The Sun.
London, England, 1857-12-26 00:00:00

IMPORTANT LETTER FROM CHINA.

(From the Vines' Special Coi.respondent.)
SHANGHAI, OCT. 17. I
Fortunately for me my mission to China has in
it something more than to chronicle the proceed-
ings of the Elgin embassy, or I should have died of
idleness. A much higher object is to study upon
the spot the subject of our trade with this empire,
and to labour to discover how commerce may be
developed and this great region opened up.
It is a task of dull utility. If there be any who
look to my letters for amusement I warn them to
quit my company. I have nothing to show them
bnt hard facts and perplexing figures.
First, let me say a few words upon the corpus
subjectum—the region we seek to open.
The 18 provinces of China proper are quite suf-
ficient for our present purposes. Tao half-tamed
mountaineers of Thibet are six times nearer to Cal-
cutta than to Pekin. The tribes of Mahomedans
who inhabit the vast hill districts to the north of
Thibet are to the rich provinces of China Proper
which lie upon their eastern boundary what the
highlands once were to the lowlands of Scotland.
.Chinese Tartary, lying along the north, is rich only
in hill and desert. It is to to shat densely peopled
piece of the globe which lies between the China
Sea and Tartary, between the Yellow Sea and
Thibet and Kokonor, that we must look for advan-
tageous relations.

This compact mass is about half the size of Eu-
rope, about seven times the size of France, and
about 15 times the size of our islands. It is about
1,500 miles long and broad. M'Culloch reckons
that in square miles it measures 1,348,870.
Cutting off the surrounding fringe of savage life,
China is still a vast empire, but not so immeasur-
able or so unmanageable as we are accustomed to
c,)nceive it to be. With a railway like our Great
Western laid down, we might traverse it from north
to south or from east to west in 30 hours.

This country contains 360,279,897 human crea-
tures. The amount need not startle us. If England
and Wales were as large as China England and Wales
would contain within one-ninth of the same amount
of population. If Lombardy were as large as
China, Lombardy would contain 360,000,000 also ;
and if Belgium were as large as China, Beligum
would contain 400,000,000. Take the average of
the whole 13 provinces, and there is nothing iu the
figures as they come out. The population as a
whole is not excessive. But when we come to
note the distribution of that population the figures
become very remarkable. There is a pressure
on the Eastern seaboard provinces such as is with-
out parallel in the world. The Chinese coasts
which lock out towards Japan, and whence a
straight a straight sea line might be drawn to Aus-
tralia, are choked with people, the average fur the
whole empire being 268 in the square mile ;
Kiaagsu has 850 ; its next inland province Anhui,
has 705 ; Shantung, to the north on the coast, has
444 ; the imperial district of Chihli 475 ; and Che-
kiang on the coast, to the south has 671.
After these come those sma'ler central provinces
of Honan (420) and Hupeh (389), which extend
wardsithrough the centre of the empire, and which
together with the province of Sz'chuen form the
girdle of China. The eastern part of Sz'chnen
would show the same large amount of population ;
but the western part joins upon Thibet, and is
mountainous and thinly peopled.
It is very important to our commercial inquiry to
remember the lay of the strata of Chinese popula-
tion. If we go into the country with our cottons
and our woollens our lace and our hard ware,• it is
to the men and women we must go, and not to the
Celestial Mountains and the Sea of Stars.

Let us remember, then, that the populous dis-
tricts of China, are, first the provinces on the
eastern seaboard—Chihli, "the Imperial pro-
vince ;" Shantung, " the province east of the
mountains ;" Kiangsu, " the province of the abun-
dant river;" Chie-kiang, the province of the
meandering river." Secondly, the inland girdle
forming provinces Ngauhwui, cr Anhui, "the
province of peace and plenty; Honan, "the pro-
vince south of the river ;" Hupeh, "province
north of the river ; Sz'chuen, " the province of
the four streams."
I shall hereafter have occasion to show that these
provinces so rich in men are those with which we
ought naturally to have the closest relations, that
they are the most accessible to us, and that with
one exception they are the provinces to which wo
have hitherto had no access. Canton, with its
neighbc uring provinces of Kwangsi, Kweichow,
and Yunnan, a. e the most thinly peopled provinces
in the empire. Kwangtung has only 241 inhabi-
tants to the square mile, which is below the aver-
_ age ; Kwangsi has 93, Kweichow has 82, and Yun-
nan 52. Contrast these figures with the 850 of
K;angsu and the 7(.)5 of Anhui.
Such is the country iu which we seek to develops
.our trade.

