That was in 1843; for seventy years thereafter pious England continued
to force the opium traffic upon protesting China, and only in the last
two or three years has the infamy been brought to an end. Throughout
the long controversy the attitude of the church was such that Li Hung
Chang was moved to assert in a letter to the Anti-Opium Society:

Opium is a subject in the discussion of which England and
China can never meet on a common ground. China views the
whole question from a moral standpoint, England from a
fiscal.

And just as the Chinese people were poisoned with opium, so the
English people are being poisoned with alcohol. Both in town and
country, labor is sodden with it. Scientists and reformers are
clamoring for restriction;--and what prevents? Head and front of the
opposition for a century, standing like a rock, has been the
Established Church. The Rev. Dawson Burns, historian of the early
temperance movement, declares that "among its supporters I cannot
recall one Church of England minister of influence." When Asquith
brought in his bill for the restriction of the traffic in beer, he was
confronted with petitions signed by members of the clergy, protesting
against the act. And what was the basis of their protest? That beer is
a food and not a poison? Yes, of course; but also that there was
property invested in brewing it. Three hundred and thirty-two clergy
of the diocese of Peterborough declared:

We do strongly protest against the main provisions of the
present bill as creating amongst our people a sense of grave
injustice as amounting to a confiscation of private
property, spelling ruin for thousands of quite innocent