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 THE 
 
 TRAFFIC IN AND THE USE 
 
 OF 
 
 OPIUM 
 
 IN 
 
 OUR OWN AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 
 
 A DOCUMENT 
 
 BY THE REPRESENTATIVE MEETING OF THE YEARLY MEETING 
 OF FRIENDS FOR NE\Y ENGLAND FOR 
 
 1881 - 1882 . 
 
 rcmibcnte : 
 
 RHODE ISLAND PRINTING COMPANY, 62 WEYROSSET STREET. 
 
 1882. 
 
No. 2 . 
 
 THE OPIUM TPAEFIC, 
 
 AND ITS USE IN OUE COUNTEY. 
 
 The opium traffic, and all the attendant evils arising from the habit 
 of smoking and chewing, are so rapidly on the increase in the United 
 States, that the Friends of New England have believed it right for them 
 to call the attention of their countrymen to the subject. 
 
 The pamphlet upon the subject is of recent issue, and is sent with the 
 hope that it will be carefully read and well considered, and I am willing 
 to believe that every good man, having the best interest of his country at 
 heart, will avail himself of the information given to do what he can in 
 creating a public sentiment against the use of opium, unless as a prescribed 
 medicine, and then it ought to be used with the utmost care or a habit 
 vnU be formed hard to relinquish, though attended with lamentable results. 
 
 A little more than one hundred years ago, the habit of chevping and 
 smoking opium was very limited, but its steady growth has been such, 
 that fifty chests of 133 1-3 pounds each are now used where one was a 
 century ago. From a few Chinamen who ate and smoked opium in the 
 last century, the number has increased to about 2.000.000. 
 
 As rapid as was this increase the evidence is in favor of its being 
 more rapid, at this time, in our own country. 
 
 In 1876, 228,742 pounds were brought into the United States, and 
 during the fiscal year ending in 1880, 553,451 pounds were imported, mak- 
 ing an increase but little short of 140 per cent, in four years. 
 
 H. H. Kane in his book on opium smoking, informs us that the first 
 white man in America began smoking in 1868 and it is believed that now 
 more than 6000 American men and women indulge in this pernicious habit. 
 In all our large cities may be found opium dens, kept and patronized by 
 American-bom citizens. 
 
 In this pamphlet from which these statistics are taken, more of like 
 import may be found that exhibits an alarming growth of this evil. 
 
 The opium dens in the chief cities of New York are becoming com- 
 mon and their patrons are on the increase, making the evils of opium eat- 
 ing and smoking so apparent as to induce a commendable action on the 
 part of the State to remove these dens by legal enactments. 
 
 Wishing to put these pamphlets into the hands of intelligent men and 
 women who help to form public opinion, I vdll take it as an act of kind- 
 ness to receive the address of such, with their profession or calling, that I 
 may send them a copy. 
 
 Information from any one who may have a knowledge of the sad 
 effect of opium eating or smoking, will be very acceptable to me. 
 
 B. F. KNOWLES, 
 
 South Manchester, Conn. 
 
 10th mo. 23rd. 1882. 
 
THE 
 
 TRAFFIC IN AND THE USE 
 
 OPIUM 
 
 OUR OWN AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 
 
 A DOCUMENT 
 
 BY THE REPRESENTATIVE MEETING OF THE YEARLY MEETING 
 OF FRIENDS FOR NEW ENGLAND FOR 
 
 1881 - 1882 . 
 
 RHODE ISLAND PRINTING COMPANY, 62 WEYBOSSET STREET. 
 
 1882. 
 
OPIUM. 
 
 The following is a minute of the Representative Meeting of th® 
 Yearly Meeting of Friends for Now England, at a meeting of that body 
 held in Providence, R. I., 2nd Mo. 1st, 1882 : 
 
 “The Committee under appointment relative to the traffic in and the 
 use of opium in our own and foreign countries, presented a report which 
 has been read. The subject elicited much interest, and our Committee 
 is authorized to prepare the statement now presented for the press, and 
 to procure the printing of 5000 copies for public circulation.” 
 
 A true copy. 
 
 New Bedford, 4th Mo. 20th, 1882. 
 
 HENRY T. WOOD, 
 
 Clerk. 
 
