利希慎的澳門鴉片煙廠：裕成公司賺了多少，以及如何對照政府的收入
摘要
本文考證利希慎（利希慎）集團承辦的澳門鴉片煙專賣——裕成公司（裕成公司）——在 1924–27 一段的收益規模，並對照澳門政府的整體預算作答「以前利希慎的收入係當時的政府幾多倍？」這一命題。 語料庫中並無任何時期文獻以「倍」來表述此一對照（負面對照：0 命中），故此比率乃本研究自行 計算之算術，而非當時的說法。核心發現（中英雙重見證）：專賣租金固定為每半月 $59,925，年 化 $1,438,2001；資本 $3,000,000，利氏自占 $800,000，另控制約 $1,000,000 家族資金2；鴉片收入約佔澳門政府 1927 年全年收入 25%3。專賣期滿時，澳門 政府對公司欠款 $1,800,000（含 $700,000 保證金）2。利氏 1928 年身故，遺產動產 $2,716,400，遺產稅 8% 為 $217,812（《中國郵報》）4——與《工商日報》「廿一萬七 千三百一十二元」（$217,312）之數位差異，二者並存，不作調和5。惟 Lloyd 報告明言「賬簿不足以推算利潤」，故淨利無法復原；本文之比率僅為毛額對照，非淨利之結論。
一、問題與方法
問題是：利希慎的收入，相對於當時（澳門）政府的收入，是幾倍？語料庫（hkintexts，只讀）
涵蓋英文之 CO 129、CO 885、英文報紙，及中文之《工商日報》影像系列。方法上，先以短語
檢索（「利希慎」「裕成公司」「opium farm」「opium revenue」等）定位核心文獻，再以
dumpdoc 整份拉取兩份中樞文件（CO 129/508/7 之 Lloyd 報告；CO 129/416 之
Hutchison 1913 憲報），並以影像索引核對中文報紙三版作插圖。所有數字均取兩獨立 contemporaneous
見證，否則列入衝突冊，不作斷言。
二、專賣的租金與資本（雙重見證的核心）
裕成公司資本 $3,000,000；利氏在誹謗案庭上自陳占 $800,000，另約 $1,000,000 為家族 資金、由其控制2。專賣租金固定為每半月 $59,925，年化 $1,438,2001； 澳門 1925/26 年預算列鴉片 $1,277,100，Lloyd 謂「略低於實付之數」，與年化租金同一 數量級6。鴉片收入約佔澳門政府 1927 年全年收入 25%，據此反推政府總收入約 $5.7M（算術，已標示）3。故專賣租金本身即約為政府全年總收入之四分之一，而公司 整個經營（租金＋波斯煙貿易＋零售）與政府全年收入同一數量級。
三、期滿、結算與「利潤」之限
專賣於 1927 年 6 月 6 日／7 月 1 日期滿；期滿時澳門政府對裕成公司欠款 $1,800,000 （$700,000 保證金＋接管之鴉片與器具）2；澳門政府遂於 7 月 1 日改設政府專賣 7。中文報紙則載「裕成公司期滿、澳門政府…擬收回政府專賣」，並謂公司之 六十萬元按餉須「繳呈政府查核方准發還」8——此一數額（$600,000）與 Lloyd 之 $59,925 半月付、$700,000 保證金三者並存，列為衝突，不作調和。Lloyd 報告明言「賬簿不足 以推算利潤」，波斯煙零售利 30–100%，「付予政府之款從未由澳門本地消費之售額所賺回」， 「大部分利潤歸 active managers」6。故淨利不可復原；本文之比率只可作毛額對照。
四、結論
就用戶之問：專賣租金約為澳門政府全年總收入的四分之一；公司整個經營與政府全年收入同一 數量級。利氏本人之份額（$800,000 資本＋控制 $1M 家族資金）與各經理之分帳，僅可以遺產 （動產 $2,716,400）與資本為界，未能逐人量化。語料庫中無任何「倍」之時期說法；此比率乃 本研究之算術，非歷史陳述，亦非淨利之結論（hard rule 5）。
The Opium Merchants' Take: Lee Hysan's Macao Farm, the Yue Seng Company, and the Scale of the Government It Fed
Abstract
This paper reconstructs how much the opium merchants took from the Macao opium farm, centred on Lee Hysan (利希慎) and the Yue Seng Company (裕成公司), and frames the answer against the government the trade fed. The corpus contains no period statement of the “N times the government” form (a negative control returns zero hits), so the ratio offered here is this thread's own arithmetic and is labelled as such (hard rule 5). The double-witnessed core: a fixed rent of $59,925 half-monthly, annualised to $1,438,2001; a capital of $3,000,000 of which Lee held $800,000 and controlled ~$1,000,000 of family money2; opium at ~25% of Macao's government revenue in 19273; and, on termination, $1,800,000 owed to the company (a $700,000 security included)2. Lee's estate at his death in 1928 carried $2,716,400 in personalty with an estate duty of $217,8124 — the China Mail's figure, against the 工商日報's $217,312, a digit variance kept as a conflict and never reconciled by assertion5. Lloyd's report is explicit that the books do not yield a profit figure, so the net profit is unrecoverable; the ratios here are a gross comparison, not a net-profit finding.
