manner it is used by the Chinese and Malays, is
in any respect more pernicious than that of ardent
spirits among the northern nations; it is certain
that it is even less so, for those who abuse the one
are infinitely fewer than those who abuse the other.
The professed opium smokers, whom I have myself
seen, were very few in number : and it is well
known that those who use the drug to excess, are
as much shunned, and considered as despicable as
habitual drunkards of any other description. The
real quantity consumed, after all, is comparatively
trifling, although the practice is pretty general.
Thus confining the opium smokers in Singapore
to the Malayan races and the Chinese, and omitting
the women altogether, it will be found that
the real consumption of each person does not exceed
one and one-fifth of a grain a-day. The distant
consumers of China, Tonquin, Cochin China,
Siam, and the Malay Islands, consume of course
much smaller quantities. There is therefore no
more foundation for saying that we poison and demoralize
the nations we supply with this drug,
than there would be for asserting that the French,
by supplying the other nations of Europe with
wines and brandies, inflicted upon them similar
injuries. All the races of men, in whatever part
of the globe, desire or require some one thing or
another productive of intoxication ; and whether
this be beer, spirits, wine, or opium, seems a matter
of taste or indifference. At all events, the
affair is one with which the moralist or the legislator
has no pretence for interference.
The revenue derived in Singapore, in 1826, from
gaming, amounted to 36,500 Spanish dollars. This
was a heavy tax on a propensity which is very
strong, both with the Chinese and Malays, and
among all classes of them. The practice, when not
carried to excess, is viewed by them as a mere
harmless pastime—a necessary amusement: to suppress
it is impossible. An attempt with this view
was made on the establishment of the King’s court
at Prince of Wales’s Island. The effect of this
measure was the universal corruption of the inferior
officers of the police, with whose connivance
gambling was carried on clandestinely, instead of
openly. An attempt equally unsuccessful was made
at Singapore, which, in 1823, drove a thousand of
the Chinese inhabitants out of the place. What it
was hopeless to root out, it was found prudent to
tolerate and regulate. Cock-fighting, playing on
credit, and other practices, which might lead to
broils or contention, were abolished; and gaming
where permitted, placed under the immediate surveillance
of the police. The effect of this measure,
which offered no violence to the prejudices or habits
of the people, was to restrict gaming as much
as, under any circumstances, it was possible; and I
had the satisfaction to find, after three years’ experience,
that the peace and order of the settlement
were never once disturbed from a cause which, in