Yo the Editor of the Nonra-Curya Dany News, Sm,—A French publicist recently remarked that, whereas the English press with singular uniformity had written di ingly of their Tonquin enterprise, the press in China, whose local knowledge enabled them to speak with authority, had written gly throughout, Newspapers have their customers to write for, and apart from the sympathy naturally felt for follow Europeans fs th fact that the lish newspapers published in China number many Frenchmen but few Chi influeticed by thi think, palpable, when we find native issues, owned by foreign proprietors, strongly upholding the Chinese caus That, beyond this desire to deal court-oonsly towards our fellow foreign residents, any impartial enlocker should be found who aeriounly approves the French action in Tonquin and China, I cannot for a moment believe. Beginning with the cruel massacre of the unfortunate Annamites in Hue, where French suldivrs, without risk to thomavlves, amused themselves by potting some hundreds of unresisting refugees in the water, down tothe beheading without trial of Cantonese merchants at Haiphong, suspected of having dealings with the enemy, their own countrymen 5 the course of the French las been marked with that cruelty and callousness of bloodshed for which, throughout their whole history, they have been notorious, Now, again, in attacking and capturing a treaty port, with-Out avy previous declaration of war, they have once more shown their customary contempt for the rights of the T wish then, as an old resident in the country, and as one who has made a good livelihood out of peaceful dealings with the Chinese, to protest against the impression that the bulk of the foreign residents in China have any sympathy whatever with the French. They are not endeavouring to open up Tonquin or China to the world; they are pursuing purely selfish and mercenary ends, ass shown by the differential durio they are establishing at Haiphong in favor of their own flag, and their avowed intention to exclude all foreign enterprise from the inland waters of their new conquests, We, the other foreign residents in the nese empire, can do little practically id the us tives of the land we live in to ward off the greater troubles which I fear are still impending; but we can at least assure them that our sympathy does not lie with those, who, after sterling their territory, would atill farther mulct them in an impossible it 9th August, 1884, We scarcely think our Correspondent is accurate in crediting the majority of f eigners here with the views he expresses 80
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.