 We have published the statement referred to in the foregoing 
 minute pursuant to the directions given therein, and the same is con- 
 tained in -the following pages. 
 
 On behalf of the Committee. 
 
 AUGUSTINE JONES, 
 
 Chairman. 
 
 Providence, R. I., 4th Mo. 24th, 1882. 
 
THE TRAFFIC IN AND THE USE OF 
 
 OPIUM 
 
 IN OUR OWN AND OTHER COUNTRIES. 
 
 The attention of Friends in New England has been 
 recently called to the alarming increase in the use of 
 opium in China, the United States and other countries. 
 Friends in England, with other Christian denomina- 
 tions, have for several years labored earnestly to arouse 
 the people and government of that country to their duty 
 respecting the traffic in opium between British India 
 and China. 
 
 We believe that the time has fully come when the 
 Yearly Meeting of Friends for New England should 
 exert its influence, not only for the encouragement of 
 those Avho are engaged in this philanthropic work, but 
 also in the discharge of its own duty and responsibility, 
 as a branch of the Christian Church. 
 
 The opium poppy is a native of Persia, and probably 
 also of the south of Europe and Asia Minor. It is 
 largely cultivated in those countries, and also in Egypt, 
 Arabia and British India, for the sake of its opium. 
 
 Dr. Joseph Hooker thus describes this process : — 
 “ The capsules are sliced in February and March with 
 a little instrument like a saw, made of three serrated 
 plates tied together. From the incisions made by this 
 instrument the opium oozes out as a milky juice, which, 
 as it dries, becomes a soft, brown, sticky paste ; each 
 morning this paste is scraped off by means of small 
 
4 
 
 shells, and collected into jars, the contents of which are 
 afterwards made into balls of about half a pound 
 weight; these are often coated with the seeds of some 
 species of rheum or rhubarb plant. The balls are 
 packed into chests and exported to other countries.” 
 
 It is important to consider first the opium trade 
 between India, China and the East, because this is 
 largely the source and origin of the traffic elsewhere. 
 Eastern nations generally are very fond of opium, 
 which they smoke with their tobacco, or alone, and 
 take in the form of pills. It is said to have greater 
 intoxicating power over them than over the inhabitants 
 of western countries. Drunkenness is not a national 
 vice in China, they have no wine — but opium has 
 greater attractions for them than for any other people 
 in the world, and on the testimony of Chinamen them- 
 selves, the effects of opium are very destructive to 
 health, and to all the better part of man’s nature. The 
 Chinese government has opposed the traffic from its 
 inception. 
 
 The East India Company commenced in 1773 to 
 export opium to China, the taste for the drug increased, 
 and in 1776 the exports reached 1000 chests per annum, 
 Warren Hastings being at that time the highest officer 
 of the company in India. 
 
 In 1781 he chartered a vessel, for the purpose of 
 selling opium in China, which was furnished with can- 
 non and soldiers, thus beginning the trade with force 
 and violence, as it has ever since been carried on, result- 
 ing in two opium wars. 
 
 In 1820 the number of chests had increased to 5147, 
 and in 1833 to 20,000 annually. 
 
 The consumption of opium has grown slowly in the 
 present century from 2000 to 100,000 chests yearly. 
 
5 
 
 In 1834 the business passed out of the hands of the 
 East India Company. It is at present a traffic which 
 bears immense profits, gives great fortunes to numbers 
 of merchants, and furnishes the British Government 
 with a large portion of its Indian revenue. 
 
 The Queen’s Government itself is the producer. It 
 provides land, lends money to the cultivator, receives 
 and stores the whole amount grown, and disposes of it 
 by auction at periodical sales in Calcutta, to merchants 
 who export it to China, and the proceeds of the sale 
 are paid into the Imperial Treasury, From a recent 
 Parliamentary Blue Book on the Progress and Condi- 
 tion of India, we learn the net opium revenue for 1871- 
 72 amounted to $38,286,066. The number of chests 
 sold being 88,789. (A chest contains about ISSl 
 pounds.) This includes 49,455 chests produced in 
 Bengal and sold in Calcutta at $695 each, the net profit 
 on each being $450 ; also 43,909 chests produced in' 
 Malwa, a native state in Central India, and exported 
 from Bombay, paying a tax to the British Government 
 of $300 per chest. 
 
