The Seven Sisters of Sleep by M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt) Cooke

Author:M. C. (Mordecai Cubitt) Cooke [Cooke, M. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Body; Mind & Spirit, Ancient Mysteries & Controversial Knowledge, Entheogens & Visionary Substances, Science, Life Sciences, Botany, Social Science, Customs & Traditions, Popular Culture, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780892817481
Google: ttUVMa0kXzMC
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co
Published: 1997-10-15T02:45:03+00:00

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CHAPTER XIII.

OPIUM MORALS.

Fal. No abuse, Hal.

Poins. No abuse!

Fal. No abuse, Ned, in the world; honest Ned, none. I dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him; in which doing, I have done the part of a careful friend, and a true subject. No abuse, Hal; none, Ned, none;—no, boys, none.——King Henry IV., part II.

Scarce a flower that graces the earth, or a tree waving in the forests, has had its character assailed so mercilessly as the poppy. Not one of the simples or compounds of the chemist’s store, even including arsenic and strychnine, has been so strictly interrogated as to the honourable and dishonourable of its intentions. It is matter of surprise that the East India Company has not been obliged, by authority of Act of Parliament, to imprint the decalogue, at least in the Chinese language, upon every cake or ball of opium leaving their stores. Take upon credit all that some men would tell you, and there would not be room for doubt, were the next informant to state that on the arrival of a cargo of opium, at such a port, on such a day, the entire population cut each other’s throats, on account of the pestilential miasma diffused by the said cargo. What are really the moral effects of opium-smoking, can best be collected from a statement of facts, the reader drawing his own inferences: they are, at any rate, bad enough without the aid of exaggeration.

At Singapore stands a house of correction, in which, during the month of July, 1847, might be found forty-four Chinese criminals; and of these, thirty-five were opium-smokers—not moderate smokers, but indulgers to excess—not confining themselves to what they could obtain with such money as they could spare from their wages, but in some instances, swallowing or smoking them all up, and in certain instances, even more than their wages.20 The aggregate amount of the monthly wages of seventeen of these men was £16 0s. 10d., or individually 18s. 10½d. The monthly consumption of opium of these men amounted in value to £20 16s. 3d., or individually to £1 4s. 5½d., so that each of these men, in addition to spending all his wages, begged, borrowed, or stole 5s. 7d. monthly, to make up his quantity of opium alone, without reference to any other necessaries. One of these men, who spent £1 5s. monthly, and whose wages only reached half of that amount, was asked to explain how it was to be accounted for. Was there not some error in the calculation, or was he deceiving the person to whom the circumstances were being detailed? How was it possible that, with an income of only 12s. 6d., he could spend £1 5s.? The answer was a graphic one and much to the point:——“What am I in here for?” Of course, the tenants of a jail can account for such discrepancies in arithmetic. The offences for which these persons were confined were such

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