Cuuxcnow's memorial on the Tievhow, a translation of which we reprint, today, from the Cycle, brings out in curious light the instincts of the party to which he belongs. The overweening pretensions of the Emperor appear in strange contrast with his inability to act; he is great enough to confer honour on the Queen of Heaven herself, but utterly unable to stir band or foot to aid the traders and fishers along the coast, whom he therefore hands over to the deity to look after, content, himself, with having conferred on her some honorific title. Nor is this all. Chunghow has discovered that foreign trade is advantageous; but, if we ox-amine his reasons for this conclusion, we find them based on the remarkable ground that thereby the Government of the Emperor is able to draw from abroad warlike stores of all sorts. That the originator and chief director of the Tientsin Arsenal should view with some degree of affection a trade so nearly allied with his own avocation, is perhaps natural; but it is difficult to understand, seeing that Chunghow has also been Superintendent of foreign trade for the Northern ports, how he should have failed to see any other be-refit to be derived. A feather shows how the wind blows, and the little memorial of Chunghow, a relation of the Emperor, and high up in the governmental party at Peking, displays, perhaps, better than the most elaborate do-cement, the inner feelings which actuated that party, There is, we fear, little to be expected from Rulers who, instead of encouraging their subjects to build better ships and make use of better apphanoes for sailing, content themselves with laudation of a superuataral being. Weallknow the story of the old man who prayed to Jupiter to get his cart out of the mud; the Chinese Government seems to be in much the same mood, except that, going beyond the old man, it sees in the delegation of its own daties little but an honour to be conferred on the deity herself. It isin fact the old story over again; while, in its last extremities, ib was begging and cntreating us to save it from the Taiping rebellion, itinwardly thought the honour of the request should be a sufficient reward, a position which it has not failed to maintain to the present moment now, since prayers to the lien how are cheaper and easier than the institution of a proper revenue and protective service along the coast, it does Uhat goddess the honour of ug her into the special graces of the Emperor, the Tientsze himself. Granting Chunghow's position of the actual existence of the Queen of Heaven, we cannot but suppose that that goddess might, after all this cry, turn, like Jupiter in the fable, rusty. She has certainly enough to do to manage her own affairs, without heingcalled on to clothe work which properly: belongs to the Tientsze, and might mirly say to him, "if you wish'the livesofyour subjects preserved, establish proper revenue system: encourage the people to build better ships, and learn the art of Navigation; fix lights on dangerous spots, and buoy out hidden jainnd-banks 5k ye in reserve to help your people in time of need; improve your harbours and do away with oppressive exactions; when you have done all this, which is but your duty, then come to me and ask me to do the rest; andI will willingly stretch out my hand to save your people in their last' distress." We should admire some such exhibition of faith as this, bat in its absence we greatly fear that the reverence of Chunghow for the Queen of Heaven is but another of those tawdry shams, thrown overjthe rotten fabric within.
There is another point to which we may draw attention. The Queen of Heaveu has, it seems, in one instance been kind, she has taken under her special protection one of the most oppressive abuses of China, namely the rice tribute to Peking. Ibis probably for this act of kivduess that Chunghow is so especially grateful. The evils of the system have been ably pointed out to the Government at Peking. Mr, Dick's notes some years ugo showed many of the political as well as economic evils of the system Chinese mandarins themselves have not been wanting, who saw the bardship caused without corresponding benefit, Payment in kind, by interfering with the free selling of commodities, is always the worst means of collecting tax; but in China, payment in kind, aggravated by the absurd regulations regarding the sale of rice and other crops, assumes a nature more pernicious than elsewhere. people in the producing provinces suffer through the constriction of their trade, while the troops and people in Peking, for whom the rice is intended, scarcely get their modicum, and that at the most extravagant cost. Officials like Chunghow may indeed fatten on the intermediate squeezes; but for the natives alarge and, we may add, for the Government at large, no move oppressive or ill-devised system could be desired. - It is for her aid to this trafic that the goddess owes the honour of a mention in Chunghow's memorial; and as Chunghow probably had some object in writing the paper, we may safely con clude that it was in its interests that it was penned. Men like Li and Ting have urged the employment of steamers to convey the rice tribute; others, with a wiser discrimination of the commercial spect of the question, have urged the continuance of the monetary commutation introduced during the Taiping troubles; both these measures would away with many of the abuses so dear to statesmen of the Peking type, so the Queen of Heaven is called, a8 a dens ex machine, to show her approval of a system vicious in the extreme but doubtless profitable to Chunghow and his official friends. Lest we should make any mistake in this matter, and should suppose that the interests of the people themselves influenced his ideas, Chunghow himself takes care inform us of his opinions. The traffic between the ports (the rice tribute), and the importation of foreign warlike stores, demand even greater attention than the industry of the people. That these are the real opinions of Chunghow and Ins party, we scarcely needed his plain statement to believe.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.