From The Economist.

THE DANGER IN CHINA.

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denly some great national resolve, and we discover afterwards that for years it has been fermenting in the minds of the millions. Where the idea was born no man can tell. First, doubtless, it was whispered vaguely in market-places and bazaars, and talked of in cautious parables in the wretched crowded hovels of the native towns. It infected the peasantry and the artisans, and gradually getting clearer it took root

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severe stress upon the men in power, and came at last to be used as a weapon for ambition. Every popular superstition, every unlucky accident, is worked into the structure of this national impulse, and every trifle becomes a pretext for its outbreak. So it was in India before the Mutiny of 1857, and so it is to-day in China. All the sort of evidence which we had of a threatening movement in India before 1857, — the stories of vague, wild hopes, of old prophecies revived, of belief in the decadence of England, of daily increasing animosity lacquered over with the flowing courtesy of the East, all this we hear again from residents in China. The masses who, five years ago, were cowed and abject, are now confident and insolent. It is not possible for a foreigner to walk the streets of Pekin without being followed by a howling mob. The contempt with which Europeans are treated is becoming more and more exultant. The disasters which the French met with in the Corea are taken as proofs of the weakness of the Western Powers; and the warlike preparations that the Chinese are

THE massacre at Tientsin has turned public attention to our relations with China, and not an instant too soon. Our horror at the savage cruelties perpetrated on the French residents in the Treaty port on the Peiho is merged, as we read between the lines of the sad story, in a more serious feeling the apprehension of an approaching collision between the Conservative_fanati- among the higher orders; it bore with cism of the Chinese and the foreign Powers who are privileged to trade with China. Already the interest excited by the massacre has brought us a mass of evidence direct and indirect which throws much light on the larger and graver question. It cannot be doubted that the jealousy with which the intrusion of the foreigner has always been viewed in China, but which was in some measure held in check by the successes of the French and English arms and the subsequent concessions of the several treaties, has again grown strong and fierce. The outrage at Tientsin whatever the local or personal influences may have been was but the culminating outburst of a dangerous spirit which judicious observers say has been gathering force in the Chinese mind. It is disheartening to have to confess this; it is discouraging to be compelled to forecast the further development of this danger. We knew all along that we had got the official and literary class against us; that, in spite of the bland Chinese courtesy and eloquent deceit which fooled poor Mr. Burlingame to the top of his bent, every man-making-the rifles and the ordnance that darin in the Empire feared and hated the presence of the Europeans. Western learning they dreaded even more than Western arms, but the immediate terror of the latter kept them quiet for awhile. Meantime we thought we were winning the confidence of the people, and that in a short time their traditional suspicion and hatred of the "foreign devils" would die away. We congratulated ourselves that the envy of the official classes being neutralized the people would soon come to like and trust

they have manufactured after European models, the military stores they have accumulated, and the troops they have disciplined—confirm the popular belief that in another war the foreigners would be defeated and driven out of the "flowery land.” With such feelings astir in the national mind, pretexts will easily be found for an outbreak. The story of the greased cartridges was enough to set the match to the prepared explosion that desolated India in 1857. A wilder legend, charging the forBut now it seems this hope was vain. eigners with the crime of killing children in There are some signs that one of those order to boil their eyes for drugs, set the strange unfathomable movements which con- ferocious populace at Tientsin upon the vulse the great nations of Asia has begun French residents. What new invention or to show its signs on the surface of events. old superstition may bring on a more exIt is from below, not from above, that the tended catastrophe cannot be foretold, but swelling impulse comes; and the ruling there are only too many current. classes, unable to control it if they would, moment, it is to be feared, there may be an must now bow down to its force. In these organized and general attempt to expel the immense densely peopled countries, in foreigners, and then we should find ourChina as in India, there comes to light sud-selves embarked upon another Chinese war.

us.

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From Fraser's Magazine.

sake of his own honour in the eyes of his THE INTERNAL RELATIONS OF EUROPE. people; and secondarily against his own HISTORY Shows us abundantly how the barons or against the contingency of popinternal relations of separate communities ular insurrection. But the British Govgrow up and are extended. Whether by ernment would have been pleased to see natural attraction or by conquest, petty all armies disappear which were not under principalities coalesce into a kingdom. their own control; and, in spite of these Barons are forced to renounce the privi- private armies, they effectually prevent lege of border-war. The supremacy of a internal wars in India. Thus, in becomsingle king delivers the local population ing the "paramount" power, we have from the misery of finding its nearest neighbours its worst enemies, and at the same time exalts the country in the great world by presenting it with a single front to all the powers without.

