But in addition to this sale of opium by chemists on the Rand, opium dens have sprung up all over the place. As soon as the police stamp them out in one quarter they reappear in another. They are accompanied, of course, by the usual gambling hells. These, too, the police endeavour to suppress. All the money that they find is impounded; heavy fines are exacted. But instead of decreasing they increase. The most dangerous vice of the Orient is thus thriving luxuriantly upon the favourable soil of the Rand. One cannot blame the Chinaman for drugging himself. It is difficult even to blame him for the outrages that he commits. The opium habit, of course, is a step towards other habits. If the Chinaman merely went to the opium dens in his off hours, drugged himself, slept his celestial sleep, and then returned to his labours prepared to work as hard as any cart-horse, the Rand lords would be the last persons to forbid him these indulgences. But the opium habit is demoralizing and degrading. It excites passions almost beyond control. I have already pointed out that Mr. Lyttelton promised in the House of Commons that the Chinaman should be allowed to take his womenfolk with him if he wished, and a great point was made of the fact that the morality of the Chinamen would be well looked after. No risks were to be taken. The Archbishop of Canterbury had to be satisfied upon the point before he made his regrettable necessity speech--"Show me that it brings about or implies the encouragement of immorality in the sense in which we ordinarily use the word, and, I am almost ashamed to say anything so obvious, I should not call the so-called necessity worth a single moment's consideration. In such a case there could be but one answer given by any honest man. The thing is wrong, and please God it shall not take place." The Most Reverend Primate should be satisfied by now that the system deliberately set up in the Transvaal has brought about and encouraged immorality. The Chinaman is always a frugal feeder, yet the strength of his passions is notorious. There is no necessity to go back into the past moral history of the Chinese race to contradict this statement. Gangs of escaped labourers have attacked farm houses on the veld, and where they have found no men, or where the men have been overpowered, they have committed all the most bestial assaults known upon the women and children. One white woman was known to have been found raped, and dead. It is not safe for any decent or respectable white woman to go near a Chinaman. The way he looks at her is sufficient to raise the most murderous thoughts in the mind of any white man present. A deputation of miners asked Lord Selborne for protection against the Chinamen, stating that the way in which they spoke to and looked at white women was intolerable, and pointed out further that, unless steps were taken to protect the white population, the most horrible crimes would be committed. That warning has proved true.