Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/58
CHINA
remained uneradicated among themselves, but that it would merely throw the market into other hands. It, in fact, he said, rests entirely with yourselves. If your people are virtuous, they will desist from the evil practice; and if your officers are incorruptible and obey your rulers, no opium can enter your country. The discouragement of the growth of the poppy in our territories rests principally with you, for nearly the entire produce cultivated in India travels east to China. If, however, the habit has become a confirmed vice, and you feel that your power is at present inadequate to stay its indulgence, you may rest assured your people will procure the drug in spite of every enactment. (Loch's "Events in China," London, 1843.)
To Chinese possessing some knowledge of English history and some power of ratiocination these arguments of Sir Henry Pottinger's must have sounded very remarkable. That England, which enforced stringent laws against unlicensed distilling of whiskey within the United Kingdom, should be constitutionally debarred from checking the cultivation of the poppy in her Indian Dependency; that Englishmen who, because China allowed the growing of poppies at home, denied the sincerity of her objections to opium-imports from abroad, should declare themselves debarred by the rights of individuals from interdicting the growing of poppies in India; that Great Britain, who made war upon the Chinese, killed thousands of their people and exacted millions of their treasure because some of their officials had been sufficiently honest and loyal to
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