country. His country, moreover, has been to him a huge and worldwide abstraction, far above and beyond him. Patriotism tends to be developed strongly among small communities like Sparta or Rome in early days, which have continually to contend with rivals close to and within easy reach of them, not in vast countries like China, wherein the average man regards his country as embracing all the world, with perhaps a small fringe of unknown and outer barbarians on the extreme verge. Under such conditions patriotism dies out, or rather

it is never evoked.

The result of these causes is that the Chinaman is supremely careful of the memory and the graves of his ancestors. He is mindful of his obligations to his own family, or to the guild or trades-union in which he works. Beyond this his horizon hardly extends. He is separated by a wide gulf from the inhabitants of another province, and dialectic variations go for much. An army of Cantonesespeaking men could easily be raised by any Power which would feed and pay them to march and fight against the people of a Pekinesespeaking province, whose very language they do not understand, and vice versa. It would not occur to either side that this was a fratricidal war-the pay would be everything. Hence we need not be surprised that when the Germans occupied Kiaochao forcibly, the gallant Chinese defenders, after some slight pretence of resistance, doffed their uniforms and took service next day under the German invaders, as hewers of wood and drawers of water, to earn 2d. a day, if they could.

It is not necessary to enlarge upon the importance of this feature in Chinese character, as enabling a ruling set of alien paymasters to carry the people whither they please, even in opposition to their own fellow countrymen.

Now it may be very safely assumed that no British Government will dream of undertaking to govern and administer any part of the Yang-tse valley directly, at least at first. We shall naturally choose the line of least resistance. That line is clearly marked out for us by the existing provincial administrations, which will enable us to take over the country and carry it on without any sudden change, or, indeed, any perceptible change at all, so far as the masses are concerned.

It seems probable that if to-morrow we were formally by proclamation to annex the various provinces of our new sphere to the British Empire, and to offer to confirm the corresponding existing viceroys and their subordinates in their positions, most of them would forthwith accept their appointments from the British Crown, and simply transfer their allegiance from Peking to London! Any vacancies in the administration occurring from individual governors or mandarins refusing to accept our terms, we should have no difficulty in

filling up forthwith from among capable and selected mandarins in the province in question.

I am not arguing for one moment that we should take such a course as this, but only endeavouring to show how easily and cheaply we can assume the indirect administration of our new sphere, if such a course should be forced upon us by the imbecility, or recalcitrance, or disappearance of the central Government at Peking.

The situation is that the present viceroys or governors are profoundly dissatisfied with the existing state of things, and many or most of them would probably transfer their allegiance to us, with possibly a little nominal show of resistance at first merely to "save face," provided only we guaranteed them liberal emoluments and strong support from the British Government. Should any show of force be necessary, we need only send a strong squadron or flotilla of sloops, gunboats, destroyers and such small craft up the Yang-tse, escorting steamers carrying a brigade of infantry and a couple of batteries of artillery. We could then summon the rulers of the provinces, one by one, to agree to our terms. It would hardly be necessary to fire a shot. At least our guns need not be loaded with villainous man-destroying bullets. Blank cartridge would suffice. Thereby we may hope that the procedure of our Government would be made more acceptable to our friends of the Peace Society at home, and that opposition in Parliament would be discounted.

VI.

Another very important and most favourable factor which we must next consider is the distinctly democratic character of Chinese governmental institutions, as hinged upon a universal system of open and public competitive examinations. Thereby we gain two cardinal advantages in aid of our rule. First there is no deeply rooted and powerful aristocratic class to form a centre and rallying point for opposition to it. The existing mandarins and ruling classes are ephemeral. They are here to-day and gone to-morrow, depending as they do on the individual results of these competitive examinations.

Secondly we have here, ready to hand, an engine of enormous and almost incalculable power which, judiciously worked, will enable us to shape the future destinies of our protectorate in almost any direction we please; for thereby we can gradually, quietly and silently mould and determine the education, the ideas, the attitude, towards the ruling power and towards Christianity and civilisation, the whole moral, religious, social, judicial and political atmosphere of the millions

committed to our charge. All these things hinge ultimately on education.

I need hardly enlarge upon this, it is sufficiently obvious; but let us take only one item in illustration. Do we want to put down the barbarous and inhuman punishments now universal in China, the torturing of unhappy prisoners until they confess to any crime of which they may be wrongly accused, or to reform the corrupt and haphazard administration of justice generally in the Chinese law courts? It will be neither necessary nor expedient to force wholesale reforms from above and per saltum in dealing with such an intensely conservative people as the Chinese. Our omnipotent agent or resident at the capital of our British-protected Chinese governor will have only to recommend that a manual of instruction in law and justice should be included in the subjects in the programme of public examinations, and to supply a simple manual drawn up by enlightened Englishmen and duly translated into Chinese-the thing is done. Millions of boys-for education is already very widely spread in China and we should presumably extend it still further-will thereupon study this manual, in which the iniquity of such barbarities is exposed, and tens of thousands of young men will be examined in the subject every year in the ordinary and regular course. Thus the way will quickly be paved for the introduction of a more just and enlightened procedure in the law courts, which, indeed, would presently be loudly demanded by a generation grown up under such influences. Similarly all other reforms whatsoever which we may wish to introduce.

