The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-11-22
A Case for Indignation.

For many months England has rung
with indignant protests against the bar
barities wrought by Russian upon Turk,
and Turk upon Russian and Bulgarian.
Yet these barbarities, terrible as they are,
and deserving of the sternest Reproduction,
are but the legitimate fruit of bitter
war between nations that are scarcely
more than semi civilized. At the very
worst, their effects are limited, both as to
time and the numbers affected by them.
But indignant England has been, for
scores of years, inflicting upon helpless
nation wrong beside which the barbara.
ties of Turk and Russian sink into COM
parative ignificance-a wrong which
has affected the physical and moral well
fare of millions of human beings,and will
prove fatal to millions more in COM
ing years. We refer to the opium trade,
which commercial England has forced
upon the Chinese for more than century
past That terrible traffic, which has in
creased from few thousand pounds a
year at the beginning to ten or eleven
million pounds at the present time, has
proved, like intemperance in our own
country, intellectually more destructive
than war in its most barbarous forms.
The Chinese Government has always
frowned upon the traffic, and resisted the
admission of the fatal drug by every
means at its command. Its energetic at
tempts to do this in the early part of the
century brought on the infamous "Opium
War;" waged by England solely to com
pei the Chinese authorities to admit
opium to the kingdom. All that Chris
tian missionaries have been able to &C
complish since their first entrance into
China, glorious as their achievements
have been, has been thousandfold over
balanced by the fearful misery and deg
radiation which nominally Christian trad.
ers have brought upon the people of that
dark land. While Christian teachers
have sought to introduce the blessing of
the gospel, these merchants, backed by
the land and naval forces of Christian
England, have succeeded in forcing in
their baneful drug, in spite of every
barrier raised against it. The Chinese
authorities have done their best; but they
are no match for the cunning and power
Of their formidable adversaries.
Recently, according to the London
Friend of China, the Government has
been making a renewed attempt to stem
the tide of intemperance in the use of
mulgated, which points out that although
stringent regulations have heretofore
been made which forbids magistrates,
scholars, soldiers and others to smoke
opium, the smokers are daily increasing
in numbers. All civil and military Of
ticers are therefore epjoined to consider
the circumstances, and take such meas
ures as may be necessary to check the
growing evil. One of the provincial
governors, it is noted, has already en-
tered upon the work of suppression, by
shutting up all shops except on the main
thoroughfares, restricting these to doors,
three feet high, forbidding the use of
beds, and compelling smokers to lie on
said, were he to shut up all the shops at
once. But by thus making opium smok-
ing disreputable from the surroundings,
be hopes to deter all who have any re-
gard for responsibility from frequenting
the shops.
These are laudable efforts on the part
of the Chinese rulers, and they deserve in
making them the heartiest sympathy of
every Christian nation. Especially ought
they to receive the sympathy of that
nation which is mainly responsible,
through its encouragement and support
of the Indian opium trade, for the enor-
nous growth of the traffic with China.
Some of the righteous indignation so
freely poured out upon Cossack and
Bashi- Bazouk might we'll be visited upon
those who are engaged in perpetrating so
foul a wrong upon defenceless nation.
-Neu York Examiner and Chronicle.