o the
character of the people. There are so many prohibitions and enormous
duties to tempt their prevailing passion, avarice, that vast numbers
engage in the contraband trade, as being the most profitable; moderate
duties, and freedom of importation, would destroy the temptation, and
render smuggling dangerous and unprofitable; at present it has become an
organized system of plunder, protected by the Mandarins themselves.

"The opium trade," says Mr. Dobell, "with the exception of ten
chests of that pernicious drug, that are allowed to be imported
into Macao, for medicinal purposes, is entirely conducted by
smugglers. In defiance of an annual edict from the Emperor,
making it death to smuggle opium, the enormous quantity of
nearly _four thousand chests_ is imported every year to Macao
and Whampoa; the greater part, however, goes to the former
place. When I inform my readers that each chest weighs a
_pecul_, that is to say, 133-1/3 English pounds, and that it
sells for twelve to fifteen hundred, and sometimes two thousand
Spanish dollars a chest, they may form some judgment of the
value and extent of smuggling in China. It is a business that
all the inferior Mandarins, and some of the higher ones, their
protectors, are engaged in; so that opium is carried through
the streets of Macao, in the most bare-faced manner, in the
open day. The opium dealers at Whampoa, formerly took it away
by night, but latterly I have seen them go to the ship, with
the linguist of the Whampoa custom-house officer, and take it
out in the day time. Sixty Spanish dollars is the bribe paid
for each chest of opium sold at Macao; and if it goes to
Canton, it pays sixty more on its arrival there. Large boats
armed, and having from thirty to forty men, called opium boats,
ply between Macao and Canton, when that market offers an
advantage in price. These boats carry this drug, and are
sanctioned by the custom-house officers, who, of course,
receive for this business likewise, a good bribe."

The only attempts made to suppress this practice, are on the initiation
into office of new _foo-yunes_, or governors, who have not yet perfectly
learned the established usages, or who have not been propitiated by the
necessary gratuities. In these cases, a terrible revolution occurs in
the peaceful and quiet frauds of the smugglers; th