Haya P'zyo-w1ex, Acting Governor of this province, is a native of the province of Kueichow, an interior pro-yince where foreigners have been very rarely seen. He took his metropolitan degree in 1847, so that he is no longer young, but he appears to have received no office of importance until 1883, when he was appointed Judicial Commissioner in Hupeh, where he might possibly come in contact with foreigners. In 1886, however, he was removed in the same capacity to the more remote province 7 of Shensi, when he remained nearly two years. In December 1887 he was appointed Financial Commissioner and is now Acting Governor in Kiangsu and at Soochow, his seat of office, he has had foreigners and their inventions brought prominently before his eyes. He is a man of over sixty, a conservative, as he tells us, by instinct, who has spent the greater part of his life in essentially Chinese surroundings; we should naturally expect that when such 'a man was asked by the Throne to give 7 his opinion on the policy of introducing railways into the country, he work have opposed them with all the pre~ judice of that antiquated conservatism which is supposed to specially mark the older officials and Jiterati; instead of which his report, which we printed two days ago, would have done credit to the most advanced foreigner in the empire, and such a report coming from such a source is one of the most hopeful signs that we have seen for a long time.
The first thing that we gather from his report is that Governor Huang is a man who keeps his eyes and earch open, and does not shut himself up in his yamen, satisfied with contemplating the glories of the China of the past. His historical summary is comprehensive and on the whole accurate. He is philosopher enough to allow that the advances which Europe has made on Asia during the century have not been the result of any "sudden exertion of force," but of a "natural and gradual development of events." China must recognise the change and must prepare herself to meet it. There are five "material results of the working of this spirit of the age" steamers, telegraphs, machinery, schools of technical education and railways. Of these, China has already adopted the first four, and she cannot afford to neglect the fifth. "'To say that China should go without railways while England, France and Russia have them, simply shews ignorance of what is going on in the world around one." These three countries are mentioned because they are now China's neighbours; England in Burma, France in Indo-China, and Russia all along the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.