The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-22


now in contemplation be great or small, it
raises the same issuses as the much more
decisive changes which will be demanded
hereafter; and if nobody cares to form an
opinion upon them now, there seems to be
little reason why we should ever care to con-
slider them at all. If we go on in our present
frame of mind, we shall wake up some morn
ing and find that social change of the high
est Importance has taken place, and that we
have looked on as quietly as if it were simply
a change from one fashion to another, and
bad no more significance than the adoption
of cbignons or the abandonment of crinoline
OPIUM.
From, the London Saturday Reuiep.
1t is not often that an abstract proposition
started by a man with hobby has any useful
result in the House of Commons. 1t is gene
rally pure waste of time to inquire whether
be is right or wrong. But the debate on the
Indian opium trade was, in its way, of consi-
derable use, although its issue was easily
foreseen, and although it could have no i'm
mediate effect. If there could be an Indian
subject named on which the House of Com
mons might proftably and properly spend an
hours talk, it is the revenue derived from the
traffic in opium. The people of England feel
that in some dim and almost unintelligible
manner they are the governors of India and
responsible for its management. They do
not interfere much with the details of the
Government, for they know nothing about
them, and they have the sense to see
that they would do a great deal of
harm if they interfered. But they believe
that on all very great points the virtual con-
troll of Indian government rests with the
English House of Commons. They are ordi-
narily invited to be very proud of the pos
session of India, to look on India as a mar
vellous field for English science, courage,
and energy, and to hope that they are doing
q great moral and even religious work bv
carrying out there what they believe to be
wise and just maxims of policy. But there
is very often represented to be one blot on
our Indian government, and that is the sane
ton and encouragement given by it to the
consumption of opium in China 1t is COM
monty said that we do what we know to be
very wrong in order that we may get money.
1t is difficult to see how more important
question regarding India could be brought
before the House of Commons If the
popular impression is true, then the English
nation may reasonably ask that it shall
from using the immense power
it possesses in order to sanction what it knows
to be wrong 1t would sooner or later have
a most pernicious effect on the tone of public
morals here, if men were secretly persuaded
that they were responsible for a system of
government in Asia which supported itself by
means that were generally supposed here to
be unquestionably wrong. If the popular
impression is wrong-if, as matter of fact,
the Indian Government does not sanction or
encourage the traffic in opium, or if the traffic
in opium is not q traffic which it is wrong to
sanction or encourage-then it is surely most
desirable that the truth should be known in
England, and that the national conscience
should be relieved from depressing burden.
The Government speakers, with Mr.. Grant
Duff at their head, took the bull fairly by the
horns, and avowed their conviction that the
opium traffic was not wrong at all. The use
OF opium was, according to them, like the use
of tobacco or of wine, sometimes useful,
sometimes neither good nor bad, sometimes
positively pernicious. Opium, they say, may
be taken in too great quantities, SO may to-
bacco or claret or ginger-beer Rash people
! smoke till they are sick, or drink claret till
they are drunk, or imbibe ginger-beer till
! they burst, but it is quite right to let mode
rate people smoke and drink as much as they
think fit. Mr.. Grant Duff assured his hearers
that, so far as he could make out, the Chinese
took, as a rule, about the right quantity of
opium. They smoked themselves quiet, but
not stupid; and then, as he thought
ishould be specially noticed, even
if they did smoke too much
opium sometimes, it was the peculiar merit
much of it not noisy, but very quiet. If a
certain amount Of excess must be looked for
in every country, it was as the Indian Under
Secretary suggested, very kind in the Indian
Government to supply the Chinese with q
drug which, if they will take too much of it,
prevents them from being nuisances to theiI
neighbors. 1t is at least something that a
nan who takes more opium than is good fol
him does not sing comic songs and wrench
off knockers. But this is not all The use
of opium may be put on much higher foot
ing than this 1t may, as was urged be
looked on as the destined and natural cor
rective of tea. The Chinese are tea-drink
ing people-in fact, a very tea-drinkine
people. To drink tea is looked on in Eng
land as something virtuous in ITSELF because
experience shows that men who viii
stick to tea and to nothing else for an,
length of time are of a gentle and milo
turn of mind, and love to live with thesort o
women who adore the placid virtues. But il
China the virtue is too common to be virtue
Tea is drunk by every one freely; but theI
tea is a stimulant and although it does no
cloud the brain, it shakes the nerves. Nature
however, assisted by the Indian Government
supplies the remedy, and the remedy il
opium. 1t is by the use of this salutary druG
that the Chinese are enabled to still the irri
tation and tranquillize the febrile excitement
which their tea would produce. In the sam,
way, it is said, the coffee-drinking nations
smoke tobacco to keep their nerves quiet
and thus opium and tobacco equally fulfil
most excellent purpose, for, although COFFEE
drinking has never, like tea drinking, beer
raised to the dignity. of a positive virtue
there is generally allowed to be something
| dionified Oriental and Datriarchal in drinkin,