It ought, in the first place, to be understood that the opium business is not like liquor in England, a matter of private enterprise. It is one big monopoly of the Indian Government from first to last, and no one else is allowed to manufacture it. Government assumes the entire responsibility for the growth, manufacture, sale and export of opium, and sells licences for the permission to retail it in British India. Government is the proprietor of the whole concern. The greater part of the Indian opium is exported to China, and there, as everybody knows, we added to our delinquencies by compelling the Chinese, at the point of the sword, to allow us to import opium into China, to the lasting detriment and ruin of untold multitudes of that people. Some of the opium, a constantly increasing quantity, is disposed of in the different provinces of India, this part of the business also being under Government management and licence. As regards Upper Burma, the law we found on annexing the country was, and had ever been, the law of prohibition. Government knew and fully admitted this. From the despatch already quoted of October 1886, it would appear at first sight that on taking over the country they had fully resolved to continue that policy. “No shops whatever will be licensed for the sale of opium, inasmuch as all respectable classes of Burmans are against legalising the consumption of opium in the new province.... As the traffic in opium was prohibited under the Burmese Government, there will be no hardship in thus proscribing opium dealings.” But the very next sentence goes on to make an exception in favour of Chinamen, to whom, and to whom only, it shall be lawful to sell opium, and this clause at once lets in the mischief. I know a small town in Upper Burma where a Chinaman obtained a licence to sell opium to his countrymen under this regulation, on his representing that there were two hundred of them in the town, when, as a matter of fact, there were not more than half a dozen. He meant, of course, to sell to the Burmans. I had this from the township officer, who knew all the circumstances; not, however, the officer who had helped him to get his licence. It is well known that the restriction is merely nominal and ineffectual, and the Government officers freely admit the fact. A recent Government officer of standing reports that— “The consumption of liquors and opium is theoretically confined to the non-Burman population. But there can be no doubt that a considerable amount of both finds its way into the hands of Burmans.”