19th Dec. 'THE new Committee of the Shanghai Literary and Debating Society is evidently determined to push the somewhat neglected debating side of the Society's raison @étre, and it has sent out a most formidable list of twenty-two questions, ouwhichit suggests that members should send in their names as "Openers". It is not, however, to be gathered that the late committee were negligent in the matter: it is the members who have shown so little anxiety to hear themselves, and allow others to hear them, speak; for though everybody concedes the value of facility in public speaking, there are very few who will take the trouble to gain that facility by attending and taking part in debates, That the new committee have grappled seriously with the question is shown by their having succeeded in evolving so many discussable questions, without having to fall back on the old disputes, still unsolved, as to whether Charles the First or Oliver Cromwell was the greater hero, whether Ma-hornet was a fanatic or an impostor, or whether Mary Queen of Scots was as black as her enemies have painted her. The questions propounded in the committee's circular are modern, local, and in some cases vividly interesting. "The first, "That State endowments should only be used for primary education," is not a specially stirring one to us in Shanghai, unless it is aimed at the modest contributions given by the Municipality to the French and Masonic Schools, with which the most austere economist can hardly find fault, If we fear "that the tendency of China's development is to lessen the chances of profitable occupation for foreigners in the country," we console ourselves, no doubt, with the belief that that development will not go on fast enough to affect us, and if the Deluge is to come, it is not we who will want an Ark. Strikes, which are the subject of the third question—* That it is the duty of governments to so control strikes that absolute freedom of contract between employer and labourer be strictly maintained",—do not often touch us immediately, though we grumble enough if a Dock Strike prevents our receiving our boxes from home when we look for them; and we expect the Council to control the jinricsha-men when they strike, without caring too much about freedom of contract. As to the settlement of new countries we ale shy; the money we have put into North Borneo and the Malay Peninsula has not fructified as much as we hoped, and future comers do not interest us. "That there is urgent need for reform in the present system of disposing of the dead", particularly when that system takes the form of stacking their coffins by hundreds for years ina contiguous guild-house, we are all convinced. Equally are nearly all sensible people convinced of the necessity of the maintenance of some such system as the Contagious Diseases Acts provided, but here, unfortunately, sentiment' is too often allowed to prevail over sanitation. ° Only about one mau in fifty will vote, we should imagine, that lotteries for the promotion of charitable ends should be encouraged and even the fortunate one often does not want his prize when he has got it,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.