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increase of the duty on opium. He went from Peking immediately to Calcutta, and held a conference with the members of the Indian Government in February, 1870. He urged them not to oppose the concession he had made, and set forth in strong terms the moral objections to the trade. He expressed his belief in the genuine character of the Chinese opposition to the trade; but also assured them that there was danger that the Chinese would in self-defense develop opium cultivation in China, and drive the Indian drug out of the market. On the other hand, if Great Britain would give up the opium revenue, and suppress the cultivation in India, he believed the Chinese Government could and would suppress the growth in China, except in Yunnan, where its authority was in abeyance. Sir R. Temple asked whether, on condition that the Indian Government would fix a limit to the amount of opium sent to China, the Chinese Government would agree to repress the growth of the poppy in China; to which Sir Rutherford Alcock replied affirmatively, and again expressed his strong desire that the British Government would agree to some effective measures to discourage the consumption of opium in China. Now mark the reply made to this honest and frank effort of the British Minister to China. In two months after his conversation with them the Indian Government adopted the following resolution:

No. 2090, dated 25th March, 1870.-By the Government of India, Financial

Department.

Resolution. The Government of Bengal shall be informed that the Supreme Government has resolved to increase the annual provision of opium in Bengal for export to China to sixty thousand chests, gradually indeed, but still with as much promptitude as may be conveniently practicable, and will be prepared to sanction any expenditure that, on full consideration, may appear necessary for this object. It is not deemed needful at present to raise the price paid to the cultivators to five rupees a seer, but the Supreme Government recognizes the probability that this. concession must soon be made, and will be prepared to consider favorably any recommendation made by the Government of Bengal for such an increase, if it be found by experience that effect cannot otherwise be given to this resolution.

Ordered, That the foregoing resolution be communicated to the Government of Bengal for information and guidance.

Such was the answer of the Indian Government to the earnest plea of the British Minister to China-a resolution to FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXV.-47

increase the production of opium, and carry on the iniquitous trade on a larger scale than ever! In the thirteen years following, the traffic has been pushed as vigorously as at any previous period. In 1876 a new convention with China was made by Sir Thomas Wade, known as the "Convention of Chefoo," the third article of which is as follows:

On opium, Sir Thomas Wade will move his government to sanction an arrangement different from that affecting other imports. British merchants, when opium is brought into port, will be obliged to have it taken cognizance of by the customs, and deposited in bond, either in a warehouse or a receiving hulk, until such time as there is a sale for it. The importer will then pay the tariff duty upon it, and the purchasers the li-kin. In order to the prevention of the evasion of the duty, the amount of li-kin to be collected will be decided by the different Provincial Governments, according to the circumstances of each.

The li-kin is a special internal tax, which may be raised or lowered at the discretion of the provincial governors, and the object of making this tax collectable by the customs was practically to put the traffic within the control of the Chinese Government. Sir Thomas Wade was quite ready to do this, as might be expected of a minister who said in an official dispatch to his government: "It is to me vain to think otherwise of the use of the drug in China than as of a habit many times more pernicious, nationally speaking, than the gin and whisky drinking which we deplore at home;" and who also said:

The concessions made to us have been from first to last extorted against the conscience of the nation-in defiance, that is to say, of the moral convictions of its educated men-not merely of the office-holders, whom we call mandarins, and who are numerically but a small proportion of the educated class, but of the millions who are saturated with the knowledge of the history and philosophy of their country.

But to this day the British Government has refused to ratify the Convention of Chefoo, and has left the opium trade just as it was, while assuming the advantages conferred by those articles of the convention favorable to British trade.

It is a little over a century since the East India Company began to export opium to China. In the sixty years which elapsed before the monopoly of British trade in China was taken away from that company, (1773-1834,) the amount of

opium imported into that country was run up from 200 chests tó 21,785 chests, valued at $14,454,193. [A chest contains about 133 pounds.] The company then lost its monopoly of trade in China, but retained its monopoly of production in India, and in 1858 had run up the total export from India to 74,738 chests. The British Government then took its place, and by 1872 had increased the export to 88,789 chests. Its net revenue from opium then amounted to $38,286,065. In 1879 the amount of opium imported into China from India, under monopoly of the British Government, was over 83,000 chests, (more than eleven millions of pounds, or over five thousand tons!) It is estimated that about 22,000 chests were smuggled from Hong-Kong into China the same year—which would make the whole amount about fourteen millions of pounds, or over six thousand tons! The value of the regularly imported drug was $50,700,000; while the value of all the tea exported was only $46,000,000-so that, after China had given up her entire crop of two hundred and sixty-five millions of pounds of tea, she still had to pay $4,700,000, to make up the amount due for opium!

