نه
January 8, 1906.]
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socially and otherwise, there can be no two opinions that it has its peers. To quote a common saying, we are not out here for our health's sake. Business is our raison d'etre; and therefore resolutions in the direction of "atrict attention to busi ness ought to be in order just now. Hongkong is averse to changes; the Chinese conservatism seems to pervade and permeate the local air. Hongkong was long in making up its mind that it would have to revise its methods when the Suez Canal was made. Then changes were resisted; the removal of the dominating centre to London was mistrusted; but who could have foreseen. that Suez would have made Hongkong what it is to-day? There have been innovations as great since Japanese evolution is a Suez, Chinese rail- way development is a Suez; European politics are a Suez-we must wake up/to vastly changed conditions all round; and ask ourselves if there is nothing we can do to fall into step with the rest of the world. If we are to do it, now is the acceptable time now in these first days of 1906.
BISHOPS AND STATISTICS.
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(Daily Press, 3rd January.)
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
A MIXED COURT SNAPSHOT.
(Daily Press, 4th January) The Shanghai TAOTAI, writing to the SENIOR CONSUL there to explain the arrange. ments for re-opening the Mixed Court, got as near to SILAS WEGG as a Chinese official may. If he did not exactly: drop into poetry, he burst into eloquence, as he enlightened the barbarous foreign official's ignorance concerning law and order. Perhaps the SENIOR CONSUL would not quarrel with His Excellency's dictum that as a judicial tribunal, stands for law and
order in community, the continued. closing of the Mixed Court must involve an absence in Shanghai of law and order. A SENIOR CONSUL does not
advance laboured argument to meet claptrap. He must, however, have raised his eyebrows when he read a passage referring to the
a
point and lived upon nothing but account for the comparatively slow growth potatoes from one year's end to another, of population which has marked the last the birth-rate was actually the highest fifteen years, nor to look upon the causes on record. In the beginning of 1846 which have brought about this new phase the population was actually double what as other than natural, and proceeding from it is at present now that the people a wise Providence, which, as SHAKESPEARE are well to do, and have practically as much says, shapes our ends, rough how them how comfort as their fellow countrymen in Eng-we may. land. The same is true of Russia; in no country in Europe has the birth rate been so high as in the agricultural provinces of European Russia, and for the same reason as in the Ireland of the early years of tire past century, namely, that the people had been reduced to living on one uncertain crop, and were reduced so low that practi- cally every prudential check to over- population had been destroyed. For a similar reason, the population of France, probably the richest in Europe, has become practically stationary, because prudence has been overdone. But leaving that out of consideration, as it is more or less artificial, there is, as we have seen above, a natural and unconscious check working in the same direction. For some three centuries the population of England had remained to all intent stationary to all intents and pur. poses the people were happy and contented with their lot. It is true they had not those luxuries and comforts which the most ordinary Englishman looks for now-a-days, but they did not desire them because they did not know of them, With the close of the eighteenth century came a great change, new industries were developed, new and richer countries opened to settlement; but the people did not at once become the happier, -far from it; they began to grow dis- contented with their lot. True, with the growth of the new industries the condition of the working classes became harder and harder, and the worker found that the former sympathy that existed between in ister and man had altered for the worse, and that beyond exacting the largest amount of labour for the minimum of pay the master had come to conceive that his duties towards the worker had ceased. It was under such conditions that the birth-rate commenced abnormally to increase, and that the first growth of the population of the early half of the century took place.
