19th Nov.
THE recrudescence of the anti-Chris-tain spirit in the west of China is to be attributed to more than one cause. The success of the brigand chief Yiu Man-tze, who instead of being suppressed has been bought up and given official rank by the Szechuan officials, so that there are well-founded suspicions that his attacks on the Christians are not entirely unpleasing to some of those officials, is a direct incentive to the scoundrels who attack mission stations, not so much from fanaticism as from the love of outrage and the desire for under. They care nothing for confucianism or Buddhism, but they can make use of the prejudice against the new religion. Then the infamous Chou Han has never been seriously punished, nor has the dissemination of his inflammatory tracts been effectually stop] There is little doubt too that the acquiescence of the Foreign Representatives at Peking in the Empress Dowager's usurpation has been an encouragement to the ae peer party all over China. The wind has been sown at the capital, and the foreigners scattered all over the empire, intent only on doing good, are reaping the whirlwind. In the river and maritime provinces, accessible to fore; men-of-war, the fear of prompt punishment keeps the criminal classes quiet, and as far as regards the river up te Ichang, the Viceroys Chang shih-tung and Liu Kun-yi may be relied on to honestly do their best to discourage anti-foreign outrages but is is difficult for prompt punishment to be inflicted at such distant spots as Panghai, the village in Kueichou prefecture where Mfr. Fleming has been done to death, or at Kueifu in Szechuan, where as our correspondent informs us, the mission premises were entirely burnt down two days after the new Viceroy passed through on his way to his capital.
No-one who saw HE. Kuei Chun, the new Viceroy of Szechuan, when he was in Shanghai in the Sprin; during Prince Henry's visit, could believe him capable of any approval of anti-Christian operations, but notwithstanding that, it is obvious that the only way to efficiently protect foreigners who are in the interior of Westesn China in accordance with their treaty rights, is for the Foreign Representatives at Peking, who if' they choose to act together can bring sufficient pressure on the Manchu cabal now in power, to insist on the high provincial authorities being held responsible for all outrages on foreigners. The Ministers have, it must be confessed, weakened their own position very considerably by the indifference they have shown t the coup @éat. The. late Viceroy of Szechuan, Lu Chuan-lin, was removed from that post because of his inaction in the face of the anti-foreign riots in his province; the Emperor left him in the retirement which was a very light punishment for his sins of omission and commission; but as far as we have heard, the Foreign Ministers at Peking have made no protest, against his appointment by the Empress Dowager to the Governorship of Kuangtung. The Emperor was honest in his determination to stop anti-Christian outrages; it is known that the Empress Dowager and her recent appointees are anxious to reverse the Emperor's policy as far as possible, and therefore the authors of outrages naturally consider that the usurping powers are not opposed to the perpetration of outrages on foreigners. There is nothing farfetched then in saying, as we do, that the coup d'état is partly responsible for the present condition of affairs in the West; in fact, the Foreign Representatives at Peking are partly responsible for it. They must know that during the brief currency the Emperor's reforms, the young literati, who have always been known as the chief enemies of Christianity, and the sons of officials anxious to become officials themselves, were everywhere turning to the missionaries for instruction and assistance, which was the very best protection the missionaries could obtain. The coup d'état has changed all this. From everywhere comes to us the news that there has been a recoil. The old bad order has replaced the new order introduced by the young Emperor. The Empress Dowager says in her decree of the 13th inst, "As the Empire has always prospered and flourished under the old regime, and the methods of old, inaugurated and sanctioned by. the ances tors of our dynasty, have attained the acme of excellence, there is indeed no necessity for' making any changes," etc. So we are going back in the interior of China to the good old methods, the burning of missionary establishments, and the baiting and occasional murdering of missionaries, with the persecution of their converts. Perhaps now that a Scotch missionary has been murdered, an earnest young. man of only thirty whose only crime was his zeal for the people fmsong whom he had pitched his. tent, and his anxiety to do them good in every way that he could devise, our Minister may ask himself whether he was altogether right in weleomin, back to the supreme rule the bigot old lady who is such a devout admirer of China's ancient ways.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.