A Vindication of England's Policy with Regard to the Opium Trade

The author surveys the history and controversy surrounding England's involvement in the opium trade with China and India, critiques the arguments of anti-opium activists, and outlines the plant's ancient use, medicinal properties, and modes of consumption. He explains Indian production, monopoly administration, and fiscal dependence, recounts diplomatic and military episodes that affected legal status, and weighs moral and practical objections to abolition. Proposed remedies examined include ending the monopoly, prohibiting cultivation, compensation negotiations, and coordinated gradual cessation of poppy-growing, with a stress on pragmatic enforcement and skepticism toward missionary and agitator claims.