1850.
Leller from B. J Bettelheim.
87
port, would do good, if their officers and crews conducted as became Christians. I do not mean they should bombard there towns, but those who have power can speak with power. God has given Christian nations power in this world, and they must show the rod, as Moses did when he stood before the rock with it in his hand, when the rock will otherwise neither hear nor yield its native waters. Lord John Russell, in a speech made in the House of Commons on the 22d of Feb., 1848, said, "He contended, that in a foreign country, Bri- tish subjects had a right to be protected by the public force of this country. The executive government would be greatly to blame if it gave less protection to British subjects now than in former times, and if it allowed the name of an Englishman to be less respected than it hitherto had been." Now then, why should not English subjects, or their friends at home and in China, openly claim protection for then against oppression, ill usage, and public disgrace in Lewchew? "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof':" who can forbid man to visit any part of God's earth? Why then should an English subject not be permitted to reside here? Have we by treaty with China bound ourselves not to visit Cochinchina, or Siam, or Tibet, or Corea? Suppose that Lewchew stands in the same relation to the Celestial Empire that these countries have stood, and perhaps still stand; even then none can oppose our residing here, or declare it against the faith of our treaties.
But admitting, for argument's sake, this to be a Chinese tributary, is it on this ground to be considered like the interior of China, which our generosity, and perhaps also just caution, have shut to us for the present? At a point of tiine when the brazen gates of Japan are so near to be burst open, is it reasonable or prudent, that Christian go- vernments should look on quietly at the insults heaped upon a fellow Christian, at the Japanese frontier? Is it not an insult to drive a man back from a ferry, which every peasant is allowed to cross and recross fifty times a day? An English officer has here bought goods, a bill of which purchase was regularly made out, and the poor sellers are not permitted to receive payment. A native gentleman once accompanied me for some distance on my way, not minding the threats and shouts of spies; he was dragged from my side, dragged away by the beard, and cruelly beaten for no other sin than that he walked a few steps in friendly conversation with the English barbarian. Another Lew- chewan, whose heart was attracted by the excellence of our faith, be- trayed by his partiality to a foreigner, whom he was not afraid to call 'father," was dragged from our neighborhood, and we have never