Let me now shortly sketch the present condition
of that trade.

It. is a subject upon which the data are not very
exact. Even with the assistance of two manuscript
volumes of commercial statistics, compiled by one
of the two largest mercantile houses in China for
their own practical guidance, and very generiusly
given up to my use, I tread this labyrinth of figures
with considerable hesitation.

At -the end of the commercial year 1854 the
balance of trade between China and Great Britain
was estimated at 7,900,000 dols. or 2,000,000 ster-
ling against China.
During the succeeding three years the exports to
Great Britain have .greatly increased. In the com-
mercial year 1856-7 the export of teas to England
and her colonies was 87,741,0001 b., and in the same
year the deliveries in England of China silk
amounted to 74,215 bales.
The silk exporting power of China seems to be
without limit. Every year we take from her an
annually increasing quantity. In 1843 there was
not a bale sent home. In 1845 there were 10,727
bales. In 1855 there were 50,489 bales. 1856
showed an increase of 50 per cent. over 1855 ; and
the present year, if the stocks on hand.are brought to
Europe, will show an increase of at least 50 per
cent. over the year past. I am informed that if the
Chinese succeed in establishing the prices now
demanded, and in selling all their produce in stock,
the money paid for China silk at Shanghai during
the current year will certainly not be less than
10,000,000/. sterling. 20, 40, 60, 90, 140, are
figures of radid progress, yet they represent the
advance of our silk imports from China. At the
prices now paid, you may, I believe, double this la.-t
quantity in the year to come. Ido not understand,
however, that by stimulating the production you
can greatly decrease the price. We have, I believe,
found by experience that however abundant the
corn crop may be in America there is a price below
which it will not be brought down fur export, but
can be proti ably employed at home ; so of China
silk. You have to compete as buyers with such an
enormous population of home consumers that any
extra production to meet our demands may be
thrown, without great effect, upon tho home
market. By improving the present faulty system
of winding you may perhaps make the silk more
valuable, but if you take treble your ancient
quantities you must pay treble your former quantity
of silver, and so far increase the balance of trade
again-t yeti.

The rapid increase in our imports from China is
a source of unmixed joy to the merchants of the
five ports. Their calculations do not extend beyond
their own business. Why should they 1 They-send
home the produce and they receive its value. They
do not feel the inconvenience occasioned to Europe
by a constant and unvarying trade wind, which
blows semi-monthly cargoes of silver into thn ports
of a hoarding nation. Of course the y stimulate the
productive power of China so long as they can find
a market for the produce ; and they act from the
healty instincts of commerce. lam not about
to resuscitate any of the buried heresies which
taught that there ie a distinction between silver
and gold, and other aiticles of barter, or to
suggest that a trade between tca and silk on
the one side and silver on the other side ought to
be disfavourt.d, I only to put the fact plainly
that such al trade has its inconveniences ; that it
would be much more advantageous to us to iiay for
ow; tea and our silk w;th goods of our own manu-
tabture, upon which we make a large profit, than
With commodity which is not manufactured by us
zlnd. upon which we make little or no profit. This
doubtless a self-evident proposition, but self-
d!aut truths muss be paraded now and then if we
nut Government have Governm t keep them
in
view and
fluke adecknate efforts e
to enforce
them. We cannot
open up
without Government energy and
Government,x.
anu,a. and we must show that
the end is worth t
Ilarrisu'Ex
In /83 and in 1844 PORTS.
E:Xprirted tw ce the quan-
tity of worsted stuffs that
potted last y:ar
lone
of 90
The
90 000 to
in 1832 four times the amoZe te7` eapotraleg
ets have Ellen off from an average
n 6,642. The woollens have sunk,, from 68042 in
,
183 G to 38,553. printed couwnavibrate with a
somewhat higher aVerage in later Year; but printed
cottoni and cotton twist show a large decrease
since 1853. While I write there is a sudden a,_
wand for English cottons at remunerative prick a,
but both the demand and the price now obtained
are temporary. The first arises from the partial
failure of the cotton crop in China : the second arises
from a cause to which I shall have occasion more
particularly to refer hereafter—the alteration in
the relative value between silver and copper cash.
The consumer "up country" is prepared to pay
the same quantity of cash for his cottons which he
used to pay, and, as these cash are now worth so
much more in dollars, the Chinese merchant can
afford to give higher prices in that metal which

