take more than an equal share of responsibility. The Chinese Government any time during fifty years before the war might, with ease and certainty have stopped the trade. While treating all foreign powers as tributaries and outer barbarians, and their trade and subjects alike as only tolerated within the Chinese limits by the indulgence of a Suzerain, who regarded them as suppliants with no rights of any kind-who never scrupled to stop the trade, murder judicially or otherwise innocent foreigners on various pretexts, and harass the traders with arbitrary orders, and extortionate demands. What prevented them? And any time since, they had the right expressly reserved by treaty to deal with it as a smuggling trade, liable to its penalties therefore, and to tax the transit of the drug from the coast to the interior to any amount they pleased. They have no locus standi on international or political grounds, and no justification for charging the British or Indian Government with having imposed upon them by force, and against their will, a pernicious drug and an injurious trade. They have been consenting parties and participators in the trade and its profits from the first day to the last.

We may dismiss all further question of complaint on any principle of international law. The jus gentium for them has no bearing upon the opium trade. And we are now free to consider the fiscal and commercial interests at stake, and the expediency as a matter of policy, or the practicability of adopting any of the measures urged by the advocates of a total suppression of the Indian trade in opium.

To begin with the Chinese, they are at this moment willingly, not to say eagerly, receiving a revenue through the Maritime Customs on opium, of 2,251,814 taels (675,544l.)—which by the Chefoo Convention they are seeking to double. This, independent of all Likin and other inland taxation, in which they have always had uncontrolled power, and at the lowest estimate, it must amount to more than double that amount -say two millions sterling. In India there is a still larger revenue at stake. The gross amount collected in each presidency and province of British India by the latest returns-those for 1880-was 10,319,162l., from which is to be deducted cost of collection, &c.-2,067,1427.; leaving a net revenue therefore of 8,252,020l. The average of ten years of the gross revenue appears to have been 8,936,0681., and deducting costs-2,067,1427.-they would reduce the average net revenue to 6,958,9261.; say, 7,000,000l.; and the total gross revenue of India for 1880 being 68,484,6667., it constitutes about one-eighth of the whole, allowing for costs of collection in both cases.

The trade with China between Great Britain, India, and the Colonies, import and export, may be taken at 40,000,000l. I cannot find space to go into any of the details, or even to show how inseparably the opium trade, which represents 8,500,000l., estimating the value at Hongkong and China of 100,000 chests, at which the import of the last year appears, must be bound up with all the trade. It VOL. X.-No. 58. 3 N

must suffice to say that it plays a very important part in adjusting the balance of trade, which would otherwise be against us to nearly that amount, and would have to be made up in bullion affecting exchange, and every condition as it now exists of the whole commerce.

The British Government is recommended to withdraw the opium element at whatever cost, for the benefit of the Chinese. But what ground is there for assuming that they would be benefited by the withholding of the Indian opium from the market? Can anyone believe, after what has been shown in these pages of the enormous area they have themselves under cultivation, that they would smoke one ounce the less-any Imperial or other edicts to the contrary, notwithstanding? Or, failing this, does anyone imagine that foreign opium would not pour in from Turkey, Persia, Egypt, Mozambique, and many other foreign sources; and if not under the British flag, under as many flags as there are nations? It needs no argument to satisfy anyone with the least knowledge of the constant tendency of trade, that such must be the result.

It is needless to go into the consequences to the Indian Empire if there were a sudden deficit of seven millions and the displacement of at least an equal value in capital and labour employed in the opium culture and trade; because the avowed object being to moralise and benefit the Chinese, if it fail in that, there is no longer any reason for the ruinous attempt.

It is true, we hear a good deal about the objection on sentimental rather than rational grounds to the Government being the encouragers of the cultivation and the manufacturers of the poison, as such advocates are pleased to term it. But Sir George Campbell has well answered this plea in his letter in the Times. The action of the Indian Government is so far restrictive, that it limits the cultivation, which might otherwise spread over the territory. The large revenue it collects is in like manner a means of limiting the sale and the consumption. So long as it is under Government control, it remains in their power to further restrict the area if they see fit; for no vested or private interest can grow up to fetter their action at any future day. My proposal to the Chinese Government in the Convention of 1869 was based on this power. I proposed to give the Chinese an increased import duty, and moreover to allow them to test their power and will to limit and diminish the hitherto unchecked production of opium in their own provinces by an understanding with the Indian Government during a certain period, not to extend the production in India; and if the Chinese Government kept faith, and showed their power to greatly diminish and more or less rapidly stop the culture of the poppy altogether, and prevent foreign opium from other sources taking its place, the Indian Government would then, pari passu, consider how far they could further co-operate by diminishing their own area of culture, having

time to substitute other crops and industries to take its place. I think it is to be regretted that such an opportunity of testing the sincerity and power of the Chinese Government to effect the proposed end was lost. They were apparently ready to accept some arrangement of this nature; but the Convention was not ratified by H.M.'s Government, and the whole matter slept and drifted for another ten years. But, finally, it is impossible that the British Government in India, or the Chinese in China, or both united, could 'put an end' to the consumption of opium, or its importation into the latter country; and if it were possible for the Indian Government to do so in India, under existing conditions it would be a folly, conferring benefit on neither race, and inflicting incalculable injury on the 250,000,000 of our Indian subjects by a loss of revenue, sufficient to shake the stability of the Government, and seriously affect its power of efficient administration. As to the question of transferring the production and manufacture into private hands, various alternatives have been suggested, and often considered; but the objections to all these are very serious if not insuperable. Sir G. Campbell may not be quite correct in saying that the Government monopoly is just the Gothenburg system-which some of our great towns would like to try with a view to restricting and controlling the production and sale of intoxicants for the benefit of the people, if the vested interests of the existing publicans did not bar the way; because, while the Government monopoly does tend to restrict the area of growth, it is not the object, but the increase of revenue.

