between the Emperor and the Pope, engaging converts to fight against the Emperor's armies, interfering in local affairs, carrying extra-territorial jurisdiction with them wherever they go, abusing Protestant missionaries; when they see Protestant missionaries split up into a dozen rival sects, almost entirely ignored and too often derided by the mercantile community, abusing the Catholics, living comfortably with their wives and families, mostly at the ports; neglecting to minister to drunken foreign sailors and others of their own kind, who manifestly require some sort of corrective discipline; when they see France and Italy playing a double game for and against religion according as it suits their purpose; America and Australia driving the Chinese from their shores; Germany taking up under her wing from political motives the exotic against which Bismarck was furiously tilting only twenty years ago; when they see all this, and couple it with the fate of India, of the fringe of states around China, of the blacks in Africa, of the Red Indians, of Honolulu, of Turkey, of Persia; when they reflect what they were themselves before they emasculated themselves with the opium habit, and when noble Emperors like K'anghi and K'ienlung dictated their will to the whole world (as they knew it), can it be wondered that their gorge, and more especially the gorge of the ruling classes, rises at the spectacle of so much one-sidedness, unfairness, and bullying? It is this that has caused the Dynasty, or a section of it, to go stark mad rather than tolerate any further an outrage against the most elementary principles of justice; and it is to this feeling also that we primarily owe a similar revolt of the mind amongst the ignorant masses, the whole culminating in the curious hesitating mixture known as the "Boxer" rebellion. Prince Tuan and his indignant friends have first induced the Empress-Mother to depose a weakly monarch who (they thought) was selling their birthright; and then they have fraudulently attempted to strengthen their own case by leading Her Majesty to believe that the greedy foreigner

was bent upon her destruction. This may be a wrong view of Europe, and a hostile one, but it is no more outrageous than the distorted Boer view of the British, which excites so much sympathy over the rest of Europe; and if it is wrong, our own European conduct is perhaps to blame too. We have no right to whimper and talk about "treachery." The Mandarins, if corrupt, are part of a system, the responsibility for which lies with their own Government, and not with us; they are naturally indignant at the loss of their accustomed livelihood, at the diversion of all available funds to foreign loans and to foreign armaments. The people, if hostile, are usually only so when encouraged or provoked; though they have their grievances, on the whole they are content with the easy laisser-aller character of their own administration. If it were not for the superior luxury of missionary life as compared with their own, for the extra-territoriality which lifts missionaries beyond equality with themselves before the law, for the mischievous intrigues caused disputes between local converts and local pagans concerning popular customs, there would be little hostility between the people and the missionaries, who are almost invariably good and kindly souls. As to the Dynasty, it is unhappily degenerate, both morally and physically, besides being ill supplied with legal heirs. But is it to be wondered at, after the treatment it has received, and with the recollections of past glory behind it, that passion gets the better of reason, and a desperate plunge is taken with a resolve to encompass in its own ruin that of the Europeans who have ruined it? When a combination of Dutch and foreign intriguers set to work to turn us out of South Africa for their own benefit, we found plenty of intellectuels at home ready to join the jealous and hostile press of the Continent, and to attack us for defending our own liberties and rights. It was admitted that the Boer Government was corrupt and cruel; yet their conduct in driving to the sea the only nation in the world which grants equality to all men was

proclaimed from the Continental housetops as heroism of the first water. The Manchu Government also has those faults of corruption and cruelty; but how is it that the Jameson Raid against Boer abuse of power was so odious to the nation which two years later made a virtue at Kiao Chou of a similar raid against Chinese abuse of power? If so many of the Germans, the French, and the Russians think it a heroic act for misguided men to try and drive us out of South Africa, how is it they are so horrified when the misguided Manchus try to drive Europeans out of China? The plot of Prince Tuan to destroy the Legations is not one whit more treacherous than that of the Boers to destroy the British officers; with this difference-that Prince Tuan is at least an open enemy, whilst Cordua and his friends. were underhand traitors, who had accepted the hospitable pardon of Lord Roberts-and yet the latter have their Continental sympathizers! The fact is, the guiding principle of right in politics is obscured in modern times, and the eyes of Europeans see black or white in the same colour accordingly as it suits their interests or their resentment; nor can we decline to admit our British share in this moral désorientation.

