An occasional correspondent sends us the following items o above Settlement—The new Club, ea 50,000 roubles, when at once arises—it is to missionaries as a body that this is chiefly due. It is utterances like those of the Friend of China which make our cause unpopular in England, and hamper the action of Government.
'A great many missionaries are far better informed than those whom the Friend of China repre and know that, whatever responsibility with regard to opium may have lain upon England in the past, she certainly was not guilty of introducing it; that English merchants in China are now rarely concerned in the trade, and. still more rarely wish its extension. But the mass of people at home are not well informed on these points, and are too prone to be misled by the plausible and one-sided writings of which the Friend is an example. Lil-natured people might suggest that their authors are glad to put upon opium the onus of their ill success in converting the heathen, and to throw upon merchants a blame which belongs to their own system. We do not find that Roman Catholic Missionaries trouble us with tirades against opium dealing. They of course disapprove of opium. smoking, as we do; and they manage to combat the evil among their cou-verts effectually but silently, without abusing the merchants for " wholesale poisoning" with which, as a body, these have nothing whatever "to do—and for which, at any rate, the Chinese who buy and smoke the drug are more blamable than they who import it. To repeat the parallel we drew yesterday, we do not ask that whiskey stills should be suppressed, nor wine-merchants nor, atop Chinese public gambling thus depriving the late police master of the enormous. revenue he drew from this source during the previo administration, Admiral Eardmann i fact, a man who will pnt up with no squeezing, has the interests of the place at heart, and in the short time he hi been here lias done much to improve and to put down old abuses.—Lant year, upwards of sixty versals entered (his port with SCimdon, and St. Petersburg' direct, eral cargoes from China, Ham-
jen of our Our correspondent rays, there in not about. The abi your to date only 49. In port,—R MoNe for Hiogo; albatross and Swlacia, for Swatow; Nawlilus, for Hongkong. No rain yet, and the country is awfully dry. Every day strong winds, not always from the same quarter, but always stra Although there is hardly any tonnage port, pulse, oil and cake keep very hi Manufactures have gone on selling well are carrying out the old Kuoln" (moving) A owes B Tls. 1,000, and passes it on to C, &e., &e., and finally A may get a bill at a low exchange, or perhaps a few shoes of sycee by paying a premium sub rosa, That sort of barter pi ly pays exporters when produce is not quite so dear.
'9th May.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.