 The Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Cus- 
 toms calculates that there are in China 1,000,000 smo- 
 kers of Indian opium, who spend nearly $85,000,000 
 per annum, and that all the smokers of opium in that 
 country would number at least 2,000,000, at a cost for 
 opium of at least $125,000,000 annually. 
 
 The Archbishop of York sfdd in a recent speech : — 
 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 grown for them, 
 and has not scrupled to go to war even to enforce what 
 I must call an iniquitous trade. 
 
6 
 
 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 .” — The Friend of China, vol. 5, p. 16. 
 
 Canon Stowell said at the same meeting : The con- 
 troversy is between the healthy and generous instincts 
 of Christian philanthropists and the special pleading of 
 politician and financier, and he was sure that in the 
 long run the former would prevail as they did in the 
 case of the slave trade, by legislation.” 
 
 An Anti-Opium Society of Canton, China, makes the 
 following statement of the corruption to the morals of 
 the people arising from opium : “ From Kieuhmg until 
 now scarcely a hundred years have elapsed, but the 
 deterioration of common morality has been incessant 
 during all that period. In out-of-the-way places, where 
 comparatively few smoke, the virtue of former times is 
 still not gone entirely, but in cities and marts of trade 
 where smoking is more prevalent, the corruption of 
 morality is notorious. Human affairs are hastening on 
 to one consummation of falsehood and hypocrisy, and 
 there is no turning them back.” This same heathen 
 
7 
 
 society calls the attention of Christian England to the 
 teaching of its own Scriptures in the following words : 
 “ The New Testament says, ‘ Whatsoever ye would that 
 others should do to you, do you to them.’ Is it possi- 
 ble that this instruction of the Saviour has not reached 
 the ears of your honored countrymen ?” 
 
 On the 13th of 9th Mo., 1876, the Chinese Gov- 
 ernment, unable to induce the Government of England 
 to consent to their prohibition of the importation of 
 opium, attempted to make a treaty known as the 
 “ Chefoo Convention,” a provision of which would im- 
 pose a heavy duty at the port, and to a great extent 
 prevent smuggling and limit the quantity imported. 
 
 England’s plenipotentiary agreed, and the treaty was 
 signed. Five years have elapsed, the Chinese have 
 fulfilled the provisions of that treaty on their part, but 
 England has not ratified it, and probably will not, 
 although she is morally bound to do it. It is claimed 
 on the part of England that the Chinese are not sin- 
 cere in their protest against the importation of opium, 
 that their real wish is to raise all the opium in that 
 country for the profit of home production. On the 
 other hand it is claimed that the raising of opium in 
 China is permitted with the purpose, if possible, of 
 first destroying the foreign traffic, and then its use 
 altogether. It is admitted that China has been con- 
 sistent in pressing her protest against opium in her 
 treaties with all countries from first to last. She has 
 recently concluded two treaties of the highest impor- 
 tance, the one with the United States, the other with 
 Russia, and by both of these treaties alike the impor- 
 tation of opium is prohibited. She failed to secure the 
 like provision in her recent Brazilian treaty, it is said, 
 through British influence. 
 
8 
 
 The Grand Secretary, Li Hung Chang, says : “ I 
 may take the opportunity to assert here once for all, 
 that the single aim of my government in taxing opium 
 will be in the future, as it has always been in the past, 
 to repress the traffic, never the desire to gain revenue 
 from such a source.” He further says on another occa- 
 sion : My government is impressed with the necessity 
 of making strenuous efforts to control this flood of opium 
 before it overwhelms this whole country. The new 
 treaty with the United States containing the prohib- 
 itory clause against opium encourages the belief that 
 the broad principles of justice and feelings of humanity 
 will prevail in future relations between China and west- 
 ern nations. My government will take effective meas- 
 ures to enforce the laws against the cultivation of the 
 poppy in China, and otherwise check the use of opium.” 
 
