People who have been jealous of English honour have tried to prove that the opium was in common use amongst the Chinese before the ships of England appeared before Canton with their deadly cargoes, but this is an absolute mistake. Isolated travellers from India may have brought some for their own individual consumption, but the drug was unknown and unused by the Chinese people. That this statement is true is proved by the fact that there is no word in the language of this people for opium, for the only one that has ever existed is the one that attempts to give the sound of the foreign name that those who produced it in other lands gave it. If the thing had been an indigenous product, the Chinese would have had a name for it that would have had no flavour of a foreign land. It has been a most disastrous thing for China that the one nation that has championed opium and has made treaties for its sale in this land, and that in the interests of its merchants and for the sake of its Indian revenue, insisted upon these treaties being carried out, should be England. If it had been a smaller Power the Chinese Government might have successfully resisted the attempt to force upon it a trade that was inevitably bound to degrade and demoralize its people. But England, the mighty power of the West, whose guns had thundered over Canton, and had waked the echoes of the Yangtze, and had even sounded through the capital of the Empire, was one that China dared not contend with, and so it has come to pass that the country that has always professed to be the refuge of the oppressed and the freer of the slave, has been the one to bind the shackles of opium on a people that, whilst they have fallen under its spell, yet feel the profoundest indignation against the Power whose legislation has helped to enslave them. Opium in China is sometimes compared to the drinking habit in England, and terrible though the latter is, men have become so accustomed to the sight of it, that it is apt to be looked upon with considerable leniency. People in the highest positions in the land have drink upon their tables, without any one commenting unfavourably, except perhaps the members of the temperance party. Clergymen, highly respectable heads of families, philanthropists, and men who are prominent in society for their benevolence, all feel that they are doing no wrong by using in moderation wines and spirits themselves, and by offering them to their friends or guests who may be visiting them. Many honestly believe that a moderate use of wine is not only allowable, but is also highly beneficial for the health, an idea that is largely believed in by the medical faculty, who are apt to recommend their patients to use it, whenever their health becomes impaired.