Our Peking correspondent touches on a matter which has been veiled as carefully from the public as are the secrets even of Peking diplomacy. Yet it is the public who are most interested in both Peking negociations and the Woosung—tramway and it is in public support that the greatest strength would be found if the managers, in either case, would invite that aid. We do not believe in secrecy; more is generally lost by it than "is gained; and very certainly popularity, which is no mean source of strength, has been lost in both the cases we have named. The reticence of the British Legation has become a bye-word, till the question whether it still exists is" common irony. The Community do not write to Peking, because experience has shown them they get no answer. Peking works—if it does work—in the dark, and loses the light of popular comment and the support of popular sympathy; and we need only refer to the discussion evoked at the Ratepayers' meeting in 1878, to prove how utterly a project which should enlist public support, met with repulsion because it came forward darkly. Peo. ple thought a mine was being sprung upon them, in regard to the Honan Road bridge and Hongkew Creek bunding, and utterly declined the project. Even this year, now the motive is better understood, the vote would have been carried by a narrow majority had a poll been taken; indeed we fancy the bund would have been hardly voted at all, if it had been dissociated from the bridge.
And it now seems that the parent scheme—that of a line to Woosung—is ata dead-lock for want of funds, froma precisely similar reason. For how could fands be expected if they were not asked? Who has been invited to subscribe? To whom are subsoriptions to be paid? We know the land is foreign-owned,—and the standpoint therefore is gained; but who are promoting the Company? What money is wanted? Who, in short, knows anything definitely about the project? We heard Shanghai necused the other day of slowness, lack of enterprise, and a dozen other similar faults, because this line could not get made. The remark seemed to us utterly unjust, inasmuch as Sbanghai has never been asked to saake it. Let a competent Board of Directors be named, a capital sum fixed, bankers appointed, the whole thing properly advertised, and tenders for scrip invited and we believe there would be a very good chance of getting the money; even in these days of bad silk, in. flated teas, depressed shares, smashed piece goods, and general impecuniosity. We respect the delicacy about nomencloture; call it the Woosung Tramway Company; but let the scheme be put in some shape before it is given up, or before even people in England are told that Shanghai will not contribute a quota towards it. We repeat, Shanghai has never been asked. The day when two or three large houses would have taken up the project and divided the capital among them, has gone. The community is larger, interests are more divided, and collections have to be made in hundreds or tens of hundreds, instead of in thousands or tens of thousands. The existing public companies had to recognise this fact, when they or several of them reduced their shares from thousand-tael to hundred-tael scrip. But such a project as the one in question need not rely on Shanghai alone. Capitalists at home would willingly subscribe to introduce, to the Chinese, a model of a system from whose adoption and extension so much is hoped. Only two years ago, certain gentlemen were anxious to, give the Emperor of China a railway, in order to make a start. That project was a mistaken one; but they might surely be persuaded to subscribe the £50,000 they were willing to sink in that present, towards the capital of amnch more practical scheme. We may rest assured that Chinese Mandarins will not, of their own accord, inaugurate railways in China daring the present generation. Neither would there now have. been a single steamship in Chinese waters, if we merely had described the kind of vessel and urged them to purchase specimens. We were wiser in those days, and did better; we introduced them. The Chinese first shied at, next tried, and ended by buying and using them. The Chinese Merchants' Steam Navigation Company is a first result of the example set; and we may rely that steam carriages will have to be introduced to them precisely as we introduced steam ships. The projected Woosung tramway is a very good and practicable opportunity of showing quietly what sort of work a railway could do. It is said people come from Soochow to ride in a foreign carriage, and to see foreign roads. They would come from Nanking to ride in carriages running on rails, and the fame of the road would spread far and wide, and prepare the way for more extensive undertakings.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.