to imagine that a lucrative trade will be suppressed by a sheet
of paper and a seal. In England we have a preventive service
which costs us half a million a year. We employ more than fifty
cruisers to guard our coasts. We have six thousand effective men
whose business is to intercept smugglers. And yet everybody
knows that every article which is much desired, which is easily
concealed, and which is heavily taxed, is smuggled into our
island to a great extent. The quantity of brandy which comes in
without paying duty is known to be not less than six hundred
thousand gallons a year. Some people think that the quantity of
tobacco which is imported clandestinely is as great as the
quantity which goes through the custom-houses. Be this as it
may, there is no doubt that the illicit importation is enormous.
It has been proved before a Committee of this House that not less
than four millions of pounds of tobacco have lately been smuggled
into Ireland. And all this, observe, has been done in spite of
the most efficient preventive service that I believe ever existed
in the world. Consider too that the price of an ounce of opium
is far, very far higher than the price of a pound of tobacco.
Knowing this, knowing that the whole power of King, Lords, and
Commons cannot here put a stop to a traffic less easy, and less
profitable than the traffic in opium, can you believe that an
order prohibiting the traffic in opium would have been readily
obeyed? Remember by what powerful motives both the buyer and the
seller would have been impelled to deal with each other. The
buyer would have been driven to the seller by something little
short of torture, by a physical craving as fierce and impatient
as any to which our race is subject. For, when stimulants of
this sort have been long used, they are desired with a rage which
resembles the rage of hunger. The seller would have been driven