Tue despatch of a Chinese Embassy to permanently represent the Emperor of China at the English capital, marks a great change from the early days of our intercourse, when Foreign Envoys were regarded as tribute-bearing barbarians, and the possibility of the Solitary Man condescending to send a representative at all, much less to apologise for a. wrong, to the sovereign of a Western State, would have been scouted as monstrous. The improvement of our political relations with China and the extension of our intercourse may be slow, but it is at least steadily continuous. It is only eighty years ago that we read of a Dutch Embassy "brought to the capital like malefactors, treated when there like beggars, and sent back to Canton like mountebanks, to perform the three times three prostrations at all times and before everything their conductors saw fit; these on their part standing by and laughing at their embarrassment in making the evolutions in their tight clothes. They were not allowed a single opportunity to speak about business, which the Chinese never associate with an Embassy, but were entertained with banquets and theatrical shows, and performed many skilful evolutions themselves upon their skates greatly to the Emperor's gratification, and received moreover a present of broken victuals which had not only been honoured by coming from the Emperor's own table, but bore marks of his teeth and good appetite." It is only sixty years since Lord Amherst's Mission was summarily dismissed from the capital without an audience, because the Ambassador would not perform the kotow. The wars of 1842 and 1858, after which peace was dictated in, respectively, the Southern and Northern capitals, bad progressive effect in persuading the Chinese that the bar-parians bad at least the power to enforce, if they were not entitled to, respect; and subsequent events have come one after another, slowly, if often uneatisfactorily, to shake still farther their conviction of immeasurable superiority. After the massacre of Tientsin, the Peking Government had to send Chung-how on a mission of apology to France. Subsequently they had to admit the Foreign Ministers to an audience, the circumstances of which they did their best to narrow in public estimation, but which still abandoned the kotow, and was at least a step towards a recognition of equality. And now, after the Yunnan outrage, they have been required not only to send a Mission of apology to England, but to establish a permanent Embassy at the Court of St. James. Every attempt to repel foreign intercourse has led to its extension; every explosion of intolerance has obliged them to deacond one step farther from the pedestal of exclusivism and superiority upon which they imagined themselves to stand, And this time, the innovation has been a greater one than before not only is an official, well qualified by his rank and reputation to fill the post, appointed Ambassador to London, butte Rales for the guidance of foreign envoys which we publish elsewhere show that the late memorial of the Tsung-li Yamen in favour of the principle of foreign embassies, is not meant to remain dead letter. We have already learned the appointment of Consuls to New York and San Francisco, and the intention to send a Chinese Minister to Washington was also indicated. However unwillingly the Chinese have been persuaded to take these steps, and however unsatisfactory the causes that have led to their propulsion on the forward path, there can be no question that progress is implied. The men who consent to send high Mandarins as Ambassadors to England and America, have come to see things differently from those who guided the counsels of Hienfung, and encouraged him to direct the utter extermination of the barbarian brood. There is very much to be learned yet; but a much clearer appreciation of the relative position of Eastern and Western nations is very evidently dawning upon the more intelligent and influ. ential Chinese Statesmen; and the very steps that are being now taken can hardly fail to lead to further enlightenment.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.