It has often been said, and not without a show of reason, that you can prove anything from statistics. Certin very worthy people, and notably so high an authority as the BISHOP of London, have been trying to teach therefrom the deterioration of British morals, as well as the lapse from virtue of the British race. It cannot be denied that they do exhibit a very marked alteration in the conditions of British life, which, is, moreover, most marked with regard to England, though both Scotland and Ireland are following very closely the lead of the senior partner. The most marked feature in these statistics is that the population of England and Wales is rapidly becoming a community of aged men and women. Fifty years ago the average length of life was under fifty, last year's statistics show that it had gone up to almost seventy-one and a half (actually over seventy-one and five months). There is no doubt that this change has been brought about by the improved care taken in sanitary affairs; and that those that now inhabit the land live both cleaner and pleasanter lives; and, of course, this bringe about concomitant changes. One of the principal of these is that in face of a longer expectation of life, and the increased expenses of living under generally im- proved conditions, marriages take place later in life in both sexes, and later marriages often verging on the limits of the period of fertility mean fewer births. Thus, while to every thousand living but, a few years ago over thirty children were born, last year the number was reduced to but a third of one over twenty-seven. This is the factor which, not unnaturally, leads to most misgivings. To a consider ablé extent, as we have seen, the explana- tion is simple, and follows easily compre- hensible rules, but there is a margin not quite so easily comprehended. Logically it might seem that the greater the ease of a community, the larger would be the birth-rate, but experience seems to prove the contrary. When a country is wasted by war or pestilence it might be anticipated that the birth-rate wo: ld fall, but it is in times of trouble and pestilence that actually the number of births has a tendency to increase. More, the largest birth-rate is not amongst nations enjoying the greatest amount of peace and prosperity. When the Irish people were at their poorest
scene" in the Mixed Court on December 12, which was, the Taora wrote, "a thing altogether unseemly and unbecoming the diguity which ought to be maintained in such a plice." The "what ought to be" and the "what is " often fail to compare in this world; and those who know the tribunal in question will wonder just where the desiderated dignity has ever been permitted to discover itself. The noises heard when approaching the Mixed Court in session are something like the noise that comes froin a school playground. Inside the scene affords absolutely no sense of what the foreign observer understands by dignity. On a low dais in the middle of a singularly neglected and dirty hall, the Chinese Magis- trate and Foreign Assessor sit, side by side, at a desk. The floor space immediately in front of them is lined on two sides by a much mixed Chinese crowd, of runners, informers, prisoners' friends, and spectators-noisy, ragged, and malodorous. The British As sessor, shivering in a great coat (our observations relate to a seance in the first quarter of the year) is the only semi-isolated figure in the room; his Chinese colleague, clad in heavy furs, bespectacled and be buttoned, looks like an over-ripe peach clustered with intoxicated wasps. Chinese runners, very much out of uniform, their costumes about as variegated and picturesque as those of a gang of coolies, stand on the hem of his robe, so to speak, leaning over his shoulder, brandishing indicatory fingers at the approaching prisoners, even turning over the papers on the magisterial desk. Also, they shout. The clamour is terrible. The prisopers, say three desperadoes from the suburbs, in chains, are dragged in by the queues, and made to kow-tow. After bumping their foreheads on the floor, while the crowd presses closer and almost hides them from view in efforts to scan their faces, the men raise bands towards the magistrate, and shriek their protestations of innocence..
A jerk at the queues, a sly kick, subdues them momentary silence. The Magistrate, who has glanced at the papers, and made.. a vermilion hieroglyphic on the margin, half rise. He bellows, positively bellows, some- thing at the prisoners. The chorus erupts as before, including a running commentary by the gang hanging to His Excellency's elbow. A witness is heard, or is presumably heard, it is impossible to feel sure; ind
Instead, then, of looking at the present slow increase of the population at home as an abnormal case, and connecting it with any special outburst of immorality, such as the BISHOP of Loudon sees in, the decreasing birth-rate, it would be more in consonance with the known facts of the case to see in it merely a return to normal conditions of population. The abnormal birth-rate of the last century was, we have seen, brought about by the sudden opening up of new industries to an extent such as had never previously occurred in the world's history, and which had doubled the capacity of the land for supporting a population. Even with the present number of in. habitants the country does not produce quite sufficient food to support the number who have to be fed; and a large portion of their earnings has to go abroad to be ex- changed for food, Besides this, there has arisen no special new industry, and the world at large is beginning to manufacture for itself those commodities for which half a century ago it was largely dependent on the United Kingdom. Altogether, then, and more especially when we take into consideration the very great prolongation of life, which enables each individual not only to live a longer and more easy life, but also permits him while enjoying a life of com- parative euse to actually do more work during his term of existence, there is no reason to look for any external reason to
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