6th April.
In the extract from the Foochow Echo that appears in another column will be found a very interesting account of the plan that has been adopted by the magistrate of the Hokchiang district, to settle the disputes that constantly go on where Christianity has made much progress. It will be remembered that while the trial of the Whasang murderers was in progress, accounts reached us of serious anti-Christian outrages in Hokchiang, in which the magistrate was accused of treating the Christians with great injustice and siding with their enemies. According to the correspondent of the Foochow Echo, a great change has come over this official, and while we refer to the matter now we note that it is an illustration of one of the most hopeful of the characteristics of the Chinese race, their capacity for self-government. The Chinese people are between two systems of government, that of the official hierarchy which descends on them from above, and that which they organise among themselves. The main object of the official hierarchy is the collection of the revenue; the maintenance of order and the settlement of disputes are managed in the first instance by the people for themselves, it is only in graver cases that the official is appealed to; and the people are happiest who never see an official from one year's end to another. Chinamen organise self-government almost as readily as Anglo-Saxons, and the best official is the one who leaves the people most to themselves. As the official exists to collect taxes, settle lawsuits, and preserve order at the one end, so the village authority performs the same functions at the other end; it collects contributions to be spent for the public benefit, settles disputes between the villagers and preserves order in lesser matters. One of the great objections that the people have to the conversion of their neighbours to Christianity is the disruption that it brings into the village life. The Christian convert objects to subscribing to the village fund, because the money is used for what the missionary stigmatised as idolatrous purposes; and if he gets into a dispute with his neighbours, instead of asking the mediation of the village elders, he goes to the missionary. The majority of missionaries refuse their assistance in such matters, seeing themselves the harm that they may do by interfering and the abuses to which their interference may lead; but the knowledge that he is a friend of the foreigner is often a protection to the convert, and his neighbours ate naturally jealous of him. As the correspondent of the Foochow Echo says:—"The presence of Christians in any district is a serious cause of perplexity to the officials and especially so when there are Christians of two or three different Churches, In the latter case the position of the magistrate is peculiarly embarrassing since he is in constant dread of finding himself in diffeulty with two or three Consuls at once, There are troubles between the Christians and non-Christians, and there are unseemly quarrels between the Christians themselves; the cases are taken to the missionaries, and by them to the Consuls, and the unfortunate magistrate is sure to have some unpleasant despatches from his superior." The magistrate at Hokchiang has taken an excellent step to relieve himself of some of this anxiety, and at the same time gratify the people in his charge by utilising their capacity for self-goverument. He has obtained the consent of the Viceroy, to whom the troubles that arise from the disputes between Christians and non-Christians are a most irksome addition to the inevitable worries of governing a province as large as a country in Europe, to the delegation of the duty of settling these disputes to a committee appointed by the leading men in his district. "They have elected twelve men, among these twelve being two Protestant native misters and a native Roman Catholic priest. hose twelve are divided into sub-committees of-four, one presided over by the magistrate himself, and the other two each by an official, and these sub-committees of five sit in rotation each day when there are cases to be
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.