Travimion tells of a certain foreign employe in the Customs service, who having once had occasion to interview the taotai of the port, borrowed the uniform of a friendly naval officer, and with all due attention to Chinese punebiliousness performed before the great man the kotow. Notwithstanding the bizarre accompaniment of the naval officer's uniform, there was some method in the poor assistant's craze. Fanoying himself, doubtless, already a Chinese official, and on the road to prospective promotion, there could be no indignity in doing what his predecessors had done for ages before; it would, doubtless, be his turn at some future period \to be himself Kkotowed to; and pictures of this and of the illimitable wealth which would fall to his lot when he had climbed the ladder of Chinese promotion were perhaps sufficient to turn even a stronger head. In those days, a Customs uniform had not been invented; but somehow or other in many peoples minds buttons are mixed up with power, so the only }available rig was indented on, probably in the hope that the taotai's attainments in foreign lore did not extend to the minutia of naval uniform and oak leaf braid. The fledgling tea-taster from Mineing Lane, who has to go down to the warehouses with a bag on his back, bears in patience the jeers of the unsympathetic street boys, because he knows that generations of chases before him have undergone the same penance, and that long after he has himself bad the honour of opening the tea market in Far Cathay, to the small content of his constituents, generations of youthful tasters will still enter the profession with the same time-hallowed rites and ceremonies. To have carried the bag is in fact the test of true chase-ship; to have gained admission by other means is to act the part of the thief and the robber.
Some such liking for the preliminary cerenionies of mandarin hood must have actuated Mr. Twinem, Acting Commis. sioner of Customs at Tientsin, when presenting himself as the Taotai's deputy' in the Court of the United States Consul, to take part in the trial of a collision case between the owner of a Chinese junk and the steamer Shantung. Complaint has been frequently made this year of the crowded state of the Peiho, and the want of order among the junks anchoring in it. On a recent trip, the' steamer Shantung van into and sunk a grain junk, on behalf of which a suit was instituted at the U.S. Consulate. We are not concerned, however, with the circumstances of the collision, and only mention them to explain the origin of the Court.: Now the U. S. Treaty, like others, provides that, "if controversies "arise between citizens: of the United "States and subjects of China, which "cannot be amicably settled otherwise, "the same shall be examined and decided "conformably to justice and equity by "the public officers of the two nations, "acting in conjunction." It is generally understood that the Court to be so constituted, is to comprise officials of equal rank; that a Taotai for instance is to sit with a Consul, or a Deputy with a Vice-Consul; and the admission by a Consul of a Taotai's Deputy to sit with him is a pure matter of courtesy and form, In any case, the inference is clear, and the understanding has always been, that the Deputies must be recognised Chinese, American, or English officials as the case may be. In the present instance, the Taotai was enable to attend, and, besides nominating two Chinese deputies to sit with Mr. Sheppard, asked that Mr. Twinem should also be admitted on that footing. Mr. Sheppard refused, on the ground that Mr. Tsinem was not a Chinese judicial officer within the meaning of the Treaty; and, leaving all questions of personal position aside, we hold that his refusal was perfectly right. Mr. Sheppard, as Consul, was entitled to expect the Taotai on the bench; and although, for convenience to both parties, it is necessary that power to appoint a deputy should not be absolutely forbiden, it certainly behoves the officer consenting to sit with a deputy, to see that there should be fit and reasonable grounds for the appointment, and that the actual position of the latter should be such as naturally to lead up to his selection. The appointment of a junior Chinese official engaged in the same routine as the Taotai, though it may be in @ subordinate
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.