A Corresronvenr in Tientsin has put us in possession of a fact which appears to ifdioate a wish, on the part of the Teung-li Yamen, to restrict the privileges hitherto enjoyed by foreigners travelling in the interior of China, The information given us is, it must be confessed, somewhat fragmentary, and we may look for fuller details ere long. But the case as far as we are able to ~jndgo at present seems to be as follows. Chang Chib.tang has memorialised the Throne, suggesting that the permis. sions to travel accorded to foi by passport should be more n defined than they have been hitherto, and the Yamen has communicated the now regulation to Li Hung-chang, as virtual Minister for Foreign Affairs, which he in his turn has communicated to the Foreign Consuls. This regulation seems to be that every passport shall contain the name of the place to which the applicant proposes to travel, and the route by which he intends to reach it; so that avy deviation from that route would be held by the inland authorities to invalidate the passport he has received. Now hitherto the wording of passports has been liberal enough. A foreigner starting, say, from Peking, and wishing to travel through Chibli and Shantung, and perhaps beyond the Great Wall, has found no difficulty whatever in pro. curing s document franking him through the whole of the territory named. Armed with this, he has been able to visit any town, any district, any mountain of interest or celebrity of which he may hear during his journey. The idea of tying a man down to a certain beaten track was never heard of or oven contemplated. In a large proportion of cases, the traveller has only a very vague notion of the route he intends to tuke when he first sere out. Whether he visits a certain spot, or whether he goes in a different direction altogether, depends entirely upon the circumstances in which he finds himself when alrendy far ad. vanced upon his journey. It is impossible for him to form his plans on a perfectly definite and unalterable basis before setting out. The obstacles he is likely to meet with uro often insur perable, and in most instances cannot be foreseen. This is true of countries where facilities for locomotion are numerous; where there are good roads, and even steam-communication by both land and water. How mach truer it is of China every traveller can testify. Cases in point are of constant occurrence. The foreigner arrives at a certain place whence he intends to diverge in order to reach some destination he has had marked upon his passport by a cer. tain route, Bat he finds that be has reckoned without his host. Perhaps the "road" of which he has heard is simply precipitous mountain-track, along which there are nainns. Orhe has been told that be can have the privilege—how valuable, those who have tried it can toll—of travelling along a dried-up river-bed; and when he gets there, he hears that there have been rains or floods, and his dry water-course is now a raging torrent. Or he fiuda that he can get no mules; or, again, that his provisions are exhausted, so that by adhering to his previous intention lo dooms himself to something very much like starvation. Hitherto, all be would have been obliged to do was simply to alter his course; under the new regula. tion he does so ut the peril of infringe ing the provisions of his passport. One of the greatest attractions of travelling in Chinn under the old system was that the tourist was free to go where he liked. If he chose to diverge from his path, or to strike out a new line altogether in order to visit some place of interest or beauty of which he heard then for the first time, he could do so without let or hindrance. Under the new arrangement ho las simply the permission to go from one point to another and back again, without venturing to leave the beaten track as specified clear) passport. We protest against this as a vexations and wholly unnecessary innovation. At the same time one cannot but feel curious to hear on what grounds it has been adopted. Article IX of the 'Treaty of Tientsin provides that British subjects be' "authorised to travel for their pleasure or for purposes of trade to all parts of the interior, under ps ports which will be issued by th Consuls and countersigned by the local authorities. These passports, if demanded, must be produced for exami tion in the localities passed through. Nothing, it will be observed, is said here of the wording of the passports; and unfortunately there is nothing in the innovation adopted by the Yamen which is actually antagonistic to the provision of the Article we have quoted. Hitherto the Treaty has been liberally interpreted, and passports have been couched in liberal terms, The authorities have succeeded, however, in restricting the privileges accorded, and they have done so in a manner which it may be difficult to combat, seeing that the innovation does not verbally infringe the provisions of the Treaty itself. Whether this has received the sanction of the Foreign Ministers at Peking we have strong reasons to doubt. But we may at any rate be permitted to hope that our representatives there will not assent to any such restriction of our privileges as may appear to them unreasonable. It has been suggested to us that the step has been adopted from a wish, on the part of the Chinese authorities, to provide better protection for_ travellers, particularly for those whose route lies through the antiforeign provinces of Honan and Honan. It ie Lowerer scarcely characteristic of the Chinese to take the initiative in any matter promoting the comfort or anfoty of foreigners. It is presumable that arguments of the Governor of Shansi contained some element of plausibility though what this may have been it is difficult, in the absence of definite in. formation, to guess. We do know, however, that the Chinese authorities in certain districts have been rendered uneasy and suspicious by the presence of wandering foreigners, who, notebook and level in hand, have been seen prowling about the country, turning up in unexpected places, and looking as though they had come to spy out either the nakedness or the attractions of the land, But whatever may have been the cause of the step now at. tributed to the Yamen, we think we do not overstep our daty in drawing attention to it, and in expressing our regret that the Chinese Government should have deemed it necessary to protect their country by measure at once so puerile and go retrogressive.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.