the medium of European commerce. This, how-,
ever, will quickly be altered by the extensive ex-
porta sure to come from England, or by a full cot-
ton crop in China.
Secondly, reduction in prices has not been me t
by corresponding increase of sales. The dollar price
in China for sbirtiogs, for instance, the great staple
article of goods, has not for several years been more
than half what it ranged at a few years previously ;
yet we see that the demand has not risen with the
reduction in price.
Thirdly, the years which appear to denote great
activity are in reality years of great disaster. In
11843, 1844, and 1845, when the Northern ports
bad just been opened, the people at home were
wild with excitement Alan eminent firm at Sheffield
sent out a large consignment of knives and forks,
and declared themselves prepared to supply all
China with cutlery. The Chinamen, who know
not the use of knives and forks (er, as they say,
abandoned the use of them when they became civi-
lised), but toss their rice into their mouths with
chopsticks, would not look at these best balance-
handles. They were sold at prices which scarcely
realised their freight, and the shops in Hong Kong
were for years afterwards adorned with them,
formed into devices like guns and spears in an
armoury. A London house of famous name sent
out a tremendous consignment of pianofortes. The
speculation was based, probably, on the calculation
that China must contain 200,000,000 wo:nen, and
" now that China was opened up " at least one out
of every 200 would wish to learn the piano. The
Chinese remained faithful to their gongs and
trumpets, and refused all hospitality to this intru-
sive flight of squares, uprights, and horizontals.
The embarrassment became great. Hong Kong
could not hold them. At last the consignees, being
people of great social influence, extricated them-
selves by an act of grievous tyranny. They insisted
upon every European resident buying two pianos.
The price, as we may suppese, was not exorbitant,
but what sale was effected was a matter of private
obligation, and not by fair market. The conse-
quence of this spirited conduct on the part of the
manufacturers is, that pianos by the best makers
abound in Hong Kong and the four ports. An ine-
vitable sequence arising from the indescribable hu-
midity of the climate that these noise•boxes are
all out of tune and discourse most eloquent discord.
What happened in the case of cutlery and pianos
occurred also in a less noticeable manner in the case
of those staple commodities which form the subject
of our table, and which, in the present condition of
our relations with China, form almost the only rea-
sonable articles of export from England.
A fourth observation which arises upon this
table is the rising—l should rather say the risen—
importance of the great northern port of Shanghai
and the declining importance of the port of Canton.
This will be strengthened by a careful analysis of
the Consularreturns for 1856, whence it will appear
that if we throw off rice and Indian cotton, the ex-
ports of British produce to Canton were 604,083'.
45., while those to Shanghai amounted to
1,679,5811. lls. Again, we must remember that
these amounts include the English exports to Amoy
and Foochow, which are transhipped at Canton,
and also some which afterwards reach Shanghai,
whereas (Shanghai b3ing the most distant port) the
Shanghai returns include only its own proper im-
port-4.

The opium trade, the least desirable part of our
export trade to China, shows healthiest in statistics.
The "foreign medicine trade," as the Chinese now
more delicately call it, is sturdy and increasing.
The deliveries to the different opium stations in
1849 and 1854. were as follows :
Names of Stations.

