The

Chinese Customs tariff is regulated by treaty with foreign Powers, and the Government desired a revision which would enable them to augment their revenue. In return for this concession by the Powers, it was understood that China on her side would grant concessions in the form of additional facilities for trade; and on this do ut des basis the hopes of a new departure in commerce were built up.

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But the Chinese Government is inscrutable to the Western mind. Since Li Hung Chang returned to China it has been announced that a commercial treaty with Japan has been concluded in Peking confirming the existing scale of duties for another ten years, and thus precluding any present revision of the tariff. For under the "most favoured nation system Power binds the rest, and had the Chinese Government meant seriously to ask for revision of the tariff they would not have stultified themselves by making this new convention with Japan. Most likely the negotiators did not realise the consequences of what they were doing, for there is great want of business intelligence in the Government departments of Peking. The transaction also suggests the query whether Li Hung Chang in his tentative negotiations in Europe was not playing off his own bat in order to have something to offer to his imperial master; nor is the possibility excluded that the negotiations with Japan were hastily closured by his enemies, from mere personal motives, in order to frustrate the projects of Li Hung Chang, what

What may be the fate of the budget of reforms needed for the promotion of foreign trade, if they can no longer be negotiated for on a basis of reciprocal concessions, is a matter of doubt. But the most important of them all, because including within itself the living germ of all material reforms, may be treated on an independent footing. Though a scheme of railway construction would in all probability have figured among the concessions asked from the Chinese Government in exchange for higher duties, it may with no less propriety be urged on its own merits as a measure of safety for the State-a fruitful source of revenue, and as a link which would bind up the interests of foreign nations indissolubly with those of China. Railways, in fact, are in the air. The most significant, because the most definite, pronouncement of Li Hung Chang while he was in England was the voluntary pledge he gave to the merchants of London that he would consecrate his remaining strength to the promotion of railway enterprise. What may remain to him of strength after he has stood for some time between the opposing factions in the imperial Court may not amount to a great deal, and it may all be needed to save his own head. But even irrespectively of Li Hung Chang, there seems some likelihood of this great enterprise being undertaken in one form or another, and it is a matter of the utmost practical interest to

Great Britain to consider under what conditions the Chinese dominions are to be intersected by lines of railway.

As to the immediate success of railways, we know from experience how eagerly the Chinese people have taken to them, so far as they have had opportunity, just as they formerly did with steamboats. We have seen how, as in India, a mineral line develops into a passenger line, and how traffic unlooked for flows in. We know also the immeasurable advantages which China possesses over India in her energetic commercial population, their freedom from caste prejudices, or other traditional observances which hamper cooperation. There is consequently very little risk in predicting business prosperity for the future Chinese railways.

That, however, is far from exhausting the question. For the introducing of such a force among the teeming millions of China is like undertaking some gigantic scheme of hydraulic engineering, the draining of the Zuyder Zee or the flooding of the Sahara, "not a thing to be enterprised nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly." The consequences cannot be reduced to an arithmetical formula.

The primary condition to be kept in view is that China, being of herself incapable of building or managing railways, must invoke foreign aid. Herein lies the obstacle which has hitherto stood in the way of railway progress. If foreign aid must be had, how is it to be regulated? Whose is to be the directing hand? That is the crux of the problem.

It is more than thirty years since the agitation for railwaymaking in China began. It proceeded from foreigners, and was

ipso facto doomed to barrenness. All Christendom has joined in the unholy scramble for the favours of China. Great syndicates, or persons professing to speak in their names, have encamped like mendicants before the gates of the Chinese authorities, inviting contumely and spoiling their own chances. They all want " concessions," powers, monopolies, the very things which China, so long as she retains any national conscience, cannot grant. Each syndicate, in short, aims at setting up an imperium in imperio in China, at extra - territorialising Chinese soil and creating an alien authority in the country. By such means alone was it supposed their concessions could be protected-concessions which, in the first instance, they proposed to obtain by the usual oriental methods which are not confined to the Orient. But the instincts of the Chinese have served them well in this matter. Better never have a mile of railway in the country than introduce a pandemonium of rival concessionnaires, of rival Governments, each claiming rights in the interior, and each disputing the other's claims, as if China were a second Africa. So far the Chinese have managed to keep their railways in their own hands, employing their own servants and regulating their own finances. Yet even under that simple régime the Great Powers by their agents have had their names dragged through the mire in spiteful efforts to mar each other's business. The material for railway construction had of course to be imported. Each of the Powers-Russia always excepted-prostituted its diplomacy by arrogating the right to prevent rivals from supplying these wants. Even when contracts were put up

to public tender the Ministers of the Western Powers in Peking have not scrupled to protest against orders being intrusted to merchants of any nationality but their own. This of course was but a form of veiled attack on British trade, which, in an open market, was bound, on the merits, to secure the bulk of the orders. The Chinese have sometimes yielded to threats and thrown a bone to the howling dogs, but always with the worst results, worthless material being supplied to them at unconscionable prices.

