At a meeting of the London Chamber of Commerce, held on the 10th of November, Mr. George Jamieson, British Consul at Shanghai, delivered an address on China the Elfects of the Japanese War and Prospeots of British Trade." There was a large attendance, among those present being Messrs. Hugh M. Matheson (chairman of the East India and China Trade section of the Chamber), A. R.
Colquhoun, H. H. Fox, S. Gilfillan, "E, W. Batt, and T. Richardson.
'The President (Sir A. Rollit), in traducing the lecturer, referred' to the interest taken by the Chamber in the Eastern trade since 1885, and referred to its reception of Li Hung-chang and the declaration elicited from him that he would favour the development of Chinese commerce. The trade reports of our Consuls were widely appreciated and used at the Chamber, and a committee, of which ho Was a member, was now sitting at the Board of Trade, which would, he hoped, recommend improvements in them and the establishment of a commercial information bureau. In China commercial prospects were good, and. the recent opening of the West route was a great step in advance while the representation of the nation by an able Minister in this country was a great security for commercial comity. Among our Consuls abroad Mr. Jamieson had ex: ceptional claims on that Chamber of Commerce, having been in the East. serving China' and Japan since 1884, having' ox. ceptional knowledge of the Treaty Ports, and having eminently qualified himself, both by long residence and close observa. Hon, for giving the information that waa wired on the subject of his address, (Choers.)
Mr. Jamieson, who was very cordially received, remarked that there was, perhaps, no country in the world which presented such interesting subjects of study at the resent moment as China; and, whether irom the point of view of the politician, the merchant, the manufacturer, or the missionary, the situation was one deserving the greatest attention. For the first time in history China was being dragged out of her seclusion. It had remained for the Japanese to prick the bubble, and the consequences were what we now saw. When one considered how much energy was being displayed in mapping out and apportioning the waste places of the earth, and how much heat was occasionally evolved over some trifling piece of hinterland of no great value to anyone, one. wondered that the Far East claimed so little of public attention in this country. For there we had not only enormous tracts of territory as yet almost undeveloped, as, for instance great parts of Manchuria, "Mongolia, and Northern all white men's land, and all capable of bearing rich harvests, but the whole of China proper as yet unexploited by the engineer and the railway contractor. These facts were, he thought much more clearly perceived on the Continent of Europe. So far, however, as things had gone he did' not know that there was any reason for regret. The time was coming when the Chinese would be pre-Pared to give satisfactory terms in regard to such works. They were learning their lesson slowly; but necessity was a hard schoolmaster, and was close on their heels, The need for more money would become more and more imperious every year, and it could hardly be but that this necess would sooner or later overcome their
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.