one respect the system of Government in China may be called ubiquitous. No man is too low, no occupation too trifling or too base, to be free from interference at the hands of some one holding some official position, or connected with some one who does. Every man has a direst interest in discovering every unusual action of his neighbour, and it thereby enables him to effect what officials in China so dearly love—squeeze, It was only the other day that an organised system of levying taxes on native boats within the limits of the Settlements was discovered, and for the time interrupted. Nearly every transaction, however, within the limita, has to undergo the same process to a greater or lesser extent. Fortunately, within the boundaries, the generally prompt action of the police prevents such grave attempts at interference as would otherwise occur; though why the Council should stand passively by, and ignore a system of petty squeezing which results in the Chinese within the limits having to pay double tax, once legitimately to the Council and again by byoways and irregular exactions to petty officers countenanced by the Chinese officials, is more than we have been quite able to divine. Outside the Settlement, the fear of the Council has not yet fallen in due force on the petty officials. We constantly hear of interruptions and attempted exactions on the part of tipaous, and two or three times projected public improvements have been seriously interfered with by those means. The attempt made by some squatters, without a tittle of right to the shanties they occupied, and the helping hands of the tipao and the Chihsien, it may be remembered, some years ago nearly brought on a serious disturbance when carrying the new road down to the Yangtszepoo. Of late, this disposition on the part of the tipaous seems to have revived. The Council ed to repair a bridge near Alpha farm. Certain of the people in the neighbourhood feared, or professed to fear, that thereby the flow of the water for irrigation purposes would be interfered with. The fear was a legitimate one, and the case bad only to be represented to ensure that every precaution would be taken. Not so thought the tipao, who determined to take the law into his own hands, and who obtained from the Chihsien warrant to arrest a man who had nothing whatever to do with the work in question. The usual result followed; the man, who proved he bad nothing to say to the work, is only released after paying a squeeze, and the real contractor feels so much dread of the action of his own people that he cannot be found, and the work has to come toa standstill. Withoutdeterminedaction on the part of the Consuls, such cases will continually crop up, but the worst of it is that it is very difficult to secure this determined action. Some one or other of the body of Consuls will call out—"Poor Chinese, don't hurt them and the rest seem to be too sparing of the feelings of a fellow to care to act of themselves, We suppose it was from some such motive that the very sensible request of the Council, that Chinese troops marching through the Settle. ment should be persuaded to go along the back roads, was sent back. Fortunately, we have not been much troubled of late with that class of Chinamen by courtesy denominated soldiers, bat the threatened outbreak with Japan did result in some bodies of men with arms in their hands being marched through the Settlements. The Chinese themselves may be supposed to know where the shoe pinches; and one and all, they did express a considerable amount of apprehension as to the possibility of preserving peace and good order, were large bodies of these men to be permitted to march through the streets. In the eyes of men of the lowest dregs of the people, conveyed from the poorest of the internal provinces of China, the native shops of the Foreign Settlements look like mines of wealth. The bumpkin set down in the streets of London, does not look upon the wonders of the metropolis with half the astonishment which the rowdy unpaid soldier of China feels, in gazing on the unwonted splendour of the Settlements. The Maloo is more to him than is Oxford Street to the other, and the temptation is increased by the apparent ease with which he can filch from the open shops. He is disd" phued enough to know that, in respect to private pelf, his comrades are all one with him; and that as for his officers, the more he steals the less they will have to provide for him, His own authorities are afraid of him, and allow him considerable latitude in his ideas of right and wrong. To them, the soldier on paper is far more satisfactory than the soldier inthe flesh. They can draw pay for both alike, and probably the live soldier does not cost them much more to keep. His peculiar ways, however, have to be humoured, and more or less anxiety devolves on the shoulders of his commanding officer, on whom the weight of responsibility may eventually be made to fall, should he exceed the very ample limits of meum and trium by prescription accorded to him. Now these things are perfectly well known to all parties concerned. It would be like waiting to lock the stable door when the steed had been stolen, to delay till some outbreak had occurred through the misconduct of the Chinese troops. Fortunately the settlement of the Formosan difficulty has lessened the need to the Chinese of their question.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.