River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, 2012, Excerpt
‘So long as you do not take it
upon yourselves to forbid the opium but continue to make it and tempt the
people of China to buy it, you will be showing yourselves careful of your own
lives, but careless of the lives of other people, indifferent in your greed for
gain to the harm you do to others. Such conduct is repugnant to human feeling and
at variance with the Way of Heaven.’
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, 2012, Excerpt
Opium is a poisonous drug,
brought from foreign countries. To the question, what are its virtues, the
answer is: It raises the animal spirits and prevents lassitude. Hence the
Chinese continually run into its toils. At first they merely strive to follow the
fashion of the day; but in the sequel the poison takes effect, the habit
becomes fixed, and the sleeping smokers are like corpses – lean and haggard as
demons. Such are the injuries which it does to life. Moreover the drug
maintains an exorbitant price and cannot be obtained except with the pure
metal. Smoking opium, in its first stages, impedes business; and when the
practice is continued for any considerable length of time, it throws whole
families into ruin, dissipates every kind of property, and destroys man
himself. There cannot be a greater evil than this.
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