Considering, however, that the culture has
vastly increased in amount lately, the balance
of evidence seems to show that the cultivators
find opium to be as profitable as rice or
cotton.

It is said above, that the price paid to the
ryot for the juice is about ninepence per
pound; but the product costs the Company
four or five times this amount before it
finally passes into other hands. The juice
has many processes to go through before it is
fit for the market, and these processes differ
in different countries. The per-centage of
morphia contained in poppy juice being the
chief fact that determines its value, the
opium brought to market is carefully classified,
in order that dealers may, in the first
place, guess the quality from the country or
district, and then analyse it more minutely.
Thus Smyrna opium is prepared into irregular
flattened masses of about two pounds weight,
somewhat hard, blackish brown, waxy in
lustre, and enveloped in leaves. Constantinopolitan
opium, generally in small lens-shaped
cakes, and covered with poppy leaves, is
redder, softer, and weaker in quality than
that from Smyrna. Egyptian opium, brought
to market in leaf-enveloped, round, flattened
cakes, about three inches in diameter, is
redder than the last named kind, but much
harder. Persian opium, of intermediate
colour, odour, and consistence, is brought to
market in the form of cylindrical sticks, each
enveloped with smooth glossy paper and tied
with cotton. The Indian opium, which in
many respects is the most important, is
treated as follows:—After the juice has been
collected it is gradually inspissated in the
cool shade, care being taken to procure a
proper jelly-like consistence, without grit or
sourness. When ready for market, it
possesses a degree of adhesiveness which keeps
it from dropping from the hand for some
seconds, though the hand be inverted. In the
Patna and Benares districts the opium is
made into balls about the size of the double
fist, and covered with a hard skin made of
the petals of the poppy. The chests in which
the opium is packed for the market are made
of mango-wood; each consists of two stories
or stages, and each story has twenty compartments
to contain twenty balls, insomuch that
the balls of opium are all kept separate.
The balls weighing about three pounds and
a-half each, the average chest-weight does
not depart far from a hundred and forty
pounds.

We have reserved for a special paragraph
the Malwa opium, for a reason that may now
appear. Malwa is not a British possession.
It is one of those few states in Hindostan,
becoming fewer and fewer in each generation,
that are still independent. The East India
Company cannot, therefore, send the
tax-gatherer into that province, but they
nevertheless contrive to obtain a large revenue
out of it in another way. The Malwa
cultivators, quite independent of the Company,
grow poppies and prepare opium just when
and where they find it most convenient.
They make up the opium into cakes about
the size of the single fist, and pack it in dried
poppy leaves, and the chests in which the
cakes are placed are covered with hides or
coarse cloth for their preservation. All is so
far well; but if the cultivators wish to sell
the opium to foreign merchants for shipment
at a seaport, how is this to be effected?
Malwa, situated between Bombay and Delhi,
does not come down to the coast, nor can it
obtain communication with any coast but by
transit through some other province. When
Scinde was independent, the opium of Malwa
found its way to the port of Kurrachee in
that region, without coming in contact with
British authorities; but when Scinde was
conquered by the late Sir Charles James
Napier, this opium trade was at once stopped.
The Company obtained such a command over
the western coasts that Malwa opium could
reach no port except that of Bombay, and by
no route that would keep clear of British
territory. Such being the new state of affairs,
a frontier duty was established, analogous to
the customs' toll on the continent of Europe,
but very heavy in amount. The opium is
sold by the cultivators to dealers in Malwa,
and about eight thousand chests are annually
consumed in that province; but a much
larger quantity is now sent by land route to
Bombay, a distance of nearly five hundred
miles. The Malwa opium was formerly
admitted along this route at a small duty, so
long as there was a rival outlet through
Scinde; but in proportion as a monopoly has
been acquired by the Company the duty has
been raised. The British resident at Indore,
a sort of ambassador to the Malwa state,
grants "passes" to merchants to convey
opium thence to Bombay; and for these
passes or permits a sum is paid which has
been trebled in amount in fifteen years—it
having been raised from about a hundred and
thirty to four hundred rupees per chest. The
last-named rate of duty, on a chest of about
one hundred and forty pounds, is nearly six
shillings per pound—eight times as much as
the ryot cultivator obtains for the juice. Any
opium found within the Bombay Presidency,
on which transit duty has not been paid, is
not only forfeited, but entails a fine on the
owner.

One stage more, and we arrive at the wholesale
mercantile dealings in Indian opium. Until
the great change effected in the Company's
charter, in eighteen hundred and thirty-four,
the Company were their own merchants in
foreign countries, to the exclusion of others;
but the external trade is now free, and is
managed by any merchants belonging to any
country. In Madras presidency no opium is
grown, and none exported. In Bombay
presidency no opium is grown, but the Malwa
opium pays duty on passing through British