Axe the Chinese really in earnest in their intention to stop the growth.of opium within the empire? We trow not; not that we discredit the will of a lange section of the governing powers to put a stop to what, to them, at least, must seem a crop fraught with danger to the Chinese people, but that we cannot conceive the possibility of a Government constituted like that of China being able to exercise a really effective surveillance over a crop which experience has shown to be profitable tothe cultivator. We may give Sung-Ko-unsin's son, the Po Wang, every credit for the sincerity of his motives in trying to crush out the cultivation of opium in Mongolia, and yet we may conceive that his action in the matter is pregnant with danger to the general interests of the empire. Had the Chinese Government been strong enough to repress the first attempts at the cultivation of the drag, we might have had some hope of their final success, but we know that they have been too weak or too venal to take decisive measures, w 2m decisive measures would have been successful; and however we may consider their desire to get rid of the cultivation of an injurious drug to be praiseworthy, neither we, nor any individual who has made economic subjects his study, could approve of the steps proposed to be taken, in the destraction of a crop which the immunity of the past has gone far to sanction, In their desire to exhibit a sort of spas-medic righteousness, they have in fact forgotten that the opium question may be viewed in very different lights, when we take, on the one side, the stand-point of the cultivator, or on the other that of the philanthropist'; whether, in fact, we look upon opium in its economical or moral aspect. Judged by the former standard, we can see as good reason for the encouragement of the growth of opium in Mongolia as in India; we may adduce the profit ensuing to the cultivator, and the use it enables him to make of land otherwise practically valueless, and we may see in this, as have other writers: elsewhere, a justification for the extension of the cultiva tion of the crop. He has been well called a benefactor of the human race who makes two blades of grass to grow where one grew befor. and as the tension of opium cultivation may have, and probably has had; this effect in the hitherto useless wilds of Mongolia, the cultivator has a fair claim to consideration, On the other hand, the wise statesman, who looks to the general interests of the empire, may equally well arrive at his conclusion that opium cultivation is against the common weal, and may be justified in taking such steps as will lead to its partial or entire suppression. The suppression of the growth of tobacco -in the British Isles is a case very much in point. So long as the inhibition is really effec tive, comparatively little injury is done, and no case of flagrant injustice can be made out, But were repression to come by fits and starts, and were it to assume the shape of confiscation matter almost legalized by prescription, but one idea of the impolicy, not to say culpability, of the act, could be entertained. We may applaud the efforts of the Chinese Government to repress
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.