e privilege of evading the prohibitions." Under these circumstances
it is not surprising that the sanction of the local officials has in most
cases prevailed over the prohibition of the Imperial Court; and it is
certain that the cultivation had attained considerable proportions by the
middle of the present century, for Wootingpoo, in the memorial quoted
above, speaks of "gangs of smugglers of _native_ opium, numbering hundreds
and even thousands, entering walled cities in the west and setting the
local governments at defiance." He would have had the prohibition against
the native growth withdrawn, as well as that against the foreign import.
He answered the chief objection to the native culture, that it took the
place of food crops, by pointing out that the poppy was grown in the
winter months, and rice in the summer on the same ground. But his
representations were of no effect, and the prohibition continued, and was
even enforced by a fresh edict, at the instigation of Sheu-kueo-feu,[28]
in 1865. How far this edict was effectual it is impossible to say;
certain it is that it was flagrantly set at nought by the highest
officials. Li Hung Chang, who has lately taken a high moral tone in his
correspondence with the Anti-Opium League, actively busied himself in
promoting the cultivation of the poppy in the provinces over which he was
appointed, alleging, in a memorial to the throne, the importance of the
native growth as a source of revenue and as a check on the importation of
foreign opium.[29] A fresh edict prohibiting the cultivation was, however,
published in the _Pekin Gazette_, January 29, 1869, in answer to a fresh
memorial by the Censor Yu Po Chuan; and to this day this prohibition
remains unrepealed but obsolete, like the law against infanticide. The
poppy is now grown in every province of the Chinese Empire, but the
cultivation is far more extensive in the western than the eastern
provinces. The two provinces of Yuennan and Szechuen produce by far the
largest portion of the drug. Two-thirds of the available land of those two
provinces may be said to be under poppy cultivation. The amount of native
opium thus produced may be taken to be at least four times as much as the
whole amount imported, and the native growth is even encouraged by the
duty levied upon it being 50 per cent. less than that levied upon the
foreign drug. Such being the case, it is quite impossible to believe that
the authorities were ever unanimous