The Chief Commissioner sums up this extraordinary body of testimony in an unsparing indictment of opium in Burma, which leaves it no loophole of excuse. “The papers now presented for consideration present a painful picture of the demoralisation, misery and ruin produced amongst the Burmese by opium smoking. Responsible officers in all divisions and districts of the province, and natives everywhere, bear testimony to it. To facilitate the examination of the evidence on this point, I have thrown some extracts from the reports into an appendix to this memorandum. These show that among the Burmans the habitual use of the drug saps the physical and mental energies, destroys the nerves, and emaciates the body, predisposes to disease, induces indolent and filthy habits of life, destroys self-respect, is one of the most fertile sources of misery, destitution and crime, fills the jails with men of relaxed frames predisposed to dysentery and cholera, prevents the due extension of cultivation and the development of the land revenue, checks the natural growth of the population, and enfeebles the constitution of succeeding generations. That opium smoking is spreading at an alarming rate under our rule does not admit of doubt. On this point the testimony of all classes of officers and of the people is unanimous.” A high official gentleman, Mr. Hodgkinson, the late Judicial Commissioner of Upper Burma, when Commissioner of the Irrawaddy District, wrote:— “A large revenue is secured to the Government by the present system, but it is secured by sapping the very hearts’ blood of the people, the better classes of whom most bitterly reproach us, and, in my opinion, very justly, for our apathy and misgovernment in this matter.” To sum up, the following facts are proved, beyond all manner of doubt; and criticism of them, though it may attempt to palliate, cannot explain them away:— 1. The Burmans have strongly objected to any licensing of opium from first to last. 2. In spite of their continued protests the British Government has thrust it upon them. 3. The Burman temperament and constitution is found to be peculiarly liable to succumb to this temptation. 4. Seeing and feeling the alarming growth of the evil, the Burmans have bitterly complained, and begged their rulers to remove the evil, but in vain. 5. Officials in different parts of the province have faithfully reported these things, and their reports have been in print for years. 6. The evil has gone on increasing to this day, and now has reached unprecedented proportions. In Lower Burma the excise revenue (liquor and opium) has increased 80 per cent. in the _five years_ ending with 1890, whereas the increase of population has only been 22 per cent. for the _ten years_. The excise revenue of all India yields an average of 4 annas per head of the whole population; in Lower Burma it averages 9 annas.