The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater | Page 4

nor would I willingly in my own person manifest a disregard of
such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do anything to weaken them;
but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a
confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it DID, the
benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience purchased
at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any
violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the
general rule. Infirmity and misery do not of necessity imply guilt. They
approach or recede from shades of that dark alliance, in proportion to

the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations,
known or secret, of the offence; in proportion as the temptations to it
were potent from the first, and the resistance to it, in act or in effort,
was earnest to the last. For my own part, without breach of truth or
modesty, I may affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a
philosopher: from my birth I was made an intellectual creature, and
intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been,
even from my schoolboy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure,
and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not
yet RECORDED {1} of any other man, it is no less true that I have
struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and
have at length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any
other man--have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain
which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in
counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist
that in my case the self-conquest was unquestionable, the
self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name
shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be
restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure.
Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and if I did, it is possible that I
might still resolve on the present act of confession in consideration of
the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of
opium-eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say a very
numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago by
computing at that time the number of those in one small class of
English society (the class of men distinguished for talents, or of
eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as
opium-eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent -, the
late Dean of -, Lord -, Mr.--the philosopher, a late Under- Secretary of
State (who described to me the sensation which first drove him to the
use of opium in the very same words as the Dean of -, viz., "that he felt
as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his stomach"),
Mr. -, and many others hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to
mention. Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so
many scores of cases (and THAT within the knowledge of one single
inquirer), it was a natural inference that the entire population of
England would furnish a proportionable number. The soundness of this

inference, however, I doubted, until some facts became known to me
which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will mention two. (1)
Three respectable London druggists, in widely remote quarters of
London, from whom I happened lately to be purchasing small
quantities of opium, assured me that the number of AMATEUR
opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at this time immense; and that
the difficulty of distinguishing those persons to whom habit had
rendered opium necessary from such as were purchasing it with a view
to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This evidence
respected London only. But (2)--which will possibly surprise the reader
more--some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was informed
by several cotton manufacturers that their workpeople were rapidly
getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a
Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills
of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the
evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of
wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or
spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would
cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted
the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and
mortal enjoyments