April 23, 1896.]
"While he remained on the vessel none of "his servants would dare to land!" This is a truly extraordinary statement, and His Excellency must have a very poor opinion of the intelligence of Englishmen if he ex- pected it to be accepted. Are we to suppose that the Ambassador has so little control over the servants he has selected to accom- pany him on his important mission that he feared they would disobey his orders and leave the vessel if he himself were absent for a few hours? That would not be exactly a compliment to His Excel- lency's allegǝl wonderful powers of gov ernment. The excuse if ever made was evidently a subterfuge, and an exceed ingly clumsy one, because even if LI HUNG- CHANG was unable to control his own ser-
vants the French mail people would have done it for him, so far as regards preventing their leaving the ship. If His Excellency was not prepared to state the true reason of his not landing it would have been more prudent for him to have said nothing at all. Excuses not founded on fact are dangerous,
REVIEW.
Problems of the Far East. By the Right Hon. GEORGE N. CURZON, M.P. New and Re- vised Edition. Westminster : Archibald Constable & Co. 1896.
It is not surprising that a new and revised edition of Mr. Curzon's excellent work should so soon have been called for. The first edition -the present one is the fourth-appeared in August, 1894, within a few weeks of the opening of the war between China and Japan. The author thus states the alterations that he has made :---
"In this new edition, which has been care fully revised throughout, I have corrected a few mistakes that had crept into the first, and have introduced a good deal of additional matter, supplied or suggested by the events of the past year. The Revision Treaty between Great Britain and Japan, and the Treaty of Peace between Japan and China, are printed as appen. dices; and in a fresh chapter I have endeavoured to sum up the main issues of the recent conflict and to forecast its hearing upon the Asiatic situation. I should add that the greater part of this chapter was written before the late change of Government in England, and that it has been composed in entire independence of official information or authority.”
Mr. Curzon has reason to congratulate him- self on the accuracy of his forecast, and has the satisfaction of confronting his critics with the evidence of events. In reviewing the first edi- tion the Spectator, which Mr. Curzon charac- terises as the most thoughtful of English || newspapers," wrote as follows:-
Though Mr. Curzon is a diligent collector of facts, and deserves every credit for his praiseworthy attempts to understand the pro- blems with which he is confronted, he does not show any very strong grasp either of the great issues at stake in the Far East, or as to the relative power and capacity of the two nations which are now confronting each other. As Mr. Curzon's conclusions are necessarily prophetic in their nature, it is not, of course, possible as yet to prove him mistaken; but it cannot be said that he shows that instinctive appreciation of international affairs which is requisite for those who undertake to diagnose the conditions of three such kingdoms as Japan, Korea, and China.
In spite of Mr. Curzon, we believe that the weight of opinion is on the side of those who hold, as we do, that China could, if hard put to it, organise a most formidable fighting force. Does Mr. Curzon remember what Lord Wolseley has said on the subject? He has expressed his opinion that the one danger of the Anglo-Saxon race was meeting the Chinese in war,-and this is no abstract opinion, for Lord Wolsoley helped to beat the Chinese under the walls of Peking, They possess every military virtue,' said Lord Wolseley of the Chinese. Mr. Curzon infers that the Chinese are a very anwarlike people. The world will, we think, prefer the verdict of
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT,
a soldier who has met the Chinese in battle, to that of a civilian who has done little but spiff the evil odours of Peking, and, as he would doubtless be the first to admit, has nothing that can be called first-hand knowledge of China."
This passage Mr. Curzon quotes in his pre face and thinks that so fair-minded a critic as the Spectator will not grudge a writer who has dared to prophesy the rare satisfaction of suc cess. The central theme of his pages when Chinese administration, and the certainty of first published was "the utter rottenness of
military disaster in the case of conflict with a well-equipped foe; the confident ambitions and swelling power of Young Japan; the corrupt though picturesque, imbecility of Korea." All this has been amply proved since the first edition appeared, but at the same time Mr. Curzon recognises, in respect of the military success of Japan, that the conquest of an effete empire like China affords little criterion of her real fighting power if confronted by a European
army.
"
Of Korea Mr. Curzon says
Unfor tunately for her the conflict for which she supplied a convenient battle-ground, rather than a legitimate provocation, was forced upon her by the tempers of her Asiatic neigbours, too highly charged to postpone any longer the inevitable explosion. My own conviction, expressed in my first edition, that the only hope of continued national existence for Korea lay in the maintenance of her connection with China has not, in my opinion, been falsified by the issue of the campaign, since the in- dependence, which was the nominal pretext of the latter, and is now claimed as its result, is a phantom which not even the interested auspices of Japan have so far persuaded to materialise, and which will assuredly be the source of further trouble in the future."
