Tae—correspondence China's treaties and the trampling thereon shows signs degenerating into. a mere wrangle. Tt is a misconception to denounce all treaties between foreigners and Chinese, bolus bolus, as unjust. The essential purport of them is the. same practically throughout, namely, to enable foreigners to live and trade peacefully in China they can do in all civilized countries and as it is perfectly plain that the Chinese people are always willing that they should do, when let alone and not deliberately excited, by their officials, This desire to trade ig natural and just, while the obstruction of officials is natural and indefensible.
The out: as terra olawea. minority of: individuals, who in' no sense represent their. countrymen's wishes or interests. Where the treaties appeared to inflict any inequities,—the Washington Conference set itself to right them with both hands. Again, it is unjust to sinuate that foreigners do not care twopence how much the Chinese are taxed but kick up a prodigious row when their own cigarettes fre mulcted. The point here is not that cigarettes were taxed, any more than it might have been kewpies—or teddy bears, hut that an agreement solemnly entered into between the Government and tain producers, and subseribed to by the provincial authorities, was suddenly flouted and torn up by the latter, who, although no Chinese yet pears to have realized "it, thereby struck at the whole foundation of the concessions and arrangements entered into or provided for at Washington.
regards the taxation of Chinese by Chinese, it happens that foreigners are by no means different to it; hut they can hardly interfere on behalf of the Chinese sufferers who do nothing to help themselves.
'The gist of Mr. "Sokolsky's original article, whence the correspondence began, was that Chinese students expend much' time and breath in denouncing the wicked foreigner and his treaties, but have nothing say about their own officials whose misgovernment and rapacity have brought China to her present sorry state: for example, they complain that the foreigner. will not allow them to tax igorottes for educational funds, out say nothing about the f the revenue
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.