Extracted from the Dictionary of
PAPAVER
somniferum.
The liking dues are now collected by the Provincial Governments and
credited to the Imperial revenue. Opium is thus in China as in India a State
Monopoly. Of imported opium, however, it is currently reported that the
working of this new arrangement is not giving satisfaction to the traders.
The chances of contraband traffic and of escaping the likin charges through
the easy bribery of the humbler officials has been greatly minimised, and
that being so the profits are much less to the smaller native dealers, hence
their purchasing limit has been considerably lowered. There seems little
doubt, however, that as far as the Chinese Government is concerned, the
traffic, by being thus legalised, is at last placed on a more certain footing,
and one from which such restrictions, as may be found necessary to the
expansion of consumption, will be within the power of the Government to
effect on perfectly constitutional grounds. At present the revenue realised
by China on its imported opium alone cannot be far short of £1,500,000;
the Indian Government realises on its exports (mainly to China) a net
revenue of, say, £5,500,000.* These two sums are, therefore, additional
charges to the cost of production of the article, and though they do not
very probably express much more than half the total profits made from
the consumer of Indian opium, they show conclusively that if taxation can
repress luxurious indulgences, opium is being fully brought under that in-
fluence. Opium, in fact, pays quite as heavy a tax as the corresponding
indulgence of the working classes of Great Britain— spirits—which gives
to the Government a little over £14,000,000 sterling a year. The actual
revenue from opium in China is of course very considerably greater than
here shown, since to the figures given have to be added the excise dues
and license fees imposed both on Chinese-grown opium as well as on the
imported drug.
30
Poppy Cultivation.
HISTORY
: Attitude of
Indian
Government.
Opium
a
State
Monopoly
in
China.
CULTIVATION
CULTIVATION OF THE POPPY.
In the historic chapter above, reference will be found to the earliest men-
tion of poppy culture in India. From the facts there brought out it will
have been seen that the plant was apparently first introduced into India by
the Arab traders at Cambay and Malwa, and that its cultivation spread
all over the peninsula, chiefly on the higher tracts of the tableland, but
ultimately, as a cold season annual, to the plains. On the subject of
the cultivation of the poppy in India numerous valuable papers have
appeared. The literature of the subject is, in fact, so accessible to the
members of the Opium Department and others interested in the subject that
it is unnecessary to give in this work more than the merest outline, sufficient
to convey a general impression, to those outside the limits of the country.
For full details the reader should consult the Transactions and Journals
of the Agri.-Horticultural Society of India ; Dr. W. C. B. Eatwell's
Poppy Cultivation and the Benares Opium Agency, 1851 ; Dr. R. Lyell's
Notes on the Patna Opium Agency, 1857 ; Mr. T. A. M. Gennoe's Notes
on the Cultivation of the Poppy, 1861 ; and Mr. J. Scott's Manual of
Opium Husbandry, 1877. The late Mr. Scott's work deals with the subject
in an able manner, and though it occasionally enlarges on side issues,
general agricultural principles, and even speculative problems of plant life,
it embodies the results of patient and careful study by one of the foremost
horticulturists who has ever lived in this country. It may in passing be
said that the chief lessons taught by Mr. Scott's deputation to study the
opium plant are that, with judicious cultivation, more manure and deeper
ploughing, combined with careful selection of seed, the yield and the quality
of the drug can be considerably improved. On the importance of a careful
selection of the forms of the plant, and the discovery of the special suitabi-
lity of these to certain soils and climates, Mr. Scott has much to say of great
* For actual figures 0f Indian Revenue see table page St.