Ir is curious that, notwithstanding the manifest improvement in the sources whence the Pall Mall Gazette derives its knowledge of affairs in China, it should still persist in sticking to the fanciful. It is however too anxious, or too sanguine, with respect to "progress" in the far East, to allow an opportunity of using the talismanic word to slip. It has just now, for instance, found out a great instance of progress, in the establishment of the Chinese Mercantile Steam Navigation Ca. Now, our own attitude towards that Company is one of perfect friendliness. We were in fact the first tabid it speed. But we must confess we are not prepared to look upon it as altogether so progressive an institution as the Pall Mall thinks. Driven by the hard logic of facts to see how firm is the hold foreign methods have taken in the Flowery Land, there are not wanting retrogressionists who, of two evils choosing the least, are desirous of fighting foreigners with their own weapons. If it were possible to run foreigners off the coast and rivers by fair competition, the end would be as well accomplished as by force. In either case, with the departure of the last foreigner, the old regime would come in, and the intermediate instruments could be laid aside. Now while we welcome the introduction of the Chinese mercantile flag, it would be folly to ignore the fact that ideas such as we have sketched out, have much to do with the one piece of progress undertaken by the Chinese. For one thing, the official nature of the so called Mercantile Company is too glaring. The mercantile classes have, we believe, little or nothing to do with it, and the whole affair has something too artificial about it to be accepted as a genuine instal. ment of progress. We do not, for one moment, mean to imply that it may not eventually lead to a sounder advance. It is good to see officials taking a lead, and we would Jike to see non-officials following; but the lead should be, in frankly adopting an improvement as such, whereas we fear there is, here, an arridre pense of using it for its own extinction. Its projectors have made no secret that their object is to ran foreigners off the coast, and that they intended to work the vessels by natives and in their own way. Perhaps this might, from one point of view, be called pure patriotism; but we regret to see in it a stronger tinge of the old principle of exclusiveness, and a despairing effort to uphold it. Perhaps the Pall Mall will believe that they intend to progress in another direction, by reforming the Chinese language. For it is an interesting fact that the accounts of the company are, we believe, kept in English, and that that language figures on their bills of lading. We hardly think, however, that the Chinese officials interested in the present venture contemplate so complete a linguistic change as that advocated by the Japanese Ambassador at Washington, as a probable corollary of the introduction of steamers on their coast. Only the Chinese lan-garage does not lend itself readily to new ideas, and the managers have found themselves unexpectedly obliged to uso foreign details, to a certain extent, in working their foreign ships.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.