Page
August 29, 1895.}
by H.M. Consul and no doubt this request, backed áp as it Was in person by the U.S. Consul, had the effect of placing the launch at our disposal. The insinuation therefore that he did not ask for a steam launch to meet the wounded is untrue. The Consul wrote to the Viceroy appointing Monday, not Wednesday, to soo his Excellency. I have no doubt H.M. Consul, when he returns, will be able to answer for himself, but in the interests of justice and fairplay I send yon this during his absence.
•
Another correspondent, referring to the above, writes to our contemporary as follows:-
On perusing the letters in to-day's piper one might well imagine Mr. Mansfield crying, “Save me from my friends."
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
159
the real type of nation to which China belongs. We are accustomed to consider her uncivilized or savage, but we do not recognise the true nature of this want of civilization. We know that the Fuegians and the Kaffirs are uncivilized, and are in the habit of placing uncivilized nations together in one class and thinking that the type is throughout the same and that generally the method of treatment should be the There could be no greater mistake, Though they may both possess many traits link- ing them together as members of low typos, there is a trait present in the one which is entirely absent in the other. Between such types as that of the Fuegian and the Chinese there is all the difference existing between an ignorant child and an old idiot. As we should meet out to the former a far different treatment from that which we should adopt towards the latter, so also much stronger measures are neces- sary in the case of a great nation grown old and rigid than in the cise of a small people still young and pliable. The difference indood is greater than appears at first sight; for while a young uncivilizзd tribe or nation may with truth be compared to an uncultured child, we find in old rigid natious not that they have lost the wis lom they once had, as is often the case in senility in man, but that they have grown old without acquiring wisdom. Whilst the national body is that of an adult, the national mind is that of a child. And the mistake of supposing the two types to be ideutical has led to the moro serious mistake of supposing that the remedies in both oases should be identical. Let us glansa at the solutions of the question which have ben suggested.
HUNAN TO BE OPENED. There is no longer any need for our French friends concealing the very important enter: prise which they have on hand in the centre of China, which means nothing more or less than the opening up of, the most conservative and anti-foreign province in China-Hanan. We havə several times of late mentioned the
sama. the gunboat · Lutin mysterious mission of in the Yangtsa). qul a few days ago we reported that her destination was the Tungting Lake. We now learn from a reliable informint at Hankow that in adlition to the extra offloors and crow, the Luli has on bard M. Emil Rocher, who is to be the c if of the Freach Commercial Mission now being organised to exploit China by the unity | French Ciambers of Commerce. M. Booher was formerly Com missioner of Custowns in the I.M. Chinos service, which he afterwards left for that of his own country in Tonkin. He has travelled extensively in Southern China, and is the author of the standard work on Yunnan, "La Province Chinoise du Yunnan.' M. Rocher's present mission is, we understand, to advise the French Government as to the best point in the Tungting Lake for the establishment of a Treaty Port. Opinion is said to be divided between Changteh-fu, Changsha fu, and Yochow fu. So far we understand nothing definits as to the exact site has been settled, though politically the opening of the provincial capital Changsha What we want to know is, what was the to foreigners would be the greatest triumph for Consul doing from early morning" till early French diplomacy and the cause of progress the same evening." whilst the American Con- ganerally in China, while Chang teh ard Yoohow sul was busy doing our Cousul's work, and are both greater places commercially than the exerting himself to secure transport, and capital. But we mast wait further information. organise the relief party, which his Marshal We believe, however, that the opening of a accompanied in the absence of the British Consul?
According to these letters Mr. Mansfield left Foochow early on the Saturday in order to reach Kuliang "in the cool of the moring." He was met half-way up the hill, soven mil s only from Fooohow, without sun hat or umbrella or chair, and though it was not dangerous for him to go on apparently, it was as much as his life was worth" to returu with the messengers the seven miles to Foochow “in the broiling suu' "in the cool of the morning.” (The letters show that the messengers reached Foochow early on Saturday, which confir as the statement as to its being "the cool of the morning.")
·
Therefore the exonse about sun bat and umbrella only makes the Consul's conduct appoar the more contemptible.
"
It is to be hoped that Consul Mansfield's ex- planation, if he condescends to give one, will include something a little less paltry and ridiculous than the lack of sua hat or umbrella, and the fatigu) of a walk of seven miles in "the cool of the morning"-not to mention the possi- bility of obtaining a chair, or at least the loan of an umbrella; otherwise your correspondent's simile of a modern Nero fiddling at Kucheng's burning" will not be so very absurd.
The following, dated Foochow, 18th August, appears in the Mercury
|
The Kucheng massacre is still the subject of the greatest interest here. So far as any of us can learn, it is the American Consul who is practically looking after the whole affair and pushing matters with commeudable energy. You already have had full particulars as to the pusillanimous manner in which the British Consul acted when the news of the horrible massacre was first heard. He has continued, up to the very prosent, to display the same indifference, and while most of the British subjects are afraid to speak their minds publicly on the subject, there is great indignation felt against this Consul and his condnot every- where. The Express" that the "ev. G. B. Smyth issued on Saturday was fully justifiable,
.
