2. The producer and trader will be tempted to the use of unfair means for the increase of the trade.
Happily the private trader is generally restrained by the strong arm of the law, can seldom use force to promote his trade, and is confined to such petty acts as lying advertisements, &c. But if the Government falls into temptation, what power shall restrain it within bounds? The whole history of the Opium trade with China is a record in which we hardly know whether to detest most the meanness of the era when supreme authority connived at smuggling while professing to prohibit it, or the abuse of our superior military and naval power, in making them the instruments for forcing this trade upon unhappy China.
An impression has got abroad that those melancholy proceedings belong to a closed chapter of English history. But this is a delusion. The attitude of the Chinese Government and people towards opium has never changed. Their protest has never ceased, though for a time, when unsuccessful war had reduced them to the lowest ebb of their fortunes, it was a silent one. So soon as they began to regain a little strength they renewed their demand to be relieved from the hideous obligation of admitting a drug which they believe is sapping the prosperity of their land. Of this we have clear proof in the testimony of Sir Rutherford Alcock to the Council in Calcutta, the account of which we extract from the same Blue Book.
Addendum to Appendix IV.
CULTIVATION IN CHINA.
Memorandum of a conference held by the Government of India with Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., on the 4th February, 1870.
A Meeting of the Viceroy in Council was held on Friday, the 4th February, 1870, to confer with His Excellency Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., Her Majesty's Minister and Plenipotentiary at the Court of Pekin, upon the prospects of the Indian opium revenue.
There were present, besides the Members of the Supreme Government, His Honour the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, the Secretaries to the Government of India, in the Financial, Foreign and Home Departments, and the Members of the Board of Revenue, of the Lower Provinces of Bengal.
At the invitation of His Excellency the Viceroy, Sir Rutherford Alcock described to the Council the progress of recent events in China as affecting the trade in Indian opium. The following is an abstract of his statement:—
The right of revising the Treaty of Tien-tsin accrued last year. The British merchants were consulted, and their views were ex-
