What else could these helpless people do but to go when seized by the policemen of the opium agent, and to take the contracts forced upon them? The Collector of the District was snubbed by the agent for his interference and when he referred the matter to the Government of the Province, he was told in polite, but very emphatic terms, that he was not to meddle with things outside his own department. As this is a true story I could name the place, the year, and give the names of all the officers concerned, but as such methods of raising revenue were no secret, why be personal? A European, writing of the Eskimos, says: “Our civilization, our missions and our commercial products have reduced its material condition, its morality and its social order to a state of such melancholy decline that the whole race seems doomed to destruction.” Would not this be applicable to India, especially as regards the introduction of European vices? Why did the natives continue to cultivate opium after the Government pressure had been removed? Because there was a little ready money in it. They are so desperately impoverished that the offer of money is a temptation not to be resisted. Nothing is so attractive to a native as an advance of money, peshgi. He will often make a ruinous bargain or take a losing contract if he can get a prepayment, trusting to fate to help him out in the end. Though heathen, they are not more able to resist temptation, when money is in question, than their Christian fellow men. I learned when in England that the business of a publican was considered degrading and disgraceful, yet there were many church members, both Catholic and Protestant, engaged in it. Such is the power and worship of wealth that even Her Majesty, the Queen, and her eminent advisers make peers of brewers and distillers, and it is not wholly a concealed secret that some prominent ecclesiastics hold shares in breweries and distilleries. If such things occur in the civilized Christian light of England, is it to be wondered at, that the wretched natives of India are tempted by money?