Auguet 6.
Tue Imperial Decree, of which we published a translation yesterday, having for its object the promotion of trade and industry within the Empire, must rank in, importance among all such docnments of recent times below only the Edicts that promised a Constitution for China and ordered the suppression of opium. In its immediate effects (always giving to these Decrees their face value) it will certainly fall far short of the Opium prohibition and probably of the promised grant of a Constitution; but its potentialities in its ultimate bearing on the welfare of the country need be inferior to neither of" its epoch-making predecessors. There still, not unnaturally, a tendency among foreigners to refuse to take Chinese Decrees at their face value; and one and all are apt to he dismissed with a contemptuous shrug and a resolve to await a more practical method of learning China's intentions. But in the three instances cited the reforms contemplated have aimed at such far-reaching effects, that their very scope precludes any" immediate appli cation with striking results, For the moment foreigners are not called upon to pass judgement on the practical outcome of this new' Industrial Decree; hut they must admit that its appearance is a significant sign of the times and forms another landmark in China's deliberate, if somewhat cride, efforts to raise herself from the ation of centuries. Tt matters little whether her attitude is prompted, as hax been suggested, by instincts of self-preservation, aroused by the fate now ov tuking Korea, or by a nobler ae= cession of enlightenment, that would woo progress. for its own sake. The primary significance of the Decree lies the fact that it tends to break down the traditional barriers between castes, and accords to n: chants, who have hitherto iginal from
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.