Consulates in Asia, and in proposing that commercial attachés should be sent to travel the inland districts, and report on trade and markets. When he reaches India, Lord Curzon will have ample fields in which he can apply these prudent counsels. He must be aware that along our mountain barriers of India, officers are to be found from time to time, who stand on the level even of Sven Hedin in both research and discovery, men like Leitner in Dardistan, Brian Hodgson in Nepaul, Ney Elias in Turkestan, and those forgotten Indian Pundits, such as A. K. and Nain Singh. It may be doubted whether rare men like these are sufficiently rewarded. Still, whether decorated or not, they belong to a "distinguished order" of their own,

"Christian and pagan, knight and sage,

Soldier and anchorite."

Seldom mingling in the struggle for honours, personal distinctions come rarely in their view. They feel no grudge when some great scholar like Prince Lucien Bonaparte gets a pension for knowing Basque or when a history of Mongolia is crowned with a knighthood; and it is not they who carp at the yearly diffusions of rewards among the abler secretaries of our Indian Governments. Nevertheless, it may well be that this class of men will look up with more confidence to a Viceroy who is a scholar and explorer as well, and who is very sure to inquire into some of those Problems of the East which have always puzzled us Indian officers, e.g., why among all the favours of the British Crown, none should have fallen upon that modest and efficient servant, the bold Tibetan traveller, Mr. A. D. Carey.

THE PARTITION OF CHINA.

BY ARCHIBALD LITTLE.

THE above sinister phrase is now in men's mouths, and the heinous actions it calls up may become accomplished facts if Britain does not come forward and take the lead in averting from China the fate of Poland: it is because I admire the interest taken by your valuable Review in the China question, and know the weight that your articles carry throughout Asia, no less than with thoughtful people at home, that I venture to send you a few words on the subject.

China is politically weak through the corruption of its rulers and the unwarlike character of its people. The corruption of the mandarinate I attribute to the evil system of paying the officials nominal salaries and allowing them to farm the revenue: pay them well, in ratio of their responsibilities and of the position and staff they are called upon to maintain, and I believe this great evil that now permeates the Chinese bureaucracy would disappear. Even as it is, incorruptible mandarins are not uncommon, i.e., officials who will not take bribes and who do not collect more revenue from their districts than is actually needed for administration and remittance to headquarters; but, human nature being what it is, if you allow officials to tax at discretion, have no real audit of accounts, and merely stipulate that a certain sum must be handed over as net revenue, the majority of men, be they Mongol or Caucasian, will not neglect the opportunity of feathering their own nests, especially when, by the rules based upon the suspicion of their Manchu conquerors, the office is only for a term of three years, and that never in the native province of the official, but in what is, to all intents and purposes, a foreign country. This impediment to good government is well known to progressive Chinese, and, as they have a brilliant object-lesson before them in the administration of the Imperial Maritime Customs, in which both the Chinese

and European employés receive high fixed pay, by which an honest return to the Government of the revenue collected is ensured; there is reason to hope in time for a change of system: the Chinese are, in the view of latter-day Europe, provokingly conservative, yet hardly more so than were our own ancestors: they are an extraordinarily reasonable people, and when they do grasp a subject, action gradually results. There is a large reform party in the country, daily increasing in numbers and influence, but it takes time for new China to shake off old China: the old fossils must be given time to die out before the young men can give scope to their modernized ideas and reform the country-unless by a bloody revolution, which was tried fifty years ago and failed. Reforms too hurried lead to reaction, as we have recently seen in the case of the poor young Emperor and his adviser and protégé, Kang-yu-wei, the so-called "modern sage"—and as our own European history most emphatically teaches us. To supplement this general axiom, we have the fact that, by custom, which in China is law, innovations of any kind can only be carried out by universal consent. In private affairs, where great changes are in discussion, the majority must convince the minority; they cannot ride roughshod over dissidents as in Europe; they must get their assent, which, in practice, is usually given, where the minority is small, even against their convictions, for the sake of peace and quietness. It cannot be denied that the Chinese are often foolishly suspicious of innovations, especially when offered by Europeans, whose complex motives, not confined solely to money-making as they think, they are incapable of gauging, and they are strengthened in their convictions by one of their own. expressive proverbs: "You yi, pi you hai"-" Evil lurks even in advantage."