VII.

Next let us take the all-important question of finance. Enlightened administration for the millions, as we have found in India and elsewhere, is expensive. China will pay abundantly for her own good administration, which will not cost the British taxpayer a penny. On the contrary, in manifold ways, and especially in a vast development of trade, she will put great sums into his pocket. In this aspect China is another Egypt, far larger, richer, and more valuable. Here we have hundreds of millions of a most industrious and law-abiding population, with a country rich not only in agricultural produce necessary for their support, but in coal, iron, minerals of all kinds, silk, cotton, hemp, fruit, cattle, and scores of other things. The Yang-tse valley only requires to be exploited by the engineer, the miner, the manufacturer and the skilled agriculturist. It has enormous capabilities of development and wealth, calculated to enrich both the Chinese inhabitants and the British exploiters.

VIII.

There is one more favourable factor of great importance in aid of our rule it is the geographical or topographical situation. We are emphatically a seafaring Power, and water transport is all-important to us. Now the huge Yang-tse-Kiang, which determines our protectorate, dominates the whole of it, and with its various lakes and tributaries constitutes an unrivalled system of waterways. The river is navigable to large and well found steamers for a good 600 miles. from its mouth, and we shall be able to send light draught steam launches, steel-plated and armed with machine guns, to further vast distances from the sea. This, and the railways and roads which we shall presently open up, will bring the whole country within easy reach. Thereby we can hold it with a comparatively small force of trained native troops under British officers, located in good central positions. Briefly, from the naval and military side, the country is eminently favourable to our occupation, at a minimum of cost and trouble.

IX.

The present condition of China presents a very sorry and pitiful spectacle. What is the net result of eighteen long centuries of Christianity and civilisation in its bearing on the present conduct of the European Powers? They have found a sick man by the wayside; how will they treat him? Why, of course, they will pour oil and wine into his wounds; they will find balm of Gilead for his sorrows. As a matter of fact, are they not, one and all, surrounding the helpless Chinese Empire like a set of hungry sharks attacking a dying whale ? Each shark vies with his neighbours in biting out a choice mouthful for himself. Verily the prophetic words of the Master are once more verifiedὅπου ἐὰν ᾖ τὸ πτῶμα, ἐκεῖ συναχθήσονται οἱ ἀετοί.

Herein, however, we may perhaps console ourselves with the idea that Britain has been foremost in respecting the rights of China, and tried to keep her hands clean as long as it was fairly possible.

But China will assuredly have her revenge. The greedy sharks will presently find that an avenging Nemesis of retribution has been following hard after them. The tables will be turned. It will hardly be a military or naval revanche. It will take the form of an industrial and economic revolution, fraught with disaster to the sharks, and especially to the last joined and more or less unwilling recruit among them, namely, Britain.

At first, no doubt, and in the era immediately in front of us, it will be otherwise. The opening up of China will bring a vast

immediate development of the trade and commerce by which we live. It will create thousands of welcome openings in life to the sons of our middle classes. There will be a huge and as yet almost unexploited field for the merchant, the manufacturer, the engineer, the banker, the doctor, the lawyer, and the parson.

But each of these in his own sphere will be only another schoolmaster to show the way to the shrewd, intelligent, and pushing Chinaman. Give him only the necessary education, which we cannot withhold from him unless we are prepared to set back the clock a thousand years and turn our backs on all our well-established Liberal principles, and experience has already shown that he is capable of making his mark in almost any capacity.

In order to see how the thing will work out we might compare for a moment the present situation in some other of our widespread possessions, say in South Africa. There the natives are too ignorant and barbarous to be fitted at present for the work of the artisan. They only monopolise the field for unskilled labour, so that there is absolutely no opening for the white labouring man as an immigrant. But there is employment for thousands of white carpenters, smiths, bricklayers, engine-drivers, and so on. These act as foremen and leading hands at their various trades, and to a considerable extent as yet as actual workmen. Manufactured articles of all kinds, in the absence of native artisans and operatives, have to be imported from Europe, largely from Britain.

China is a very long stage ahead of this. There is no opening whatever there for the ordinary skilled artisan, unless he happen to know a special trade, such as engine-driving, which, however, many Chinamen have already acquired. Thus the whole of the buildingtrade in Hong Kong and the older treaty ports is already in the hands of the Chinese. A European architect draws the plans and supervises the work generally; but Chinese contractors with Chinese foremen and workmen do all the rest. Hence in the erection of a large building there is only room for one white man instead of a dozen, as at the Cape. Moreover, all ordinary trades are run mainly by Chinese, only a few special trades involving elaborate Western education, as that of the chemist, are for the present in the hands of Europeans.

China, as we have seen, is rich in raw material of all kinds. She is superabundantly rich in an intelligent and industrious population, who work all day for the smallest wages in the world. A Chinaman will keep a wife and bring up a family on two dollars a month, or say 1. a day. How can cotton, say, continue to be brought from distant lands to Manchester or Bradford, there to be worked up by our highly paid operatives, and re-exported for sale, when similar machinery is set up in Chinese mills, worked by Chinese at 1d. a day, and