Ir is to be hoped that in the interest of Ostholic and other pioneers of civilisation in China some notice will be taken of the extraordinary story told by @ Correspondent of the Hw Pao, writing from Canton. Under the bending of Traitors in the Camp, this writer states certain facts as being within his own knowledge, and adds that he was an eye-wiiness of the proceedings he describes. The Catho-lio converts of Canton, be says, have fallen under the suspicion of being in league with the Frouch, and of concenling stores of firearms and gunpowder upon rheic premises. Their houses have been searched, and the accusations have been proved trae. Forty persons, on being brought before the Brigndier-General Cheng, have confessed their complicity in a plot in whioh over two thousand men are implicated, to rise in the city as soon as ever it was attacked by the Frenob, and deliver into theinvader; stating, farther, that they wore led and supplied with arms by Frenchmen, Such is the story told by a man who says that ho was an eye-witness of what is alleged to have taken place, and which is said to have been corroborated from many independent sources. A considerable amount of discount must of course be allowed in negotiating such statements as these. The implication is of course that the Oatholio pri who offered to provide bail for the suspected men were privy to the plot, and there is no doubt that this is very widely believed among the Chinese, who are only too ready to catch up any story reflecting upon Jesuit missionaries. It la difficult to sift the statements we have quoted without further light being thrown upon the subject from other and less prejudiced quarters, The same aconsation, as our readers will remember, was brought some months ago against rta in Wuobaug, and ess proved upon examination, Now we find it cropping up again in Canton, and this time it actually said to have been substantiated. That it has some foundation in fact need not, we think, be doubted. In times of disturbance and anxiety there will always be those who afford grounds of suspicion to the authorities, who are naturally on the look-out to suspect somebody. Nor need there be any hesitation in supposing that were an invading army to attack Canton, there would not be much delicacy on the part of the in. vaders in making use of whatever assistance they might procure from traitors within the camp. Canton is one of the homes and hotbeds of seditious sects; or if it be not so, it has been very seriously maligned. Now there is nothing impossible in the idea that there may be native converts among the members of the sects, and that some of those who occupy this doubly dubious position may have been arrested on suspicion, Our informant is particularly reticent as to the method of examination pursued at the trial of these men, although he says he present all the time himself. It is scarcely likely that such an enquiry should be conducted without the use of torture; and if torture was applied to the men, and they then confessed to things they had before denied, we would not give a fig for their confess sion, The mere fact that arma and weapons were found upon their pre mises does not prove that they were themselves in complicity with the French; nor need we attach more im= portance to the foot that they were professing Catholics, That, indeed, would render them all the more likely objects of suspicion, and lay them open to far severer treatment than if they had no connection whatever with a religion that is regarded so distrust. fully. If, then, these men are innocent of the treachery with which they are said to have been charged, we cannot help luting out the mischief that may be with the best intentions in the world, by those to whom they owe their conversion, The right to protect native Catholics, claimed by Catholic priests, cannot but redound to the disadvantage of the converts themselves. Such claim rouses the not ununtnral jealousy of the native authorities, and prompts a hostile attitude at once, No mis. sionary has the slightest right to step between a Chinaman and his lawful ud any attempt at such inter-must result badly for both parties, And we must eay at the same time that much of the unfounded and absurd suspicions which the Ohivese harbour against Catholics, and the persecutions arising out of them, are fostered by the policy of seoreay and lence which sorns to guide French mis-in Ohina., Of course it is i tio, brutish, what you please, to bel the unspeakable stories which bay been oironlated and printed in against Ontholios and their But we do say that this makes it all the unfairer towards Oatholios, Oatholieism, and foreigners and foreign things generally, not to adopt a more open and candid policy in these matters; not to invite enquiry and inspection not to take some measures to prevent their good being evil spoken of, Missionaries oan do much to avert suspicion; it is not so easy to rebut suspicion when it has already boon excited; and on no principles of religion or politics is it defensible to interfere between a people and their governors, The more fact that Catholic converts are continually the objects of stupid suspicion from which Protestant oouverts are wholly free, points to some flaw, not in the doctrines held by the former, but in the mode by which they are enforced. There are not many political ims in the Bible; but even in Nero's the persecuted Christians wore on-joined to honour the King, and to be subject to the reigning powers. Let once understood in China that these injunctions form part of the teaching of Christian missionaries of whatever sect, and much of the distrust which now prevails will be dissipated.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.