Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... Opium-smoking amongst the Chinese--The responsibility of the English government--Rapid spread of the vice--Import statistics--The two opium wars--Chinese laws against the practice--Effects of the vice on the individual and the nation--Morality--Finance--Pathology--How to remedy the evil. THE picture of a nation with a population estimated at four hundred million, and whose country covers an area equivalent to nearly one half of all Europe, --one whose people are but slowly responding to missionary effort, forced, under protest and at the point of the bayonet, by a Christian nation to receive, almost duty free, a drug that is ruining its people physically, mentally, morally, and financially, that is emasculating its men, rendering sterile its women, increasing its paupers and criminals, decimating and corrupting the ranks of its statesmen, officials, and military, and stultifying all efforts to advance the cause of the Christian religion, is indeed saddening and pitiable. This nation of Christians, deaf alike to protest and appeal, maintaining their dictum by force of arms in the face of facts from which a school-boy could draw more just conclusions, when asked to put an end to this digraceful and inhuman traffic, replies: "How can we do without the revenue? What would become of India?" Better do without the revenue and India also, than to support it upon the financial and moral ruin of the Chinese. Must a nation of 400,000,000 be ruined here and hereafter, to give employment to and support the English rule over a nation of 200,000,000? Does it not look ridiculous to see a nation fostering another nation's vice with a yearly profit to itself of $50,000,000, and at the same time endeavoring to convert the vicious to the Christian religion...
