both Powers, and to form, so far as is possible, a union of interests with her in the future development of Asia."

Even were China to pledge herself to grant us all the advantages which we should have to bargain for as a consideration for committing ourselves to the serious step of affording her aid, it may be doubted whether she is sufficiently strong to maintain her ground, not merely against Russia, but against any adventurer like Yakoob Beg or rebels like the Panthays, who may suddenly rise up and wrest her territory from her. Then, again, it must be remembered what an alliance with such a Government as that of China is likely to involve. Her civil administration, based although it may be on a system excellently well suited to a people like the Chinese, is so weakened, save in a few isolated instances, by the incapacity, and so debased by the venality of its executive, that it has long since forfeited the confidence and goodwill of the masses, and rebellion has only to raise its head to find a fruitful soil for its speedy growth and development. Her army is numerically large, and can be recruited without difficulty, and she has constantly at command any quantity of the most approved war material, so long as there are foreigners to sell and she has the money to buy; to say nothing of what she can now to a certain extent manufacture for herself. But of strategy and the general science of war her officers are entirely ignorant, and beyond the capability of hurling huge masses of men at the enemy, irrespective of all consequences, she is in no way formidable as a military Power in the European sense of the term, nor could her troops permanently hope to hold their own against those of any Western State. Even the Japanese, in the little affair with China which threatened the peaceful relations of the two countries not long ago, showed themselves quite equal to the occasion, and their sailors and soldiers pined to exhibit their prowess, and prove the value of their recent acquirements in the art of war, as against the conservative and unpractical Chinese. If the rules of civilized warfare are to the Chinese a sealed book, still less can they be said to appreciate its humane side. Their officers fail to value the necessity, and indeed do not seem to possess the power, of protecting their own countrymen from the general license which marks the march of soldiery through, or the military occupation of, any peaceable district; and in the wholesale barbarities which invariably distinguish their triumphs over a conquered foe, they are scarcely to be surpassed by savages of the lowest type. Little more can be said in favour of the Chinese in respect of their relations with England and other Western nations. They have treaties of peace and commerce with the leading Powers, it is true, and they do not fail to act up to the strict letter of these engagements as construed by themselves. But the whole history of their foreign intercourse since 1842 has shown that the Chinese Government has borne with ill grace the restrictions thus imposed upon it, and has embraced every opportunity to evade them in spirit, whilst professing to carry them

out in the letter. Trade has been everywhere hampered by vexatious imposts cunningly introduced on all kinds of pretexts, and as pertinaciously persisted in, in spite of pointed remonstrances on the part of foreign representatives. Outrages of a glaring kind have been passed over without redress, or perhaps with a show of redress so ingeniously conceded as to evince distinct sympathy with the perpetrators of the deeds complained of; and the case must be rare, if not unheard of, in which the initiative has been voluntarily taken by a Chinese official in righting a wrong suffered by a foreigner at the hands of a Chinese. Amicable relations prevail between the various foreign communities and the native population by whom they are surrounded; but these may be traced rather to the innate good-nature of the people, and the forbearing conduct of the "strangers from afar," than to any direct effort on the part of the native authorities to encourage and develop friendly feeling. The Chinese Court still affects to regard the Emperor as the Supreme Ruler of all People under Heaven; its recognition of foreign Ministers accredited to it seems never to have advanced beyond the not very flattering ceremonial which accorded them a so-called. audience in a body a few years ago; and the relations between the representatives and the high officials at Pekin cannot as yet be said to have entered upon a phase which may strictly be styled cordial; and all this, notwithstanding that Chinese representatives to Western Courts have been treated with all the ceremony and consideration due to their official position, and have been received into the highest society of foreign capitals, not only without demur, but with a warmth and hospitality which, whilst on the spot, they have themselves been the first to acknowledge. Under these circumstances, with a civil administration so effete and corrupt, a

*

* Apropos of these remarks it is worth while quoting here a memorial by the exAmbassador Kwo Sung t'ao, published in the London and China Telegraph of 7th July, 1879, as the first presented to the Throne on his return to China, and in which the best that he can say of England, notwithstanding his cordial reception and marvellous experiences, seems to be that he was "excessively cast down in a strange country," where, had he been put into a ditch, there would have been nobody to cover him with earth." The very name of the place to which he was accredited appears to have been beneath mention to his august master. The Peking Gazette of the 3rd moon, 3rd day, contains the following memorial from Kwo Sung-t'ao, late Ambassador at the Court of St. James's, to the Emperor:-"Your servant," he writes, "has suffered from many bodily infirmities. Relying upon the heavenly (i.e.. your Majesty's) grace, I was appointed to go abroad on service of heavy responsibility. I am now feeble with age, having served at so great a distance; I also deplore my stupidity, and am extremely apprehensive of my inability in performing the functions devolving upon me. Since the sixth or seventh moon of the year before last I have suffered from insomnia. A year ago my spirits became daily more abattu. In the second month of last year I suddenly experienced phlegm rising in my mouth, and vomited fresh red blood, without being able to stop it, so that in a trice a basin would get quite full. I consider that my life has been marked by increasing afflictions; my respiration is impeded; I am agitated and nervous; already I have contracted an asthma, and this I certainly had not formerly. Excessively cast down, in a strange country several tens of thousands of li away, I thought that if I were put in a ditch there would be nobody to cover me with earth. Fortunately, by virtue of the heavenly (i.e., Imperial) compassion, having been graciously permitted to give up my office, all that remains of me, protractedly wearing out my failing breath, is due to the overflowing grace of the Holy Lord (the Emperor). During the two years I have been abroad I have passed under the hands of foreign doctors not a few, who felt my pulse and administered medicine in a manner very different from native practitioners. In relieving my indigestion and removing the torpor