Having had five thousand years in which to become civilized, and having acquired in that port in Hunan is one of the conditions of the immense period bat au infinitosimal portion of new Franco-Chinese Treaty, which is as yet a civilization as compared with that acquired by sealed book to British diplomats au 1 like every; other nations in one-fifth of the time, the Chi- thing else not nulerstood awakens suspicion and nese people may rightly be regarded as incap- vague terrors, where probably, when the full able of self-advancement. Even if any possible document is published, there will be found to conditions admitted of their being left to them- be no oause for such fesrs. The opening selves, we cannot by any effort of imagination of Hunan by any nation will be au im-conceive the nature of the people, after bing mense gain to all foreiga interests in China, unchanged for so long, suddenly taking to itself as it will strike at the very heart of the anti-
a now character au bursting forth into new life. foreign devil, and tend to enlighten the natives Not only have we no warrant for believing that of the most ignorant and prejudiced province as it could do this, but there are very strong rea- to the true object of the mission of the Ocoisons, depending on biological and psychological dental in China. A few years back a great laws too long to state clearly in a small space, fuss was made about a projected visit to the | for believing that it oo :ld not do it. No solution shores of Hunan by a British min-of-war of the question, then, is to be looked for from with Mr. Consul Chris. Gardner ou board. within. And if the solution cannot cims from but it proved abortive and never eventuated" within it must, if it is to be brought about at all, as the Americans say. It will be a nasty jar for come from without. There are only three on- British diplomacy to have the work which it civable ways in which it can so com 3-by forces failed so miserably to carry out, after openly talk-operating from a position of inferiority, of ing about it, quietly accomplished without any equality, or of superiority. Lot us ex unine each flourish of trumpets by the French. But British of these on their merits. diplomacy is a thing of the past, like British prestige, in China.—China Gazette.
THE LING-CHI'IHING OF CHINA.
CONTRIBUTED. Į
It is said, though we believe the assertion
Did civilization consist in material advance only, or in intellectual advance only, or in moral advance only, it might be possible for an en- lightened people to make an old rigid people civilized. If living in well-built houses, using railways, and being possessed of ships of the most recent type were all that is nooissary to civilization, it would by possible to make the and has already resulted in good. At rests upon inadequate evidence, that Guillotin, Chinese civilized without much difficulty. But first the British Consul was very hot and the inventor of the guillotine, was the victim of civilization consists in none of these thres demanded a public retractation, which, of course, his own invention. Whether he was or not, elements alone: it consists in them all com- Mr. Smyth would not make, A public there is no doubt that China, the nation which bined. So long as we are lacking in any one of meeting arranged for yesterday to discuss the conceived and uses the ling-ch'ih process of dis- them we cannot be truly civilized. It is obvious, matter was postponed on account of the coming membering certain criminals before putting therefore, that any system which advances only of the Detroit, and as the Consuls both start for them to death -a savage metho adapted to a the material civilization of the Chinese, even if Kucheng this afternoon the matter will probably savage people-is slowly dying by this self-same completely successful, leaves them still two- not be heard of again in an official manner.
process. During the course of the last few thirds uncivilized. You may dress up a Kaffir in Mr. Mansfield said that if Mr. Smyth did centuries her members have, one after another-a neat new coat and a silk hat, but if you assert not publicly retract he would take the here a tributary state and there an outlying pr›- that you have by this action trausformed him thing to Peking. and Mr. Smyth sent vince or island-been severed from the main into an intellectual and moral man you will him word by the American Coasul that
Take away the outward if he had any complaints to make of him to body, leaving at the present day hardly anything only be laughed at Peking he had better wait until the Shanghai more than the trunk itsolf It is now time for show and ho is seen to be a Kaffir still. His
the coup de grace
There remains nothing but belief that the dead revisit the earth in the form papers came in, and he would have something the stab into the heart.
of serpents is the same as before. His thirst for worth complaining about. You will bear more
You have not blood has not been quenched, about the matter if anything comes of it, and
changed his mind. Your attempt to pass him probably it will be interesting reading when it
off as a civilized human being deceives only those comes. Mr. Smyth has grit, and gave the
who do not look below the surface of things, and: British Consul not one particle more than he
the farce can have but short duration. So, too. you may supply a nation with new ships aud now rifles, you may build her forts and arsenals, you may collect her taxes for her, without making her one jot more intellectual or moral. Were proof of this assertion needed it is ready to hand in the bombs filled with lime, the rifles suplied with the wrong cartridges, the non-existence of half the soldiers for whom pay had been drawo
deserved.
The Mercury says the new Minister to Japan, Yu Loong-si, had audience with the Emperor on the 2nd instant, and left for Tientsin on the 11th. He was expected to reach Shanghai on his way to his post to-day, the 26th inst.
!
This expression represents more than a mere analogy, it represents a homology. A society is an organism. Social aggregates and organic aggregates both commence as small clusters and insensibly augment in mass; both assume a continually increasing complexity of struc- ture as they increase in size; both become ever more mutually dependent in their parts; and in both the life of the aggregate is far longer thau and independent of the lives of the component units. Inadequate study of the structures and functions of societies, past and present, habitually shuts out from our eyes
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.