Now, Hong Kong may be said to be, and is, in fact, the headquarters in China of the opium trade. It is there that all the opium coming from India and Persia is first brought. It is, in fact, the entrepôt or depôt from which all other parts of China are supplied with the drug. Furthermore, it is the port whence "prepared opium," the condition in which the drug is smoked, is mostly manufactured and exported to the Chinese in all other parts of the world, for wherever he goes, the Chinaman, if he can afford it, must have his opium-pipe. Moreover, the Chinese of Hong Kong get much better wages and make larger profits in their trades and businesses than they could obtain in their own country; and can, therefore, better afford to enjoy the luxury of the pipe than their own countrymen in China. So that if opium smoking produced the evil consequences alleged, Hong Kong is unquestionably the place where those consequences would be found in their fullest force. They are not to be found there in the slightest degree. One fact is worth a thousand theories, and this I give you as one which I challenge Mr. Storrs Turner or any other advocate of the Anti-Opium Society to disprove. I will now show you how I am corroborated. I have a witness on the subject whose testimony is simply irrefragable. Dr. Philip B. C. Ayres, the learned and efficient Colonial Surgeon, and Inspector of Hospitals of Hong Kong, confirms my statement in the strongest possible manner. That gentleman has held the important office I have mentioned for about ten years. Previous to taking up his appointment at Hong Kong he had been on the Medical Staff of India, where he had made opium and opium eating--for the drug is not smoked in India--a special study. In Hong Kong he has had abundant opportunities of studying the effects of opium smoking and making himself thoroughly acquainted with the wonderful drug, such opportunities, indeed, as few other medical men have ever had. It is part of his daily duties to inspect the Civil Hospital of Hong Kong,--a splendid institution open to all nationalities, and conducted by able medical men,--the Gaol, the Chinese Hospital, called the Tung Wah, which is under exclusive Chinese management, and all other medical institutions in the Colony. Thus a wide field of observation is presented to him. I may add here that Dr. Ayres is the only European physician who has succeeded in removing the prejudice among the better class of the Chinese against European doctors and in obtaining a large native practice. This fact speaks volumes as to his general abilities as well as to his professional attainments and his means of acquainting himself with the social life of the Chinese. In his annual Report presented to the Government of Hong Kong for the year 1881, a copy of which, I believe, is now, or ought to be, in the pigeon-holes of the Colonial Office in Downing Street, there is the following passage:--