the June number of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine there is a most interesting article with the attractive heading, "Two Old Indians and a Diamond," which contains some paragraphs which, notwithstanding their length, are so apposite that we make no apology for reproducing them. They refer to the work of our merchant adventurers in India over two hundred years ago "Fortunately in those days the Government took less grandmotherly care of its merchant adventurers than it does at present. Not only did it encourage them in their search for new markets and fresh colonies, but in case of need it supported them both with diplomatic and material assistance. Under this wise and fostering system the commerce of the empire advanced by leaps and by bounds, and London became the headquarters of trade with the four quarters ofthe world. Ships laden with the silks and teas of China, the stuffs, gold and diamonds of India, the produce of the West Indies, and hunters' spoils from Africa, daily disgorged their cargoes at the wharves on the Thames, and carried back to the coloured and and pig-tailed customers the manufactures of British looms and workshops. At the present day, if a traveller ventures" out of the beaten track, he is summarily recalled by a telegram from Downing Street or if a merchant wishes to take advantage of a debatable clause in a treaty, he is peremptorily forbidden to move a step until the native government whose interest it is to prevent him from doing anything has exchanged genuine opposition for an unwilling assent. It is difficult to imagine, for instance, either the government of that day attempting to stop Hedges on his journey through Persia, or his submitting to be stopped, even if it had been unwise enough to try to do so; and it is beyond the limits of belief that any Indian merchant of that time would have yielded to the vexatious delays which have kept Mr. Little and his steamer at Ichang, the starting point of his proposed voyage to Chungking, for nearly two years.
"The effect of this over-cautious po-hey is such as must before long lead to its reversal, or at least its modification. Already there is a cry at our mercantile centres for new markets. With an energy which once was ours, but which now seems to be leaving us, the Continental Powers are pushing their commerce and their influence not only in the countries where our trade used to be supreme, but in quarters of the world into which our traders are discouraged from venturing. Even when so perfectly safe and practic: able an opening is proposed as that through Siam to southern China, constant streams of cold water are poured upon the scheme from the two stately buildings in Downing Street."
The writer of this, it will be seen, is somewhat of the opinion of our northern contemporary, to whom we referred briefly elsewhere, that the Minister at Peking is not so much to be blamed as those in Downing Street who sent him to China. But we cannot hold him thus excused. An energetic man, such a man as the late charge d'affaires Mr. O'Conor, would have adopted a forward policy himself, wowd have reminded the Foreign Office of the dictum of that ultra humane ian, Lord Elgin, that "the Chinese yield nothing to reason, but everything to fear." He would have reminded Lord Salisbury that the Chinese, while they will generally refuse a demand, will accept a fait accompli; and that if the Kuling had been allowed to go on when she first reached Ichang—for it was the British Minister, and not the Chinese who stopped her—the question would have been solved; the Yamen might have sent in a formal remonstrance in order to save its "face," but it would have accepted the situation. Our com-oar of Sir John Walsham is that is much too ready to fall in with the timorous policy of the Home Government; a policy which so staunchly conservative a journal as Blackwood shews to be utterly un-English. here is not the slightest necessity to use, or even to threaten the use of force; it would be quite enough to tell the Yamen firmly that we had decided that the Chefoo Convention must be carried out; and the Chinese, like all Orientals, respect much more those who are firm
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.