To the Editor of the "Nontn-Catsa Darty News."
Sr,—T have roxd your criticism of the condition of things' illustrated by the death of Mr, Stonehousa with entire usent and with distress, if not indignation.
Proposals have been made from time to time during the past months to send" punitive expedition throug! Chekiang and Chuchou. Much as I desired in the interes's of justice, which ix the truest merey, that the officials responsible for the outraves there should be capitally punished, I hive alway deprecated thst step, inthe belief that it would, by superseding native officials, at "ance vitally relieve them of r-sponsibility and result in anarchy, unless the invaders wore willing and able to police the whole province, Native mandoring have many faults. Nevertheless their rule is so far beneficent that during forty years I have been able to perambulate any district of Chekiang to which my duties led mo with hardly rare approhontion of danger frorh__brigands than one would feel of encountering highwayman to-day on Hounslow Heath.
Bveryono says that, ious to last spring, such was the condition of things for the traveller in Chibli.
'You argue that the present dangerous anarchy has been, if not caused by, at any rate suffered to' grow in spite of,.the presence of a formidable foreign military foran; anid that one obvious treter in the production of brigandage ix the indiscriminate application of punitive measures intended to check it.
Theard thre days ago of a recent expedition to destroy a village nowt Tientsin, in which many persons were shat, on the pretext ofthe oxpoion of the boiler of a locomotive on the railway elise by. Te was aseumod without enqu that treachery had occasioned what was the result of yur" accident. My informant is one wh would not repeat such a story without. e Te matters not what was the matic the members of the expedition, for, as you argue, the international concert as a whole jointly responsible for such suicidal ion, The German Commander-in-Chief may surely be credited with humanity enough deplore such imp
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.