Ir is regrettable, now that so mach 4s9 interest is being taken at home in Chinese matters, that English newspapers should have so very limited an acquaintance with their subject, Many of their most complacent dicta are based upon information which is at best imperfect, and in some instances erroneous. Que often wonders who writes these curious articles. Is it some man who was in China five-and-twenty years ago, or, what is quite as likely, some one who has never been farther east than Temple Bar, and whose knowledge of China is picked up from hearsay and from reading untrustworthy booke It is safe to affirm that we have seldom if ever lighted on an article in the Saturday, the Standard, the Pall Mall, or the Spectator which bore upon its face any evidence that the writer had. his knowledge at first-hand. This superficial acqanintauoo with Chinese politics, both domestic and foreign, la nowhere more clearly displayed than in those articles which den! with the probable results of a Chinese war with. in the frontiers of the Empire; and it is on this point that we propose to say few words to-day.
In the last number of the Saturday ps Review we find a confident and airy prophecy of the effec! nnd the effete of tra upon the Chinese people. nese," we are told, " with the exception of the minority who inhabit the treats ports, can afford to dispense with foreign trade for a time, Ther considerable party which would be glad to see it put a atop to for ever, Eveit the loss of the revenue from the Customs which would result from a blockade could be borne with equanimity, as it is already mortgaged to English bankers." Now it would be difficult to surpass the confusion of thought apparent in these few lines. Who constitute the "considerable party" which would be glad to see a stop put to foreign trade altogether? The writer probably has in his mind the anti-progressive or conservative section of statesmen, some of whom are at Peking, others scattered here and there in official positions throughout the Eupire. The trae reply, we believe, is simply the literati, and those of the literati who are unemployed, Those, no doubt, form a etroug and mis chievous class. Their ignorance of everything beyond the Four Books and the Five Classis is phoneme: supreme, They know nothing of the outside world, and wish to know nothing. It is of infinitely more im. portance, in their view, to know that Confacius was never without ginger when be ate, or that when his mat was not straight he did wot sit upon it, or that he said a cornered vessel without corners was than to have the slightest acquaintance with such science as every child of ten years old in Europe hae at ite flugora' ends. No doubt these men, in their marvellous arrogance and hatred of the foreigner, would be glad to hear that foreign trade had been pat a stop to. They know no more of trade, as a means of national prosperity, than the average merchant of Mivoing Lane knows of the Dingrams of Fa Hai. What argument can be based on this? We are aware, of course, that in every station which has taken place in China there men have been the moving power. It ly they who compose and distribute the libellous and obscene Iampoons which fan the passions of the mob agai the foreigner. But we entirely to see that the views of these foolish Nffeot the nes of a war either sous on foreign commerce will
ne way or another. We believe that the writer in the Saturday Review la totally beside the mark when he cays that the sudden blockade of the treaty ports will make little or no difference to anybody but the minority who inhabit them. The stoppage of a trade estimated at some Tis, 145,000,000 per annam would make a vast difference toa vast vamper of persons whose ciroume. stances are even now at the lowest ebb of prosperity. The peasantry—whioh include the boatmen, farmers, and small teadere—of the southern provinces of China are at present deeply stricken with poverty, and are hard put to it to earn their bowls of rice, Every countryman one spanks tomand we have good authority for this—tells tha same story. The Empire is not pros sporing; and when, on the top to all the calamities we have witnessed of late years—the floods, the droughts, the famines, and. the prevailing distresses both in north and south—there comes a war, with all ite disorgenising tone
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.