The following passage also calls for quota- tion: How the new issue, thus raised, is likely to effect the fortunes of Korea primarily, and of the Far East in general, the time has not yet come to discuss. Japan has ousted China, and is now retiring, for fear of being ousted herself. Meanwhile, Korea is the chief sufferer at the hands of her many friends. She supplies the international football that is kicked about between the rival goal-posts of Vladivos- tock and Nagasaki. Poor, forlorn, and pathetic victim! Last of the nations and most miser- able of peoples? With the achievement of independence her tragic vicissitudes have only entered upon a new phase. It will not be long before we hear of her again."
Mr. Curzon is careful to make it clear in his preface that the new matter embodied in the present edition was written before the late change of Government in England and has been composed in entire independence of official information or authority. Neverthe. less special interest attaches to what he says in view of the fact that he is now the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and therefore in a position which lends weight to his views. This is what he has to say of British and Russian rivalries
45
The primary interest of Great Britain in Korea is as a market for an already cousider- able trade. Of far greater moment; however, the secondary and contingent interest arising out of the political future. A country so well provided with harbours which could both supply and shelter great flotillas, and so richiy endowed with many potential sources of wealth, might involve a serious menace to British commerce and interests throughout the China Seas, and even in the Pacific Ocean, if held by a hostile State. A Russian port and fleet, for instance, in the Gulf of Pechili would, in time of war, constitute as formidable a danger to British shipping in the Yellow Sea as they would to the metropolitan province and the capital of China. Permanent Russian squadrons at Port Lazareff and Fusan would convert her into the greatest naval Power in the Facific. The balance of power in the Far East would be seriously jeopardised, if not absolutely over- turned, by such a development; and England is prohibited alike by her imperial objects and her commercial needs from lending her sanction to any such issue."
Mr. Curzon arrives at the following con- ❘clusions as regards China -
333
"China having escaped owing to the in- terested intervention of foreign Powers, with no worse penalty than the surrender of an island which she had never been able either to conquer or to administer, and the payment of an indem- nity for the loan of which she was willing to mortgage a security whose value she owed to the foreigner, not to herself-had a rare op- portunity, as soon as peace was concluded, and she had satisfied the natural claims of her saviours, of putting her own house in order and against another day. No such reflection, how- of fortifying her still prodigious resources
ever, seems to have presented itself to the Chinese mind. She appears to have learned nothing, and what is worse, to have unlearned nothing from the war. She is content to remain the same old China, untaught and unteachable.
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Some tentative steps in the direction of so-called Reform she may take, rather with the view of appeasing others than of benefiting her- self. A railroad here, an arsenal there, an order in one country for ships, an appeal to another for officers-these may be duly antici- pated. But to the idea of any radical change in the system, or of any voluntary effort at national recuperation, the answer will prove to be the eternal and contemptuous 'No.'
"If she deliberately refrains from doing so, the tutelage which she will not voluntarily engage for herself will some day be forcibly applied to her by others; her industrial exploita- tion, once taken seriously in hand, will pour wealth into other coffers, not into her own; in her refusal to employ foreign servants she will discover that she has invited foreign masters; and where procrastination has been the sole policy she may find, when it is too late, that partition is the inevitable result.”
SUPREME COURT.
16th April.
IN. BANKRUPTCY.
BEFORE HON, W. M. GOODMAN (ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE).
RE THE YAT SHING LUNG FIEM, EX PARTE TAM SHING, A CREDITOR.
This was an application for a receiving order. Mr. Reece appeared for the petitioning cre- ditor, and Mr. Grist appeared for Ho Lin Sam, the managing partner of the debtor firm, and opposed the petition on the ground that he disputed the petitioning creditor's debt and the several acts of bankruptcy alleged in the petition.
His Lordship delivered the following judg ment--The petition was filed on the 5th of March and came on for hearing, in the first instance, before this Court, on the 26th March. It was then proved by Tam Shing that he lent the defendant firm $1,000 on the 19th November last, and received à duly chopped promissory note for that amount. His statement was fully corroborated by Tam Chun, whose rent collector Tam Shing was. On the other hand Ho Lin Sam declared the chop to be a forgery and denied having given the note, but as the peti tioner's statement was further corroborated by Tam Chenk Wan, who described himself as a partner in defendant's firm and who acted as assistant accountant and who swore he saw Ho Lin Sam affix the chop, I must believe the testimony of the three witnesses and by a great stretch of charity assume that Ho Lin Sam has a very defective memory. I hold, therefore, that the petitioning creditor has proved his debt. In the next place it is clear that an act of bankruptcy was committed, as the execution in the Summary but No. 247 of 1893 was levied by seizure and sale of the debtor's goods. It is however, in this colony found by experience that receiving orders are often applied for, for the purpose of obtaining protection of the person of the debtor without any real desire to carry out the true intent of the Bankruptcy Ordinance, namely, an equal distribution of assets among the creditors. It is clear this dis- tribution can only be made where there are assets to distribute, after payment of the costs incidental to the Lruptcy. It is, therefore, provided by section 7. subsection 3, of the Bank- ruptcy Ordinance. 1991, that, if the Court is satisfied that there are and will be no sub-
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