The conduct of a section of the Chinese Government and people has undoubtedly been bad, but it is equally incontestable that the irritating, aggressive, and unfair attitude of European nations is largely responsible for such a lapse of reason; nor must it be forgotten that, in contemplation of so immoderate and exaggerated an outburst of passion at the capital, the greater part of both the governors and the governed in the provinces of China have remained quiescent and fair. It would be a lasting injustice, and an act of cowardice as well, to repay these good men for their abstention from evil in the time of our own stress by attacking them after their very abstention has enabled us to bring adequate forces to the front. It is only fair that the nation as a whole should be held responsible for wilful (liquidated) damage done; but it is not fair that the nation should be

permanently crippled with exemplary damages, caused in part by our own contributory negligence. What the Chinese, who are the freest democracy in the world, dread even more than the missionaries is the grinding, inquisitorial, and unsparing administrative methods of nearly every European Power but England. We have a duty to perform to the Chinese people as well as punishing the Manchu Government. For all that is outrageous in the recent explosion of ferocity the Manchu Government is solely responsible to us, morally as well as actually; if the Chinese people had any part in it, it was only a limited section of the people in one limited region: apart from foreign contributory action in the shape of mistaken missionary zeal and seizure of ter ritory, the wrongful action of that limited section of the people was first provoked by misery and starvation such as the original action was at the outset, it was as dangerous to the Dynasty as to the missionaries; but its effect was ingeniously diverted by rascally governors and misguided princely personages from the Dynasty to missionaries and to foreigners generally. It is a very serious question whether the Manchu Dynasty ought to be allowed to exist any longer; at any rate, if it is tolerated, it should only be in the person of the legitimate Emperor, duly elected in 1874; and the wasting of revenues upon an idle pack of useless bannermen should be at once put a stop to. These bannermen at Peking are partly responsible for the attacks on the legations, and the whole organization should be at once broken up, the men being either drafted into a new and homogeneous national army, or being left to gain their own living by labour, like common Chinamen. As to the bannermen in the provinces-Canton, Foochow, Hangchow, Nanking, Chinkiang, Kingchow, Ch'êngtu, Si-an Fu, Kwei-hwa Ch'êng, Ts'ingchou, etc.-they are in a very peculiar position, inasmuch as they have taken no part whatever in the revolt against foreigners. Of course, if it is decided to keep on the Manchu Dynasty, they will remain as they are; but in that case those interested in setting

upon her legs a strong China should see that they do proper military work for their money. Should the Manchu ruling house be displaced, these same bannermen can also be drafted into the national army like ordinary Chinamen.

If this expensive incubus of bannermen could only be got rid of, there is really no reason (not of the vindictive kind) why the Manchu dynasty should be set aside. In the first place, it has been in the past the very best the Chinese ever had, in almost every way, and from every point of view. So far as it is foreign, it has lost its language, and practically become Chinese; so far as the Chinese are foreign to it, they have grown to love the pigtail, and have practically become Manchu. The two elements should henceforth be welded into one homogeneous nation, the Manchus disappearing into the mass of Chinese just as the Scotch (as a power) have disappeared into the mass of English; the Manchu family continuing to reign, not by reason of its power or nationality, but by virtue of its excellent antecedents and traditions-very much as the Stuarts (much worse kings than the Manchus) ceased to be Scotchmen, or the Hanoverians to be Germans, after a few generations on the British throne. The Chinese monarchy would thus be strengthened by the total abolition of fictitious and useless dividing lines and interests. With the exception of a limited family circle, well paid, well educated, and bred carefully up simply to produce heirs, the whole of the imperial loafers known as agnates, clansmen, ghioro, and so on, should be drafted into the mandarin classes as

ordinary unprivileged officials. The eight "iron-capped princes," or Fürsts, who occupy an intermediate position between the Imperial princes and nobles like Confucius and Mencius, and who correspond somewhat to persons like the King of Hanover or the Duke of Hesse-Nassau in the German system, might be left their rank as counsellors, and also their estates, so long as they cease to be pensioners on the public chest: in fact, no vested property rights or empty titles should be interfered with at all, provided that no