 The British minister at Pekin for a quarter of a cent- 
 ury, says : ‘‘ It is to me vain to think otherwise of the 
 use jof the drug in China than as of a habit many times 
 more pernicious, nationally speaking, than* the gin and 
 whiskey drinking which we deplore at home. It takes 
 possession more insidiously, and keeps its hold to the 
 full as tenaciously. It has ensured, in every case 
 within my knowledge, the steady descent, moral and 
 physical, of the smoker, and it is so far a greater mis- 
 chief than drink, that it does not, by external evidence 
 of its effects, expose its victim to the loss of repute, 
 which is the penalty of drunkenness.” 
 
 Dr. Dudgeon, for many years Medical Missionary at 
 Pekin, who occupies a chair in a Chinese college for the 
 study of foreign literature in that city, says : “ Once 
 
 habituated to the drug, everything will be endured 
 rather than its privation. The pipe becomes the smo- 
 ker’s very life, and to satisfy the inexorable demands 
 
9 
 
 of tyrant craving, there is nothing to which he will 
 not stoop. In the case of poverty the wretched victim 
 is driven to the perpetration of crime in order to secure 
 the pipe. Time, wealth, energies, self-respect, self-con- 
 trol, honesty, truthfulness, honor, are all sacrificed at 
 the dicker of the opium lamp. This new constitutional 
 idiosyncrasy, or second nature, demands its regular 
 periodic dose, twice, sometimes thrice or four times, and 
 in the case of old, confirmed smokers an almost con- 
 tinuous supply, day and night, without which the 
 smoker could not exist. What a slavery ! none more 
 easy to acquire, none more difficult to break off !” 
 The Anti-Opium Society, mentioned before, says : 
 “ Finally, your countrymen come here to preach the 
 gospel, and their object is to make many converts, and 
 thus spread abroad the love of God to men. But their 
 hearers continually ask, ‘ Why don’t you go home and 
 exhort your own people not to sell opium, since you are 
 so bent on exhortation ?’ And it is impossible for the 
 missionaries entirely to slop their mouths. On this 
 account not only are few converts made, but the whole 
 Christian doctrine is suspected to be an imposition.” 
 
 When Bishop Schereschewsky, in 1869, was ex- 
 pelled from the capital of Honan province, a mob 
 followed him shouting, “You sell poison to the 
 people, and now you come to teach us virtue.” The 
 Bishop of Victoria said, that again and again, while 
 preaching he has been stopped with the question, “Are 
 you an Englishman ? Is not that the country where 
 opium comes from ? Go back and stop it, and then 
 we will talk about Christianity.” 
 
 The opium habit has been found by the missionaries, 
 not only in China and Burmah, but everywhere a very 
 difficult obstruction to their work, both in the prejudice 
 
10 
 
 which it creates against Christianity and in the deplor- 
 able condition of its victims. These persons can seldom 
 be trusted in their religious professions. Indeed, it is 
 a proverb in the East : “That God furnishes a means of 
 escape from everything except the use of opium.” 
 
 The importance of this matter to the missionary 
 interests in India appears in a petition and protest just 
 received in the British House of Commons, signed by 
 338 clergy, ministers and missionaries in India. The list 
 includes the Bishop of Bombay and his clergy, twenty- 
 two members of the Calcutta Missionary Conference, 
 all the members of the Bombay Missionary Conference, 
 and missionaries of all societies in every part of India. 
 
 David Hill, one of the missionaries to China who 
 assembled at Exeter Hall, London, 3d Mo. 15th, 1882, 
 to tell the public the truth about opium, said : “ The 
 verdict of all the 350 missionaries in China was unan- 
 imous in regard to its ruinous results.” 
 
 The section of the recent treaty between the United 
 States and China on this subject is as follows : “ The 
 governments of China and of the United States mu- 
 tually agree and undertake that Chinese subjects shall 
 not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports 
 of the United States, and citizens of the United States 
 shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the 
 open ports of China, to transport it from one open port 
 to any other open port, or to buy or sell opium in any 
 of the open ports of China. This absolute prohibition, 
 which extends to vessels owned by citizens or subjects 
 of either power, to foreign vessels employed by them, 
 or to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either 
 power and employed by other persons for the transpor- 
 tation of opium shall be enforced by appropriate legis- 
 lation on the part of China and the United States and 
 
11 
 
 the benefits of the favored-nation clause in existing 
 treaties shall not be claimed by the citizens or subjects 
 of either power, as against the provisions of this arti- 
 cle.” President Arthur in his recent message to Con- 
 gress urges the enforcement of the stipulations of the 
 new Chinese treaty, and states that those regarding 
 the opium trade will undoubtedly receive the ap- 
 proval of Congress, thus giving the moral weight of 
 the present administration on the side of justice to 
 China. 
 
