the Peiho having been forced, the Envoys proceeded to Tientsin, where they were met by commissioners, who announced their willingness to treat. Without much difficulty a treaty was agreed upon by which, among other things, the right of establishing Legations at Peking was conceded; the nine new ports of Tientsin, Newchwang, Chefoo, Swatow, Chinkiang, Kiukiang, Hankow, Tamsui in Formosa, and Kiungchow in Hainau, were opened to trade; the payment by the Chinese of an indemnity of 4,000,000 taels of silver was agreed to; and the undertaking was entered into that neither import nor export duties should exceed 5 per cent. ad valorem except in the case of opium, which was to be taxed to the extent of about £10 per chest, a tax which, at the price then ruling, amounted to 8 per cent.

It was confidently hoped that this treaty would have put an end to the state of uncertainty and hostility on the part of the Chinese which had disturbed the foreign relations of the country for many years. For a second time the Chinese had been defeated in the field, and had now been obliged to sign a treaty in the neighbourhood of the capital, at a city never before visited by a hostile European force. It might well have been anticipated that the capture of Canton, one of the strongest cities of the empire, and the easy brushing away by our soldiers and sailors of the obstacles to the approaches of the river leading to Peking, would have taught the Chinese the futility of all attempts to oppose their raw levies and undrilled battalions to the troops of England and France. But the Chinese are clothed with so tough a triple coat of conceit that it was, and still is, except in the case of some few enlightened officials, impossible to induce them to recognise even the equality of Europeans with themselves. It was, as it is still, their opinion that they are the salt of the earth, and their power is supreme. It is true that in 1858, as in 1842, they were compelled to drop their "shattered spear," but that was due, so they professed to believe, to the faults and follies of the commanders who directed their armies. The power was theirs-it was only that on those occasions it was misused. Such were the feelings with which the commissioners solemnly signed the treaty at Tientsin, with the mental reservation that, so soon as they were able, they would tear it across and drive the barbarians into the sea.

It was arranged that the ratified treaties should be exchanged at Peking in the following year, and Lord Elgin having returned to England, it was agreed that his brother, Frederick Bruce, should make the exchange. During the interval ugly rumours had been circulated to the effect that the fortifications at the mouth of the river had been restored and refurnished with guns. But Englishmen are not prone to indulge in the "treason of mistrust," and Mr. Bruce proceeded to the Peiho without any suspicion that serious opposition would be offered to his advance up the river. But he was soon undeceived. For once rumour proved to be in accordance with facts. The forts on both banks bristled with cannon, and the passage was barred by stakes and booms. In these circumstances Mr. Bruce requested Admiral Hope to force an entrance, which that officer, who was never backward when a blow had to be struck, at once attempted to do. But the obstacles proved to be too formidable for the

force which he had at hand. When the first gunboat touched the booms the guns in the forts opened fire with terrible effect, and the day ended in the discomfiture of Admiral Hope's sailors and marines, and with the loss of eighty-nine men and of three gunboats.

Treason never prospers, and this act of base treachery on the part of the Chinese was destined to bring upon them a yet more crushing defeat than any they had as yet suffered. The news of the reverse at Taku no sooner reached London than steps were at once taken to despatch an expedition, in which the French joined, to avenge the insult offered to our envoy, and to inflict punishment for the breach of faith committed. Lord Elgin again represented the Queen, and a considerable force, under Sir Hope Grant, with a French contingent under General Montauban, assembled in 1860 with the intention of marching to Peking. This was done. The Taku Forts, which had been the scene of the surprise of the year before, were taken, Tientsin was occupied, and eventually a gate of the city of Peking was surrendered to our troops. From this coign of vantage Lord Elgin opened negotiations with Prince Kung, the brother of the Emperor Hienfêng, who had fled to Mongolia on the approach of our soldiers, and signed with him the treaty which now, modified only by the Chefoo Convention, by which Ich'ang, Wuhu, Wênchow, aud Pakhoi were added to the Treaty Ports, governs our relations with the Chinese.

I have entered thus fully into this, the first part of my subject, in order to present a consistent picture of the attitude assumed by the Chinese towards ourselves. They were not averse to allow our countrymen to trade at Canton as long as they were content to be cabin'd, cribb'd, confined within the factories, and to be treated with ignominy and contempt, just as they allowed solitary travellers like Marco Polo and others to journey through the empire without let or hindrance. But directly the foreigner asked to be treated as citizens of an equally great commonwealth as that of the Middle Kingdom, and made justice their plea, the Chinese refused to listen to their demands, and, professing to regard them as vipers which they had unwittingly nourished in their bosoms, attempted to destroy them utterly. This unfortunate course of action was the natural outcome of the combined pride, ignorance, and fear which has always guided the policy of China. Every order which was issued and every edict which was published regarding the intruders was couched in terms which could be justified only by the possession of a vast superiority. The Emperor and his advisers knew so little about us that they were ignorant of whence we came, and believed us to be on a par as regards power with the petty Mongol chiefs and Lolo savages whom they had been accustomed to quell with a blow. (Even during the war of 1860 a memorial was found addressed by Prince Sankolinsin to the Throne, in which the writer asserted that, as our men were powerless to fight except on board ship, he had enticed them on shore in order to overwhelm them.) Then again, their fears were aroused by the reports which reached them, of how we, having originally settled as merchant adventurers at the mouth of the Hugli, and at Fort St. George, had ended by deposing the native princes, and forming a mighty empire.

