"The Siamese are a pleasant, good-natured people, but lazy and indolent to the utmost degree, and vain, shallow, and self-conceited. Their greatest vices are lying, gambling, immorality, and intemperance, although the latter is strictly forbidden by one of the commandments in their Buddhist decalogue."
The Siamese are deplorably susceptible to the evil effects of alcohol and opium. Physically they are a small and rather weakly race, and the effect of strong drink upon them is shown in the rapid deterioration of their bodily health; while their temperament, which is by nature light, timid, and gay, becomes morose and sullen under the same influence. The terrible inroads which were at one time made on the health and well-being of the people from the too-abundant use of arrack, a native spirit distilled from rice, brought these truths vividly before the minds of the authorities, and led to the adoption of stringent regulations affecting the sale of that spirit, to the loss and much to the regret of the Chinese dealers who had acquired a monopoly of the trade. A still more determined crusade was undertaken against opium-smoking, which was even held to be a blacker and more pernicious habit than swilling arrack. Strict laws prohibiting the practice were passed and enforced; and any ill-starred Siamese now found pipe in hand has the choice given him of either denationalizing himself by adopting the Chinese pig-tail, and paying an annual tax as an alien, or of suffering death. In this traffic also the purveyors are Chinese, who, while protesting, perhaps too much, against the importation of the drug into their own country, show no compunction whatever in distributing it broadcast among the people of other nations.
Returning to Miss Cort's account: "The dress of the Siamese," she writes, "is very simple and comfortable, consisting of a waist-cloth, jacket, and scarf, and sometimes a hat and sandals. If all would at all times wear the native dress there would be no occasion for fault-finding. But as a nation they do not know what shame is, and as the climate is mild and pleasant, and the majority of the people poor and careless, their usual dress consists of a simple waist-cloth, adjusted in a very loose and slovenly manner; while many children until they are ten or twelve years old wear no clothing whatever. When foreigners first arrive in Siam they are shocked almost beyond endurance at the nudity of the people; and although they constantly preach a gospel of dress, their influence in this respect seems less apparent than in almost any other. Not until Siam is clothed need she expect a place among respectable, civilized nations.