1th Jan.
Ir is rarely that the opportunity is presented to us in Shanghai of hearing such an able, instructive, and interesting address as that delivered on Thursday afternoon by the Hon. John Barrett at the Municipal Hall; and the enjoyment was enhanced by the fact that Mr. Barrett has not only the ability, and the knowledge gained by personal study, to write a good address, but also the power to it admirably, so that none of his hearers missed a word of it, bad as the acoustic properties of the Municipal Hall notoriously are. It hardly needed the neat introductory speech of Mr. E. F. Alford, the Chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce, to introduce Mr. Barrett to his hearers, for they already knew him well by his reputation as Minister of the United States to Siam, and they have gauged his abilities as a public speaker by our recent notice of his address to the Oriental Society in Tokio.
Mr. Barrett's address, which will be found in this issue, occupied nearly an hour in delivery though Mr. Barrett is a somewhat rapid speaker, but it was not a minute too long for his audience, which included Sir Nicholas Hannen, Chief Judge of H. M. Supreme Court, the British and American Consuls-General, the most prominent members of the Chamber of Commerce, the China Association, the American Asiatic Association, and the Municipal Council, and a very large and representative gathering of the foreign community of Shanghai. Mr. Barrett had a large map of Asia and maps of the Shilippinge and of Manila and its neighbourhood on the platform, by which his hearers were enabled the more intelligently to follow his address. He began by mentioning in a very unassuming way his qualifications to come before his audience as a lecturer on the Philippines. For six years he has been, he said, a devoted student of Pacific and Asiatic peoples, polities, and possibilities, and for four of those years "U.S. Minister in a land whose inhabitants, climb ate, resources and peculiarities are in many respects similar to those of the Philippines; in close touch for a considerable period with the British Colonies of Burma, Singapore, and Hongkong, and the Protected Malay States, as well as the French possessions of Indo-China, where problems have had to be solved like those that will. meet America in the Philippines." During those six years Mr Bar-reft has been directing by every means in his power the attention of the United States to the " Asiatic Opportunity," finally completing his study of the marvellous Antilles of the Orient by personal presence at the seat of war from May until No-personal experience enabled him to pay a very high tribute of praise to the naval and military commanders at Manila, and to the officers and men they commanded. The great desideratum, he said, was men, given first an Act of Congress providing for a special civil service for the government of the Phal ppiaes, out of which politics will be barred and bolted, then given, secondly, men of quality and integrity, for we have plenty of them to fill the necessary position, and the problem of the American government of the islands will be for ever solved." The only fear is lest the American people be misled, as} seems possible from this morning's telegram, into thinking that their occupation of the Philippines is only to be temporary, and that it is therefore not worth While to organise such a colonial service as is indispensable if the islands are to be satisfactorily administered. It will certainly be some, probably many, years, before the Philippines will' have a native government strong enough to ensure internal peace and security from external encroachment.
After giving some description of the size and population of the Philippines, Mx. Barrett made a very interesting digression into the China question, which is more closely bound up with the Philippiness question than might appear at first sight. Like our recent gallant visitor, he is a convinced advocate of the "open door," to ensure which, he said, we want a Dewey. But it is doubtful if even Dewey would have become famous, if he had had the drag on him of the British Foreign Office. "It is high time that we were up and] doing," said Mr. Barrett; let us hope that Lord Charles Beresford will make Lord Salisbury sec this.
After a sketch of the history. ofthe Philippines, on which Great Britain still'has an unpaid mortgage of -five million dollars, Mr. Barrett pointed out the importance of its situation between Japan and China on the north, Australia on the south, and Java, Borneo, and the Straits Settlements on the west. He pointed out the importance of the islands to the United States, both on the ground of their own trade, and the recent enormous growth of the United to xf. States' trade with China. Remembering that the German pretext for the dispatch of a such a large squadron to Manila was the preponderance there of German trade, it was interesting to hear that in the sixteen months from January 1897 to April 1898, British firms paid in duties alone to the Custom-house $3,365,000, Swiss firms $735,700, and German firms $546,300. That there will be an enormous expansion of the trade of the Philippines -under an honest and progressive
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.