Ir is some nine months since the Peking Gazette recorded, with complacent utterance, the horrible barbarities perpetrated by the Chinese troops after the surrender of Manns; how the garrison were eventually driven by want of food to capitulate to the besiegers, who thereupon massacred every able-bodied man, their leaders alone being reserved for execution "by the extreme of torture." The case was one which might well have called forth from European powers, which continue to treat China as a friendly and civilised nation, the indignant protest which was addressed to Turkey with regard to the cruelties in Bulgaria and would have justified the heartiest wish that the Russians would aid in expelling the Chinese, "bag and baggage," from the Mahomedan territory which they were trying to overrun. Bat there has been a remarkable wish to deal tenderly with China, of late. Somebody once started the idea that, if the present effete dynasty were overthrown, a condition of anarchy would ensue, which would not only entail misery upon the country, but be advanitegeous to foreign commerce; and eversiuce than Western statesmen have been afraid of shaking the fragile throne, lest it should be overthrown, We'are glad to see, however, that a protest has come—though it be from " Power whose utterances are always suspected of hidden political design. The Goyernor-General of Russian Turkestan has addressed to the Viceroy of Kansah an energetic protest against the cruelties and the treachery of his generals, "It la well-known to you," writes General Kanffman, "that the detachment under the orders of General Kinshun wns occupied during two months, last autumn, iv besieging the town of Manas. The Chinese forces were repulsed in several assaults; and it was not until the General promised a full amnesty that the inhabitants of the town, with the chief at their head, consented to capitulate. The commander of the detachment did not keep to his word as a trae soldier, and after the Chinese troops had occupied Manas, more than 1,500 Davgans, as well us women and children, were basely massacred. Such acts of cruelty and treachery are unworthy of the Commander-in of great power, and cannot but impress most unfavourably the people which the Chinese Government is desirous to bring under its authority. Sach terrible cruelty can only result in the total depopulation of the country, and must without doubt seriously compromise the interests of China herself." The General goes on to request that the Chinese Viceroy will take measures to prevent the repetition of such atrocities, and says It is the duty of a "soldier to fight the enemy who offers "armed resistance, not to slay the un-"armed population, or women and "children." Perhaps General Kautfmann is not the man from whom we had preferred to see this protest emanate, But the Chinese may rest assured that the language expresses the feeling of all civilised peoples. What we wrote in commenting on Mr. Davenport's description of the condition of Yiionan—that the massacre of every human being seems to be, to Chinese rulers, the highest conception and result of victory—is justified by every step of the present campaign, from the mas-sacro which followed the capture of Sulchow to the similar atrocities which ensued upon the tuking of Manas, General Kanfimann speaks: truth, in adding to his protest in the name of humanity, that such proceedings must be hurtful even to the interests of China herself. They can, in fact, only intensify the hatred between the two races, instead of tending to preserve the peace which we take it to be the object of the present campaign to secre. As we have remarked more than once in writing upon the subject, it is notorious that, even among leading Chinese statesmen, the war is far from popular; the drain of men and money, at a time when the Empire can ill afford it, to districts remote from the border of China proper, is viewed with jealousy and dislike. But there is this to be said for the policy which has hitherto prevailed, For a sories of generations, China has been liable to invasion by the half-nomad Mahomedan tribes on her North-west frontier. It is only a dozen years since, joined by their ce-religionists of Kansuh and Shensi, these invaders succeeded in penetrating even within the metro. politan province; and the distress which has since prevailed in these districts is due in great measure to the devastation then wrought. The idea, therefore, of repelling as far as possible from their border the elements of this invasion; of establishing, as it were, an outlying camp by obtaining control over districts beyond the border; and of even scotching the snake in its nest, by carrying the war into-Kashgaria, was not 60 unnatural. The folly and the cruelty lie in such proceedings as those denounced by General Kauffmann, which can only intensify the enmity which true statesmanship would endeavour to allay; which tend to create a desert where the® survivors cannot live; and which must tend therefore, for both reasons, to produce a recoil of the wave directly the repellent pressure is withdrawn. In both senses, therefore, on the ground of impolicy as well as of inknmanity, the language of General Kanffmann's emphatic protest will be emphatically endorsed.
SHEN PAO-CHEN versus ROADS.
Tue Viceroy Shen Pao-chen bids fair to attain a world-wide reparation. Men with the power and the will to tear up a railroad in spirit of sheer sulkiness, are not to be meet with every day; and the fact that a Chinese Mandarin has been found to do this will be cited as a curious fact in the history of railway enterprise and of Chinese eccentricity. The news may be received at first with some incredulity, as it will scarcely seem possible to Western minds that a man considered fit for the important post of Governor-General of three provinces should commit such an act of ridiculous folly; but the Western mind has yet to learn the length, depth and breadth of Mandarin obstructiveness, Roads are no insignificant standard of civilisation. The desire for means of com. munication is one of the first symptoms of a people's emergence from the stage in which they are content to grow enough grain on the spot where they were born, to sustain lifo until it is time to dio; and this latter is the condition la which Shen Pao-chen and those like him would wish to keep the Chinese peasant. Good roads imply a greater degree of enterprise on the part of rulers, and of organ isation in the system of Govern. ment, than have yet been disclosed in China. Some former Emperors have appreciated the value of good com. munications, for the remains of excellent roads are to be seen in some districts of Northern China; but they would seem to have been created by the energy of individuals, and to have been let fall into disrepair when the exceptional impulse was removed. Good roads imply some conception of political economy. It needs that the advantage to be derived by the whole body politic, from the application of the' resources of the whole to the developement of the country, should be appreciated; but this idea does not seem to have dawned upon the Chinese, any rate as bearing upon roads, If the foot-path—for Chinese roads are no better—between Shanghai and Loonghwa wants mending, why the people of the neighborhood must mend it, Whom else does it concern P—oxcept indeed the petty officials, to whom it affords an additional opportunity of squeezing. The Tactai—how can he be expected to make or improve com. munications? Ho holds his post only for three years, and his object in purchasing it was to make as much as possible out of it. Why should he lessen his gains for the benefit of hia successors and of posterity? Besides, he would earn the reputation of an innovator, and be looked upon with jealousy by his comrades, as a man who sought to disturb the existing stagnation.
Still, even if the intelligence and enterprise necessary to make roads be lacking, one might have conceived an intermediate stage between civilisation and its antipode, when people would appreciate having roads made for them. And to do the mass of the Chinese people justice, we believe they hare
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.