Explore "Four Years in Upper Burma" by W.R. Winston on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If the case of Burma in respect of liquor is serious, that of opium is more so. It presents in a vivid manner some of the most frightful evils of the traffic in this drug, and it shows clearly the gross inconsistency of any Christian nation, especially when it is the ruling power, deliberately introducing and maintaining such an evil and profiting largely in the revenue by it, when it is eating the very vitals of the subject nation that has implored us again and again to remove it.
The whole question of the opium policy of our Indian Government in the East is now prominently under the view of the nation. Parliament has already declared in the abstract that our opium policy is indefensible, and the conscience of the British public, never quite easy on the subject, is at present feeling keenly about it. It seems not unlikely that the consideration of Burma, our latest, and in some respects our worst development of the policy, may greatly aid in shaping the views of the public on this question, and may decide us, at the earliest possible moment, to wash our hands of the whole sad business.