Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/25

ply, it would be futile to restrict the native. Of course, when the opium question entered its acutest phase in 1838, foreigners did not fully appreciate this legislative inconsistency on China's part. Their acquaintance with conditions existing in the interior of the Empire was still vague, and they knew little about the area of land devoted to poppy cultivation. But they had some perception of the contradiction, and it confirmed their conviction that the Chinese Government was not honestly solicitous for the people's welfare, but that it aimed rather at stopping the outflow of specie. To substitute home-produced opium for the imported article would have saved China from paying some five million pounds sterling annually to foreign countries for the purchase of a pernicious luxury, and she made no secret of the fact that her prohibitions were partially influenced by that consideration. With such a policy, however, the foreign trader could scarcely be expected to sympathise practically. He sought a market for his opium, and, compared with the attainment of that object, China's financial convenience was a matter of altogether subordinate importance in his eyes.

Of course the above extenuations of opium-smuggling are flimsy. To affirm that because a law may be evaded by corrupting its administrators therefore its aims may be discredited and its violations condoned, is at once most defective logic and most crooked morality; and even though it