One readers will not have forgotten the memorial by Kwoh Sung-tao, which we published in August last, sketching a course of procedure for the extinction of opium-smoking. Recognizing, at the outset, the great extension of poppy cultivation in Yunnan and Szechuen, in Kansuh, Shansi and Shensi, as well as the Inrge foreign import, His Ex. cellency went on to suggest the measures which seemed to him practicable for checking and gradually extinguishing ug. It was useless to ye enactments; the first thing was to develope a feeling of self-respect among the higher official classes which should induce them to refrain from the use of the drug, and that these should strictly supervise their subordinates with a similar view of checking the practice. Notice was to be given that three years would be allowed, at the end of which pains and penalties from degradation downward would be visited on all officials and literati who had not abandoned their evil courses; and a check was to be placed on the cultivation of the poppy in the districts where it is now rampant, by "yequiving the district and department magistrates to call upon the notables and people generally to set matters right in the localities respectively under their control, a change being thus brought about by patient effort and exhortation." The tone of the whole memorial is that of a man persuaded that opium-smoking is deeply injurious, but sufficiently intelligent to know that violent remedies are impracticable. As we pointed out at the time, moreover, there.is no word of the denunciation of foreign vendors of the drag, in which his couutrymen—and not only his countrymen but the English members of the Anti-Opium Association—are proue.to indulge; on the contrary, it is upon his countrymen, and more especially upon the ruling classes, that saddles' the, respousibility for the spread of the vice; and the fact is admitted that it was fonnd necessary, to issue an interdict against opium, less than a century and a half ago—loug before any appreciable quantity was brought from India, It is by 0 similar process of domestic legislation that Lo hopes now to grapple with the vice, and we respect his purpose and his proposals, however much we may doubt the possibility of carrying them into effective operation. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is.as likely to convert to teetotalism.a nation which. has been given to a.free use of beer since it first learned how to brew,' as auy- Chinese statesman is to eradicate a habit which lias become so widely spread among the sons of Han.
Peking statesmen seem, however, to be willing to make the trial. An edict "based upon Kwoh Sung-tao's memorial was circulated last year in the provinces; and among the transluions from the Peking Gazette which we publish elsewhere, will be found a memorial from the Viceroy of Nanking, recommending for degradation a batch of five officials whom he accuses of babitaally smoking the drug. He goes, in this, beyond the proposal of Ewoh, who was willing to allow three years for reform; but the proceeding is all the more indicative of earnestness, and tallies in this respect with the measures taken, on his first assumption of office, to repress smoking by making resort to the opium shops more difficalt and disgraceful. This idea of checking the practice with the higher orders by making it discreditable, and so affording a better example to the people, seems to be the leading idea with both Statesmen, though Shen Pao-chen is going into rather more active measures of repression than Kwoh seemed to contemplate. And there is no doubt that opium smoking is theoretically considered discreditable, although the practice is 80 common that there seems to be fa tacit understanding to overlook it. Perhaps it was a conviction of this fact which induced the Viceroy to advocate more stringent measures. The occasional disgrace of an official for indulging in the drag has not, we believe, been unusual, even before; Shen only hands up a more than usnally large batch of victims; and in the case of Liu Hien, Taotai of Hwai-van and Yangchow, he strikes at an official holding @ more important, though por-haps less lucrative post, than the ''taotai of Shanghai, There however, a curious appendix to this incident, which involves a difficulty the Anti-opium Association may find interest in solving. It appears, from a later number of the Gazette, that almost simultaneously with his impeachment by the Governor-General of Nanking, Liu has been extolled for his ability and activity in the public service, by the Director General of Grain Transport,—with whom his. post at Hwai-ngan at the auction of the Canal and the Yellow River brings him into constant official contact, and who has solicited promotion on his behalf. There arises, then, this dilemma, Either Lin: Hien has been grossly maligned by the Viceroy, or opium-smoking cannot possibly be so detrimental to the mental and bodily. faculties as its professed enemies declare.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.