13th Nov.
Later information enables us to correct one or two misapprehensions in our recent article on this important subject. It appears now that it is only the section from Peking toHankow, some 650 miles, which Sheng 'l'aotai is authorised by Imperial edict to form a Chinese company to construct, It is not the Wharton Barker syndicate, but a syndicate represented by Mr. Bash, to which Sheng has promised the order for the necessary materials which he cannot provide at the Hanyang Ironworks, payment therefor being taken by the syndicate in shares in the projected company. It is stated that the syndicate is prepared to provide for this purpose a sum of at least twenty million taels, The Peking and Tientsin Times is very angry with Sheng, " whose face is behind every obstruction to British interests," regarding it as entirely unfair that he should reap where Li has planted and Lo watered. It says that China is trying to revise her tariff with fore nations, and HE. Li has been appoint ed to the 'I'sungli Yamen to discuss this important question, but he is checkmated by the march that his former protege has stolen on him.
guid pro quo which Li thought he would have to offer when he came to ask for the tariff to be raised has been filched away by Shéog before Li could get back to ory Stop thief! and by the aid of promises the impossibility of whose fulfilment is self-evident to every formal capacity. The Emperor is determined that the railways to be built in China shall be built with native capital exclusively, all the plant being manufactured in China, avy foreigners engaged being simply the employees of the Chinese and under their absolute control. Sheng has promised to observe these conditions—to the Emperor; while to the Bash syndicate he has promised to order plant from them and employ American capital, It is hardly likely that even by the time the road bed is ready, the Hanyang Ironworks will be able to manufacture all the rails, bridges, rolling stock, etc., necessary for the line, and this Sheng knows perfectly well and, our northern contemporary says, "if capital he procured from American capitalists on Shéng's and not the Emperor's authority, the chances are that the American influence on the new line will be far more powerful than that exerted by mere employees." Sheng, whatever his backing may be among the Legations at Peking, is anything but a persona grata at the British Legation, and it is England that China has mainly to conciliate if she really wants to raise her tariffs; and our northern contemporary goes on to say: "It is highly probable that tthe Foreign Ministers will insist that rails, bridges, locomotives, and other railway material shall not be given in contract to one syndicate without giving other parties the option of tendering." It is pointed out that the existing railways have been excellently and cheaply builé by tender by Mr. Kinder, "who combines ingenuity and theoretical learning with vast practical experience railway matters in this particular country." Our contemporary continues "Why should China, in order to satisfy the ambition of an official who has just recently escaped the claws of the Censors, having been accused of every form of dark squeeze, abandon safe and fair rules of procedure?—"1.—Why should she not raise loans from foreign countries? She cannot preeaze all the capital herself. Surely her resources are not so exhausted, that she cannot do so so? and—"2.—Why should she not, as before, buy her rails, bridges, and rolling stock through the medium of tenders, thereby securing the best articles at the best price "3,—Why should she not leave the technical superintendence solely to her present Engineer-in-Chief and Engineers who have built her first railways so honestly and so well "Surely Shéng's influence cannot be so powerful as to blow away well established modes of procedure and high merit simply by breathing some half-fantastic, half-artful persuasions in the ear of the young Emperor.
"There are other and weightier reasons why China should not throw herself absolutely into the arms of one nation when such a grand question as railways across her vast dominions is at stake, She is trying to raise her tariffs, and Viceroy Li has been appointed to solve the difficulty, in which England by force of undisputed trade supremacy must have the first say. There is a certain connection between China's recent movement in the railway question and the tariff revision. How can China expect to find a willing ear to her proposals in Great Britain and elsewhere when she seems to entirely overlook the spirit of the most favoured nation clause, the broad sense of which after all must be that a fair chance as regards trade and business enterprises shall be given to all treaty Powers?"
The real answer to these questions, we imagine, is, because, to-use a phrase which is very expressive if not very classical, there is no money for any one in the tender system. It is generally understood that owing to the competition between the tenderers, the Chinese have obtained everything for the railway between 'T'ientsin and Peking, sleepers, rails, ironworks, rolling-stock, actually below cost price, Whoever provides the money for the Great Western Railway has in some form to repay Sheng for the money he has paid for that gigantic white elephant, the Hanyang Ironworks, and this cannot be done by the tender system. Still it remains to be seen whether Shénz has sufficiently consolidated his position at Peking, and can give sufficient security to the syndicate with which he is supposed to be working, to enable him to build his railway in the way he proposes to himself and his friends, Reviews, THE ENGLISH MAIL PAPERS, (Por THe WEEK ENDING THE AND OF SEPT.) a say_when he contemplates the condition of Euro at the end of the nineteenth century? He will see a number of great nations all armed to the teeth, alli devoted to. the cause of page and humanity and all afraid to check force the Sultan's career of atrocity, and equally afraid to give the mandate to do it to any one Power. So serious was the situation that great emotion, as we leora from the Paris Temps, was caused by M. Cambon, the French Minister at Constantinople, going to the Sultan and speaking to him quite seriously M. Cambon is reported to have informed his colleagues that he had acquainted the Sultan with the feeling of diequistude caused throughout Europe by the fact that Constantinople was for several days given up to pillage and massacre without any attempt of the authorities to interfere. He is, moreover, said to have declared that a repetition of such outrages would lead to a European intervention in consequence of the danger to which regards the Armenians, the French Ambassa-the foreign colonies would be exposed. As dor recommended the Sultan to adopt a policy of clemency and pacification, and to make a distinction between the mass of the people, who were peacefully inclined, and the revolutionary. element. He demanded the release of the thousands of unoffending Armenians now detained in prison, the convocation of an Armenian Assembly, the election of the Patriarch, and the carrying out of the promised reforms. The Sultan is said to have replied that the Assembly would be summoned, that the reforms would be extended to the whole of the Empire, and that a Commission would be appointed to carry out the extension of these reforms.
And with these promises, the like of which the Sulten has made and broken over and over again, Europe, with its 5,000,000 men under arms, is satisfied. If we are to take the Continental Press as guide, the Powers were in a curious state of flux at the time the Czar was visiting England and France. Some of the Russian papers urged an understanding between England and Russia, while others were warning England that these soft words were only. written to make things pleasant while the Czar was at Balmoral. Meanwhile the German Press continued
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.