Ir is by no means easy to know how far we should carry the principle of respecting national prejudices. A century ago this species of courtesy was rudely and generally neglected. The British were sinners above all other nations in this respect. They travelled on the continent and took a perverse pleasure in hurting the feelings of the subjects of the foreign potentates and the citizens of foreign republics. They had at their command a rich vocabulary of offensive epithets with which they delighted to bespatter the customs and the institutions, the manners and the morals, of those who had not the happiness to be born under the shadow of the Union Jack. there no possibility of striking a reason. able balance between "too much stiff-in refusing and too much easiness in admitting" the two principles—Ist, that there is something to be learned from everybody; and 2nd, that we have to respect the feelings of weak brethren We all know how a nervous invalid, a baby, or oven a pet poodle, may become the tyrant of a household, and if we once begin making concessions to an inferior race, they will see indications of irresolution and use every means they can to make us pay for our weakness in yielding the first point. To localize these remarks is unfortunately only too easy. We are at this moment paying for the weakness of the British Oouaul who first allowed the Chinese to obtain Their charter was to bully and bluster whenever they could do so with impunity. The lower classes befouled foreigners with torrents of unsavoury adjectives, and the higher ranks, though more decorous in speech, were equally unreasonable in their opinions and rooted in their antipathies. 'The letters of our great grandfathers' time which occasionally come to light in the biographies of the Georgian era, reveal amidst a general coarsenoes of manners an ugly stain of prejudice against the natives of those lands from which "the streak of silver sea" divides us. The national character is largely chargeable with these blemishes, and the ignorance of the epoch must also bear a share of the blame. There is some truth in Emersou's remark a footing in the Settlement; and every year we spend here we shall see reason to rue the folly of the policy which was so apt at making concessions and 80 careless of the future of a great city community.
At the time we are writing, we hear and see in our streets a practical illustration of the folly of this spirit of weakness. he Chinese are allowed to enjoy themselves during their annual holiday; and if their enjoyments did not assume a form which is alike objectionable and dangerous, no one would venture to complain. But we aver that the discharge of crackers and noisy fireworks in streets thronged with horses and pedestrians, is a prac-fise which any save legislation would discountenance. The same remark that "every Englishman is an island nnd ata time when few people except the wealthy ever left their own country, very wide sympathy with the denizens of other lands could not be expected.
All this is now changed. Above all, the attitude of the official Englishman now is violently contrasted applies to the lighting of large fires in the thick of groups of wooden houses, but it is in vain to urge these objections against an Altruist. The reply is in effect the same as that given by the Municipal Policeman to the Huglish Resident who asked him to silence some crackers that were breaking the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.