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December 1, 1900.]
LADY BLAKE'S SPEECH AT THE WOMEN'S CONFERENCE,
SHANGHAI.
This conference was opened at the Shanghai Mission Press Chapel on the morning of the 20th ult., more than two hundred and fifty ladies attending. Lady Blake presided and opened the conference with the following ad- dress, which was listened to with great in- terest:-
It was with no small surprise that I received the invitation with which your committee were so kind as to honour me, asking me to preside at this conference.
Conscious of the elementary nature of my acquaintance with the questions to be dis- cussed, my first impulse was to decline the proffered honour. We all know the old pro- verb "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." I remembered it and paused. Then it struck me that in the action deprecated by the adage, the fools may sometimes have their use, for they may beat down the track for the angels to follow. In this instance my self- love leads me to substitute the term
"the ignorant" for that of "fools," and I came to the conclusion that my very ignorance might be a reason for adding my mite of effort in clearing a path for those capable and willing to enlighten us concerning Things Chinese, especially such as relate to the women of China.
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I feel it a very great honour to have been invited to take the chair on the occasion of this-I believe the first conference that has ever been held on the subject of the social position, the customs, and the daily life of one- sixth of the human race, namely, the two han- dred millions-or thereabouts-of the women of this wonderful and little known Chinese Empire.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
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"The laws of a nation," said the historian | must have a deleterious effect on any society, Gibbon, "form the most instructive portion of We all are proud of the progress made in its history." Let us glance at China by the Europe in modern days, and it is in very standard of its laws. Its Penal Code, compiled modern days, not much more than a century at the beginning of the present Dynasty-with | ago, that women to any wide extent began the exception that it sanctions the use of torture to resume their share in the general work to extract confessions, and ordains in certain of progress in Western lands.
As we cases the inhuman mode of execution by the claim that those countries have advanced slow and painful process "—is on the whole since women have done so, may we not also just and reasonable, and may compare not claim that part of such progress is due to the unfavourably with the laws obtaining at the women of Europe and Americs ? Undoubtedly same period in European countries. But how in our own countries the position of women has changed are the criminal laws of the West to- | been largely owing to the spread of the ideas day from what they were two or more cen- and customs of the Teutonic and Celtic races, turies ago. For instance, the laws of Great in whose ranks from the dawn of their history Britain, at one time said to have been women occupied an exceptionally honoured and vised and amended, till now we can boast that if Germans suppose some divine and prophetic the most sanguinary in Europe, have been re-important position. Tacitus writes that "the
our laws err it is on the side of over-leniency, quality resident in their women, and are careful while the Chinese laws, far from having been neither to disregard their admonitions, nor to ameliorated, have degenerated into instruments neglect their answers." The Cymri are described of injustice and tyranny. Originally the by another contemporary writer as accompanied severe enactments of the Chinese code were on their expeditions of war by venerable pro- fenced round with provisions to mitigate their phetesses clad in long linen robes "most severity, but these are now set aside, and the splendidly white." All Celtic histories and sentences of magistrates and judges, to which traditions also bear testimony to the con to apply the name of law is a mockery, are too sideration in which their women were held. often carried out with a savagery and callous- That the ladies of China are respected and ap- ness that, even in cases in which the victim preciated by their countrymen I have no doubt, merits punishment, makes us feel that the judge though their way of life is almost a closed book who can dictate sentences of such ferocious to us; but if the women who in Scandinavia cruelty is more horrible than the miserable wretch worshipped Odin and Thor; who in Britain who writhes before him. Bribery, both to him with golden sickles out the sacred mistletoe who received a bribe and to those who negotiated from the boughs of the oak; who guarded the it or through whose hands it passed, was, accord- holy fires in the ancient shrines of Ireland, ing to the ancient code, liable to strict punish were treated with honour and consideration and ment, but on all sides we are assured that, like most took leading parts in the affairs of their people large democracies, China has not escaped the long before those people had learnt the higher general tendency, and that the length of the truths of Christianity, why should it not be the purse of the accused materially influences the same with their sisters who live where the noble decisions of his judges.
teachings of Confucius and the great lessons of the Light of Asia are the professed guides of the nation From the days of the beautiful and not over scrupulous Empress, who for sixty. seven years exercised despotic way over the Empire, Chinese history makes mention of many distinguished and remarkable women, and as far as one can judge, the position of women in China is superior to that they occupy in most Oriental lands; but in no Asiatic country is the status of women on a par with what it is where Teutonic and Celtic ideas preponderate; therefore we are justified in thinking that in many ways the lot of Chinese women might be ameliorated, and more interests and greater hap- piness might be introduced into their lives, while it is not a necessary corollary that Chinese women should adopt manners and. customs peculiar to foreign races, and to which, by heredity and surroundings, Oriental women must be unfitted. Echoes from the homes of China reach us from time to time of young girls committing suicide to ́es- cape a distasteful marriage, of brides putting an end to an existence rendered intolerable by the tyranny of their mother-in-law; that lead us to suppose that there are aspects of the life of Chinese women that are capable of improve- ment. Comprendre," wrote a distinguished Frenchwoman, "c'est pardonner." To enable us to understand something more of the mode of life and thought of the women of Chins, so that they may obtain glimmers of light on the-to them-strange and weird ways and minds of their European sisters, is, I take it, the object of the conference, which may be the beginning of large efforts that I hope and trust will ul- timately lead to greater mutual goodwill and friendship.
