January 26, 1901:]
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
of which we - nved fuing, yesterday: * name of Queen Victoria has been the emblem to as since childhood, of all that was elevated and noble, and of whatever nationality any of us may be we can all enter into the national sorrow, which is felt as keenly in this corner of the Queen Empress's dominions as in any other part of her world-wide Empire:
!
THE HON. J. J. KESWICK ON THE NATIONAL CALAMITY.
closed, whose glorious renown will descend far down the centuries with undiminished lustre.
to pay down a long price for
offce, has beari quietly "permitted to retire into private life." and a new official, one Chang Jenchun, has been ordered to take charge in his stead, the charge against the former being his alleged neglect in pushing supplies to Peking, during the tragi-comedy in the Forbidden City.
us well any good eruben, and as such the world first, and England ultimately will bail her Victoria the Great and Good. Of her good ness there is no doubt. All acknowledge it in their various sand from their different points of view. She was a pure, true womail, in all things womanly. As maid, as wife, as mother, she was above and beyond reproach No stain of any kind rests upon her life or
Thirteen years ago one of those men who, had character. In her widowhood she was beyond
he been permitted, would have placed China on praise. In her relations with her people of
the road of progress, the Fatai Changyeo, took all classes and grades she was most cordial At the shareholders' meeting in connection steps amongst other things to have the Canal and sympathetic. Her heart went out to with the Hongkong Land Investment and surveyed and levelled, with the view of making all suffering humanity. But was she Great Agency Company on Thursday, the Hon. J. Jit an open waterway. Ch'angyeo's tenure of I say emphatically she was a great Queen Keswick, who presided, said-Gentlemen, as office was marked by a general reform in the as well as a good Queen, better deserving this is one of the first meetings that has taken provincial administration, the military element of the title than any to whom it has ever place since the receipt of the mournful tidings was kept under control, and the civil authorities been given, and day by day her true greatness which reached us yesterday, my colleagues and were made to attend to their respective duties. will be more fully and fairly recognised as we myself feel that we could have wished to post-The end of this was that Changyeo died poor, come to learn more of her life and her work pone it had it bean legally practicable. But as and Peking, instead of being grateful to his But enough is known now to enable us to say. we are not able to defer the meeting until a memory, had the ill grace to endeavour to that she possessed all the elements, all the eslater date, it will be fitting if, before I take extort from his heirs the little that was left, sentials of greatness, in its best and truest the chair, I say a very few words to record under the pretext that he had embezzled the sense. She was great in her devotion to duty, our profound sorrow in this great calamity public funds in his keeping There is no Her successive ministers tell us that never for which has befallen the British Realm, by the doubt that a properly constructed canal, & day, unless when absolutely unable to work, death of Queen Victoria. At this meeting which would enable the old waterway to be were her duties as a sovereign neglected or there are representatives of various races and re-opened, would result in the greatly increased allowed to fall into arrear. Her duties were nationalities, but all alike will feel that a griev prosperity of the districts traversed, and this numerous and important and she was only able ous loss has been sustained, not by British sub was the view taken of the matter by the old to get through them by great self denial and jects alone in whose hearts their sovereign lived, Futai. When, however, the affair was repre- self sacrifice, and self denial and self sacrifice but by the world at large, in the removal from sented to Li Hung-chang, then Viceroy at are the essentials of greatness whether in the it of that aged monarch who already occupied Tientsin, that obstructive official at once threw field or in the Cabinet. She was the first the British throne before any of us were born. cold water on the scheme; and there is little doubt truly constitutional Sovereign of Great Britain, We can only bow before the blow which has fal-that to his direct influence was to be attributed the first who knew no will but her people's,den on the British Empire, in the death of the its failure. However much we may congratu who took as her Ministers and officersQueen-Empress, and render our befitting hom-late ourselves on the failure of the Dowager's the nominees of the nation and not her ownage before that great figure of an era now nominees. She had no previous example of a constitutional sovereign on which to model herself. She created, if I may so speak, the roie of Constitutional Sovereign and was the first to play it. It was a great role and she played it greatly. Her Majesty had great natural ability and cultivated it to the utmost. The extent of her knowledge astonished her Ministers. She was a student to the last day of her life. She had sound judgment, great tact, unfailing knowledge of men and a strong will, and yet that strength of intellect and strength of will was always subservient to constitutional restraints. We shall not know for many years how much England owes, how much the world owes to that strong, patient tactful woman, giving up all pleasures for the sole performance of her duties. England has grown from a Kingdom to an Empire and great Empire under her guiding hand. Great deeds have been done in it, great victories won, great conquests effected in all fields of enter prise. Shall not she be called truly great under whom and in whose name all these great things have been done, and who dominated and con- trolled all the wise and good men by whom they were accomplished, being herself greater than any of them in her manifold knowledge, in her flush of water, taken from the Yellow courage, in her energy and in her will? Her River at high flood, from the village of was a great life, greatly lived; an exalted posi-Ch'angkiu, near Tungch'angfu iu Shantung. tion, still further exalted and adorned by the manner in which she filled it. Royalty is a higher and holier thing in the eyes of her people and of the civilised world than it was when she came to the throne and because of her. Kingly rule has taken from her a new lease of life.quisites to a number of useless and greedy The Queen is dead, but the Throne is more colid, more durable, more respected, more powerful more constitutional than ever it was before in -England because such a Queen has lived.
