Mr. M. Stewart, on Friday week, began a debate on
the Opium monopoly in Bengal, urging that it should be abandoned, and the opium taxed, as in Bombay, at the port of export. We have shown the fallacy of this proposal elsewhere ; but Lord George Hamilton, in a very good speech, defended not only the mono- poly, which is perfectly defensible, but the trade itself, which is very much more doubtful. His grand argument—that the Indian Government, through opium, taxed the Chinese, and thereby relieved their own people—is positively absurd in its cynicism. Suppose that Government robbed the Chinese, and thereby relieved their own people? We could levy a tribute of ten millions a year from the Chinese if we only killed enough of them, but the Under-Secretary for India would hardly defend the transaction. The morality or the infamy of the opium trade depends upon two questions, the extent of moral evil caused by the use of the drug —which is not doubtful among Europeans, but is doubtful among Chinese—and the extent of the willingness at Pekin tstop its use if we retire, and on neither have we enough evidence. Sir G. Balfour, who founded Shanghai and conducted the opium negotiations in 1843, believes the horror of opium expressed by the Chinese Court to be simulated. Their aversion is caused by the loss of money to the country, and they offered to permit the universal sale of the drug for a payment of about three-quarters of a million,—annually, as we presume, but it is not so reported. On the other hand, he did not believe the Indian opium could be grown elsewhere, and so threw on us the sole responsibility for the supply of the drug. We question his last assertion. A con- firmed smoker wants Cubes, but he will smoke French army cigars—below which man cannot go—rather than not smoke.
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