he carried round his neck.

The chairen is the policeman of China, the lictor of the magistrate, the
satellite of the official; the soldier is the representative of military
authority. Now, China, in the person of her greatest statesman, Li Hung
Chang, has, through the secretary of the Anti-Opium Society, called upon
England "to aid her in the efforts she is now making to suppress opium."
If, then, China is sincere in her alleged efforts to abolish opium, it
is the chairen and the soldier who must be employed by the authorities
to suppress the evil; yet I have never been accompanied by either a
chairen or a soldier who did not smoke opium, nor have I to my knowledge
ever met a chairen or a soldier who was not an opium-smoker. Through all
districts of Yunnan, wherever the soil permits it, the poppy is grown
for miles, as far as the sight can reach, on every available acre, on
both sides of the road.

But why does China grow this poppy? Have not the _literati_ and elders
of Canton written to support the schemes of the Anti-Opium Society in
these thrilling words: "If Englishmen wish to know the sentiments of
China, here they are:--If we are told to let things go on as they are
going, then there is no remedy and no salvation for China. Oh! it makes
the blood run cold, and we want in this our extremity to ask the
question of High Heaven, what unknown crimes or atrocity have the
Chinese people committed beyond all others that they are doomed to
suffer thus?" (Cited by Mr. S. S. Mander, _China's Millions_, iv., 156.)

And the women of Canton, have they not written to the missionaries "that
there is no tear that they shed that is not red with blood because of
this opium?" ("China," by M. Reed, p. 63). Why, then, does China, while
she protests against the importation of a drug which a Governor of
Canton, himself an opium-smoker, described as a "vile excrementitious
substance" ("Barrow's Travels," p. 153), sanction, if not foster, with
all the weight of the authorities in the ever-extending opium-districts
the growth of the poppy? To the Rev. G. Piercy (formerly of the W.M.S.,
Canton), we are indebted for the following explanation of this anomaly:
China, it appears, is growing opium in order to put a stop to
opium-smoking.

"Moreover, China has not done with the evils of opium, even if our hands
were washed of this traffic to-day. China in her desperation has invoked
Satan to cast out Satan. She now grows her own opium, vainly