23rd March.
THE first set debate on the China Question in the House of Commons took place on the 8th of February, when Sir E. Ashmead-Bartlett moved to add to the address the words "And we humbly pray your majesty to direct your Ministers to take early and effective measures to assist the Chinese Government in maintaining the territorial independence of the Chinese Empire, and especially of the province of Manchuria, in accordance with the resolution of March 1, 1898, unanimously affirmed by this House." It looked well, no doubt, to remind the House that only a year ago it had determined that it was of vital importance to British commerce that the independence of Chinese territory should be maintained; but it has not taken a year to show that to carry this out would be as easy as to build a monument more lasting than brass out of jelly. Russia was Sir Ashmead-Bartlett's bugbear. Within the last twenty years she has turned the Black Sea into a Russian lake, and her cast-iron tariffs have been supplemented by special restrictions which have practically ousted British trade. Sir Ashmead proposed that the Government, fortified by the result of a resolute policy in the Soudan, should join with Japan in turning the rissians out of Manchuria, acting before the Siberian railway is finished, as until then Russia has to get all her reinforcements by sea, where they are at our mercy.
Mr. Walton then rose and asked for information on the subject of the Shanhaikuan-Newchwang Railway Loan. The security for the loan was no doubt ample, but the Russian Government had prevented the line outside Shanhaikuan being mortgaged, and being a party to this transaction, the Government had given their sanction to an abandonment of the principle of equality of treatment to British nationals north of the Great Wall. Coming to the Lu-Han railway, which was nominally Belgian but really Franco-Russian, Mr. Walton asked how far the instruction to the British Minister at Peking to press for the insertion in every railway concession granted by the Chinese Government of a proper provision as to equal treatment of all nationals and trade had been successfully carried out, "and whether in regard to the Peking and Hankow railway concession, penetrating as it did into the very heart of our special sphere of trade and commercial enterprise in the Yangtze Valley, Her Majesty's Government had insisted the terms and conditions on which it was granted being similar to those imposed by Russia in connection with that portion of the Newchwang Railway extension north
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.