ghbourhood cannot be much more than one million souls. About 12,000
chests of Bengal opium are imported yearly, being more than one-seventh of
the total amount of Indian opium exported. It appears, then, that the
Chinese of the Straits Settlements, who are the finest specimens[88] of
their race in existence, consume one-seventh part of the opium consumed by
175,000,000 Chinese, the other 175,000,000 being held to consume the
native drug. Or, if the Straits scale of consumption prevails in China,
then the quantity of opium imported is only enough to reach one-fiftieth
part of the Chinese population, leaving the remaining forty-nine fiftieths
to consume the home-grown article. The correspondent goes on to say:
"According to the descriptions circulated by the Anti-Opium Society of
decimation, emaciation, &c., the Straits Chinamen ought to be all dead
men. But they live to disprove the anti-opium theory. Nay more, they are
robust, energetic, and hearty beyond all other Eastern races."

It has, we think, been sufficiently proved that, though opium is strictly
a poison, and if you take too much of it you must probably, as De Quincey
says, "do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits,
viz. die," yet taken in moderation it is, for the most part, harmless, if
not beneficial.

We will now advert to the second charge, and endeavour to point out that
we are not responsible for the introduction of opium into China, either as
having first brought it to the notice of the Chinese, or as having planted
in them a craving for it, which is really due partly to climatic causes,
partly to constitutional characteristics.

From the history of the traffic given above, it will abundantly appear
that the poppy was known and cultivated in China--to what extent it is
impossible to define, but certainly to some extent--_long_ before any
foreign opium found its way into the empire. But even if this were not so,
the English would not be responsible for the first importation of foreign
opium, since the Portuguese preceded them by some years. Not that the
Portuguese or any other nation can be said to have created a craving for
the drug among the Chinese by the mere fact of supplying it, as Mr.
Storrs Turner insists, for such a view of the conditions of supply and
demand is, we take it, untenable. We may be sure that in those early days,
before the haughty Celestial had felt the power of the outside barbarians,
whom he thoroughly d