1. The question and the sources
The commissioned question is blunt: how much did the opium merchants profit,
and how did that compare with the government of the day? The hkintexts corpus
(read-only) holds the English stratum (CO 129, CO 885, the English
press) and the Chinese stratum (the Kung Sheung Yat Po 工商日報 image
series). The method follows the standing battery: a phrase sweep to locate the
central documents; a compulsory whole-document dumpdoc pull of each
(Lloyd's report in CO 129/508/7 and Hutchison's 1913 despatch in
CO 129/416); and a vision read of the three Chinese newspaper plates. Every
load-bearing figure is carried by two independent contemporaneous witnesses, or
it goes to the conflict register and is not asserted.
2. The rent and the capital (the double-witnessed core)
The company's capital was $3,000,000. In the libel case Lee declared he owned $800,000 himself and that ~$1,000,000 was family money under his control2. The rent was fixed at $59,925 half-monthly, annualised to $1,438,2001. Macao's own 1925/26 budget put opium at $1,277,100, which Lloyd called “only a little short of the amount actually paid” — the same order of magnitude6. Opium was ~25% of Macao's total government revenue in 1927, from which a total revenue of ~$5.7M is reconstructed (arithmetic, labelled)3. The rent alone was therefore about a quarter of the government's whole annual income, and the company's enterprise — rent plus the Persian trade plus retail — moved a sum of the same order as the state's annual income.
3. Termination, settlement, and the limits of “profit”
The monopoly ended on 6 June / 1 July 1927; on termination the Macao government became responsible to the company for $1,800,000 (the $700,000 security plus opium and utensils taken over)2, and converted the farm to a Government Opium Monopoly on 1 July 19277. The Chinese press dates the same turn — 裕成公司期滿, the government 擬收回政府專賣 — and records a 六十萬元按餉 to be returned only after the company lodged all its books for audit8; that $600,000 figure sits beside Lloyd's $59,925 half-monthly and his $700,000 security, and all three are kept as printed. Lloyd's verdict is the honesty constraint of the thread: the books “do not give sufficient data to arrive at any idea of the profits made”; the Persian retail margin was 30–100%; the amount paid to the government “was never earned by the amount sold for consumption in Macau itself”; and “most of the profit was made by the active managers.”6
4. The arithmetic — how much, and against what
The rent ladder is the spine: $59,925 half-monthly × 24 = $1,438,200 per annum1, the post-1911 certified/uncertified split9 letting the farmer prepare at half the Chinese price. On termination the company was owed $1,800,000 — a receivable, not a profit2. Subscribers received 25% on the $3,000,000 capital, which the books recorded without settling whether it was a division of profits or a return of capital; Lee insisted it was capital62. Against the government: the opium rent was ~25% of Macao's entire annual revenue3, so the ratio the user asks for resolves to about a quarter for the rent alone, and to the same order as the whole state's annual income for the company's total operation. Lee's personal slice — $800,000 of the $3,000,000 capital (26.7%) plus control of ~$1M — and the managers' cut are bounded only by the estate ($2,716,400 personalty; duty $217,812)4, built in roughly six years; Lee had been born in Honolulu and educated at Queen’s College10. This is not a period statement (the “N times” negative control returns zero hits) and not a net profit; it is a gross comparison, and the deliverables carry the constraint.
