Tae opium question has been so well ventilated that it is very difficult to find anything new to say about it, and this was undoubledly the case with the few members who addressed the House of Commons on 29th April last. There is so much floating philanthropy in England ready to attach itself to thing appropriate that the wonkest cause can got some support if it is supposed to be on the side of humanity and to this we must attribute the success of the teetotal organisations, the aborigines-protection societies, the anti-vivisection associations, the opium-abolishing leagues, whose appeals and subscription lists fil a large expnuse in the Home daily papers. At the bottom of the support of these institutions for meddling with other people's business lies the disposition many men have to Compound for sins they are inclined to, By damning those they have no =nind to, This class of enthusiasts is little prone to examining judicially the facts of the thing they condemn 80 noisily; and they often have a success which their efforts are far from deserving because their attack is credited with independence, while defenders are always believed to be interested. The war against the opiam traffic has been strenuously aided by the missionaries because they recognise in it an unanswerable ranson for the small progress they make in China, Unfortunately there is a large section of people at Homo who consider it their duty to make other people conform to their standard of morality, and they take much comfort from the almost unanimous diatribes of the missionary clergy against opium. At times this feeling finds a champion in the House of Commons; this champion on the 29th of April Inst was Mr. J. Pease. He brought forward a resolution stating that the opium traffic was immoral as regards India and degrading to China; that the revenue obtained by. India from it might with care be dispensed with; that it was our duty to join the Chinese at once in suppressing the traffic. He proved again the point which needs no proving, that the abuse of opium is harmful, and he relied mainly on the evidence of Sir Rutherford Alcock, whom people here will not think quite so high an authority as Mr. Pease evidently does. The unfortunate treaty between China and America, which has just been ratified, he brought in as a proof that the Chinese were honest in their expressed desire to put an end to the trade, Hoe probably was not aware that America has no opium traffic to abandon and that the Chinese steamer company, largely owned and directed by high officials of the Empire, has not yet begun to refuse to mako a profit by carrying the condemned drug. He owned that a large quantity of opium was actually grown in China, but ho led his hearers to believe that if the British Government prohibited the export of opium from India, the Chinese would eradicate the poppy from their soil, an opinion which, we imagine, few residents in China share. His supporters repeated his arguments, His opponents relied chiefly ea the impossibility of finding substitute for the revenue that would ixth of the the opium trade were suspended; and Mr. Onslow pointed out that the objection to Chinese immigration in California and Australia Iny in the fact that they were too energetic and industrious: that the eral consumption of opium ese people neither checked their energies abroad nor the increase of population at home, But the strongest opposition to the resolution came from the Marquis of Hartington, whose speech is, as usual, a model of clear reasoning and sound common sense. He reiterated the revenue argument, which is indeed unanswerable, and pointed out how absurd it would be for India, at the bidding of certain sentimentalists in England, to give up one-sixth of her revenue and do no good to China. He quoted the authorities who hold, and with reason, that it is only the abuse of opium that is injurious, and showed that as the total consumption of opium in China is only enough for ten per cent. of the population if smoked to excess, the actual proportion of people injured by its abuse must be trifling. He referred to the able letter to the Times from Shanghai on the subject, showing that in the west of China opium-smoking has prevailed for actually hundreds of years; and he explained the cause of delay in the ratification of the Chefoo Convention. But his strongest argument was derived froma telegram sent Home by Sir Thomas Wade in January last. Sir Thomas mentioned that he had been to the Tsung-li Yaméo, and had asked the Ministers whether the Chinese Government really sympathised with the officials who wanted to tax opium out of consumption or with those who were working to increase its sale. The Ministers were unable to answer.
They would like to stop opium-smoking, bat it could not be done by the Government. They had no idea of abolishing the trade at present. The people generally were wedded to the use of opium, and its condemnation must come from the people. If the export from India were stopped the opium would be produced elsewhere; there would be a loss to the revenue and'no benefit to the country. We now and then get a glimpse like this of the statesmanship that still exists in the Teung-li Yamen, and this confession of the rulers of China should be a sufficient answer to the anti-opium association.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.