another part of his evidence, where he gravely affirms that, in his opinion, were the opium supply to be suddenly cut off, _one-third_ of the adult population of China would die! Why, to begin with, one-third of the adult population do not even now, after the lapse of ten years, in which the spread of the habit has been unchecked, smoke opium; no, nor any number approaching it. Secondly, it has been proved in the case of prisoners, whose supply of opium is always stopped when they enter the jail,[73] that a sudden deprivation of the drug does not cause death. Again, opium is held accountable for pauperism, dishonesty, crime, and depravity of all sorts. That indulgence of any kind is a sign of moral weakness, and likely further to deprave the moral nature, is undeniable, but (and here we have Dr. Myers with us) "though excessive opium may hasten the effects of a general moral depravity, we are inclined to think that it is much more often rather a sequence than a cause." "In China," says Mr. Lay, "the spendthrift, the man of lewd habits, the drunkard, and a large assortment of bad characters slide into the opium-smoker: hence the drug seems chargeable with all the vices of the country." There will be no need to point out that opium is not the cause of all the pauperism and vice that exists among the Chinese people; for a vast amount of pauperism is common to all Eastern races, and dishonesty, untruthfulness, cruelty, and vice of the most revolting kind, were characteristic of the Chinese long before opium was so common as it now is.