September 5, 1904.]
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
young Chinese for evangelistic work in the interior, where they were to be launched without experience or guidance! The in- evitable would have followed; the Taiping | Rebellion with its horrors broken out with | the difference that it would have been con- vincingly traced to the instigation of the English missionaries. Such, and not the conversion to Christianity of China, would have been the demonstrable effect of Mr. DAVENPORT's notable sclieine.
It must not, however, be taken for granted that because "China from Within many foolish passages the whole book is to contains be lightly thrown away as rubbish on the midden heap. For the most part, as Mr. DAVENPORT half confesses, the outrages on common sense have been dictated by the home societies, and are pretty evenly divided amongst the various bodies; but the work goes on--and why? Buddhism and Confucianism are empty titles in China. The salt has lost its savour.
the mildest, is in certain communities, as in the Falklands, becoming a curse. The writer has seen many wrecks of humanity brought about in the United States by the coffee habit. The man who has learnt statecraft from actual experience under stands the difficulty of seeking to repress by legislative measures any of these, and instinctively feels that repression leads to worse excess in other directions. It is only amongst the ignorant or the fanatical: that we find such attempts made. The very instruments made use of to repress such natural cravings are found to be them selves the most addicted to the practices they are called on to destroy; and the too j frequent issue is the demoralisation of the entire body politic. Our own royal SOLOMON Sought by his celebrated "Counter blast "
to repress the smoking of tobacco in England; as effectively does the dog bay at the moon from generation to generation.
So far does Mr. DAVENPORT carry his reader with him. His weakness is showu when, having charged through the ranks of and a conflict wherein peoples of varying Europe, seasoned by a millennium of wars, the enemy, he essays to take on himself their armour and methods. He makes an fell almost like an avalanche on China, and de- race had come one after another to the front, active and brilliant onslaught on the verymanded admission; rusted by disuse, China's shallow and self-compromising Memorial presented in 1902 by the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade to the late Lord SALISBURY, then Prime Minister; which Memorial, evidently through false representations, was unfortunately signed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin. On the strength of it, Mr. DAVEN- PORT takes a tilt at the missionaries.
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more potent factor than doctrine humble priest, the literati, nay, the entire of the ruling hierarchy, found the foundations of their powers rudely disturbed. Their appeal, like that of the hangers-on of the temple of the appeal was the strongest evidence of the DIANA. was to the great unwashed. Indirectly national want. cannot be repressed by force. To remove at Such national movements this eleventh hour the missionary would be to take away the only influence able to control the movement. It would be as medical man, because certain of the super- insensate as in time of plague to banish the stitious object to the isolation of the infected.
remedy. Unable to comprehead the move- This is, however, Mr. DAVENPORT's great ment in China, which characteristically he sees only from the official side, he would have the missionaries baggage to Africa, where the people, he remove bag and truly adds, desire Christianity, but in default are ready to become Mohammedan. side of a thesis, Mr. DAVENPORT closes his Like many other theorista who see only one
the missionary propaganda is only the eyes to the fact that the movement, of which outward sigo, is really spontaneous, or could not have attained the depth or superficial dimensions it occupies. The removal of the force of the stream. missionaries would in no sense diminish the banked and well-ordered river, the absence From being an em of control would convert it into a destruc- What that means in China, let the history of the closing days of eruption indicate. the Mings and the more recent Taip'ing
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In any case Jesus, with more knowledge of human nature than is exhibited by Mr. sion of the Jews of his day, | DAVENPORT, points out of the sins of omis. ye to have done; and not to have left the These ought other uudone." Increased exertion in Africa for faint-hearted withdrawal in China. could in no sense be held as a compensation
CHINESE CURRENCY REFORM (11).