5. Evidence register
| Class | Claim |
|---|---|
| Confirmed (two witnesses) | Rent $59,925 half-monthly → $1,438,200/yr (Lloyd; the $1,277,100 budget line). Capital $3,000,000, Lee $800k + $1M family (prospectus; libel testimony). Termination $1,800,000 owed (Lee's evidence; the Chinese press's return-obligation). Government monopoly from 1 Jul 1927 (Clementi; Lloyd/Lee). Opium ~25% of Macao revenue 1927 (ES 508674; arithmetic cross-check). Estate $2,716,400; duty $217,812 (China Mail; 工商日報, digit variance). Lee shot 30 Apr 1928 on the 裕記俱樂部 stair11 (工商日報; China Mail obituary). |
| Single-witness (S) | The “3,000 per cent” estimate12, no second witness. The “over 7 lakhs” first-term figure (libel case). The loss-claims (the “Yue Shing firm lost most of its capital”; the executors' ~$2M debt claim) — Lloyd reporting others, against his own “insufficient data.” The 30–100% Persian retail margin, ~70 retailers, 54,008 lbs. The obituary's age 40. |
| Conflicts (kept, never merged) | K1 the dating of Lee's management start (the press's 前年承辨 vs the English 1921–27 arc). K2 the Daily Press's OCR-lossy “$1,841,500”13. K3 the three security/payment figures ($600k 按餉 / $700k security / $59,925 half-monthly). K4 age 40 (obituary) vs 48 (secondary works). K5 the estate duty $217,812 vs $217,312. K6 the “Million Dollar Opium Case” dated 1914 vs 1918. K7 the unquantified first term. |
| Failed / do-not | Do NOT assert the “N times the government” framing as a period claim (zero hits). Do NOT treat the book scans as plates (login-gated). Do NOT reconcile K3 or K5 by assertion. Do NOT present the ratios as a net-profit finding. |
| Gaps | The books' own profit-and-loss (Lloyd: insufficient data). The first-term rent as a book figure. The per-manager split (Fung Chok I, Pat Tui Kim, Lee Hyson, Ko Ho Ning named, not quantified); the modern secondary accounts1415 sit behind a login gate and are cited only via the corpus excerpts. Whether the 25% was profit or capital (unresolved). |
6. The estate duty digit variance (K5, settled as a conflict)
The China Mail prints the estate duty at 8% as $217,8124. The 工商日報's scan reads 「共交廿一萬七千三百一十二元」 ($217,312) plus 堂費 $1,132.405. A zoom read of the plate at final bytes confirms the Chinese figure is 三百一十二 (312), so the two witnesses genuinely differ by $500 in the hundreds place. Both are kept; neither is corrected. The estate's personalty, $2,716,400, is agreed by both.
Appendix A. Query log and pull inventory
The compulsory whole-document dumpdoc pulls are Lloyd's report
(CO 129/508/7, the seized books 1924–27) and Hutchison's 1913 despatch
(CO 129/416, the rental history and the 3,000% estimate). Single-page
get.py pulls cover ES 508674 (the 25% ratio), CO 885/11
(Clementi), the China Mail obituary (1990715) and estate (1992993), the
Daily Press 1921 (2290716), and the supporting pages. The
phrase-battery queries (利希慎, 裕成公司, opium farm, opium revenue, and the
negative-control “N times / 倍” pair) and the image-series
all_text queries that located the three plates are logged in the
research notes' Appendix A. Access date for every citation: 18 October 2026.
Bibliography
The numbered references in the endnotes key to the bibliography in the
research notes (research_opium_merchants.md §4, items 1–13).
Every corpus-derived citation carries the public viewer link
(/page/{id} or /image-page/{id}) and an access date of
18 October 2026. The four romanisations of the company (Yue Sing, Yue Seng, Yue
Shing, Yue Hing) are each kept in the form its own source prints (rule 9).