1819. P 54,
Camsingmoon 1400 20,010
Hongkong ... 9
00 001 2,760
Macao . 6
.• ••• •••
Nsmoa ... 2,470 3,095
Amoy ... ... 3,200 3,860
Chewchew ... 1,390 1,3A2
—. 1,840 4,495

Lookong ... ... ... ... 1,003 2,100
Woosnng ... ... ... ... 21,030 28,870

47,870 66,062

I have not the station statement for 1856, but
the total amount was 76,300 piculs, and the value
was 30,868,050, or 7,202,5451. Now, this is a very
important sum of money spent, no doubt, upon a
very deleterious drug. Divided among the
360,000,000, it is nearly 6d. per head per annum—
about one-tenth of what each one average unit of
our 20,000,000 Britons spends in tobacco ; about
one-sixth of what he spends additionally on gin
and whisky.
It is very wrong of John Chinaman to smoke
opium to the extent of 6d. per head per annum.
But what is he to do 7 He detests beer and wine.
You may leave an open brandy bottle in his custody
for weeks, and it will not evaporate. His own satu-
slice is, so far as I can discover, almost a myth, ex-
cept as an article to sell to foreign sailors. His vile
tobacco is a very miserable debauch. It is used in
very small pipes by the men, and is much affected
by the ladies. My room at Hong Kong looked upon
the domesticities of a learnednChinePe "teacher,"
his wife, and his child. The exigencies of the East
—open casements and narrow thoroughfares—ren-
dered strict seclusion difficult. Whenever, in mid-
night, a more than usually intense sense of suffoca-
tion or a particularly heavy thunder-storm, or a
specially shrill fit of screaming from the infant
Chinaman, or the sharp bite of some mosquito
which had eluded my fortifications made me start
up in my bed, the same object always presented
itself. The lady of the house opposite, with her
hair full dressed, but otherwise in deshabille—
rather economical than elegant—the simplex with-
out the munditiis—was always at her casement,
gravely smoking a bamboo pipe. But for the mos-
quito curtains I could almost have stretched forth
my hand and lit a cigar from her bowl ; alas ! I
could quite taste the flavour of her tobacco, and it
was not fragrant.
If, then, John Chinaman, not being reasonable,
will not get drunk, and if he has small comfort in
the narcotic which it pleases us to patronise, what
is ho to do ? It is not in his habits to call a temper-
ance or a teetotal meeting and harangue himself
and his hearers into a state of excitement which
leaves all other drunkenness far behind—which,
instead of involving the penalty of sad reaction, is
followed by sweet soothing reports of platform
speeches, by votive slippers, and by a pleasant con-
sciousness of self-superiority to all other mundane
creatures. He knows not the civilisation which
teaches means of cheap moral excitement. Our
young ladies shall thrill with ecstacy while some
dear good man is describing to them the horrors of
drunkenness, and in the next street some zealous
surgeon shall electrify his medical class, and throw
the blood up into his own head, while setting forth
with anatomical severity the consequences of tight-
lacing. But these are the resources of civilised
Britons, not of pharisaical Chinamen.
Yet there never was found in any age or in any
clime a tribe, a race, or a nation, which had not
acme stimulant in which they habitually indulged.
Mrs. Chinaman takes her munduneus ; her hus-
band varies the same pleasure with an occasional
whiff el the stronger narcotic. I wish he would
drink beer, or whisky, or gin, or British brandy,
for they aro all recognised means of intoxication
and British manutacLuree. But he stedfestly re-
fuses—Que voulez vous ? 1/ est fait comma cela.
A Chinaman loves opium as he loves nothing else. '
The head of a Parsee house at Hong Kong was so
civil as to take me into his warehouse and to open
two chests of opium, that I might see the drug as
it passes iu commerce. The first consisted of balls,
the size of a large apple dumpling, and when cut
open the mass was found to be solid ; the other
was full of objects which 4 commander in the navy
not long since ordered his men to return to the
owners of a captured junk, " Arn't you ashamed,
. my lads, to loot a lot of miserable Dutch cheeses ?"
The "Dutch cheeses" were fine Patna opium, worth
about Si. each. They aro globes of thick dark jelly,
enclosed in a crust not unlike the rind of a cheese.
My Parsee acquaintance tapped one with a frag-
ment of the iron fastening of a chest, and drew
foi th about a spoonful of the evil-smelling drug.
It was nut the opium which engaged my attention ;
it was the efleA produced by it upon the sur-
rounding Coolies. I never before saw real excite-
ment in a Chinaman's face. I've se en them tried
for their lives and condemned to (testi], and I've
seen theta test the long-suffering patience of Mr.
Tudor Davies in the Hongkong Police-court, where
that gentleman is daily engaged in laborious en-
deavours to extract truth oat of conflicting lies.
I've seen them laugh heartily at an obscene gesture
at a singsong, and I once saw a witness grin with
great delight as he unexpectedly recognised his most
intimate friend, a tradesman of repu'ed wealth,
among a crowd of prisoners in the dock. But these
Coolies, when they saw that opium, opened their
horizontal, slit-shaped eyes, till they grew round
and starting, their iambs, so lax and limpid when
not in actual strain of labour, were stiff from ex-
citement, every head was pressed forward, every
hand seemed ready to clutch. There was a possi-
bility that it wou!d be put down upon the window-
sill near which we were at indiu 0.. I could see the
shadow of fingers ready to slid:in. It was ahnOet
Zertain that it would be thrown aside—there was
lishope of an opium debauch gratis, and this was
the state of mind that hope created.
Tile 'Chines Governments have long ceased to
againstwhether they this passion for opium. I doibt
strive e this passion
did strive against it. At
Chi time
China, de opium weaabal- balance of trade was agaipst
Lip. the Sycee silver out
01 thought it absolutely pe-
a the country, and
policyj o p to
Surf stop, theof
eeseary as a matter
ce
traffic. A Chinh;ese°Meial is the
diplomacy ; be ~,,s deeds good or evil, they are cer-

