9th Oct.
In reference to the leading article in the W.-C. Daily News of the 25th ult, and to the letter by Mr. Cockburn in the same journal's issue of the 26th ult., let us' look into the past, In 1842 Great Britain with a few thousand Indian troops could have made China a province of the Empire upon which the sun never sets. That her then doing so would have been an advantage to the world and to China, few travelled Westerns will doubt. But she feared the responsibility and difficulty of governing the country. In the war of 1842 China received her first lesson. In 1857 she was again spoiling for a beating. Britain hesitated to undertake to ade minister a second lesson, not because she had any doubt of the ability of a twentieth part of her Indian army to go to Peking, but because she feared that other nations would suspect her of aiming at the possession of too large a portion of the earth, and that jealousy of and combination against her would have been the result. She therefore induced France to join in the expedition which resulted in the capture of Peking, and in the negotiation of the treaties uow in force. But the alliance between Great Britain and France had one bad result; it caused the Chinaman to believe that one western power was
gry, and unarmed braves. Then came not able to cope with his ragged hun-the Tongking difficulty. France gained her point. But as she effected nothing striking, and the Chinaman found that he had lived through a war with a leading military nation of the West, and was still able to eat his rice and smoke his pipe, he lost all fear of foreign devils. When his fear disappeared his hatred increased. Hunan became emboldened. Like a stone rolling down a hill, a movement of this sort gains strength as it goes. A number of Catholic institutions, in which all Christendom is interested, have been burned, Catholic priests have been' fiercely assaulted, and Catholic Sisters beaten and shamefully
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.