Notes
- Lloyd, Report on the Macao Opium Farm, the payment ladder ($2,800/chest for the first eight chests, then $2,530.13/chest to 27 Oct 1924; the first fixed half-monthly payment of $59,925 on 3 Dec 1924, paid regularly thereafter → $1,438,200/annum), the change "never publicly admitted," the Macau government's security of $700,000, and Lee's voluntary increase of $35,000/month four months into the second term. https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/513988, accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩
- Pedro Jose Lobo v. Lee Hysan, libel action, Chief Justice Sir Henry Gollan (CO 129/508/7, Sep–Oct 1927): Lee “the moving spirit in the opium farming”; the $3,000,000 capital, of which Lee owned $800,000 himself and ~$1,000,000 was family money under his control; “I had been paying over 7 lakhs for the monopoly”; the termination debt of $1,800,000. https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/513988, accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩
- Opium was ~25% of Macau's government revenue in 1927 (ES doc 508674), from which the government's total revenue is reconstructed at ~$5.7M (arithmetic, labelled). https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/508674, accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩
- China Mail, 19 Nov 1928, the estate: personalty $2,716,400; the schedule $4,461,145.85; estate duty at 8% $217,812. https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/1992993, accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩
- 《工商日報》, 20 Nov 1928, p. 14, 「利希慎之遺產 連二百七十一萬六千四百元」 (the estate $2,716,400); 「共交廿一萬七千三百一十二元」 ($217,312) + 堂費 $1,132.40 — digit variance against the China Mail's $217,812, both kept. https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/image-page/219731, accessed 18 Oct 2026. (Plate 2.) ↩
- J. D. Lloyd, Report on the Macao Opium Farm (CO 129/508/7), the seized books 1924–27, the fixed half-monthly payment of $59,925, the $3,000,000 capital, the 25% to subscribers, and the profits verdict ("the books examined do not give sufficient data to arrive at any idea of the profits made"). https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/513988, accessed 18 Oct 2026. (The compulsory whole-document
dumpdocpull.) ↩ - Clementi, opium-revenue memorandum (CO 885/11): the Colony's opium revenue in 1926 was 10.1 per cent of its total income (the Hong Kong comparator); the Macau government monopoly was “inaugurated on the 1st July, 1927… in the face of bitter opposition from the Chinese who had till then been the Macao opium farmers, Messrs. Yue Seng and Company.” https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/720112, accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩
- 《工商日報》, 3 May 1928, p. 6, the 裕成公司 passage: 「利氏自前年承辨澳門鴉片煙、裕成公司期滿、澳門政府…擬收回政府專賣」; the 六十萬元按餉 (a $600,000 security) to be returned only after the company lodged all its books for the government's audit (繳呈政府查核方准發還); on expiry the capital was to be distributed to shareholders with the profits. https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/image-page/217576, accessed 18 Oct 2026. (Plate 3.) ↩
- Hutchison, CO 129/416, the 1910–13 rentals and the certified / uncertified price split after the 1911 agreement, which let the farmer prepare opium at half the Chinese price. https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/513974, accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩
- China Mail, 1 May 1928, p. 7, the obituary of Lee Hysan (利希慎): Honolulu-born, Queen's College, HSBC compradore, Yue Hing Co. from 1912, the “Million Dollar Opium Case,” age 40. https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/1990715, accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩
- 《工商日報》(Kung Sheung Daily Press), 1 May 1928, p. 6, 「利希慎被刺斃命」: Lee shot dead on the 裕記俱樂部 stair, 威靈頓街, at 1:20 p.m.; 「前月利氏已接有恐嚇函件」 (threatening letters the previous month). https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/image-page/217559, accessed 18 Oct 2026. (Plate 1.) ↩
- Hutchison, despatch on the Macao opium farm (CO 129/416, 1913), the rental history (1903: $330,000 for ten years; 1910: $148,500 for three years; 1913: $1,056,666 — a rise of roughly sevenfold), the 1909 collapse (the farm shut and forfeited its $100,000 security; the highest new tender $141,700 rejected; a Government Opium Monopoly started instead; boiled chests 2,176 / 181 / 150), and the estimate that “the farmer made 3,000 per cent on his venture.” https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/513974, accessed 18 Oct 2026. (The second compulsory whole-document
dumpdocpull.) ↩ - Hong Kong Daily Press, 3 Jan 1921, the farm's rent reduced by ~$34,500, the farmer “still paying $1,841,500” (an OCR-lossy figure; conflicting witness, not used in the headline arithmetic). https://hkintexts.histsyn.com/page/2290716, accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩
- 《一代煙王利希慎》 (A Generation's Opium King, Lee Hysan), corpus publications series, image id 2211543 (login-gated, no plate). Cited via the ES
all_textexcerpts; accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩ - 《白手興家》 (From Nothing: self-made fortunes), corpus publications series, image ids 2214386–7 (login-gated, no plate). Cited via the ES
all_textexcerpts; accessed 18 Oct 2026. ↩