Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/267

East India Company undertook the whole business in India. It is easy to conceive that so long as the importation did not increase with conspicuous rapidity, the drug continued to obtain admittance as medicine. But by and by the quantity became too large for that subterfuge.

Then bribes were used, and as the Chinese official has to eke out an insufficient salary by his wits, importers of opium found no difficulty in eluding the prohibitory laws. A record shows that a picul of silk and a chest of opium had the same market value at Canton in 1755, the drug commanding then only one-half of its present price. It is not possible to determine the exact quantity of opium that entered China ports prior to the virtual monopoly of the trade established by the East India Company. But a document compiled by a British merchant in Canton in 1782, and subsequently laid before Parliament, says: "The importation of opium to China is forbidden on very severe penalties: the opium on seizure is burned; the vessel in which it is brought to the port confiscated, and the Chinese in whose possession it is found for sale is punishable with death. It might be concluded that with a law so rigid no foreigners would venture to import, nor any Chinese dare to purchase, this article. Yet opium for a long course of time has been annually carried to China, and often in large quantities, both by our country's vessels and those of the Portuguese. It is sometimes landed at