Well, nobody ever said they all did smoke opium. Females, as a rule, do not smoke, and children don't smoke. It is only the grown men, and those who can afford to buy the drug, who smoke it. China, for its extent and its vast and industrious population, is still a poor country. Although its natural resources are considerable, the great bulk of the people are in poor circumstances. It is only those above the very poor who can afford to smoke opium occasionally, and only well-to-do people who are able to do so habitually. Opium smoking is, in fact, a luxury in which, every Chinaman who can afford it indulges more or less, just as English people who have sufficient means drink tea, wine, and beer, or smoke tobacco. The effects of opium smoking are no more injurious than are those articles, in daily use in England, nor is its use more enslaving. On the contrary, from my own observation, I feel persuaded that those who habitually drink wine or spirits are far more liable to abuse and become enslaved to the habit than the smoker of opium. This, as you are now aware, is confirmed by the great authority of Dr. Ayres. Yet Mr. Storrs Turner, in the face of that most damaging admission, and his disciples would have the British public believe that by supplying the Chinese with a small quantity of opium, which is used and grown largely in almost every province, district, and village of China, we are demoralizing and degrading the whole people. Now, if this practice of opium smoking has existed, and does exist, throughout these eighteen provinces, over this large and mighty empire, as Mr. Storrs Turner admits, can it be urged for a moment that England has had anything to do with it more than that Englishmen, in common with other foreigners, have imported for the last forty or forty-five years a quantity of the drug very much less than that actually grown in China itself? I say she has not. I say that opium smoking has existed for a thousand years or more, and that its use by the natives of China is simply limited by the extent of their purchasing power. But how is it that such divergent opinions can exist between Englishmen living in China and certain Englishmen here at home? My answer is, that the former, the English residents in China, derive their knowledge on the subject from actual experience formed from personal intercourse with the natives, from seeing with their own eyes, and hearing with their own ears; whilst people in England obtain their information from hearsay only. Hearsay testimony is their sole guide; and, as I shall show you by and by, this hearsay evidence is of the worst and most unreliable kind. But still the question remains why this should be so; why is it that among the educated and intelligent people of England, in an age when newspapers are universal, and books of travel cheap and plentiful, that such an extraordinary difference of opinion should exist? I will now give you the explanation of these opposite views.