Now, the observation suggests itself that if this beggary with violence can be displayed where no rights whatsoever exist, what a nest of furies would be let loose on the unhappy country if the interference of foreign Governments had the most flimsy pretext of justification! No friend to China could desire to see railway or any other kind of progress on such conditions. Neither, it may be added, could any friend to European peace, for no surer source of quarrel could be created than a scrimmage for the exploitation of China.

The railway problem in China, and others of kindred nature, may be succinctly stated as, How to pour in the new wine without bursting the old skins. The general defectiveness of communication being assumed, what concerns us next to consider are the resources which China has at her disposal for supplying her own needs-for it is to the deficiencies in these resources that we foreigners propose to address ourselves.

From the point of view of material development there would appear to be three principal characteristic disqualifications in the existing state of China:

1. Laxity of social organisation. 2. Absence of financial accountability.

3. Want of practical education.

It is quite unnecessary to complicate the question by ethical theories or odious comparisons. The phenomena are sufficient for us, and from them it is a natural deduction that the strict administration of funds and the economical combinations necessary to the carrying out of great public works are beyond the capacity of Chinese officials. (It is only officials that are in question.) No bona fide investor would touch an undertaking which any official person controlled. The efforts we hear of from time to time to force merchants to subscribe capital for making railways are interesting, no less for the effusiveness of the mercantile response than for the adroitness of the evasion of any practical issue therefrom.

Here, then, we have an immense gap to be filled by foreign enterprise, which gives food for very grave reflection. This great alien force once introduced, what is to be its destination? To transform China like a leaven, or to supersede her?

That will depend on the further question, whether the loose and corrupt Chinese administration is susceptible of reformation, —a question which no man can answer. It is well that we are not obliged to untie the knot; it has been cut for us, as we shall now see.

Although unable to raise loans from her own people, China is able to borrow from strangers, because she respects her pecuniary obligations abroad, and is ready to offer to foreigners what looks like security. That security has hitherto consisted in the faithful administration of one branch of the revenue service-the Maritime Customs-which is under foreign direction. This anomalous

THE forty-one years over which Lord Roberts' Eastern career extended have witnessed enormous changes in British India. The increase of territory alone has been considerable. The consolidation of power within those extended limits, and the increasing guarantees for its continuance, are equally conspicuous features of the history of that period. The value of Lord Roberts' book to the ordinary reader, who is not equally interested with the military student in the wonderfully graphic and detailed accounts of military movements, and of the terrible encounters through which our race had to struggle in order to maintain the empire which our forefathers had won, lies in this, that it brings home to his mind the conditions under which British power in India has been developed in the past and has to be maintained in the future. The period opens, as it closes, with a handful of Englishmen administering the affairs and regulating down to the minutest detail the government of millions of their fellow creatures, alien in race and religion and the habits of life. It is dominated by one great overwhelming event, which, however many centuries our rule may endure, must always be regarded as the great crisis of its history, the Indian Mutiny, the great rebellion of the native army, which we had armed and trained and disciplined. According to all reasonable calculation of probabilities, British power should have been swept, if not out of India entirely, at all

events from the larger portion of it. The story of the spread of that rebellion, of the manner in which it was confronted, and of the manner in which it was crushed, must always be one of the most sensational episodes in the history of the world. Even the marvellous story of the original rise and progress of the empire of the East India Company is of less interest than this stirring narrative of successful resistance to its overthrow. If the day should ever come when, as some statesmen predict, Great Britain and Russia will join in mortal combat for its possession, one can hardly imagine that even a conflict of those gigantic dimensions would give rise to more thrilling scenes of strife, to greater deeds of heroism, or to more conspicuous triumphs of audacity, endurance, and skill. Be that as it may, the Mutiny is the important date at which the whole character of our relations with India underwent a great organic change. It marks the period at which Government by a Company ceased, and direct sovereignty was assumed by the Queen, which was proclaimed the instant that the Mutiny was suppressed. And it brought home to the minds of both governors and governed the stern realities of the position, and of their relations to one another. It put an end at once, and let us hope for ever, to that self-satisfied sense of security in which the former had so fatally indulged; it compelled the conviction that, however apparently submissive and pliant the latter may be, power rests ultimately on mili