18th Aug.
Tux most determined disbeliever in the value of missionary work in China must have found one part of Dr. Griffith John's letter to us of 30th July last leasing to him; that part in which r. John dissipated the idea that the so-called Opium War was waged by Great Britain against China solely in order to force opium on the unwilling Chinese. This 'Opium War' has been made for years by English anti-opiumists a stick forthe back of their country, and at the recent Christian Anti-opium Convention in London—the chief object of which seems to have been to raise a sum of £20,000 to carry on the agitation against the opium traffie—the 'Opium War' was referred to in the usual terms over and over again. At that convention, however, Dr. Dudgeon, we are glad to see, exploded the common idea that the English introduced opium into China. He said:—It is often said that we introduced opium, We did nothing of the sort. I thought so:
{atone time. We did not introduce! central government. When Dr. John opium-smoking, nor were we the first wrote, he could not know what was traders in opium... The Chinese! preparing in the councils of Europe, but themselves were the first to bring opium- Peking would have done well to consider smoking to China." Dr. Griffith John his letter carefully. He says: "I venture says of the Opium War:—It may be to predict that should a missionary regarded in another light, namely, in war' ever come to pass, it will not be a its relation to the immoderate assump-war against the people of China, but as tions of the Peking Court and the heretofore a war against the Chinese haughty, contemptuous, and insulting government, and that it will be induced bearing of the Chinese officials in not by the doings of the missions, but their intercourse with all foreigners from by the pride and folly of the governing the beginning." Dr. John goes on to! classes." With all the enlighten-give the principles on which the Chinese ment that the last thirty years have have always tried to act in their deal-offered to China, and the closer ings with foreigners; they are summed acquaintance it has made with the up in the maxim, "'lo rule barbarians power of foreigners, the leopard. has not by misrule is the true and best way of changed his spots; the typical Chingse ruling them."
Dr. John then says most official—there are, of course, exceptions truly that "No great Power could pos-—is as insolently contemptuous of the sibly submit long to such insults and foreigner now, as his predecessor was humiliations as England was called upon thirty years ago, and he has now the to submit to in the persons of her idea that, if necessary, the whole power representatives; and hence war, apart of the Empire can be devoted to crush-[altogether from the opium traffic, was ing the foreigner, as there is no Taiping inevitable sooner or later." rebellion to' be' simultaneously com-The effects of the Opium War, and bated. and if diplomacy fails now, the cannon the ' Arrow' War, as it is called, lasted People here hardly realise how serious is to speak in tones that the Chinese for some years, but they have gradually the situation is. We have been accus-been dying out, and there is not a: tomed so long to see the foreign worm Minister of a great Power at Peking who has not had to put up in the last few years with "insult and humiliations." Sir Harry Parke: it is well known, felt the attitude of the Peking government }so acutely, that he had determined to throw up his post, unless his* govern-iment at home relieved him from the task of bearing the insults and humid \Tiations without having the power to retaliate. All the Foreign Ministers have had to put up with similar slights and indignities, and nowhere has the temper of the people been worse than in Peking itself, where the central government ought to be able to enforce the courteous treatment of foreigners. 'I'he Ministers have made the best of this treatment, have put up with it, because they thought that nothing would induce their governments at home to use force with China, but the cup has been ing, and it is now full. now, and there will be war unless China grants our demands fully and honestly, these anti-missionary outbreaks will only be the exch cause; the real causes have been accus mulating for years. Hunan is the chief culprit. As was seen in the able account of a six weeks' trip in that province which we published recently, the Hunan people—and some of the strongest officials in China are drawn from that province—are puffed up with antiforeign pride. They, they consider, saved the dynasty from the Taipings, and they, if the Peking government will only call on them, will drive foreigners into the sea. The gentry and Jiterati of Hunan distribute all over China the lying pamphlets and placards which stir up the people; they will not allow the telegraph to be introduced into their sacred province; when we reduce Hunan to stibjection we shall be doing it partly for the benefit of the bear without complaining the Chinese heel, that we have come to believe that he will never turn, The Cabinets Europe, however, have taken the Chinese question seriously in hand, and they have determined that there shall be no more anti-Christian outbreaks, jand that Hunan shall be effectively tamed by foreign force, if the central government is unwilling or able to carry out that wor
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.