twin to 1.,e concealed under a mass of fine senti-
ments.
In (*.Mina every pragmatical pedant who has a
certair L literary degree has the privilege of me-
morial rising the Emperor. I have waded through
hundr eds of these to find only those stupid plal-i-
-tudo., those trite commonplaces, those "banalites
sur lw morale," as Huc says, which, like the maxims
in Pc so r Richard's Almanack, pass for deep wisdom
with Vie vulgar of all nations. The opium question
of co a rse produced a rank crop of these imperti-
nencer,, and some were selected for publication in
the Poilzin Gazette. One of them is reprinted in
the bh re-book for 1840, and contains that rarest of
all thir tgs in these memorials—a fact
" Frcn t Fuhkein, Kwangtung, Chekeing, Shantung,
Yunnan„ and Kweichow memorials have been presented
by the cie nsors and other officers, requesting that prohi-
bition should be enacted against the cultivation
of the poppy and the preparation of opium ; but
while Ts( truinally prohibited, the cultivation has not
been rea lltir stopped in those places. Of any of those
provinces, except Yunnan, I do not presume to
speak ; b al of that portion of the country I have it in
my power- to say, that the poppy is cultivated all over
the hills and in the open plain, and that the qttantity of
opium annually produced there cannot be less than se-
veral thou.sAnd chests ; and yet we do not see any dimi-
nution in the quantity of silver exported as compared
with any previous period, while, on the other hand, the
lack of this metal in Yunnan is double in degree what it
formerly wee. To what cause is this to be ascribed
To what but that the consumers of the drug are very
many, and that those who are choice and dainty with
regard to its quality prefer always the foreign article."
This testimony of Choo Tsun as to the cultiva-
tion of -thousands of chests of native opium in one
province alone was given in 1836, while the ver-
million: pencil was inditing heroics about the im-
moral ity of foreign opium-growers.
I ain add to this statement that the culture of
°pima certainly is not confined to the province of
Yuni lan. Any one who penetrates intothe amphi-
theaUe of mountains which bounds the Ningpo
plait, will see valleys upon valleys of fine rich land
coves red with poppies. The official reports deplore
this, but cannot stop it. The estimate is that
60,000 chests of opium are annually grown in
China. This opium is purer and stronger than the
Indian opium, but for want of skill in the prepara-
tion, and patience in keeping, it has an acrid fla-
vour.

