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The ryot or farmer was frequently compelled to cultivate the poppy at a fixed rate, when it was discovered that anybody was cultivating poppy , without having entered into such an arrangement with the government, his property was to be immediately attached, or he has to give securities for the faithful delivery of the product. A system was also established, for the preventing the traffic of even a minimum quantity of this valuable drug. The first opium factories were established by the dutch in early eighteenth centuries. In 1781, the Dutch Factory at Patna was seized on the lOth of July by
The Dutch factory received its opium from the English contractor, paying the English Company a nazarana of Rs. 10,000 per annum for this purpose. At the date of the seizure of the factory Mr. Campbell, the opium contractor, had a claim of Rs. 96,900 against the Dutch for opium supplied, which the English Government liquidated on the 29th of November 1781. Mr. Brooke, Revenue chief of Patna, was ordered to make the buildings of the Dutch factory over to the opium contractor.
The Stacking Room Opium Factory and the opium fleet on Ganges, Patna (c.1850)
There was no secret in the opium trade; the quantity exported was well-known, and the prices were always given in the Canton Register, a public newspaper : the opium chests being cumbrous things, were broken up on board the receiving smuggling ships at Lin tin, and the opium placed In bags for delivering to the Chinese, who go alongside the ships in smuggling boats in the open face of day, frequently within view of the Chinese men-of-war boats, and the opium was delivered to them upon their presenting what was called an opium order from the agent at Canton.
They took it from along-side in smuggling boats that were well manned and armed, Four Mandarin boats have been surrounding a ship when there were thirty chests of opium to smuggle, and was prevented from going to sea on account of the opium : the way that they smuggled it was thus—they stripped the chest entirely away, took nothing but the opium, and put it into bags; the lower deck-port was opened, and in one moment they put the opium into the boat, and all hands were off in a second.
From the profits of Patna poppy,crores of the Chinese wealth was drained to India for a century from China, till at last that country awoke to the appalling enormity both of the physical and moral drain, and how the humanities of British civilization had rendered that trade negligible.
Indeed the British Government had washed its hands of the unrighteous trade . The extent of the trade was in the figures of the enormous exports between 1840 and 1860. The recorded value rose from 1.14 crore to 5-16 crore rupees.
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