granted. Ask a Tory political leader of
to-day--Mr. Balfour say--for his opinion on the opium question, and if he
thinks it worth his while to answer you at all he will probably deal
shortly with you for dragging up an absurd bit of fanaticism. For a
century or more, about all the missionaries, and goodness knows how many
other observers, have protested against this monstrous traffic in poison.
Sixty-five years ago Lord Ashley (afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) agitated
the question in Parliament. Fifty years ago he obtained from the Law
Officers of the Crown the opinion that the opium trade was "at variance"
with the "spirit and intention" of the treaty between England and China.
In 1891, the House of Commons decided by a good majority that "the system
by which the Indian opium revenue is raised is morally indefensible." And
yet, I will venture to believe that to most of my readers, British as well
as American, the bald statement that the British Indian government
actually manufactures opium on a huge scale in its own factories to suit
the Chinese taste comes with the force of a shock. It is not the sort of a
thing we like to think of as among the activities of an Anglo-Saxon
government. It would seem to be government ownership with a vengeance.

Now, to get down to cases, just what this Government Opium Monopoly is,
and just how does it work? An excerpt from the rather ponderous blue book
will tell us. It may be dry, but it is official and unassailable. It is
also short.

"The opium revenue"--thus the blue book--"is partly raised by a monopoly
of the production of the drug in Bengal and the United Provinces, and
partly by the levy of a duty on all opium imported from native states....
In these two provinces, the crop is grown under the control of a
government department, which arranges the total area which is to be placed
under the crop, with a view to the amount of opium required."

So much for the broader outline. Now for a few of the details:

"The cultivator of opium in these monopoly districts receives a license,
and is granted advances to enable him to prepare the land for the crop,
and he is required to deliver the whole of the product at a fixed price to
opium agents, by whom it is dispatched to the government factories at
Patna and Ghazipur."

This money advanced to the cultivator bears no interest. The British
Indian government lends money without interest in no other cases.
Producers of crops other than