military Power so unpractical, a style of warfare so barbarous, and a Government so wanting in the honest desire to conciliate, can it be thought politic to go out of our way in order to further its pretensions, and that to the prejudice of a Power which, with all its faults, is progressive in its tendencies, and prepared to acknowledge our international rights, and which more nearly approaches us in recognising the duty of consulting the material interests of the people subjected to its sway? The little experience at any rate which we have had of the results of co-operation with the Chinese Government has not been such as to encourage us in a repetition of the experiment. Take, for example, the important aid given by England in clearing the province of Kiangsu of rebels in 1862-63, and thereby bringing about the eventual extermination of the Taepings. Such a service, it might be presumed, would have earned the lasting gratitude of the nation, and induced a cordiality of sentiment towards their benefactors which would have exhibited itself in an endeavour on the part of the Chinese Government to relax the restrictions and remove the vexations by which mutual relations had up to that time been beset. But nothing of the kind transpired. No special and national recognition of the service rendered was ever accorded; and, so far from any improvement being observable, as a consequence, in British relations with China, these were marked in the sequel by some of the most trying and difficult crises with which we have had to deal. More than this, the very moment of triumph was disgraced by an act of treachery in the deliberate murder of the surrendered rebel chiefs at Soochow, which must have induced in the mind of Colonel Gordon, R.E., the keenest regret that he had ever embarked his honour and expended his labours in the cause of such allies. The only other instance in which British influence was brought to bear towards rescuing the Chinese Government from an awkward dilemma was when the Japanese threatened reprisals for outrages committed against their subjects, and went the length of sending a considerable force to occupy the island of Formosa. Hostilities had commenced, and the war might have proved a protracted if not hazardous one for the Chinese, had not H.B.M.'s Minister volunteered his services as mediator, and succeeded in arranging matters to the satisfaction of both parties, and with as little loss of prestige to the Chinese [of my liver] they occasionally produced some little effect; but my constitution became weaker every day, and there was no restoring it. After casting about this way and that, there seemed but one resource left to me-to take advantage of a steamer bound for Fu (i.e., Shanghai), and then to return by way of the Yangtsze River to my native place and put myself under medical advice. Prostrate I implore the Heavenly Compassion to grant me three months' leave of absence, in order to establish a complete cure, so that perhaps I may not contract disease that will prove incurable. After your servant has got home it will be his duty to report early the day of his arrival, and he earnestly desires that he may be restored to health. Then I will return to the capital to resume my functions, and implore that some trifling post may be given me that I may testify my gratitude by strenuous exertions, like a dog or a horse. Wherefore I, your humble servant, now beg for leave of absence on account of my ill-health, and respectfully present the petition in which my request is lucidly set forth, entreating with reverence that the sacred glance may rest upon it.'

as they had any right to expect. Here, again, if any gratitude was felt, there was no public recognition of the service rendered, and the obligation certainly left no appreciable trace upon the subsequent policy of the Government; for, in the very next difficulty with China which occurred not long after-namely, the official murder of Margary—it needed the pressure of our demands to the very verge of war, in order to procure the vaguest attempt at redress, and then we had to rest contented with commercial concessions as a makeweight for the substantial justice which could not, or would not, be granted.

To conclude, China, nationally considered, is in a state of decline. The very efforts which the more enlightened amongst her statesmen are now making towards rescuing her from the collapse which threatens show how desperate they consider her case, and how anxious they are to prevent or even delay the catastrophe. Her history, it is true, shows that although she has passed through a series of such periodical lapses, she has ever exhibited a wonderful power of recuperation more or less effective in its nature and extent. But these changes have been experienced at times when she was comparatively isolated from the rest of the world. Her political crises were never before complicated by the interposition of a foreign element, such as must be the case in any revolution through which she may hereafter pass. Mr. Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of Customs, Joseph-like, has done China good service in reorganizing the maritime revenue department, and advocating reform generally in the policy and practice of the State; and did China know her own interest she would largely develop and extend the advantages of a foreign admixture in her whole system of executive. But Mr. Hart's efforts must have a limited result at best, and they can only serve to put off the evil day. He cannot reform the nature of the Chinese mandarin; and until there is a radical change in this respect there can be little hope of reconstruction and progress under purely native guidance. The process becomes the more embarrassing and futile with aggressive foreign Powers pressing on all sides with their irresistible influence and exacting pretensions. China must in time, and as at present constituted, yield to one or the other, and Russia promises to be the one whose ambition and interests will probably lead her to turn the opportunity to advantage. It may not be the best fate that can befall any part of China to be Russianized, but it will be a better alternative for her people to be subjected to the sway of a civilized and civilizing Power than to become the prey to interminable civil wars. It will be better, moreover, for England and other nations, whose interest in the question is mainly commercial, that China's millions should be brought under a vigorous and progressive Government, able and willing to develop the vast trade resources at their disposal, than that they should decimate themselves and ruin their country by perpetual internecine strife. Whether it will be to the interest of England in a political point of view that Russia should attain the com

manding position which the possession of any part of China would undoubtedly secure her, is an entirely different question. If it be a danger, it is a danger which she must look in the face, for everything seems to point to the possibility of such a consummation. But no consideration of political expediency or self-preservation can certainly warrant her in interfering as yet; and it is to be hoped that the time may never come when she shall be called upon to thwart the ambitious designs of her great rival in Asian dominion in the extreme East, as she has so long and so successfully endeavoured to do in countries more directly affecting her political power and prestige in Europe and India.

WALTER H. MEDHURST.