Native Prepared '134 Native Raw 44,208, Tis, 1,600 are equal to one picul, so we have a grand total of over seventy-six piculs of opium, or more than four tons, seized by the Customs in one The most instructive feature of these figures is that the amounts show no declension from year to year. There is a drop in the March quarter, possibly because it la the farthest from the last growing. By the end of June the figures are up again and reach their highest pitch in the September quarter. ges If such large amounts can be seized from month to month, and it is still worth the smuggler while to carry on, obviously the quantity that eludes the Cus toms searchers and the profits thereon must he colossal, We have not by us the figures for the amount seized by the Shanghai municipal police inside the Settlement, but Mixed Court and monthly police re ports (as anyone may remember) indicate that that quantity is also very large, and it is a fact that a considerable amount of the already heavily taxed energies of the police is devoted to hunting out the opium-dealers and their stores. And the ques tion arises, How long is this farce of the supposed suppress ion of opium in Shanghai to continue?—for farce it is in spite of the efforts of police and Customs. The Municipal Council has been faithfully carrying out its part of the bargain with the Chinese Government and has been doing its utmost to stop the sale and use of opium within its jurisdiction. But inasmuch as China continues cheerfully to grow onium—to the extent according to the estimate given at Geneva of 1,500 tons a year—while Ghinese officials grow fat the sale thereof, and no human power can check the flow of the drug which pours into Shanghai from up river and down the coast, through a thousand unstoppable channels, there comes a time when patience is exhausted.
Not long ago Sir Francis Aglen, the Inspector-General of Customs, openly expressed the opinion that the only feasible way of controlling the trade would be for China to establish opium—monopoly. "This eminently practical suggestion was at once howled down and volumes of abuse poured upon its author, We may be. quite sure that any Chairman of the Municipal Council who was rash-enough to make a like sugges-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.