What then should we do now? We do not know. It isa matter for the Consuls to consider and decide, but I will tell you Jastory. A long ime ago, more than 3,000 years indeed, a man was staying for a night in a town when the people set upon his companion, and perpetrated a hideously brutal murder. The man was a person of no great account, and his companion was of still less. Further there was no one there to whom the man could appeal for justice, or who could obtain justice for him. In that respect he was'as helpless there as we are here. So the man took his companion's corpse, and dividing it into a dozen pieces, sent a piece to all the tribes of the nation. They assembled tos gether: their men enquired into the e case, and then they utterly exterminated the guilty. It is a Bible story you will find it in the nineteenth chapter of Judges. Tt was a callous age and people no ordinary means would rouse them, and it seems to me we must face our difficulty in something of the same spirit. The trouble is not in China, but with the home governments who cannot be brought to realise the situation, We must therefore take, figuratively, a dozen boxfuls of these mangled remains. and send one to the responsible authorities of Sweden and Norway, one to Germany, to Belgium, to England, France; Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria, Russia, and America—one to each of all the countries represented in China and say: "These poor remains, please Your Excellencies, were once ' strong, healthy men, and dear friends of ours. They were brutally butchered within a short distance of a large foreign Settlement, with four gunboats in port, and men enough on board them to take the capital. They lay rotting on the ground stark naked where they fell for three days, and every effort made by their friends to bring them off only resulted in failure, because the murderersforbade. Every effort only called forth fresh insult, and led fresh people into danger. This is a new thing under the sun. Consider of it, Your Excellencies. Turn over the contents of the box if you dare, smell of it, and know that what you have there is what many of those for whose safety you are responsible may soon be made. Don't call us alarmists because we tell you the truth. Don't call us cowardly and timorous. We are not. Whatever dangers have been faced by man before we can face but why condemn us, as you are doing now, to fill, without the sughest Power to help ourselves, boxes such as these
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.