No wonder the Archbishop of York felt moved to say:

The state of the matter is this: that the Christian nation of England has been in the past continually engaged in enforcing an unwilling nation to purchase great quantities of poison, which it has given to them; and has not scrupled to go to war even to enforce what I must call an iniquitous trade. Now, that being so, I do say that we cannot hold up our heads among the nations of the world if, when attention has once been directed to this matter, we allow it to slumber and sleep. . . . It makes the Queen herself, who is now the sovereign, the Empress of India, responsible... for poisoning the people, for destroying them physically and morally, and for corrupting a whole nation that is ready to protest against the corruption. . . . We say that it is a wrong thing from first to last. We say that it is a disgrace and a shame to this country that a heathen people should have to ask us to hold our hands and not to force the opium upon them, and that we as a Christian people should refuse to hold our hands, and with fire and sword make them take this deadly drug.

It is hardly possible fully to realize, or to characterize in adequate terms, the awful iniquity of this death-dealing traffic. The spectacle presented is not that of a government reluctantly

protecting some of its unworthy subjects in a trade abhorrent to itself; but that of the Christian government of one of the greatest, most powerful, and most enlightened nations of the earth deliberately entering into the growth, manufacture, and sale of a noxious drug, stimulating its production, complacently gloating over the increasing demand, anxiously watching for new openings, refusing to listen to the pleadings of a pagan emperor and his officials against so ruinous a traffic, demanding with sword and cannon the payment of indemnity for contraband opium righteously destroyed, forcing the legalization of the traffic, and continuing to push the trade with unscrupulous vigor, and to pocket its ungodly revenue for the benefit of its lavish and luxurious Indian Government. Surely the curse of heaven must rest upon this dark and damning traffic and upon. its most unholy gains. The Christianity and humanity of England ought to rise up with united voice, and compel the government to cut off all connection with the production of the drug in India, and to assist the Chinese Government in the entire extirpation of the abominable and destructive trade. And the humane and Christian people of all other nations ought to give their united and hearty support to those in England who are battling for the right against heavy odds, in the face of guilty indifference and active opposition.

The consideration of the effects of the trade on the victims of the drug, and on the missionary cause, of Chinese opinion and action on the subject, and of the efforts made for the suppression of the traffic, must be left for a subsequent article.

ART. VII.-LATIN PRONUNCIATION.

MANY teachers and scholars have thought that the pronunciation of Latin was a matter of no importance; that, as it was no longer a living tongue, it would make no difference how it might be uttered. And yet there has been a desire, for several years, on the part of the most eminent Latinists of Europe and America, for a uniform system of orthoepy.

It is evident to every student of language that the English

system never can become universal. Indeed, it is impossible to suppose that any of the nations, besides those that are English-speaking, would ever adopt it in any of its features; for the English sounds are so flat and sharp that they cannot adequately express the rotund and sonorous inflections and intonations that swelled forth in the native tongue of Cicero and Cæsar. No Italian, Spanish, French, or German scholar could be persuaded to adopt the English method; for these languages are more directly from the Latin than the English, and these nations know that the sounds of vowels and consonants which they have heard from infancy must more nearly express the old Latin sounds than any system of AngloSaxon origin.

Indeed, we may venture to assert that no critical English philologist ever expects, or even desires, the general adoption of the English system. And many of the most scholarly men in the United States and in Europe, who have been for years accustomed to this method, are longing for the prevalence of a more rational mode of pronouncing Latin. The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, in his preface to "Homer and the Homeric Age," speaking of several classical matters, makes this incidental reference to the English method of pronouncing Latin and Greek:

I should gladly see the day when, under the authority of scholars, and especially of those who bear rule in places of education, improvement might be effected, not only in the points above mentioned, but also in our solitary and barbarous method of pronouncing both the Greek and Latin languages.

And this I believe to be the general sentiment of those who are conversant with the tongues of Southern Europe, and who are able to imagine what must have been the pronunciation in Italy when Rome was in her power and grandeur.

But can we adopt the Continental method? If we investigate we shall find that there are several Continental methods. Each nation of Europe may be said to have its own system. And there is little hope that that of the Germans will be adopted in France, or that of the Italians in Spain. For though they all agree, to a great extent, on vowel sounds, they differ on many consonant sounds, and there are national peculiarities belonging to each. So that, if we should seek to introduce, all over the

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