Tae recent China dinner held at the Thatched House Club, London, is to result, we are informed, in the establishment of a China Association, and the first idea is that it is a splendid thing to have a China Association in London, just what we want, etc., etc. It has] often been reproached to Shanghai, the representative port of China, that when its residents discover a want they come together full of enthusiasm, elect a Committee with power to appoint a chairman and secretary from among its number, and then go off to the Club perfectly contented that everything necessary has been done. There are already in the House of Commons several representatives of China, who are not delegates, and they carry more weight as not being delegates than they would if they appeared as the direct representatives of a Chi lation. A Foreign Secretary or Under-Secretary is more ready to listen to the question or remonstrance of an individual; the for-motion of an association has the asp of being intended to oppose, and it is supposed to be always on the look out for grievances in order to justify its existence; and government officials are apt to be less careful in attending to its complaints, from the very feeling that they may be made merely to prove that it is in a state of activity. Nor indeed are the interests of British residents in China a ways so identical, that a China As tion would be able to speak with the voice of a united constituency. We have seen in the failure of the attempts that have been made to establish an industrial museum, how this opposition of interests works; the old-established houses are naturally unwilling to disclose their trade secrets which would be most valuable to, and are therefore much desired by their later or intending rivals. he Chambers of Commerce in Shanghai and London are already, or should be, the accredited representatives of the trade; the Chamber of Commerce in London is, no doubt, overburdened with work; but there is, or should be, a China Sub-committee which should do what we imagine is the intended work of the China Association, and to start a new body may lead to important questions falling between the two stools. Another objection is that the best men are as a rule, too much occupied with their own affairs to attend a voluntary association of this kind, and its direction tends to fall into the hands of men of more leisure but less weight.
It has been suggested that it is not always politic to insist too much—as the formation of a China Association in London seems to do—on the preponderance of British trade in China, and to be too ready to act as if the foreign settlements in China were British settlements. It has been suggested, though we believe that there is no real foundation for the suggestion, that this British assertiveness has sometimes had the effect of indisposing the Ministers of other Powers at Peking to take as much interest in the representations of the Chamber of Commerce or the Municipal Council as they might otherwise do. Both those institutions are cosmopolitan, indeed, and representative of all interests; but national susceptibilities are delicate things, and cannot be too delicately handled, and though there is, we believe, nothing in the suggestion that there is some jealousy in Peking of British preponderance, it should not be altogether left out of consideration.
"The existing machinery for the protection of British interests in China is quite sufficient, we hold, as long as it works properly. There is a chief Superintendent of British Trade at Peking, there are Chambers of Commerce at the treaty ports and at home, there are active members of the House of Commons ready and willing to look after us, and last but not least, there is s anxious to do its best, if not s as successful as its intentions are good. The block in the working of the machinery at present comes, we fear, from the mistaken—as it appears to us—view of his position taken by the Superintendent of Trade at Peking. It is stated that Sir John Walsham makes no secret of his conviction that his duties at Peking are to see that the relations between Great Britain and China ran smoothly, and that he is not sent to the capital to devote himself to the claims, complaints or demands of British traders, It is quite possible that the diplomatic relations for which Sir John has to care occupy so much of his time that he cannot look after what seem to him so much more trivial matters, and if this is the case, what we want is not a China Association in London, but a Commercial Secretary at Peking. But after all, the real stumbling-block in our way is that no European wants to have a "Chinese ques-we mentioned yesterday, the Foreign Offices of Europe are occupied with European questions, and the trade even of Great Britain with China is only equal in value to her trade with Norway and Sweden; and Foreign Secretaries, who are here to-day and gone to-morrow, have so much to do with actualities that they cannot be expected to care for possibilities. The instructions of every Foreign Secretary to his Minister at Peking are, "Get what you can out of China, but do not raise a Chinese question and as long as it is well known at Peking that nothing more than moral suasion will be used, our claims will receive nombre attention than the Tsung-li Yamen cares to devote to them. Not even a China Association could alter this state of things; and if it took an antagonistic attitude, as it would be too likely to be compelled to do, it might actually do more harm than good. We do not really want a new fly-wheel in the machinery; the existing machinery is sufficient, if it is kept properly at work. The objections we have mentioned are to a China Association as a political institution. As a. social institution, a rallying-point for China hands at home, it would undoubtedly be very valuable.
TEA, Cuuna," says Barclay's Complete and Universal Dictionary published just eighty years ago, "is the only country from whence teas are imported." It would be well for foreign residents in China, and for the owners of steamers trading to China, if this were still true. Unfortunately the truth of this statement has, in the last few years, been becoming fine by degrees and beautifully less, and soon the compiler of the encyclopedia of the period, for we cannot now compress complete and universal knowledge into a one-volume dictionary, will have to write that China, the original home of the leaf, is one of the few Asiatic countries from whence no teas are imported into England. India, Ceylon and Java now have circulars to themselves in Mincing Lane, which are enlivened by occasional depreciatory references to this effete empire; even the Malay Peninsula is beginning to grow tea, and the cruelty thereof especially is that it is Chinese who are adding this one to the wounds from which their native country's once leading trade is expiring, China may well say to her unfilial children "That eagle's fate and mine are one, Who, on the shaft that made him die, Espied a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to sour 60 high."
For it is by not following Chinese methods of preparation that India and Ceylon have become such fatal competitors to China, They cannot even be accused of stealing their seed from China, except in part: it was the discovery of the tea plant yrowing wild in Assam that first turned the thoughts of Englishmen in India to the possibi lity of cultivating tea there; a possibility which has grown so rapidly into so lucrative and magnificent an actuality. Not that the China trade is dying without friends at home, who still profess. to hope that a recovery is possible, We read in a recent circular of Messrs. J. C. Sillar & Ca, that their remarks about Tudian teas are having an effect in England, "and sooner or later, the popular taste will undergo a change regarding them." And they add, with a feeling of disgust that the British taste should be so vitiated, that "other nations are not so stupid as poor John Bull, to mistake the muddy, mucilagenous appearance of the liquor of Indian teas for strength." It is pleasant to see
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.