"played out?" There are a good many people who will answer this question at once in the affirmative, and the answer will be given in a tone of melancholy in China, and of wild exultation in India and Ceylon. It is the unkindest cut of all that India, which learned from us how to make tea, took our tea seeds and our workmen, and planted and cherished the one, and rapidly ejected the other, has not only supplanted us in the London market, but exhibits the. most indecent joy at every lengthening of the distance by which she passes us in the competition. The Times of India is the worst offender; it has not even the common delicacy to leave us alone in our misery. Some months ago it wrote a contemptuous article full of facts and ex: ations; the facts we could not, alas! dispute: the exaggera-tious we did dare to point out. But has this done any good to this Indian Jeshurun? Not a bit: the Times is more exultant than ever. It has had the e not to send us the number in which the cause and we are so heartlessly mocked, and we are indebted to the Daily Press for the following extract. Our Southern contemporary calls it " good-natured chaff"; is it then good-natured chaff to exult over a man who is slowly dying of starvation because his business has been taken away from him by a younger rival whom he trained? Is not this the case of the China tea trade to England? his is what the Z%mes of India says:—Oddly enough no attempt is made even in this case to deny the charges we made. ''hey were too ridiculous.' No doubt they were but as China's 200,000,000 Ibs. of export tea have dwindled down to about 90,000,000 lbs, and the Chinese papers do not estimate an export for this year of more than 45,000,000 Ibs. against India's 102,000,000 Ibs. and Ceylon's 42,000,000, the ridiculous does not appear to be in this case China, as the Herald frankly admits, articularly funny, The look-out for
grows worse and worse; but as the catastrophe has been mainly brought about by China herself—that is, by her manufacturers and shippers—we do not see that they have much claim to our sympathy. The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they are grinding China tea exceeding small."
Is not this adding insult to injury? The Times owns that we were right in characterising its "charges" as too ridiculous to need denial; its statistics we could not and did not attempt to impugn, nor have we ever thought they were funny; the struggles of a dying trade are only "funny" to such hardhearted people as the writer in the Times of India. "The catastrophe has been mainly brought about by China herself that is, she ought to have locked up Mr. Robert Fortune when he was starting from China with his tea seeds and his tea makers; but it is hardly grateful of the country that has.
profited by China's generosity to twit her with it now.
"The mills of the ind slowly, but they are ies ing China tea exceeding small these mills may yet turn their attention to those who exult so indecently over a conquered competitor.
For, we are glad to be able to tell our readers, there is still some bope.for
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.