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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
tions of the country, extremely doubtful if it were even feasible. Lake Nicaragua is a sheet of water at a considerable elevation above sea level in a country which is the habitual play-ground of earthquakes: it is not a thing without precedent that lakes have been drained by the sudden opening by subterranean forces of passages for the escape of the waters above-sea level. Even a slight fissure might result in such a cataclysm. Elevated locks under the best of circumstances are unstable things, and a slight subsidence might undo the work of years. These dangers would be reduced to a minimum in the case of the Panama Canal; first, on account of the lower eleva- tion of the contained water; and second, because the land, so far as the experience of four centuries telle, is less subject to subterranean movements.
in favour of certain measures of reform are hollow and insincere. It is to be feared that there is only too much grou: d for such a belief. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, the leopard his spots, or the Chinese mandarin his hatred of change. Any reforms ever introduced into the Central Kingdom will have to come from the out- side; the few real reformers there are in China are neither sufficiently powerful nor sufficiently persistent to move the vast mass of official inertia or set in motion any pro- gressive measures. Whether the influence of those Chinese who have travelled and who recognise the superior merits of most of the Western institutions and customs | will ever suffice in any appreciable degree to leaven the public opinion-such as exists in China or dissipate the clouds of ignor- ance and prejudice which still obscure the vision of the Celestial, time alone can decide. But the weight of evidence certainly seems to indicate that whatever the Chinaman of one generation learns or acquires is lost or frittered away by the next. Reforms are past hoping for while the Chinese bow their neck to the Manchu yoke; but, it may not unieasonably be asked, would they prove much more teachable if placed in other leading strings?
THE PANAMA CANAL.
(Daily Press, 24th July.) One of the main difficulties in the path of the foreign student of American institutions is to formulate an opinion on the course likely to be adopted by the Senate on any particular business coming before Congress. In this particular the relations of the two Houses have undergone a conspicuous change. Time was, and not so many years ago, when the Senate, above the influence of merely party issues, and unswayed by personal motives, was looked upon as the saviour of the State against the often hasty and generally perfervid legislation of the Lower Chamber. Nowadays it more fre- quently falls to the lot of the House to discuss with temper and judgment the high political issues brought before it; while the Senate too frequently permits itself to be taken off the track by the momentary issues of the day, to the detriment of the public service in general. The recent action of Congress has thus come to be a matter of surprises; and perhaps in no particular is this more marked than in those important issues which deal with the relations of the United States with what we as Europeans and Englishmen are wont to call the Far East. The unexpected and capricious action of the Senate in rejecting the Oceanic Canal treaty of President McKINLEY, and afterwards accepting that negotiated by President ROOSEVELT, is a case in point; but the Panama Isthmian Canal has since its first inception been a thing of surprises, and not the least of these is the last. If there were one thing, wost people thought, that would occur when the new-fangled scheme to buy up the interests of the Panama Canal Company came before the Senate, it was that it would be indignantly rejected. Yet there was very much to be said in favour of the proposal. In the first place the price at which it was offered, only forty million dollars, was tempting, the work had cost nearly four times the amount, and though that was ro criterion of its actual value, the work had proceeded already so far that the completion had left the region of speculation and had become a matter for sober estimating. In the second place the Nicaragua scheme was altogether founded on speculative estimates; it was, in view of the volcanic condi-
ay,
[July 28, 1902.
BOXERISM IN CHINA.
(Daily Press, 25th July.)
