What, then, may I ask, is the reproach constantly hurled at the East India Company? That it derives an annual income by the culture of opium of at least three millions of pounds sterling. Should the Company prohibit the culture of the drug in order to allow other nations to derive the emoluments arising from it? I who have travelled in both upper and lower India, and know something of the country, am persuaded that the people there are already over-taxed, and to demand from them a substituted tax for those three millions would be a very serious matter indeed. And for whom pray would this sacrifice be made? To reduce the quantity of opium smoked in China? Most assuredly not; for the Chinese would still smoke just as much. This sacrifice on the part of England would only benefit those countries which would take up the cultivation of opium in order to supply the Chinese markets from which the Indian drug had been withdrawn. And what fault can be found with the merchants? Is it not the Chinese who ask for opium, and who buy it of their own free will, although not a single foreigner, either by example or precept, encourages them to do so. Is it not the Chinese who go out of their ports to the "Receiving Ships" to fetch it? Is the Chinese nation composed of children, or of savages who do not know right from wrong? Ought, for instance, the Queen of England to undertake to redress Chinese habits, or let us say vices, and to reform her Custom-house administration by watching the Chinese Coast? By what right could the English Government or any other Government do such things? If that is not what is wished, what is? Against whom and against what is all this outcry? It is said that the receiving ships are anchored at the mouth of rivers, that British war-ships anchor alongside of them, and that the consuls know this. That is quite true. The consuls admit all this--in fact, they often send their despatches by these very opium ships to Hong Kong. How many times has it happened that the consuls have had discussions with the Chinese governors respecting these receiving ships? They say, "We do not protect these ships; why do you not drive them away?" All this, I repeat, is notorious, and it is to be regretted that it is so; because, under proper legal authorisation, opium might be introduced into the Chinese Empire with such great advantage to the Imperial treasury.... It cannot be expected that the English Government through its naval commanders should prevent its subjects from carrying on a remunerative commerce, whilst Americans, Dutchmen, Danes, Swedes, and Portuguese would continue to carry on the trade with increased profit through the withdrawal of the English.