 The following statistics, respecting the use of opium 
 in the United States, are from the bureau of statistics 
 in Washington : There were imported into the United 
 States in 1869, 90,997 pounds of opium, valued in gold 
 at $626,802; in 1874, 170,706 pounds, valued at 
 $945,232; in 1877, 230,102 pounds, valued in gold at 
 $997,692. 
 
 And in 1869, 17,940 pounds of opium for smoking, 
 valued in gold at $168,718; in 1874, 53,343 pounds, 
 valued in gold at $566,844 ; in 1877, 47,428 pounds, 
 valued in gold at $602,662. The slight reduction this 
 last year is due undoubtedly to a depression in business, 
 but recent reports show a great increase. 
 
 In 1876 228,742 pounds of crude opium were im- 
 ported into the United States. This shows an increase 
 of seventy per cent, since 1867. 
 
 During the fiscal year ending 6th Mo. 30, 1880, the 
 importations amounted to 533,451 pounds. Of this 
 97,000 pounds came from China, 329,575 pounds from 
 England, and 92,633 from Turkey in Asia. This is an 
 increase of 140 per cent, in four years. In 1876 
 3285 ounces of morphia were imported. In 1880 the 
 amount received in New York alone was 8822 ounces. 
 In 1876 there were estimated to be 200,000 opium 
 
12 
 
 eaters in the United States, two-thirds of them being 
 the well-to-do classes — many of them actors and literary 
 persons. The figures indicate that it is probable that 
 there are now 400,000. They consume nearly 5,000,- 
 000,000 grains annually, the imported value of which 
 is over $2,000,000, for which consumers have to pay 
 over $5,000,000. 
 
 If opium is smuggled in large quantities, as no doubt 
 it is, the amount is to be increased. A wholesale dealer 
 observes that much of the increase of opium imports is 
 absorbed in cigars and cigarettes. The opium is used 
 in a liquid state, the tobacco being saturated’ with a 
 solution of greater or less strength. 
 
 A prominent druggist is reported in the New York 
 World to have said : “ The increased consumption of 
 opium has followed very closely the increased use of 
 the hypodermic syringe. A single instrument maker 
 told me he has sold enough of these instruments within 
 two years to supply the whole profession in the city.” 
 
 The number of preparations in which opium is used 
 is annually increasing. It forms an important ingre- 
 dient in a number of quack and patent medicines. 
 The wholesale dealers and manufacturers in New York 
 report that it is increasing there with alarming rapid- 
 ity, but that it is no worse in that city than in other 
 parts of the country. 
 
 Harpers Weekly of 4th Mo. 8th, 1882, contains the 
 statement that opium smoking has increased very rap- 
 idly in that place within a few months, and that the per- 
 sons who smoke are not Chinese, but Americans, and that 
 the smoking dens which they visit are kept by Ameri- 
 cans and are made very attractive by their costly furni- 
 ture, colored lights and various other devices. Albany 
 consumes annually 3500 pounds of opium and 650 
 
13 
 
 ounces of morphia, four-fifths of which is said to be 
 consumed by women. The vice-president of the Illi- 
 nois State Temperance League gives local statistics of 
 towns in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, in which 
 there are from three to six opium eaters in every 
 hundred of population. 
 
 And it is reported that in some of the country towns 
 of New England morphia is sold by the grocers in large 
 quantities. It is a significant fact in this connection 
 thatsome’of these towns are within the districts where 
 prohibitory liquor laws have been most successfully 
 enforced. 
 
 H. H. Kane, in his book on opium smoking in China 
 and America, informs us that the first white man in 
 America began smoking opium in 1868, the second in 
 1871. Now it is computed that more than 6000 Amer- 
 ican men and women smoke it, and that now there are 
 opium dens in all the principal cities. 
 
