Ir is curious, just at the time we have been horrified in China by Tso Tsung-tang's account of the sack of Manas, to note that Professor Douglas has been calling the attention of people at home to Li Hung-chang's famous execution of the Wangs at Soochow—a nearly parallel case of treachery. Those who were in Shanghai fourteen years ago, will well remember the circum.
nees, and the anger of Colonel Gordon at the violation of his promise of safety. After the departure of the Chung-wang for Nanking, the Mo-wang remained in command of Soochow and was willing to defend it to extremity but certain of the other chiefs inclined to entertain the proposals of surrender which had somehow reached them; and at the close of a Council when the Mo-wang had refused to listen to such a suggestion, he was stabbed to the heart by one of his colleagues, Willing to surrender, the chiefs were too wise, however, to trust to the mercies of their own countrymen. They made overtares to Colonel Gordon, and it was in reliance on his pledged word for their safety, that they came out on that December morning, to pay their respects to Li Hung-chang in the Imperialist camp. Vastly different, however, was their reception from what they had anticipated. In violation of his assurance to his colleague, in violations of that colleague's pledged word, Li ordered them to be seized, bound and executed; and when Gordon hurried to the ground, on hearing that some evil had overtaken them, he found only the headless and matic lated body We need not relate how, enraged by the outrage and the insult to himself, Gordon for the first time in the whole campaign armed himself with @ weapon, with which he designed to punish Li for his treachery nor how the latter succeeded for days in dodging his pursuer, till he gave up the chase. We recall the incident as a parallel one to the execntions of the Mahomedan leaders at Monas and Suh.chow, and as showing that these were not exceptional misdeeds by an exceptionally truculent general, but are part and parcel of Chinese policy. Li, afterwards, when efforts were made to.produée a reconciliation between himself' and Gordon, affirmed that he dared not act otherwise. "I dared not, not kill!" He would have been liable to punishment for treachery himself, had he allowed the leaders of rebellion to live. To the Chinese mind it la clever diplomacy to induce an enemy to surrender on a pledge of safety, and so compass his death without the risk of battle. The fact exhibits a sufficiently low standard of honor and civilisation; and that is precisely what we wish to call attention to. The Sultan of Yinnan seems to have anticipated his fate, by poison. Knowing what he had to expect, he came out as Ma Sze did out of Suh-chow, as Haiyen did out of Manas; but when he had declared his inability to hold out, and had besought the clemency of the Imperialist General for his subjects in Tali, he swallowed poison and died. How the prayer for mercy was regarded, the Rangoon correspondent of the Times, shall tell. "The Chinese General decapitated the body, and sent the head preserved in honey to Peking. All the attendants who had come out with him, besides another embassy that came out later to treat of surrender, were beheaded; and eventually the city was entered and every Mahomedan—man, woman, and child remorselessly massacred." These things however attract no attention in Europe. They are perpetrated on Asiatic soil, and the theory seems to be that Asiatics may do whit they like with their own. I is the fact of the Tark's being an intruder in Europe which seems to aggravate his misdeeds in the eyes of the Gladstone party; otherwise we might as well have a conference at Peking to demand guarantees for the proper government of Kansuh and Yunnan, as a conference at Constantinoble to insist on the good government of Bosnia and Bulgaria. And the massacres by the Chinese troops, be it remembered, are no outbursts of tary on the part of undisciplined Bashi Bazouks. Sub-chow and Manas were desolated by regular soldiery by the order of a prominent General; and i the former case under the eyes of Tso Tsang-tang, the Viceroy of the province and a man who stands second only to Li himself in rank and public estimation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.