It must be with deep sorrow and profound regret that the Chinese people and foreign citizens in Kurope and America and foreign denizens in China hear of the sudden and premature death of his Excellenc the Marquis Tseng, late Envoy Extraon and Minister Plenipotentiary of perial Majesty the Emperor of China to the Courts of St. James's, Russia and France. In each of these countries his late Excellency had distinguished himself by so loyally serving his Emperor and his country, as to have achieved three great events which no other Ministers who have been sent out of China were in a position to bring about. I do not mean that other Ministers besides the Marquis Tseng have not the required talents to deal with such great affairs of international importance as those that were successfully managed by the Marquis Tseng, but other Ministers have not had so' many serious tasks imposed on them during @ term of three years. A wisely prolonged term of service of seven years and three months enabled the Marquis Tseng first to settle in Russia the vexed and long unsettled Kuldja question by signing with the Russian Government, on the 12th of February, 1881, on the tot the Imperial Chinese Government in quality of Ambassador Extraordinary, a treaty, by which the Chinese Government in Ni (commonly known to Euro: peans as Kuldja) was restored and re-established, to the satisfaction of the Government which he so worthily represented. At the same time the Russian Government obtained the right to nominate Consuls to Ili, to Tarbagatai, to Kashgar and to Ourga extended, from the time when the St. Petersburg treaty was signed, to the towns of Sontcheou (Tsia-yn-kwan) and of Turfan, besides power to establish consulates at Kobdo, Uliassoutai, Hami, Urumtsi and Goutchen on the conditions of considering the development of commerce before establishing them, and after an understanding with the Imperial Government of China. After the St. Petersburg Treaty, his Excellency maintained the dignity of hi country with singular wisdom in France in the matter of the intended annexation of Tongking. Before his Excellency's departure from London another important agreement was signed by him on behalf of the Chinese Government with her Britannic Majesty's Government, on the long pending opium question and the question of Tikin on opium, first broached inthe well-known ChefooConvention, signed on the 13th of September, 1876, by his Excellency Li Hung-chang, and Sir Thomas Francis Wade, formerly Envoy
Great Britain in China, The agreement Extraordinary and - Plenipotentiary which Marquis Tseng signed with Lord Salisbury on the 18th July, 1883, is called English Additional Articles to the Agreement between Great Britain and igned at Chefoo on the 13th Septem-76." Thus the article on opium duty and likin of the Chefoo Convention had been pending for final and satisfactory settlement nearly nine years, before a master hand of China, acting and working under an enlight Govern together with a no distinguished English statesman, cut Gordian knot and compounded' the likin dues at the rate of a sum not exceeding eighty taels per chest of one hundred catties in addition to the regular tariff duty of thirty per chest. To mark the appreciation of the additional articles of 1885, Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G.,. the Inspector General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs for no less than twenty-one ports in China, ordered and had built three more revenue cruisers from the well-known English Mitchell & Ca., in order to put the te arsenal of Sir W. G. Armstrong,
collection of Customs' duties and dues in an even greater degree of efficiency. These cruisers Sir Robert Hart appropria ately christened A(R, Special article, BAM, Opening management, and HERE, Likin. Tt was parti of wholly on account of i hat the revenue cruiser Li Regarding the reorganisation of the naval affairs of the Chinese Empire and the institution of & BRIN WH TPA, the Board of Admiralty at Peking, the knowledge of foreign affairs and experience of western methods possessed in equal degrees by the late Marquis Tseng, were secured by the Imperial Chinese Government for the effcient modus operandi of the new Admiralt Board a considerable time before his Excel-louey quitted his post as Chinese Minister in London. A few months before the Marquis was, appointed one of, the vieepresidents of the new Chinese Admiralty, his Excellency Li Hung-chang obtained the assistance of Marquis Tseng as Chinese Minister to have built by Sir William Armstrong and Ca. two fast turtle-back or tech-nicolly called protected (that is, horizontally armoured) cruisers, which, being designed of the English Navy and Director of Naval Mr. W. H. White, Assistant Controller
Construction in the British Admiralty, are the fastest vessels built by a western or English firm and running in eastern waters. The names 3% @ Reaching distant parts and $M Tranquillising distant parts, which his Excellency Li Hung-chang chose and gave to them, at once acknowledged the efficiency of thole two English-built war cruisers and. did much credit to the shipyard which built them, for the care taken in giving the cruisers a speed of Ynore than the contracted eighteen knots per hour. Had the Marquis Tseng lived many years longer his enlightened colleagues would have had the good fortune of availing theniselves of the satind counsels on naval matters of a Minister who not only was in close contact with the administrators of the British Navy, bat who, among all the Ministers that have been sent to foreign countries, was the only one who had the command of such. an important foreign language as English The one single Minister alone who had the knowledge of only. one foreign lan guage had already done great deal towards cementing international intercourse in all its useful and practical aspects and in a truly unbiased light, So if the Almighty had spared the valuable life of the Marquis Tstng, he would yet live a model to be copied by others who have the welfare of China, and the importance of closer international intercourse with China always at heart. By the death of the Marquis Tetng the case of railways in China has sustained the irretrievable loss of man, who having made longer po: of railroad locomotion in the west than any other Chinese high functionaries, could alone explain to the Chinese people who do not Know what' jeep, the fron Road, is, thet railway locomotion does not take their liv. ing away from any of the Chinese working class, but will eventually require many more of them to work on the. railways,
comfort, and with less manual drudgery with better pay, with " greater degree of that railways will also help to make mine almost an impossibility, and troubles in the shape of foreign invasion and civil commotivns more remote than ever. premature death of the Marquis Rebnce, hile regretting the premature, nay, ver itis to be sincerely hoped that what. the late Marquis did for the country of China will be ever kept in the memory of those who are either still living or to be born, 60 that they may take up the improvements that he has already made in China, and continuetoadvancestillmore, and with unabated but renewed vigour, and in truer light. In humble opinion the Chinese people caus not better commemorate the sad occurrence of last Saturday, and honour with more respect aman who has for ever left us, than to follow his noble example and walk in his footsteps,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.