given to India the same two advantages as republican federation gives, though the union in the case of India is extremely imperfect in several important respects. Considering how diverse in mind and temThe American colonies of England, on perament are English from Indians; conattaining their independence, felt how sidering also how many and how separathelpless they would be to support the dig-ed by language, law, and history are the nity of Sovereign States in the face of natives of India; the wonder is that so great European powers, unless they were great progress has been made towards federated into a Union which should deal blending two hundred millions of mankind with foreigners in their collective name. into a single organic community, cognizaThe Union, which was planned chiefly as a ble certainly to the foreigner as only one strength against the foreigner, gave them power. also the priceless benefit of deliverance European communities have long suffrom border-wars. These are the two car- fered from one another the horrible curse dinal advantages which, it is notorious to of war, which is more painfully felt in proevery American citizen; accrued from their portion to our refinement, our humanity, federation; and to attain this, the sep- and the artificial means of livelihood. It arate States resigned to the Federal Gov- now spreads its ruin to neutrals. Since ernment not only the public defence the great French war, which may be comwhich draws after it care for army, navy, puted from the death of Louis XVI. until fortresses and harbours, right of conscrip- the battle of Waterloo, there has been no tion and of taxation - but also the sole war which can be called European in the right of holding relations with the exter- wide sense; for even in the Crimean war nal world by ambassadors and by treaties. - besides the four principals, Russia, TurMoreover, they ceded the superintendence key, France, and England — only Sardinia of the coinage, the Post Office, the Cus- was involved. Equally important is the tom Duties, and other matters, to the cen- shortening of wars. The Crimean war tral organ. did but last into a third year; the Italian In India, under the British military pre-war of 1859 was but three or four months dominance, affairs have taken a different in length, and the great German war of course, but with some of the great results in common. By treaties with native princes, often signed under constraint, the British enforced that no Indian potentate should have relations with other powers except through British diplomacy; and in very many cases imposed the duty of keeping up, out of a prince's own revenues, an army

for the British use. It was not always possible to forbid to the prince his private army. He maintained it, chiefly against the British Government, for the

1866 was counted by weeks. The gain from this is vast; for the destruction of crops, of stores, of houses and of trees, with the discouragement of cultivation, from long wars, was a curse much greater than the loss of life in battles. But while we must not shut our eyes to the gain which has really been made a gain which has accrued, not from our humanity nor our wisdom, but from mechanical developments, still the evil of war in Europe is alike enormous and disgraceful. Nor has

war ever long ceased, in one country or Hungary with near 200,000 men. When other. Soon after the battle of Waterloo, Austria had thus forfeited the heart of Austria, at the call of the king of Naples, Hungary, Russia thought her time was marched her armies into Naples and Sicily fully come for invading Turkey; so after to overthrow the constitutional liberties sounding the British Government and of Sicily especially. The Grecian war of ascertaining that it would not oppose, she independence rose in 1821, and was ended took her plunge in the summer of 1853. by the battle of Navarino in 1827. In Lord Aberdeen's ministry dreaded noth1823 the Holy Alliance sent French ar- ing so much as an alliance of Turkey with mies to overthrow the free constitution of Hungary, which would have taken place Spain, which has in consequence suffered if the Western Powers had been inactive; conflict and misery almost to the present for Austria was, just then, the mere tool day. Navarino was instantly followed by of Russia, and was eager to get for herself the Russian war against Turkey, which Bosnia, or Servia, or Wallachia, as her ended in the prostration of the Sultan in reward for subservience. By talking 1829. Italy was, not indeed in war, but friendship to Turkey, and acting to the under perpetual warlike pressure, from damage of Turkey, in hope of putting off 1814 to 1859. In 1830, after the French European war, Lords Aberdeen and revolution which brought Louis Philippe Clarendon involved England in duplicity to the throne, besides the revolt and little and apparent perfidy to the Turks, and war of Belgium, the uprising of Poland thus "drifted" into war with Russia as against the tyranny of the Grand Duke the only means of redressing our honour. Constantine took place, whence the fierce France had shared the baseness of our war of little Poland against great Russia, policy and the ignominy of the battle of so unhappy to the weaker party. Under Sinope; and in consequence the great the policy of Louis Philippe and the Engglish Whigs, not only was peace between the Five Great Powers sustained as previously, but after the overthrow of Poland by Russia there was a comparative lull of war in all Europe except Spain. But in 1840 Russell and Palmerston, by fighting the Syrian war against the Pasha of Egypt without consulting France, so irritated all French statesmen, that Louis Philippe had the greatest difficulty in preserving the peace with England. Nothing but the rapid and complete success of our arms saved us from the horrible calamity of a war with France. After this we may recount the crushing of the freedom of Cracow by an Austrian army, against the treaty of 1815, and without the slightest offence or pretext given by the city of Cracow; then followed in 1846 the massacres of the nobility in Galicia by the peasants, to whom the Austrian Government paid money for their heads-more if they were brought dead, less if they were brought alive. On this came the conspiracy of Austria to overthrow the constitutional liberties of Hungary; and when she was ignominiously beaten by the Hungarians in 1849, the Russians invaded

Russian war was fought. Since then, we have seen the wars of 1859 and 1861 in Italy; the terrible and final war of Russia with Poland; the war of Germany with Denmark; the war of Prussia with Austria; and now, alas!-by far the greatest the present war of France against Prussian Germany in order to undo German unity. Who can deny that war is still a terrible curse to Europe?

Yet there is nothing gained by mere talking against it, without pointing out the causes, and the direction in which a preventive is to be sought. To declaim against war in the commonplace way which confounds both combatants in common guilt, is not merely useless, but is also unjust and mischievous. In private life also (no one denies it) fights between individuals are greatly to be deprecated. There is a respectable class of people who maintain that if a man be assaulted in the street by a ruffian, he ought in no case to defend himself by retaliating violence: nay, there are those who go so far as to say, that if the ruffian attack a man's wife or child, the husband or father ought not to defend them by heavy blows - certainly not by such as may inflict death or perma