CANALS IN CHINA.
(Contributed.)
party to obtain reinforcements to aid in her darling project of murdering the foreign resi dents in north China, it is in accordance with poetic justice that she herself should have been the first to suffer from the act. A couple of generations ago Shantang was one of the richest provinces of China; now the whole course of the Imperial Canal is marked by ruined Now and then an entry about some new ap- villages, while the open country swarms with pointment, or a notice of praise or blame in the beggars, whose abject misery tells of a long Peking Gazette, throws an unexpected light on-course of oppression and extortion. What is matters of general interest. One recently happening in Shantung has happened in the published lets us into the condition of the com- past in Shensi, and the Dowager, who had been munications between the north and the south of buoyed up with the hope of finding in that pro- China. Probably most foreigners resident invince an asylum, where there was plenty to ba China have an idea, imbibed when at school had for the asking, and where the hated for- that there exists a grand series of canals, eigner troubleth not, has discovered that, even beginning at Hangchow and leading up to the more than in Peking where decay has not eaten walls of Peking; and that the ordinary travellero deeply into the vitals of the land, she is has nothing to do beyond step into a boat any dependant on the comparatively untouched pro- where about Hangchow or Soochow, and after vinces of the South for the ordinary expenses a few days, or weeks at most, find himself of her Court. Sad though the story be, it is quietly at anchor under the walls of the Capital one that deeply concerns the Powers, who have As a fact, as a public highway the canal does aow become more or less answerable for China; not exist at all, and as a road for the transport and had they been less attentive to private gain, of rice to Peking it can be only made use
and a little more anxious to lead by gentle of once in the year, when at an enormous
means China into the path of reform at home, expense, a fleet of rice-junks is washed by they would not have had to pay the penalty in
the recent humiliation in North China.
to Lintsing on the river Wei. By a great effort the empty boats are able to get back some three months later, after which the channel is so far silted up as to require to be dug out for the next year's traffic. Except to supply per
officials, the Canal is utterly useless. The carriage of the rice, even if required at Peking could be much better effected by leaving it in private hands, and remitting its cost in money Mr. F. B. L. BOWLEY (Crown Solicitor) said and probably it would be found that were they -On behalf of the junior branch of the profes-assured of the non-interference of a paternal sion I have the honour to represent to-day, 1 government, the people of the districts through beg leave to express entire concurrence with which it passes would find means to make the the remarks of your Lordship, the Attorney waterway effective The events of the las General, and the learned counsel, and to ex-year have brought this into prominence. I press our sorrow and mourning to-day for the loss of our beloved Sovereign.
The Court then adjourned sine die.
seems that at the time when the Empress Dowager had planned her great coup, she hac intended that troops and supplies should hurried forward along the Imperial Grain River, for such is its name in Chinese; ard WEST POINT BUILDING COMPANY towards this end a Mancha on whom she
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thought she could rely, one Sungch'ün, had been placed in charge. Sungch un, new to his work, thought that the task of removing
THE TROUBLE ON H.M.S. "BARFLEUR.”
COURTMARTIAL · ON. THE TERRIBLE. Rumours of discontent on board HM,S. Burfleur had been prevalent for some time past, and it is now well known in the colony that that feeling found its culmination in the throwing overboard by one or more blue- jackets of a ball brought down from North China by one of the officers, who in one way or another had incurred the dislike of some of the men in his division. Enquiries resulted in the arrest of three of them,” and on the 18th inst. they were ranged before a ourtmartial and charged with breach of naval liscipline.
The Court was composed as follows:-Captain Percy Scott, C.B., of H.M.S. Terrible (pre- ident); Captain J. H. T. Burke, CB, H.M.S. Orlando Captain G. A. Callaghan, .B., of H.M.S. Endymion; Captain F. fillard, of H.M.S. Dido, and Commander H. P. W. Freeman, of H.M.S.Mohawk: Mr. G. Hew. ett, private secretary to Rear Admiral Brace,
**** At the 12th ordinary meeting of share
holders at the West Point Building Comtemporary dam was a light one; but the chanuevas Judge Advocate, and Lieutenant England, of pany on Thursday the CHAIRMAN (the Hon U.P. CHA1EE, C.M.G.) said Gentlemen, before the notice calling this meeting is read I know that it will be your wish that we should record our grief for the great national bereavement
has been permitted to drift into such a state o neglect that he found the task an impossibilit The Dowager is not a woman to forget an i turn, so the unfortunate Sungoh'ang, who mos likely according to custom, for it is one of th
H.M.8. Terrible, acted as Officer of the Court, Captain George Warrender, of HM8. Bar fleur, appeared as prosecutor, and Lieutenant Field, of HM.8. Barfeur, on behalf of the prisoners.
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