vay" oP Puocnss Phe First English Tr Allen Unviny Lado 3
Mr, Flint; the first Englishman who learned the Chinese language, Beers 10 have imbibed the childlike faith of the Chinese of those days the Emperor's Justice. Me petition written in the servile age which a a itis sovereign and made his wny In spite of many obstacles, to Peking, Me was enst into prison—a Chinese prison of those days wan a terrible place. The Chinese scholar who wrote the petition was. beheaded. The British merchants who had alded Flint in his enterprise were bast-Gnadoed. "Thin was how the "do-mincering" English, who wanted nothing but liberty to trade, were treated by China in 1759.
Mr. Soothill deals firmly others, beside Chinese, who." present the position of the British China. (The title of his book is "China and England," yot China and Foreigners, and he keeps stvietly to his thesis.) Ie says, Certain, American statements by retponalfte men, do an injustice 10 Thie°tna other' "countsieg Wihere in China Auerien has' taker Yali ulvantaye.of the Inbour and irifees of the Hietish td also ain other ations: yet it poses heldinge "no *eondesstons Ghina™ this acevsiny other: nations of. "ngaresaion, Where, tens may he sake have American traders lived ALP those leeds. Where do. the their courts of" taw? Where'
live? In. what
they ponalite have had their abode except inthe Settlements required other people's efforts? Tt these {facts were known, Americans. woul De'the first to feel mean ut being 80 isto.
This testimony is true. If some! Americans sin, as we must confess Four and sixpence, it must be! admitted, isnot an exorbitant price to pay for a glimpse of the Millennum, or rather, a scrutiny of the path which one ix assured must lead thereto, no matter how familiar the path may appear, once it Is stripped of the present guide's sophistry and prolixity. Once this has happened, then the old, old erriters obtrude themselves again in all their hide-
'The great difficulty with all charts of the kind, is this. The path to the Millenniom, the way of pro-ress, was pre-ordained. It reached out, goldenly, before the bunion race in its earliest infancy, with' tempting vistas. Unfortunately for mankind, its surface was soon eroded by false] doctrine and experimental dogma, and the once-alluring vistas were shrouded and finally obscured.
Of late, (by which we mean the! past five decades and more), men have from time to time stirred uneasily at the realization of this, and have been moved to come forward with projects for repaving the path, or at least for vouchsafing us an occasional glimpse of the goal. To be strictly accurate, we should say "of what they, themselves, are fully satisfied is the goal." Alas, that these well-meaning ones should] be subjected to such brutal questions as by what authority they assume the mantle of Elijah, and that their ingeniously concocted expedients should be coldly regarded the light of special paving materials that are as unlikely to ind the traffic as their predeces-_ they do, in this respect, their ex cense is that given by Dr, Johnson to Jady who asked him why he had wrongly defined a certain word in his great Yictionary. "Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance," was the Doctor's reply and this accounts for' most of the injustices that happen in the world. No one who reads this book can_any longer! plead this ingenuous excuse. Those who speak er write on the Chinese situation are under an obligation to amoke themselves familiar with the facts of the case.
Formerly, this Games now Mr. George Frederick Wates to tell us, most eruditely, all about the Golden Age and how we are most likely to achieve it. Were it nct, indeed, for his very evident} erudition, one might be inclined Dluntly to suggest that his cure worse than the discase. He is, however, entitled to far greater consideration than any such curt, dismissal. There is so much he says that is good, albeit much that is not quite'so good. Thus, 'The Golden Age is not' static, but developing; and i cannot come by
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.