23rd August.
Tue world has been looking forward for some years to the appearance of the late Mr. Pethick's Life of Li Hung-chang. Granting the very pronounced faults that disfigured' his character and career, Li was a great man, the foremost man for some decades in a homogeneous nation of some three hundred and fifty millions of individuals; and a real, trustworthy, account of his life would be of the deepest interest to every one. So-called lives of Li exist already, and more will appear collections of dry husks, painfully extracted from old blue-books and back volumes of the "North-China Herald," with stories that have formed part of the gossip of the treaty ports of China for forty years, and such reminiscences as good-natured people who came in contact with Li at some period or other of his career could be induced to recall from the recesses of their memory. Then there is the official life of Li which the family of the great man of Anhui have commissioned a distinguished Chinese scholar to write, which we may safely prophesy will not appear for some years, and will be very long, very full of trivial details, of doubtful veracity, and utterly unreadable. But one man there was who.knew Li thoroughly and had known him intimately for a long term of years, who knew his greatness and his weaknesses, his private as well as his pablic affairs, his goings out and his comings in. That man was the late Mr. Pethick. He had made it the welcome labour of his recent years to write a life of the great patron whom he served so faithfully, and he had made very great progress with his self-imposed task, Those who have been: privily egod, and they were very few, to read portions of the manuscript prote themselves enchanted with it. The style, they said, was not particularly polished, but it was vigorous, straightforward writing and as deeply interesting as a biography can be; and such a life as that of Li Hung-chang must be fall of the deepest interest. When Mr. Pethick died prematutely, there was great anxiety to know who held this precious manuscript, and very large sums were offered for it by eager publishers. Every possible search has been made for it, but it has entirely disappeared so entirely, that by-and-by we shall, no doubt, be confidently assured that it never existed except in Mr. Pethick's imagination.
There are various theories current in the north to account for the disappearance of this precious manuscript. One is, that Mr. Pethick destroyed it himself. It has already been mentioned in these columns that towards the close of his life Mr. Pethick saw reason to entirely change the opinion he had held for many years of Li's greatness; and it is suggested that when this very important change came over him, he found that it would be necessary to recast. his book so extensively that in a fit of disgust he destroyed it altogether. This is a possible solution; on the other hand no friend or servant of Mr, Pethick can remember seeing at any time: any such debris as the destruction of such a bulky manuscript as this was must have left, Then it was thought sible that the manuscript might ave been carried away by accident in one of the old boxes that were removed from Mr. Pethick's quarters when he died, and the coolies were offered a large reward for its recovery; but this was unsuccessful, Another suggestion is that the manuscript was taken away by some member of the Li family, or at instigation of some Chinese official who feared that it might contain unwelcome disclosures, or compromise
or the provinces. Considering how people now in high places in Peking blunt and outspoken Li could be at times, how thoroughly he saw through and despised the native tools that he used, it is very probable that Mr. Pethick's manuscript did contain a great deal of matter whose publication would flutter many dovecots and this seems the most probable solution of the enigma, There is another theory, however; that the manuscript was taken by some foreigner who knew its value, and who is keeping it hidden, either for his own use, or for sale hereafter when such excitement as has been cause: l by its mysterious disappearance has died out. 4 Meanwhile, if the manuscript is really destroyed, its loss is simply irreparable. No one, not even the late Mr. Michie, knew Li Hiwng-chang and ed had earned his confidence, as Mr. Pethick did. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole world is the poorer by the disappearance of "Pethick's Life of Earl Li" Who can say now authoritatively what was the real character of the late Viceroy? Was he a patriot or a traitor? A Bismarck or a Machiavelli? Is he responsible for the present condition of China, or did he do anything to prevent that condition being much worse than it is? Of his abilities there is no question but-was his devotion to his country's
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.