19th October.
OnE of our native daily contemporaries has published recently a startling paper on the subject of the present policy of the Manchus in China, Though he gives it under the head of "rumours," the editor evidently regards the story as something more serious than' tea-house gossip. If there is a grain of truth in it, it is a grain of dynamite, liable at no distant time to cause an explosion, and since the experience of 1900 such rumen's are not to be lightly ignored, Th following is a translate tion of the important parts of the article "Rich Liang's mission to the south is now attract ly the eyes an! cuts of the world. Speculation us to its secret aims has given rise to a crop of rumours cov-ring both banks of the Great River from its mouth to its head wares. Our first, impres-min was that these rumours were invented by enetnies of the Envoy, has we ave new inclined to think that they emanate from his own suite. They are, in fact, attributed to his confidential adviser, a Manchu who has studied and travelled in foreign countries, According to this authority, as rumour has it, the objects of the mission are three "1, In the interest of the Court, to curtail the power of the provincial magnates. This is to be effected by depriving them of the coutto of the revenues and of the military. Without these they will be no beter than inanimate figureheads, and in case of some tremendous coup like that of Keng-tse (1900, when they were ordered to massacre all foreigners), they will not again dare to disobey the Imperial mandate.
"2. It is intended to repress the Chinese race, urd to reduce them to a position of more marked inferiority. That, indeed must fullow from the preceding; for when the provincial authorities are stripped alike of purse and sword, their people will be at the mercy of the Court." As in ancient sports, they will be treated as aliens and reduced to the condition of helots or predial serfs; no one of them being allowed to rise high r in the lof the blue button). civil service than the third rank (that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.