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Boxerism appears to be far from defunct in China notwithstanding the blow Fit received in the North on the occupation of the capital and various districts of Chibli and Shantung by the Treaty Powers. This fanatical organisation is only scotched, not killed. It continues to receive the secret sympathy and possibly support of many of the Chinese officials. There is still a great deal of partly smothered discontent in the Northern provinces, and it is regularly fed and fostered by the misrepresentations about foreigners and the foreign religion made by the literati and some of the more. anti-foreign of the officials. Not only is the foreigner compelled to bear the opprobrium of being the direct cause of increased taxa- But even laying aside these accidental |tion, but he is credited with having inspired circumstances, there seems little doubt that all the severities dealt out to rebels and the permanent water level of the lake is Boxers by the imperial soldiery, when undergoing a secular change, and the water repressing disorders. The house tax now is gradually assuming a lower level. Even being collected is alone sufficient justifica- at present the lake is reported as by notion for widespread discontent. The means too deep for its intended use, and payment of the Foreign Indemnity has been further sinking would necessitate a new made the pretext for a levy which is most series of excavations. It is true that the oppressive. In Kiangsu the assessment for lake offers a through route some three or this tax amounted to Tls. 2,500,000 per four hundred miles shorter than the canal annum, at which rate, if spread over the from Colon to Panama, but the time whole Empire, it could be made to pay the necessarily lost iu surmounting the higher Indemnity, principal and interest, in from elevation, and the time spent in passing the fifteen to twenty years. The people kick more numerous locks, would more than against this impost, and it may be necessary compensate for the shortened route. Seen to reduce it to prevent riots, but even if then from an engineering point of view, the collected, it would, after the enormous cost advantages seem to be all in favour of the of collection, melt down into a very moderate Panama line. The disadvantages of the amount. The larger the sum raised in shorter canal would seem to be the greater Chinn the greater the opportunities for initial cost; but after all, in view of the plunder, and the more daring the squeezes absence of any means of making even an to which the revenue is subjected. Mean- approximate estimate of the lake route, and time the incidence of the Indemnity is freely the absolutely incalculable expense of taken advantage of to lay at the door of the, making good subsequent mishaps, this may much traduced foreigner the necessity for be set aside as at best an uncertain the levy of new taxes. The ignorant natives, quantity. On the whole, as has often not unnaturally connecting the increased happened in the past, second thoughts are taxes with foreign invasion, lose sight of likely to be best. The world at large, the events which conduced to bring about however hardly it, thought of the at best that invasion and the garrisoning of certain very questionable methods with which the points, and only remember that foreign early efforts of the promoters of the scheme troops are in possession of certain important were advanced, will very gladly see a bold cities and positions. scheme carried out in a manner which will So far the Boxer agitation has not ven. afford some slight recompense for the hard-tured to lift its head anew in Shantung and ships undergone by its first promoters; and Chihli; tl e recollection of some stern lessons would not be unwilling to see, however has not quite been lost, but they will soon tardily, some justice done to the memory of fade unless rigorously kept within sight. In Baron LESSEPS.
Szechuen, which province lies far to the west of the Empire, and is practically remote from the seat of Government, there has been a renewal of outrages on a truly shock- ing scale. From particulars recently re- ceived from the Tzechou correspondent of our Shanghai morning contemporary, it seems that the last massacre by Boxers has been quite in keeping with the atrocities committed in 1900, According to this authority, & num- ber of outrages of different kinds had been perpetrated in the districts of Tzeyang and Chienchou, between Tzechou and the capital, Chengtu, in one of which several Roman Catholics had been killed, but the climax was reached on the 12th ultimo, when the Methodist Episcopal Mission at Tien-ku- chiao was destroyed by a large band of Boxers. The attack was made at midnight and on three sides of the buildings. The Mission was of course speedily carried, and in a short space of time the church and houses were a blazing pile, and the occupants at the mercy of the rioters. No less than seven of the inmates, thus rudely roused from their slumbers, were butchered on the spot, and the preacher in charge, an old man, was most barbarously done to death. He was first beheaded, his hands and feet
The plea that there may be difficulties of title connected with the purchase of the Canal works is hardly worth considering where the United States are themselves the purchasers. The Government of President ROOSEVELT is hardly likely to admit bogus claims, and as the old Company is prac- tically bankrupt, the governments concerned will not be exceeding the ordinary legal rights assumed daily in granting full discharges, and acknowledging the new rights conferred. It would be verging on the ridículous were the United States to permit the Columbian Government to arrest by any overt act the completion of a work in which all the nations of the world are interested. So far as England is concerned, the adoption of one or other route bas passed out of the region of politics; and any right of ob truction has by the recent treaty been formally waived. This does not, however, apply to the rights of Britishers to friendly comment, and as we are one and all anxious that the work should be brought, to a speedy termination, we may be permit- ted to congratulate the States as well as ourselves on the recent decision of the Senate.
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