The Rev. J. Li. Davies has done good and serviceable philanthropical work before now both with his pen and his hands, It is therefore all the more to be regretted that the authority he has fairly earned, supported by the authority of an influential review (Contemporary for August), should eusureamong ill-informed personsamensure of respectful attention to the singular mixture of amiable imbecility a misrepresentation which constitutes his latent utterance. He must surely be ious for the suppression of the episcopal the House of Lords, else he gent that the score or sri pectable elderly clergymen to whom, by x curious survival from the dark still accorded, should sri legislation is ly meddle in ent of intern: ional questions, here is," ho says, parent indifference, on the part of these who should speak in behalf of the national ence, about the fulfilment of our Christian duty towards other countries" In no sense are the bishops of the church and the depositaries of the conscience of a nation made up of Jews, Cath our duty to other nations a Chi duty, except in so far as the term Chi be held to connate the hig!
"ment of honesty sud humanity.
Tt is uvedless to say that it doos not ale anything of the kind, Atall events, were the bishops to issue manifestoes upon every occasion for the exercise of the legislative or administrative conscience, their tenure of their present would speedily c-me to an end. Not that we desire to denounce the right of the in the House. Far from it, Probably no better means could be de keeping a number of fusay old gentlemen reasonably quiet. But th t Me, Davies's view. which he suggests tervention, is one which opium trade with the English nation, and not xt all a class of more or less reputable foreign traders, "began by ing opium into China." If this be trae is also true that we, that is, the English nation, and not at all a cines of criminals, were at the same time cutting throats, robbing on the highway, engaged in rape, adultery and every other nayinable contravention of the decay The Chinese Government, believing the use of opium to be pernicious, forbade the importation of it." The writer speaks as though the Chinese Government were a tangible entity like a western Government, and is ignorant of the fact, or ignor-s it, that out of the motley multitude that makes up that Govermment the majority are opium nakers, a majority think only of raising the largest possible revenue from the drug, and a certain number wink at the produetion of native opium on a rapidly increasing scale. We made war, not as Mr. Davies believes for the purpose of forcing opium down Chinese throats, but because our relations with China had become intolerable, and the destruction of a vast amount of British property furnished the protext wanted for inflicting punishment and asserting our position, Wo exacted indemnity it is true, partly perhaps " out of sheer rapacity," but chiefly because having courted war, the Chines thoroughly beaten at a game of choosing, were bound to pay the But the fact which, if we are to be just to ourselves, we must ever bear in mind is this, that had the opium question never arisen we must have had war. Let anyone who doubts this, look up the blue books Gontaining the correspondence between the Canton officials and the British representatives of these days. Twenty yours Inter came the second Chinese war, audaciously described as another opium-smuggling war. We have not space to criticise in detail Mr, Davies's view of the last war. We puss on to the assertion that there is evidence that if it were possible the uso of the drug would be prohibited in China as stringently as ever." The only evidence that Mr, Davies can adduce is that under the Chefoo Convention the English Minister was to move his Government to sanction an arrangement different from that affecting other imports." The evidence we would adduce is that enormous tracts of country are year by year brought under poppy cultivation, and that the sole unxioty visibly betrayed by the provincial authorities. in respect of opium, is to increase the income derivable from it. Tu the way of supporting the proposition either of the of evidence is as good as the other, The fundamental question whether opium is or is not an unmitigated curs the historical question as to the period and the mode of its first introduction into China, the economical and humanitarian question of the effects of a prohibition of poppy cultivation throughout India, along 1 multitude of others equally momentous are not even touched, nnd therefore presumably do not exist for Mr. Davies It la perhaps after all not ao absurd to recommend that whatever supernatural sagacity may distinguish the bishops would be profitably devoted to unravelling the author's imbroglio of uncommon nonsense. But some malignant demon appears to got hold of every English writer, no matter how well informed on other topics, a soon as he ventures to treat of Chi object To this theory Mr. Boulyer brings efficient support by his article in the Nineteenth Century, which we have alrendy subjected to criticism in detail.
Macmillan for August is attractive chiefly on account of two excellent biographies! and critical sketches devoted respectively to Miss Heary and to Tom Taylor, A Suurnaliste maigre lui gives w good humoured and graphic sketch of the outrageous personalities in which French political jour is merit of " certain kind in the vitriolic articles levelled at one another by writers of opposite parties, but this merit nly -in their property of exciting the enemy to madness. They are-very witty
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.