Ovr Tientsin Correspondent pointed out three to four months ag0 some of the difficulties which the officials would be likely to encounter in constructing the railway in the north. The intelligence which we published on Saturday will therefore scarcely have come as a surprise to our readers, more especially as items of news which had reached us through the native papers had shown that considerable commotion had arisen among the Salt traders and their dependents and some of the country people, in part of the district through which the line is to pass. Our Correspondent tells us the peculiarly official methods by which Chou Fu proposed to acquire the necessary land. - In the language of the Proclamation of Magistrate Kung, as translated by the Chinese Times, for "whatever land may be needed for the Jine, after having been carefully surveyed, a just price will be paid, and the owner of the laud so appropriated for the railway will no longer be liable for the taxes here~ tofore levied." The owners very naturally p do not believe in a just price being obtained after the land has been appropriated, nor would owners in any part of the world be likely to assent quietly such a one sided arrangement; owners of all kinds of property everywhere would have what our Correspondent aptly calls an incorrigible mistrust of such promises. People in the north, landowners, salt traders and others have taken the accustomed way of getting what they consider their rights; they have threatened officials, railway surveyors, and navvies in one district, and in another have gone further and driven at least the foreigners away. It is greatly to be regretted that these disturbances should have occurred; they are due partly to the Cabinet at Peking having delegated powers to construct the railway to officials who are of course perfectly inexperienced in such work, and have no notion about going about it beyond the old mixture of highhandedness and bungling. Chou Fu has on several occasions lately shown his complete mastery of the art of making a mess of things when on the jot, and it will readily be conceived that those matters which are entrusted to him are even more mismanaged when he is absent and directing subordinates by telegraph. But the Government is to blame in another way for what has occurred. When it decided to commence the construction of railways and to commit the work to officials who know nothing about them or how to go about making them, it should have given the officials power to deal thoroughly with the land question. Phis of course is not. the best way to initiate railways in China, but when the Government determined to adopt it, it should have completed the powers of the officials to whom the work yas committed. It would have been perfectly possible to frame liberal instructions, by which the rights of landowners and every one else in the districts through which' the railway will would have been respected, and the or Decree would only have been disregarded at the peril of life or other severe punishment. That is what the Government will have to do at last, and it fitable. We are not insinuating anything special against Chou Fu, who is said to be an ordinary official, when we say that although he now holds posts which would require five or six men as able as himself to administer and superintend them properly, he would doubtless accept some more of equal or greater importance, provided they carried with would have been much better had it them the expenditure of Jarge sums begun with firmness. What was done in of money. It is the system, by which England, and we suppose in every popu-! officials alone can recover the sums they lated country through which railways' have to pay for their posts, maintain were constructed, was to give powers to! themselves, and make their fortunes, the railways to acquire laud, whether the which leads them to seize every oppor-owners wanted to keep it or not, on terms tunity of taking new offices. A mau to be settled by the owners and the rail-undertakes work that he cannot possibly ways companies, under the supervision perform, the State and the people suffer, and with the consent of a Commission, but he gets richer all the time. which Chou Fu and his colleague The introduction of railways in China, might be considered to represent in would have been smoothed, and the China. But no Government in the' difficulties which have already occurred world would vomit proprietors to stand H won probably have been avoided, had in the way of the construction of the the Government adopted what seems to railways which had been duly sanctioned, us the very obvious plan of associating any more than it would permit railway with their own officials a few foreigners projectors or constructors to take land j of ability and experience. A Railway at their own valuation—which is the Commission or Board of this kind would translation of the Magistrate's "just have acted independently, and whatever the nationality of the foreigners, we are But apart from the difficulties which certain that they would have done their ere arm from me sayin ship Ae dutyashonestlyand withasmuch freedom cial Superintendent of Railways has ' fromreproachastheCustoms Service have attempted to deal with the inhabitants always done theirs. The arrangement along the line, others, probably more of all matters connected with the small serious, are certain to arise from the, ines which have been authorised would direction of the work having been in- have taught the Chinese members of trusted to persons wholly unacquainted the Board much of a practical nature in with the duties they have been set to! railway work. The officials would make able Lelie lit is the Citoees way. one ad id the great department, official has intrusted to him the most which must be formed if the Gov-incongruous duties, and, as our northern ernment intend either to construct contemporary lately pointed out, Chou railways or to allow them to be made by Fu has been recently appointed Ins- private enterprise. 'The Chinese ant sector-General of Fortifications, Director' foreigners who formed this Board should General of Railways, Superintendent of have no other duties, and their powers the Navy, of the Coast Defence and of; should be defined, to prevent ignorant several other things, Again, a much officials meddling with them on the one higher official, Li Hung-chang, is Viceroy. hand and their exceeding their authority of Chili, and has doubtless a good on the other. The public service of China deal to do with affairs at Poking contains, we hope, many men who would a in moulding a policy of or bring intelligence and uprightness to this pire.
But besides that post, and! work, and who would soon be fitted Foreign Affairs where statesmanship for it by what they would learn from this of the highest order is required, he has foreign colleagues and the experience intrusted to him the direction of War, ' they would gain. And some, at least, Amy, Navy, Finance, Coast Defence, of the foreign element might be drawn and Judicial and Ceremonial functions. He has to see to the details of all these. At home, at least six men would be at the head of the departments which he administers and be assisted by as many more duly qualified subordinates. Work which is thus heaped upon one man cannot be'thoroughily well done, and the less able the official who undertakes it, the more serious the blunders which he will'commit. The blunders of Chou Fu, at Port Arthur, in the introduction of the railway scheme to his countrymen, and here again in acquiring the land for the line, are proofs of this so striking that we need not instance others of his colleagues in other parts of the Empire. No Chinese official, under the present system, can be expected to refuse to accept new offices hich promise to be pro-from the ranks of the Foreign Customs staff, who would bring familiarity with the Chinese Ihguaye and ways, while purely professional aid could be obtained the engineering ranks of all the countries in the world:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.