 This cause will not at present receive the attention 
 it merits. The world at large is not yet awakened to 
 the impending danger, and because there is a natural 
 apathy towards the distant and unseen. And as the 
 watchman on the wall has a special trust and duty, 
 because he first discovers the danger, so the Society of 
 Friends, so Christianity, holds a responsible position 
 where it may discern in advance the approach and in 
 part the extent of this baneful influence. 
 
 The use of opium will in the future prove a more 
 serious obstruction to the progress of Christianity than 
 in the past, for the habit is extending; hence it is high 
 time that the alarm was sounded, and the whole 
 Christian world summoned to its duty. It may justly 
 be questioned whether any moral cause ever more 
 clearly demanded the force and exercise of Gospel 
 
14 
 
 teachings than the opium question, with its wide and 
 varied elements. 
 
 The hope of the world in the struggle with this evil, 
 as with every other, lies in Christianity, which is uni- 
 versal, is no respecter of persons or nations, but extends 
 its healing hand to every individual of the race. That 
 was the true light which lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world.” And God ‘‘hath made of one 
 blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face 
 of the earth.” We, as Christians, are charged with the 
 solemn duty to teach all nations whatsoever things He 
 has commanded us, and this injunction requires us to 
 restrain our carnal appetites, and to teach men so to do 
 to keep the body in subjection to the spirit, to love, 
 our neighbors as ourselves, to seek first the King- 
 dom of Heaven, and to labor for the extension of 
 that kingdom. Our duty is beautifully taught by the 
 Master himself in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. 
 The Priest and Levite, Church and State, Hypocrisy 
 and Respectability went by on the other side, while the 
 foreigner, the genuine neighbor and true disciple, waiv- 
 ing the question of sect and nationality, performed his 
 Christian duty. 
 
 The government of England ought to feel that the 
 Christian conviction of the world, a force more potent 
 than armies, has irrevocably decreed that it shall do 
 justice to China, and that it ought to be, in fact and in 
 truth, as well as in name, a great Christian nation. But 
 England is not the only guilty nation, if she has been 
 more aggressive in this wrong, other nations have been 
 grossly negligent as Christian governments, while their 
 citizens have shared in the crime and the spoils, and to 
 our shame it must be said that this is notably true of 
 Americans. We think that an appeal ought to be 
 
15 
 
 made in the name and in behalf of Christianity, to all 
 the civilized governments of the world, immediately to 
 take part in this common cause, the issues of which 
 reach all mankind. The people of China, Burmah and 
 elsewhere must be made to realize that Christianity 
 was not represented in the violence of opium wars, 
 and in wicked attempts to degrade and destroy weaker 
 races, but that on the contrary it seeks in its purity 
 the elevation and redemption of all men. But this 
 subject is brought home to us when we consider that 
 the use of opium is extending silently but surely in 
 our own midst. That we, as individuals, are now ex- 
 posed to this very peril, that it may enter our own 
 families in some of its varied forms. The wonderful 
 and increasing facilities for inter-communication be- 
 tween remote parts of the world have, in effect, reduced 
 the size of the globe, and we are brought into nearer 
 contact with distant countries than ever before. And 
 this will probably be increasingly the case with the 
 progress of ^invention, so that national life and charac- 
 ter will be more influenced by foreign nations. 
 
 Neither China nor India can longer be poisoned and 
 demoralized without sending the injury around the 
 world. England plants a Upas tree in China whose 
 deadly branches not only reach America, but over- 
 shadow herself with their noxious influence. What- 
 ever nation pours poison into the circulation of the 
 world’s life current, may expect it in time to flow back 
 upon itself with all its destructive power. The law of 
 compensation is sure. 
 
 Though the mills of God grind slowl}', yet they grind exceeding small ; 
 
 Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all. 
 
 We believe it to be our duty, as a Religious Society, 
 
16 
 
 to invite the co-operation of other denominations of 
 Christians in the formation of a healthy and well 
 informed public opinion on the evils and extent of 
 opium use, which are comparatively little understood. 
 We recognize the magnitude and intricacy of the sub- 
 ject, and that the influence of a small Christian com- 
 munity like ours can do but little, yet we believe that 
 the duty and responsibility rest none the less upon us 
 faithfully to do our small share in this great work, 
 leaving the results with Him, who will bless the 
 humblest efforts in His service. 
 
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