Identifier: chinainseriesofv3to4allo (find matches)
Title: China, in a series of views : displaying the scenery, architecture, and social habits of that ancient empire
Year: 1843 (1840s)
Authors: Allom, Thomas, 1804-1872 Wright, G. N. (George Newenham), 1790?-1877, editor Fisher, Son, & Co., publisher
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Publisher: London, Newgate Street Paris, rue St. Honoré : Fisher, Son, & Co.
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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. 0 P I U M - S M 0 K E R S. Ah ! then, methought, my unseald eyesWith wonderment and sweet surprise,First opd upon a scene so fair.That ecstasy alone could share. J. S. H. The rapidity with which the crime of opium-smoking has spread over the empire, maybe collected from the statement, that in 1821 only four thousand chests were in use,while upwards of twenty thousand were required, to satisfy the appetite for this narcoticdrug, in the year 1832. Its deleterious and debasing effects were early known to theimperial government, and every means that benevolence could suggest, duly exer-cised to prevent its importation. Upwards of forty years ago, the governor of Cantonthreatened, supplicated, the rejection of this dangerous import; and finding moralsentiments ineffectual, artfully pointed at the monetary consideration : Thus it is, sayshis proclamation that foreigners, by means of a vile and poisonous substance,derive from this empire the most solid ji^ofits and advantages; but that our
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I -^ 1 I OPIUM-SMOKERS. Oii countrymen should blindly pursue this destructive and ensnaring vice, even till deathis the consequence, without being undeceived, is indeed a fact odious and deplorablein the highest degree. Yet this very governor was himself a notorious opium-smoker. Increase of duty, threats of punishment, and obviously ruinous effects upon thehuman frame, were still unable to resist the passion, the mania for opium, that in a fewyears absorbed the whole people of China: and to such an extent had the contrabandand illegitimate trade in this noxious drug proceeded, that when war was recently declaredagainst England by the Celestial Empire, the imports of opium exceeded the exportsof tea by three millions of dollars value annually, which balance of trade in our favourwas paid in silver. The public censor, whose power had proved so disproportionate to the magnitudeof the offence, now declared that the buyer and seller of opium should be punished withone hundred blows, and b

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