Mr. Mepuursr, in his work on the Foreigner in Far Cathay, a volume worthy to rank with that excellent series " Small Books on Great Subjects," has drawn the attention of his readers to a very noteworthy point in our past policy in China. We mean the fact that the Western Powers have always stopped short of the point necessary to secure the conditions of permanent peace. It is to repeat an old story to adduce the facts which corroborate this statement, but we may briefly remind the reader who is not an old China Hand, that we spared Canton and its authorities when Captain Elliot had it at his mercy, after the seizure of the Opium, and instead of punishing the City which was really guilty, we proceeded instead to attack towns far away, finally stopping short at the Southern Capital, instead of carrying our arms northward and dealing with the enemy in Peking. In these early days we began the policy which we have continued to act upon. The Arrow war was a repetition of the blunder that we committed twenty years before, and when the Treaty of Tientsin was ratified we left the work unfinished, and so have given the Chinese an opportunity of representing our success as less decisive than it really was. By this action we have been really parties to most of the wrong-doing by which the Chinese people have suffered during late years. We demonstrated by our military and naval successes the weakness of the Rulers, heme we gave hopes of liberty to the Ruled, and afforded them. opportunities for risings which they were too ready to seize; whereas, had we forced the mandarins into such a position that they could not have pretended they were victors over the Barbarian, and made it a condition with them to devote themselves to the improvement of the masses of the people by introducing European inventions, making good roads, piercing mines and the like, then, we repeat, we should have had no dread of future wars, and we should have had the satis faction of knowing that the blood shed at Canton and at the other ports would be the seed of a better system of civilization, not an idle outpouring of life for a temporary purpose. The bane of our policy in the Middle Kingdom has been the pernicious habit of stopping short when one more blow would have gained all we desired. We have always, to quote a vulgar proverb, spoilt our ship from economy in the matter of a halfpenny worth of tar, Mr. Medhurst expresses this clearly when he says: " Both in the interest of China and in ours, had the earliest blow been struck home whilst.she was
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.