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although few in numbers, have succeeded in modifying the resolations either in substance or in form. We congratulate Hongkong on a most successful demonstration of its common sense and fearlessness,
OPINIONS OF THE SHANGHAI PRESS.
(The China Gazette, August 3rd.) We hope the British and American Govern- ments are pleased with the result of their policy In China. If they had made up their minds to definitely abandon their wretched and deserted nationals to the tender mercies of the Chinese mandarios and the murderous mobs at their command, they could scarcely have gone a better way about attaining that desirable object than they have followed. The inscrutable and cold-blooded apathy with which the two govern- ments named (British and American) have looked upon the unparalleled series of outrages in Szechuen p:ovince is already bearing fruit in other parts of China, as we foretold at the time it would.
. Already, in the case of the Kucheng outrages, an effort is being made by the apologists of Chinese ferocity to put the blame apon a secret society-a Vegetarian Society above all others--the Vegatarian being one of the strictest sects which objects to the shedding of all blood ! But we lay all the blame for the Kucheng outrages
the emasculated upon Diplomatic and Consular services by whom Great Britain and the United States choose to be represented in China. The cup, however, is now about fall. We do not think that the great world in Europe and America, which goes into hysterics over the assaults by the Turks upon the wretched Armenians, can longer stand aside and see English ladies butchered by these fiends, whom we have been taught to worship and to treat as the Israelites did the great Molok. The time has come when the relations between foreigners and Chinese will have to be
and a different basis,
that put upon at the mouth of the cannon. We think that the time has come when justice shall be no longer asked for, but when vengeance must be exacted. It is no longer a case for diplomacy; it is a case for the gattling gun, the rife, and the bayonet. All the promises of protection which the Emperor of China and his İying mandarins have made have been broken, The tongue in the cheek, as these promises were given, is exposed, and the ever-present devil of Chinese hatred is encouraged by the attitude of those who are supposed to lend foreigners in China protection. That protection is, like Chinese promises and treaty obligations, a criminal fraud. The time has come when the appeal for vengeance for the blood of those murdered women must be carried beyond the deadening walls of Peking, and addressed direct to the great world outside;
We think that from the blood of the murdered English women of Kocheng a new race wil arise, and the hopeless Incubus which weighs down our present relations with China will be broken for ever. To do this a different policy is needed, the policy which had long since been abandoned in the delusive belief that China is a civilized country. She is more savage to-day than the Barbary States fifty years ago, and ber mandarins are to the Bashi Bazook what the vulture is to the cooing dove. The fiendish officials who organized these murders and outrages are wise in their they have shown Us Oper generation; and over again that they will only burn and destroy the property of French missionaries, because they know the French Government would exact vengeance for the lives of her children, but they wisely reserve their atrocities and murders for the British and Americans, whose governments stand calmly by and see such crimes committed before their eyes as long as trade flourishes. The ledgers of the mills of Manchester and Massachusetts are of more account than the lives of English and American men and women in China.
(North China Daily News, August 5th.) It is hard to say that the massacre at Wha sang is a direct consequence of the indifference of the foreign Ministers at Peking, but we may well believe that the officials would have pre vented such a tragedy had they known that it would be followed by swift panishment. We do not envy Sir Nicholas O'Conor his feelings when he heard the sad news--or the Foreign Office in London, if it is on the Foreign Office and not on the Minister that the blame should be laid.... But whoever organised this massacre knew that the officials would not interfere, A mob dare not collect in China unless with the connivance of the officials; and as the officials see that none of them are ever punished for an anti-Chistian outrage, why should they try and prevent it ? If our Ministers, who have fleets at their disposal, had insisted on the punishment of the Chêngit officials, the good of it would have been felt all over the Empire; but instead they consent to one of them being put on the Commission of Enquiry!
(Shangkat Mercury, August 3rd.)
This (massacre at Kucheng) is an answer to our Ministers' action jeeringly traced with fingers of blood, and what have our Minis ters to say to this? If prompt and decisive steps are not taken to repress murder and lawlessness against foreigners by the native authorities; and the foreign Ministers at Peking, in whose power it is to render present and future protec tion and bring the perpetrators to justice, decline to fittingly exert themselves, to whom is the foreign citizen in China to appeal for help? For how long is this system of weak-kneed scraping to a number of lying, cowardly Chinese officialsjat Peking-known as the Tsungli Yamer,
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who compistely guil and convince our Ministerial Representatives to continue? We do not usually indulge in invective; we usually avoid doing so, bat la face of the Peking demonstration and the murderous reply from Kucheng, where five barmless and good women, living noble liver for the benefit of those who killed them, is a reply which makes the blood of every foreigner bell and his fingers itch to be at the throats of the murderers---and in Heaven's name how long are Europeans in China to submit to it?
DESCRIPTION OF KUCHENG.
Ka-Cheng, or "the ancient field," is finely situated in a plain surrounded by mountains, It is an important į city;; In the province of Fahklen, with a large population ; but not more than two-thirds of the space enclosed within the walls, which are four miles and a half in circum. ference, is occupied by the habitations of the lving. "It is," observes Archdeacon Wolf, "a necropolis, a city of the dead, Thousands of collins occupy the spare ground inside the walla, and there are numbers of sheds built to protect them from the rain and from the heat of the sun. The laws of China forbid burial within the city walls, but they do not prohibit this practice of keeping the coffins exposed in the
city to public gaia," Ho manufactures are carried on, the inhabitants belog all engaged in agricultural pursults; and the city is described as "a quiet old place, the very people having a sleepy look" partly, no doubt, owing to their being inveterate oplum smokers, which gives "a cadaverous appearance."
The stream which, in its lower course, becomes a foaming torrent, Is, in this upland plain, a peaceful and pretty river, and almost encircles the city. Within the walla is a pagoda dedicated to its honour, and designed to propitiate its wrath. Bishop Alford mentions that it is crossed by “a very lofty bridge of five well- spanned arches, with a covered roof." It is utilised for the irrigation of the fields by means of large water-wheels, twenty feet in diameter which raise the water and discharge it into troughs laid to convey it over the country.
Kucheng was, according to the Shanghat Mercury, occupied as a Church of England mission station at the end of 1865. Two catechists went first as pioneers, and hired a room for a preaching chapel. Then Mr. Wolfe visited the city, preached to large and attentive audiences, and left one of the catechists to carry on the good work,
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY CHESNEY DUNCAN, AT THE OFFICE OF
"THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH," PEDDER'S HILL, VICTORIA,
IN THE COLONY OF HONGKONG.
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