The English opium trade, even although Indian
opium. should bapppen to be consumed only by maeis-
trates on the judgment-seat and other distinguished
persons, is a great thorn in the aide of the British mis-
sionary, The controversy which the Chinese politely
evade finds exercise among the Christians. An English
missionary related quite recently how he had met and
vanquished a Portuguese priest who confronted him in
hostile manner in the streets of a northern city. Having
no European language in common, and Latin being
found to be an inconvenient medium, they dropped
fluently into the Shanghai dialect. The gaping
Chinese stood round and wondered, while the priest
accused the English Minister of being about to teach
the Chinese a modern heresy, only 100 years old, in-
vented by a wicked king and an abandoned woman ;
and while the priest was in his turn twitted with teach-
ing an idolatry stolen from the temples of Buddha. We
have all classes of missionaries here, except only "high"
churchmen, whereof I have met none. The ordained
clergy in China often abandon their prayer-book, and
conduct their service in the Presbyterian form. Some
of the sectarian ministers carry their Protestantism with
a dauntlessness that makes us start or shiver. There
was a reception day some time since at the yamun of
Taoutai of Shanghai city. The Roman Catholic Bishop
had just had his audience, and an uncompronising Protes-
tant of an extreme sect took his place. Now, this Taou-
tai had the reputation of being a clever, a malicious, and
a sarcastic man, accustomed to gather all the European
scandal of the settlement, and to cast it into the faces of
the missionaries—Roman Catholic, Catholic, and Pro-
testant. ss The head man of your Christians has just
gone out," maliciously remarked the Taoutai. "Sir,
he is not our bead man. He is not a Christian at all ;
he is an idolator ; he worships the cross.". "And do
not you ?" asked the innocent Taoutai. "No, I do not."
" And yet if I were to lay the cross on the floor at
your feet you dare not trample upon it?" "I would,"
answered the unhesitating Christian missionary. Of
course, there must be jealousies and difficultly and
heartburnings among men holding such very different
opinions. Even some Americans of the more violently
hostile sects point out to the Chinese that the English
are opium dealers, suppressing the fact that American
houses are quite as eager in disputing the profits of the '
trade. Sometimes it happens that in the midst of a mis-
sionary discourse an old man comes forward (either
spontaneously or at some one's suggestion), and tells the
crowd what a good son he once had, and how that
son kept him iu comfort, but that he has lately taken
to spend all his earnings in opium-smoking, and leaves
his father unprovided for. The old gentleman
wishes to know whether it is the countrymen of the
" elder teacher" who sell that opium. We mu,t imbue
ourselves with the exaggerated notiins which the Chinese
have of the sacredness of parental despotism to fully un-
derstand the effect of such a question. If while a candi-
date was addressing the electors-of the borough of Maine-
law, with their wives in general tea-party aseeml•lad,
Mrs. Brown Jones Robinson 'Smith were suddenly to
appear leading in Mr. B. J. R. Smith, staggering in the
last: stage of maudlin tipsiness—if Mrs. Smith were
then, addressing the candidate and po'nting to her
spouse to ask whether the report was true that he, Mr.
Juniper, was the person who made and sold the liquid
which had reduced Mr. Smith to the condition of a beast
—and if the candidate, thus adjured, felt constrained to
confess that he certa'nly was the proprietor of a rather
extensive distillery, the interruption would not be more
provoking than those which sometimes occur at Amoy
or Shanghai.
The English missionaries meet these things with a
constancy almost as bold as the chronology of the Por-
tuguese pries'. They say that India is not England,
but a country to which China is indebted for her two
great curses—opium and Buddhism. As to this effect
upon the conversion of the Chinese the suggestion is
simply absurd ; but it is a weak point in the armour
of controversy, and our missionary countrymen feel it
very bitterly.
At Ningpo I accepted an invitation from the Rase Mr-
Russell, the Church of England missionary priest, and
the Rev. Mr. Edkins, of the Loudon Mission at Shangai,
to visit the opium dens of Ningpo city. Commander
Dew, of the Nimrod, and several of his officers accom-
