Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/26

were established that in prohibiting opium imports China was influenced chiefly by financial expediency, assuredly foreigners did not thereby acquire any title to disregard her vetoes. In those preconventional days no international obligation restrained her from regulating her trade according to her own fiscal convenience, and no one within her borders had any right to disregard her regulations. As for the plea based on her hypothetical insincerity, it could not for a moment survive incidents such as those that occurred immediately before and after the arrival of Commissioner Lin at Canton. The local authorities did not torture, imprison, scourge and strangle their own nationals merely in pro-forma deference to a disregarded regulation.

Another explanation given of foreigners' indifference to China's anti-opium law at the time of these events is that they classed opium-smoking in the same category with alcohol-drinking. They contended that the evil effects of the drug had been greatly exaggerated; that, smoked in moderation, it was beneficial rather than noxious, and that for injurious excesses the depraved consumer alone should be held responsible. An interminable controversy was provoked by that phase of the question. Men of high standing and unimpeachable honesty ranged themselves on either side. English philanthropists untiringly endeavoured to show that the Chinese nation was gradually losing its virility through opium