In comparison with that of China, pur civili sation is of yesterday. Nevertheless, we are apt to consider it as already old, and there are Whatever may be the difference of opinions even pessimists who hold that the growth has on subjects connected with China, we must, I been over rapid. that the vitality of the fledge- think, all agree that China is a deeply interest-ling is not as great as its stature, and that al- ing country, remarkable not alone on account of its vast size and teeming population, but be- cause of the genius of its people that has pro- duced arts so varied and striking, and so unlike our own; public works on a scale of unsurpassed magnitude, and a literature that has few equals in purity of tone and high moral purpose. And above all is China marvellons in the stability of & civilisation that has survived the companions of its youth, the partners of its prime, and which bids fair to outlast many of the rivals of its ma- ture age. When the Egyptain Pharaohs were building the Pyramids and ruling a vanished civilisation, the threads of which we are only now beginning to gather up; when Semiramis sat on the throne of Assyria; when the Grecian heroes laid siege to Troy; when the Sabine women made peace between their new-found husbands and their avenging fathers and brothers; all those long centuries-mounting up to thousands of years ago the Chinese were a settled and civilised peop'e, leading lives not very different from those their descendants lead nowadays, and who, even then, could boast an ancient history. Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, Greece, Rome, those mighty empires of old, the account of whose wonders and splendours still dazzles our minds and excites our imaginations, all rose, flourished, and passed away, and all the while their contemporary--the remote, unknown Middle Kingdom-built her stupendous walls, dug her great canals, wove her gorgeous fabrics, painted her delicate porcelains, raised her glit tering temples, and cared not at all for Egypt. Greece, or any other of the rulers of old. But China possessed a quality that was not shared by the other ancient civilisations; she had the characteristic we call staying power; in this respect no nation has ever yet equalled the Celestial Empire.
But, while admiring the tenacity of existence evinced by the Chinese Empire, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that it has the drawback of showing an indifference to progress which may ultimately curtail its hitherto apparent eternity of life. Absolute immobility is impos sible, the great law of evolution holds good in China as over all this earth, so we are forced to the conclusion that if China has not moved upwards, however slow may have been the pro- cess, little by little she must have retrograded,
ready it shows symptoms of decay. May we not "betimes take some hints from the ex- perience of older countries that may help to avert a calamity such as that. If there is anything to be gathered from the wisdom of the ancients, there must be some hints and not a few warnings we may take from China, and in exchange there may be some les- sons, though possibly not so many as Europe supposes, that the people of the Middle King. dom may learn from us. For this exchange of mutual benefits, it is necessary that Europeans and Chinese should learn to respect whatever is worthy of respect in each other, and to know something of each other beyond the mere commercial transactions that, while increasing material properity, add little to the weightier matters that give real zest and charm to life. It is now more than two centuries since Europeans have resided for periods long or short on the shores of China, and it is strange how little progress has been made during that time in social intercourse be- tween the two races, or in mutually under- standing one another's ideas and idiosyncrasies. Europeans seem often to believe that the hi- nese are incomprehensible beings to Western minds, whose feelings-if they exist are not our feelings, whose aspirations are different from ours, whose likes and dislikes are almost antageuistic to ours. I confess I do not believe this opinion is correct; get down to the bedrock of our common humanity, and, extraordinary as may be the difference in the superstructures, the foundation is the same all the world over. To get to that substratum is the difficulty for us; possibly from their point of view, the task may equally be a difficult one for the Chinese. Probab ly hitherto we have considered China chiefly from its political standpoint. Political affairs are, of course, of paramount national importance, but the substratum on which they rest is that of social interests, and it is social questions that affect individual happiness or unhappiness most strongly. In every clime and in all coun- tries the position and influence of women in social matters must be of as great importance as that of the masculine element. To under stand a country we ought to know something of its women as well as of its men. The ab- sence, or ill-regulated force, of female influence,
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Here is a tiger story from Yaumati, At about ten o'clock on the night of the 22nd ult., a European constable was patrolling his boat, when, at the upper end of Station Street North, what he positively asserts was
a full-grown tiger trotted past in front of him. The animal did not betray any signs of having seen the constable, but quietly loped off in the direction of Un Chan village, crossing the road not more than ten yards from the man, who asserts that he plainly saw the stripes on its body. If there are any big game hunters in the colony-and of course there are here is a splendid opportunity of adding another skin to their collection and ridding the colony at the same time of a dangerous visitor. Incidentally it will also acquit the constable of the unkind suggestion that he had an attack of “ xnakes."
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