panied us. 1 had seen the opium-eaters of Constan-
tinople and Smyrna, and the hashish smokers of Con
stantine, and I was prepared fer emaciated forms and
trembling limbs. I recollected buying a taboosh in the
bazaars of Smyrna from a young Moslem whose palsied
hand and dotard head could not count the coins I offered
him. I recollected the hashish-smokers of Constantine,
who were to be seen and heard every after-
noon at the bottom of that abyss which yawns
under the " Adultress's Rock,"—lean, fleshless
Arabs, smoking their little pipes of hempseed
chanting and swaying their skeleton forms to and fro,
shrieking to the wild echoes of the chasm, then sinking
exhausted under the huge cactus,—sights and sounds of
saturnalia in purgatory.
The Chinese exhibition was sufficiently disgusting,
but was otherwise quite a failure. These opium dens
are ordinary Chinese cottages, with a room about 12
feet square, furnished with a bed, a table, and a sofa,
In tae first we entered three men sat upon the bed and
two upon the sofa. There was the opium pipe, the
lamp, and the small porcelain cup of treacle-looking
opium. One of the customers takes the pipe and the
Limp, then dips a pin into,the opium, turas it round and
round till he has the proper quantity of the jellified
drug, inserts the pin in the pipe, applies the pipe to the
flame of the lamp, and at tie same time draws up the
vapour by two or three long inhalations—not whiffs,
for he draws it into his lungs ; then he press on the
pipe, the opium hi ing consumed, and gradually lets the
vapour slowly return through his mouth and his no e.
The menst• s of this convivial society were good-
humoured and communicative. One was a chair Coolie,
a second was a petty tradesman, a third was a runner
in a mandarin's yamun ' • they were all of that class of
urban population which is just above the lowest. They
e ere, however, neither emaciated nor infirm. The chair
Coolie was a sturdy fellow, well capable of taking his
share in the porterage of a 16 stone mandarin, the
runner seemed well able to run, and the tradeesnan,
who said he was 38 years old—say, 37, for the Chinese
commence to count their age nine months earlier than
we do—was remembered by all of us to be a singularly
young looking man for that age. He had smoked opium
for seven years. As we passed from the opium dens we
went into a Chinese tea-garden—a dirty paved court
with some small trees and flowers in flowerpots,—
and a very emaciated aria yawning proprietor pre-
, s ated himself. " The man has deetroyiel himself by
opium-smoking," said Mr. Russell. The man being
euestionel, declared that he had never smoked an
opium pipe in his life,—a bad shot, at which no one
was more amused than the rev. gentleman who fired it.
I only take the experiment for what it is worth.
There must be very many most lamentable specimens
of the effects of indulgence in this vicious practice,
although we did not happen to see any of them that
morning. They are not, however, so universal, nor
even so common, al travellers who write in support of
some thesis, or who are not above truckling to popular
prejudices in England, are pleased to say they are.
But if our visit was a failure in one respect, it was
fully instructive in another. In the first house we visited
nu man spent on an average less than 80 cash aelay on
his opium pipe, One man said he spent 120. The
chair Coolie spends 80, and his average earnings are 100
cash a-day. English physicians, unconnected with the
missionary societies, have assured me that the C .olie
opium-sruolzer dies, not from opium, but from starvation.
If he sta=ves Himself for his pipe, we need not ask what
happens to his family.
No earthly power can stop opium-smoking in China ;
but if the pe=ople of England are earnest in wishing to
stop the English trade in it, nothing is easier than to dii
so by far less of self-sacrifice than the opium smoker
would be obliged to exercise. Let the old ladies give
up tea and the young ladies give up silk, and the thing
is done. If the Chinese had again to pay for opium in
silver they would grow it all at home, and lock sharp
after the foreign smuggler. At present the trade is as
open and as unrestrained in all the cities of China as the
sale of hos-cross buns on Good Friday is in the streets
of London.
Those-unfortunate fine sentiments of Mr. Commissioner
Lin emit tee Chic e e Treaatiry. a- Very hannsome source
c f reventee. When the drain of sycee these sentiments
became (ply expensive encumbrances. It is amusing

