he opium must be disposed of in one
way and another; accordingly: 'The supply of prepared opium required
for consumption in India is made over to the Excise Department ... the
chests of "provision" opium, for export, are sold at monthly sales,
which take place at Calcutta.' For the meaning of the curious term,
'provision opium' we have only to read on a little further. 'The opium
is received and prepared at the government factories, where the
out-turn of the year included 8,774 chests of opium for the Excise
Department, about three hundred pounds of various opium alkaloids,
thirty maunds of medical opium; and 51,770 chests of provision opium
for the Chinese market.' There are about 140 pounds in a chest.... Last
year the government had under poppy cultivation 654,928 acres. And the
revenue to the treasury, including returns from auction sales, duties
and license fees, and deducting all 'opium expenditures' was nearly
$22,000,000."

As the blue book states, this opium is auctioned off once a month. At
that point, the British Government, as a government, washes its hands
of the business. Who buys the opium at these government auctions, and
what afterwards becomes of it? "The men who buy in the opium at these
monthly auctions and afterwards dispose of it are a curious crowd of
Parsees, Mohammedans, Hindoos and Asiatic Jews. Few British names
appear in the opium trade to-day. British dignity prefers not to stoop
beneath the taking in of profits; it leaves the details of a dirty
business to dirty hands. This is as it has been from the first. The
directors of the East India Company, years and years before that
splendid corporation relinquished the actual government of India,
forbade the selling of its specially-prepared opium direct to China,
and advised a trading station on the coast whence the drug might find
its way 'without the company being exposed to the disgrace of being
engaged in illicit commerce.'"

"So clean hands and dirty hands went into partnership. They are in
partnership still, save that the most nearly Christian of governments
has officially succeeded the company as party of the first part."

You will say, if the British Government chooses to deal in opium, that
is not our concern. It is most emphatically our concern. Once a month,
at these great auction sales, the British Government distributes
thousands of pounds of opium, which are thus turned loose upon the
world, to bring destruction and ruin to the h