'A wave of anti-missionary excitement seems just now to be passing over Central China. Nearly four months ago, we mentioned the outbreak of riots in Szechuen, as a natural consequence of the promulgation, there, of the hostile effusion ascribed to the Literary Chancellor of the province. No effort was made by the local autho-ities to control these at the outset; nor have they since tried to check the persecution. We are told on good authority that some 600 houses have been pillaged or burnt, and some fifty converts killed in the neighbourhood of Chung-king, during the interval; and that the number of abusive placards which are in circulation give ground for apprehension that a more general outbreak may occur, unless orders are issued to the provincial authorities to do their duty and maintain order. The next serious manifestation has been in Anhwei, where nearly the whole section of the province south of the Yangtze seems to have been stirred up against the missionaries and their converts.
A horrible account has been given of the massacre of a priest at Ning-kwo, during the celebration of mass, of brutal outrage perpetrated upon the body of another which lay in a coffin in the chapel, and of the murder and maltreatment of sundry of the converts who were assembled. All this ill-feeling is said to have been excited by the literati, under the guidance of a retired official, and to have been brewing for months under the eyes of the mandarins, who forbore to interfere, though they were warned of the pending trouble. Soldiers are said to have taken part in the final outrage, which gives colour to the farther report that a certain military mandarin was more or less a party to the crime. The districts of Kwang-te on the south-east, and Kien-teh on the south-west, of the province are alleged to have been also scenes of outbreak, in which much mission property has been destroyed. Besides these active demonstrations, we have heard from one place and another, from Wuchang to Shanghai, of placards abusing missionaries in connexion with the tail-cutting excitement. At the former place, an intelli gent literate informed the people that the hair cut off was tied to a tree and that within three days the people so clipped would inevitably die; that "the Bishop called away their souls, and by some mysterious process changed them into terrible soldiers, whom he could lead forth to battle against his enemies." We may pity the man who could concoct such a farrago of such intolerable nonsense; but it has an undoubted effect upon the populace, who are too ignorant to appreciate the absurdity.
The misfortune is that, as in the case of the Tientsin Massacre, when riots follow upon the dissemination of these falsehoods, only a few of those actually engaged are punished; and the literati and the retired officials, who devote themselves to working up the mischief, escape scot-free. No one doubts that Chen Kwo-jui's head ought to have fallen at Tientsin, even if the punishment were not carried higher; but circumstances prevented the French from exacting an adequate atonement for that outrage. There is nothing at
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.