to;observe how delicately they have been dropped over
board.

T 123 North China Herald of the 27th of June, 1857,
contains two proclamations from the authorities
of Fnhkien and the prefects of Fuhchow. These
authorities profess that they have discovered that
"among the foreign imports, there is an article called
foreign medicine,' of which immense quantities are sold,
and on which hitherto there has been no duty." They
innocently remark that It appears that this foreign
medicine is sold to the people as medicine, avid is used
for expelling epidemics, so that it cannot be classed with
rice, paddy, cloth, &c., which are of constant use. There-
fore in levying this duty en foreign medicine we do not
oppress the people." The proclamations declare that
" hereafter this foreign medicine, when it has paid the
duties, is to be regarded as a legal article of trade."
The duties imposed are, that "every box of foreign
medicine containing 40 balls shall pay a duty of one
dollar per ball" (that is, the Patna opium) • " other
kinds of foregn medicine in small balls (the Malwa
opium) ehall pay duty at the rate of $4 per 101 b." The
proclamation ends thus :
" The high military and civil authorities of the province
have already memorialised the Throne. Hereafter, when the
duty on foreign medicine is paid, the trade is legal; and at a'l
the Custom-houses the presentation of the proper certificate
will secure immediate passage for the foreign medicine with-
out the slightest opposition."
The date of the second of these proclamations is the
7th of June, 1857.
At Shanghai there has been no formal proclamation,
but the same Viceroy rules, and levies a duty of 24 taels
a chest.

At Ningpo a tax of 12 Shanghai dollars per chest has
been established for some time, and the mandarins are
now about to raise it to the Shanghai amount. lam
told that it was originally proposed to levy this tax as
an important duty, but that the merchants refused
to pay it, and threatened to retire to their depot ships
again. In this lam inclined to think they were unwise.
Opium might have been brought within the 5 per cent.
of the " unenumerated articles clause" of the treaty,
and this vexed question thus settled for ever ; whereas
the tax is now levied from the Chinese brokers, and is,
of course, without limit.

In the face of the present large returns from these
opium duties—concerning the amount whereof Lord
Elgin may, perhaps, be able to give the Emperor some
information which has not yet reached him—there will
be no difficulty in putting this part of our trade on a
satisfactory treaty basis.
Perhaps I have said too much about this topic ;
but it must come into the new treaty, and there may
be some few readers in England who may be willing
to hear the question stated as I have endeavoured to
state it—without the prejudices either of a missionary
or a merchant.

One word upon a subject to which I shall probably
not have occasion to recur. I have sometimes spoken
untenderly of topics much cherished by some of our
Protestant missionaries. There is, however, no subscriber
to the various bodies which send preachers forth who
thinks more highly of the usefulness of these men
than I do. I will not say that they are making sincere
Chinese Christians—those who say this must be either
governed by a delusion or guilty of a fraud—but they
are doing the work which, if China is ever to be Chris-
tianised, must precede its conversion. Th►;y live among
the Chinese people, they speak their language, they are
known to them by deeds of charity and beneficence;
their wives are the friends of the poor, friendless
Chinese woman ; their children prattle to the natives
in their own tongue, and are the messengers of their
parents in little offices of love. The merchants in China
are almost universally large-hearted and benevolent men;
they will give largely, but they have not either time or
taste for such offices as these ; nor would the wildest
philanthropist expect it from them. Yet this must be
done by somebody if China is to be opened. Even if I
had to hope that the cold speculative systems of Laotze,
Confucius, and Buddha could be overthrown, that those
palaces of ice would some day melt before the fervid
quickening fire of true religion, still 1 would say plant
missionary establishments in China ; but remember
always that a fool, a bigot, or a firebrand can do
more evil there than ten good men can repair.
(To be continued.)