arms broke in her nerveless hands. Dim tradi- tion kept alive indeed the memory of former greatness, but it was but a memory at best. Real warfare had assumed the outer aspect of mere posturing. The barbarian was to be frightened by the antics of the stage, the display of banners and the imitated howling|tive torrent. of wild beasts. The people themselves were As a fact, which he is unable to com- disuse had had its usual effect, and the by no means a nation of cowards, but long prehend in its fullness, missionaries are power of organisation and the instinct of in China because the Chinese would bave national defence had been lost. It was use- them there, exactly as merchants here because the Chinese needed their indeed exist, but they had been so overlaid less to look within. Treatises on war did wares and would trade whatever were the by the corruptions of centuries and the glosses opposing obstacles. The two things are of mere scholars, that the most formidable mutually interlocked, and по power on earth, be it ever so far reaching, can inter- banners with difficulty carried by the weapons of offence consisted of larger fere effectually to repress a national instinct. soldiers, who for defence carried nothing Mr. DAVENPORT in various chapters des- more formidable than great wicker shields cribes the different classes of missionaries painted in brilliant colours to who have penetrated to the various regions the enemy by the presentment of savage of the earth, Jewish, early Christian, tigers, Tactics were Buddhist, Mohammedan, and the celebrated weapons, and the highest aim of the general OR a level with
(Daily Press, 3rd September.) 16th century Roman missions in China; he in command was an ambush, in the cutting Chinese currency is going on steadily, and The movement for the reform of the even describes the imaginary Buddhistic off by treachery of a few stragglers. missionaries, who he fancies, from some
there are not wanting signs of progress remote resemblance of the ruins at Palengue to whom were they to turn?
The people at large felt the indignity, but such as justify the hope that the question to Indian topes, to have been Buddhistic. ment, in the hands of a bigotted and im- Peking correspondent of the N.-C. Daily The Govern- will not again be indefinitely shelved. The It is in accordance with his other conclusions practical literati, was unable to save itself. News, writing on the subject on the 11th that all these have been markedly superior The secret of self-control had been lost to ultimo, says: "Perhaps no Commission sent in their ways to those of the nineteenth China, but clearly survived amongst these out by a foreign Government has had a century; our present-day missionaries do formidable Westerners, who were clearly more cordial reception in Peking, been more not appear to realise that China was opened actuated by some to them by earthly warfare. Considering tradition pointed to some such period in own nationality, or been given a fairer common bond. Dim heartily supported by the Minister of its it a case of adding insult to injury, the China, and that was associated with the hearing than the Chinese strongly resented their efforts to ascendancy of the Buddhist Church. Simi- which exists by virtue of the invitation of present Commission, evangelise the people; "they did not under- larly, however, they differed amongst them- the Chinese Government. The time is stand why barbarians who could not dis-selves. These Westerners had a common limited for conference, and the bad roads tinguish between Tan and Li should
and persistent mins have tended to prevent presume to teach them Tanli, unless from
the attendance of officials from distact parts some underlying sinister motive; or why
of the city. the robbers should be so anxious to improve
to see so many high officials attend sɔ many It is certainly most unusual the morality of the robbed." They had not
meetings, and brave wind and weather in fact studied the Tsu-erh-chi, but had
almost daily, to listen to and take part in taken the irregular mode of climbing over the fence into the sheepfold without the
marking on the difficult nature of the task difficult financial discussions." After re- indispensable key of the Wadean Pekingese teacher, or delaying till their intellects had
of the Chinese monetary system où a scien- to be undertaken, namely the reorganisation become obfuscated through his inane repeti-
tific basis, the correspondent goes on to tions. Fur otherwise should have been the method. His method has at least the sionary came to be a political factor. First in Chinese history, and something which Unconsciously the mis-say-"The whole scheme is revolutionary method of originality; our readers may from judge of its probable efficiency. It was to to;
mere curiosity he listened has not been attempted for a milieunium. afterwards. BLS his ideal erect on the southern face of the island of to be more fully recognised, men came to of the present system there can be no doubt. came That the Chinese are alive to the defects Hongkong, "far away from the seductions him for instruction. of the seaport," schools and colleges. Here leads to reaction; the craft was in danger, system, presented by Professor Jexxs has Action inevitably They are thoroughly dissatisfied. The the missionaries sixty years ago, setting to and all the elements of obstruction were obtained the approval of the leading mone- one side the arm of flesh, would have trained called into being. Self-interest is ever a tary experts of the world, and if China
bond in their reverence for Christianity. In China modern Buddhism had. like her modern government, fallen into the hands of a set of lazy, degraded drones. The Christian missionary taught on the other hand the essential doctrine of the strenuous life.
China had for centuries taught the tenets of Emperors, literati, and priests in quietism, and what had been the result? The conclusion was inevitable that herein lay the essential difference between China and the West.
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