Few things are exciting more curiosity in China at the present moment, than the extraordinary delay in the pub. lication of Mr. Grosvenor's report on the Yunnan Mission, and of Sir Thomas Wade's promised memorandum upon the Chefoo Convention, It is now more than a year since Mr. Grosvenor left for England, and nearly nine months since Sir Thomas Wade announced, on leave-taking, that he would hand to the British Consul, for publication, a memorandum explaining the view of our treaty rights which had guided him in framing the Convention. Yet neither of the expected documents have seen the light. The delay is not with Mr. Grosvenor. The Government have admitted over and over again that his report is in their hands, when throwing the onus of delay upon Sir Thomas Wade, for whose promised memorandum they are always waiting when asked to explain the reason of delay in publi tion, But-even this explanation, which seemed natural enough at first, is cease ing now to meet the difficulty. Tt was not unnatural that Sir Thomas Wade should change his mind, and resolve' to address his memorandum to the Government, instead of to the British: Consul at Shanghai; nor that he should conclude to elaborate it somewhat under the changed conditions. -Nor was: it unnatural that the Government should prefer to publish both reports under one cover. But it is not credible that. Sir Thomas can have been incubating for eight months, a document which he had drawn up before ho left Shanghai; nor, even if we could suppose this possible, is it likely that the Government would persistently hold back Mr. Grosvenor's report, in face of repeated calls. for it in the House, pending Sir Thomas' extraordinary delay? Woe are driven, then, to surmise, with our correspondent Questor, that one or both..of these documents is so distasteful to the Foreign Office that an effort la being made to burke them or' to have them recast in a more satisfactory form. The silence maintained is so complete that we are driven to the rankest guess-work for an explanation of the mystery; but certainly, the guess we have hazarded commends itself as the most natural inter. pretation. If Sir Thomas Wade's report were not necessary to put a better face on. Mr. Grosvenor's. report, why the delay of nearly " year in publishing the latter And unless on the supposition that Sir Thomas Wade's report is unsatisfactory, bow explain the nonappearance of this document also? It is ramoured that both the points which the Convention reserved for the decision of the English Government, viz., Lekin and opium, are objected to; and we might suppose it was the difficult task of placing a satisfactory" inter pretation upon these concessions was occupying Sir Thomas Wade's pen—if ie were not that Mr. Grosvenor's report is reserved as firmly as his chief's.
In the meantime, an important feature of the Convention seems to remain unfulfilled. We gather from Home papers that the ceremony of presenting the letter of regret has not yet been fulfilled; so that it is possible the nature of the reparation exacted may be also a ground of dissatisfaction, although it was generally understood that the Government had telegraphed its approval of the leading features of the Convention before the document itself was published in Shang. hai.—All these things, however, as we said at the outset, are still mysteries. All we can see is that the whole course of Chinese affairs seems at a deadlock, Documents relating to transactions more than a year old are yet -unpublished. The decision of -the English Government in regard to a Convention entered into more: than year ago, is not yet uttered.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.