The second impediment to the continued independence of China is not so easily remediable as is the first ;-I allude to the unwarlike character of the people. In our present stage of civilization, where Might is Right and Christianity nothing but an impracticable ideal, this is a fatal defect in

any people, but it is specially fatal to the occupiers of a so exceptionally rich and fertile country as China. The Chinese cannot defend themselves against aggression, and will be utterly unable to do so for another century without European aid. To raise an army such as their numbers and hardy physique should render possible, strong enough to protect the country against European brute force, European organizers are absolutely necessary; not simple drill-instructors as hitherto, but a trained European staff: this must come ere long; the great question is, Shall this training be under the supervision of a semi-civilized corrupt bureaucracy like that of Russia, or under the guidance of Liberal powers like England and America, and I would even add Germany?

China, in climate, resources and population, is worth a dozen Africas to our trade,-that foreign trade by which alone we are enabled to feed our people,-and, in my opinion, is worth fighting for; although at the same time I am convinced that, had Lord Salisbury's Government paid due attention to China two years ago, when they were warned by the publication of the Cassini convention of what was in store for British interests in China,-the country which we had opened up to the world, where two-thirds of the trade and two-thirds of the foreign population are British, and declared plainly for the open door policy "even at the cost of war," the latest military aggressions of Russia would not have been attempted. It was that which has been well called by Mr. Asquith the "infirmity of purpose and inconsistency of method of Lord Salisbury" that encouraged Russia to come on: originally she only asked for an ice-free port on the Pacific, south of Wladiwostock to this no one had any objection: this project was amended by a proposal to bring the terminus of the Siberian Railway to the Gulf of Pechili, with which object the Chinese granted a right of way through Manchuria and, in their weakness, permitted the Russians to guard the line with Cossack troops. No formal cession of the country to Russia was made; this is not Russia's way; a

stealthy seizure of the country is made noiselessly and thus European opposition is disarmed; meanwhile, however, Russia advances her frontier 1,000 miles South. This was not enough: the peninsula of the Regent's sword was ceded by China and Port Arthur, rescued from the Japanese, nominally in the interest of China, is being fast converted into a second Sebastopol: Peking is threatened, and all Northern China menaced by a Russian invasion as soon as the fruit is ripe.

Meanwhile our Government had sent two men-of-war to anchor in the harbour of Port Arthur; they were there. with the consent of the Chinese: had they been allowed to remain, Russia would have been compelled to show her hand, either by attacking our ships, which she would not have dared to do, or else, which is the probable contingency, she would have put off the seizure of the fortress to a more convenient time. But for some unaccountable reason, our Government ordered the ships to withdraw, and the Russians moved in. This retreat on our part dealt a heavy blow to our prestige in the East, and necessarily threw China into the arms of Russia as the only power in the field that knew its own mind and must consequently be conciliated on the best terms possible by the helpless Chinese.

Mr. Chamberlain, in his recent speech in Manchester, defended the Government, and boldly asserted that no door had been closed upon us. We have treaties with China, and under these treaties our goods have free access to Manchuria. Newchang is a Treaty Port in Manchuria, and its Customs is under the management of Sir Robert Hart. Do the Russians respect this Treaty Port and observe the conditions under which they and the other Powers having treaty rights there are supposed to trade with it? Only the other day, the Russians totally ignored the Newchang Customs, and landed the cargoes of three vessels destined for Manchuria in a neighbouring bay without paying duty. This is a sample of what we have to expect in any portion of the Chinese empire occupied by