If there is any real substantial effort among the great mass of Chinese to improve existing—oonditions there is no wish whatever to depreciate it. There is every wish to help the movement onward,—but with four thousand years of Chinese history before us, and not a chapter to prove that a foreigner would feel any degree of safety in confiding his interest to the administration of a native Court. then why should he be expected to submit, with servile acquiescence, that interest even to a Court, holding its sessions in this Settlement, and presided over by a Chinese official, invested with the full power to say. what shall be evidence, how it shall be admitted, what weight' it shall have, and to render judgement accordingly.
Tt will not do to answer, that the Chinese official only has the power mentioned when a native defendant, for such an answer would ignore the fact, that there are as many as half a million of natives living in the Settlement, a great many of whom are closely allied in business with the foreign banks and merchants, so the one cannot be separated from the other, although the litigants before the Mixed Court only be natives, thus that the result of any decision of the Court, under the circumstances, can seriously jeopard-
473 ize the interest of a foreign bank or merchant.
Many of the natives residing in the Settlement are engaged in business, and sustain valuable mercantile relations with the foreign residents, as well as between themselves, and it can be easily understood how interdependent one interest may be upon another, and to close the door of the Mixed Court to a foreign Assessor because natives appear from the Court record to be the sole litigants simply means that foreign interest is to be seriously imperiled.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.