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did not employ professional kidnappers to inveigle children into their clutches, and Tientsin is a very long way from being "the roughest city in the Empire," I do not speak from hearsay on either point, but as a former resident at that port, well acquainted with all that was or could be alleged against the Sisters of Mercy and with but little sympathy for their system. Sir C. Dilke's hasty impressions should scarcely, I think, be put against the lengthened experience of men whose special duty it was to note the points he has so grievously misrepresented.
And here I come to the first paragraph in which our would-be critic finds a word of praise for English action. The Missionary Societies, he says, have behaved well. No one will controvert the statement. But readers in China will be unable to avoid a feeling of acute sympathy for the societies at being so championed. People who have been unjustly maligned are naturally grateful to all of good repute who bear testimony in their behalf. But gratitude is apt to be changed into exasperation when the volunteer witness is found to be a man, whose evidence on other points is utterly worthless. Sir Charles Dilke's defence of the action of the Missionary Societies is in effect the severest blow they have received for some time. The public will be apt to think that a writer who can so blunder in stating his facts and display so remarkable an ignorance of the past political history of the subject he has chosen for his theme, will prove an equally unsafe guide regarding those points in which he accords praise. Apropos of the missionary question, Sir Charles Dilke enquires, "Has China ever obtained compensation for the ill-usage of her peaceable, and unoffending subjects in California and in our Colonies?" No sentence could better display his utter ignorance of Chinese policy and ideas than this. Not only has she never obtained compensation, but the united representations of the foreign diplomatists and of the Press, foreign and native, in China, had until the last few weeks failed to move her to take the first steps to protect her children in the countries named. So inhuman was the indifference of the Government to the sufferings of the
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people that it had to be almost forced into even expressing any satisfaction at the suppression of the old coolie slave trade. Of those who fought, and the lesser number who suffered in, the crusade which resulted in its eventual abolition, not one has received, either directly or indirectly, from the Chinese Government, or any official whatever, the faintest word of thanks, or the least sign of approbation. And this is the Government which Sir Charles Dilke would have us regard as a victim to the oppressions of the Western races who seek the hospitality of her treacherous shores.
Upon the subject of Transit Dues, Sir Charles Dilke reaches what may perhaps be termed the acme of his misrepresentations. It is necessary to quote him somewhat at length to enable my readers to fully understand their enormity:--"It was," he says, "foreseen at the time that difficulties would arise out of a grasping policy upon this point. We were warned that the Chinese, whose whole Customs' system is one of tolls levied at many places, could not with justice be asked suddenly to revolutionise it in our favour. We should have wondered if foreigners had been freed from paying toll for their carriages upon English roads while it continued to be paid by British subjects. We allow our whole trade with Central Asia to be stopped by the tolls that our Cashmere feudatories levy, and are shocked and horrified beyond measure if the Chinese presume to raise from our people their ordinary dues." In other words, Sir Charles Dilke is trying to persuade the readers of Macmillan that the Transit Dues system is an exemption from paying any inland duties whatever on goods owned by foreigners. Of the real fact that the system simply provides for the payment in one sum at any given port of a number of octroi charges, often arbitrarily increased, and as systematically evaded by the natives themselves as their ingenuity can devise—not a word is said. To point out that the "difficulties" which have arisen chiefly consist in the refusal of the semi-independent inland officials to recognize the right of the Chinese Customs at the ports to give a free pass for goods, upon
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