I must conclude, although I could have wished to make this article more complete, and that space would have allowed me to go fully into the moral aspect of the question, which is deeply interesting. But I may at some future time be enabled to take up this part of the subject. All I can say now is to repeat in substance my evidence before the Special Committee of 1871, which will be found, in extenso, at page 283 of the printed evidence, to the effect that I distrusted the power of any restraining laws and decrees, and believed they must fail, because a craving for something of a stimulating, intoxicating, or narcotic character was universal; and that there had been no country yet discovered, and no age of the world in which stimulants and narcotics of some kind or form had not been in use. They amount to more than fifty in number. They are in every possible form, and yet no race, savage or civilised, has ever failed to discover them, though sometimes by very recondite processes, by distillation and fermentation, but always with the same object and result. I also stated, as I do now, that, after a long residence among the Chinese, and with the evidence before me of whole nations and races like the Chinese, preserving great vigour and exceptional power of labour under the most trying conditions of climate, food and soil, I cannot adopt the conclusion that opium exercises no salutary

influence, and is simply noxious and destructive. I believe this is only true of those who take it to excess; that these are not the many, but the few, forming only a small percentage on the whole; and that as a cause of crime it is infinitely less dangerous than intoxicating liquors largely consumed in our own land. If any restrictive or prohibitory system could avail in preventing the frightful evils brought on by the abuse of spirituous and other liquors at home, I think it should have a fair trial here, before we attempt by forcible means to derange the whole administrative economy and habits of life of the populations of two great Asiatic Empires, respectively containing some 400,000,000 and 250,000,000 of the most industrious and easily governed people in the world. If we cannot succeed at home, we shall certainly not have better fortune in China.

I should be glad, in common with many others, if it were possible without aggravating the evil, and bringing new and worse agencies of mischief into play-that the Indian Government should be relieved of all participation in the growing, manufacturing and selling of the drug, which is not the proper function of a Government. By licences, passes, and export duties some distinguished Indian officials have held that a gradual process of transfer might be effected and this desirable end attained. It was on the supposition that such a power was in their hands that I urged some arrangement based upon successive limitation might be entered into with China with great advantage.

How far the allegations or convictions of the missionaries are well founded, or otherwise, as to the obstruction and prejudice created by the opium trade, and our active participation in it, I will not attempt to decide. I am bound to say, however, that, if time and space permitted, it would not be difficult to show that many other, if not more obvious and influential, causes are in operation, to account for the small degree of success which has attended their efforts to Christianise the Chinese population. And I will add that I do not believe, after a long residence in China, that the active and latent hostility of the 'literati and gentry,' who are generally the instigators of all outrages on the missions, or the official and ruling classes who are so supine, and the populace that supply the agents of violence, would be other than it is, or suffer any diminution, if there were no opium question to exercise its influence in heightening this prejudice or creating ill will against the foreign missionary.

RUTHERFORD ALCOCK.

DEAN STANLEY AS A SPIRITUAL

TEACHER AND THEOLOGIAN.

1

DURING the twelve months since this College was last opened, many distinguished names in our English world of thought and literature have passed away. I do not know when so many great writers have died in such quick succession. There was first of all George Eliot, then Thomas Carlyle, then, after a brief interval, Lord Beaconsfield, and lastly Dean Stanley. It would be a difficult, but an interesting and curious, study to compare these several writers; and especially to estimate their respective relation to the spiritual movement of their times. For it is remarkable that they were all more or less, after their sort, spiritual teachers. They were, as one of them, whose claims may be most questioned to the character we have assigned them, said, on a memorable occasion,' on the side of the angels' in the great modern battle of mind versus matter, of Humanity versus the Cosmos. They were all, indeed, more or less theologiansthat is to say, writers who appreciated the great thoughts which Christianity had discharged into the world and which the Church has preserved through eighteen centuries. The personal relation

which they themselves occupied to these thoughts is quite another question. Even if it be true that two of them only dealt with such thoughts to reject them ultimately, and to throw themselves into lines which cannot fairly be considered Christian-which many suppose to be quite opposed to any possible Christian theology-it is none the less true that they also started in their intellectual career from a Christian basis, while they were more or less proficient students of the history and thought of the Church; and, further, that they never parted from those profound roots in the spiritual life of mankind which Christianity addresses, and of which, on the human side, it is the most perfect growth and development that the world has yet seen.

It may seem strange to some to mention in this connection the name of Mr. D'Israeli, latterly known as Lord Beaconsfield. But no one can be familiar with the writings of this remarkable man who

This paper was delivered as an address at the opening of St. Mary's College, in the University of St. Andrews, November 16.