Apart from Lord Salisbu protest against Earl Spencer that. the Gorernme Sof Count von Biilow difference to Manchu the House of Lords, on Tuesday, respecting China was somewhat j Lord Lansdowne was able to exhibit a plausible schedule of progress in the negotiations he went so far even as to call factory progress." But he spoke of it with little enthusiasm; and it is indeed not easy to suppose that anyone acquainted vith the facts can regard with much gratfication the outcome of twelve monty endeavour to exact reparation for " crimes committed" (in the language of the joint Note) under circumstances which have no parallel in the history of the world." The extraordinary embassy which China was required to send to Berlin has set out; a heavy indemnity has been fixed; proviso for the future defence of the Legati demolition of the Taku Forts. has been quarter in Peking has been made; and the
agreed to; the Tsung-li Yamen has been dissolved and a Board of Foreign Affairs instituted in its stead; an edict of the 11th June decrees the suspension of official ex-nations in certain towns where forcignave been killed; and other points of the programme have been settled in principle if not actually carried out. But the chief authors of these crimes are still at large; the faction which instigated them is still in power; and of the fiscal reforms which experts regard as essential not. only for the development of China's resources but to enable her to meet the fresh burdens that have been placed upon her, there is no sign.
We hear a great deal of the Imperial Government; formal use_is made even, in the negotiations, of the Emperor's name. But the Emperor is still under the duress in which he has been held since the coup d'état in 1898; and the "Imperial Government" consists of a usurper—the Empress Dowager—and a triumvirate comprising the so-called " lie-eunuch," Li Lien-yung, and two ultra-reactionaries, former colleagues of Prince Tuan. What is to be expected from a Government so constituted our readers can judge for themselves. What the Chinese think of it may be inferred, broadly, from the nickname of The Three Tigers bestowed upon its members. It is difficult to speak seriously of such people as a Government; yet that is presumably what Lord Lansdownie means when he sags that "the Chinese iovernment has had a very severe lesson, and although in future we may not expect a very enlightened policy at their hands, we may at any rate count on a policy more pri dent than that which has guided them in the past." Let us hear what the (Chinese) correspondent of the "North China Herald" at Hsian thinks of that prospect. "Instead (he writes) of becoming more enlightened and amenable to present conditions as taught them by the resistless march of the Ailies last year, the Government of Heian is now more bigoted, more conservative and more anti-foreign than it was ever before." The avowal is consistent with a statement that the latest device for securing revenge on officials, who protected missionaries instead of abet ting Prince Tuan's edict of extermination,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.