This knowledge, coming as it did at a time when we were making constant advances in China, may well have disturbed the minds of those among the rulers of the empire who may have been secretly aware of the comparative weakness of their defences, and we need not, therefore, be extreme to mark the errors and follies which arose from this not unnatural alarm. But less excuse can be found for the persistent neglect on the part of the mandarins of their international obligations, or for the trickery by which they have ever attempted to neutralise the privileges to which our treaties have entitled us.

Coming now to the second part of my discourse, we find that when the present condition of things was brought into existence, the belief was current that the establishment of our Minister in Peking, with power to communicate directly with the central Government, would put our relations with China on an entirely new footing, and that a happy period had arrived when every mercantile dispute would be settled out of hand, and when travellers and missionaries would be as welcome to move freely about in the empire as they would be in France or Russia. Unfortunately, this dream has not been realised. The convictions and views of the Chinese as regards Europeans have been marvellously little affected by the presence of the half-dozen Legations which have now been established at Peking for nearly thirty years. No doubt the once familiar gunboat has appeared less frequently than formerly; but it is a question whether the mercantile claims have been much more speedily settled than before the last war. Certain it is that a never-ending contention has been carried on between our Legation and the Tsungli Yamên concerning commercial rights withheld or interfered with, unsatisfactory judicial proceedings, and an absence of all administrative progress. Writing in 1876, fifteen years after the establishment of the British Legation at Peking, Sir Thomas Wade said: "The anti-foreign feeling in the country is, on the part of a large majority of the educated class, as violent as ever it was. The leading members of the central Government, so far as there is one, are in a great degree anti-foreign." This being so, the privileges gained by the treaty have been robbed of much of their value. Nevertheless, the opening of the new ports has unquestionably given fresh facilities for trade, and has added points of contact not only on the sea-coast, but on the Yang-tsze-kiang, supplying both new markets for our goods, and means of becoming better acquainted with the people.

But with this new order of things there have sprung up entirely changed conditions, under which our merchants are called upon to pursue their callings. Until the treaty of 1858 the foreign trade in China was almost entirely in the hands of British merchants. They had no serious competition to fear, and they conducted their business in the leisurely and very profitable manner begotten by this circumstance. But with increased energy on the part of American and Continental firms, the practical monopoly enjoyed by the British has been abolished, and not only abolished, but the scales have been so turned that, while of late the trade with the United States of America and the Continent has been increasing, the trade with this country has been falling off. This the following figures show:

In 1866 the value of the trade of this country with China was Taels 49,770,547; that of America was Taels 6,605,962; and that of the Continent of Europe, exclusive of Russia, was Taels 1,634,280.

In 1875 these totals were respectively, Taels 50,297,151; Taels 8,690,166; and Taels 9,345,630.

In 1885 they were Taels 45,983,873; Taels 11,613,124; and Taels 9,822,717.

In 1889 they were Taels 36,824,264; Taels 10,889,785; and Taels 19,739,695.

These figures, which I have taken from the Trade Reports of the Imperial Maritime Customs, display an ominous state of things. They show that since 1866 our direct trade has declined rather more than one-fourth, while the American trade has increased forty per cent.; and the value of the Continental trade has multiplied twelve times over. In other words, while in 1866 the value of the Continental trade was only one-thirtieth that of ours, last year it was more than ope-half.

This decline of our trade was, I find, accompanied by an increased British population at the Treaty Ports. I have only been able to compare the statistics on this point of the years 1879 and 1889, and from them it appears that in the first of these years the number of British residents was 2070, and that in 1889 their number had increased to 3276. Thus, while the number of British residents has increased, British trade has decreased.

What, then, is the cause of this decline? Undoubtedly it is the competition which has grown up of late, especially on the part of the Continental States. With new energy, and with the experience gained by observation, the traders of these Powers have invaded the fields where we were accustomed to reign almost alone, and certainly supreme. They jostle us in the markets, compete with us, and, it must be confessed, often successfully, in obtaining contracts; and push their trade by means unknown before their advent in the East. At the back of this private enterprise stand the various Governments, which, with enlightened generosity, have established museums of Eastern products, and schools for instruction in the languages of the Orient. In Germany the Imperial Government gives a grant of £3600 a year to the School of Oriental Languages which has of late been opened at Berlin, and where 120 students, according to recent information, study the principal languages of Asia. In Paris a still larger annual grant-£6000—is given in support of a similar school; and in St. Petersburg and Vienna subsidies are in the same way given to like institutions. England, whose interests in the East are immeasurably greater than those of any other European country, is alone in refusing Government aid to the study of Oriental languages. It is needless to emphasise the fact that to merchants in China a knowledge of the language is of incalculable advantage. It enables them to travel through the country with ease and profit, to acquaint themselves personally with the condition of the inland markets, to gain the confidence and understand the wishes of the people, and to establish friendly and personal relations with the mandarins.

A few years since one well-known English firm, recognising the

commercial value of these advantages, enlisted the services of a member of one of Her Majesty's Consulates, and was benefiting largely by the assistance of this gentleman, when unhappily his usefulness was cut short by death. The results of the experiment, however, were so eminently satisfactory, that arrangements have been made, or are in course of being made, by the same firm, for securing instruction in Chinese for a number of young clerks at Peking. It cannot be doubted that the example thus set will be followed by others, and that before long men going to China. will equip themselves with a knowledge of the language as regularly as they now provide themselves with their material outfits. In anticipation. of this condition of things the Imperial Institute, in conjunction with King's College and University College, has established in London a School of living Oriental Languages, where all the principal tongues of the East are taught, and where young men preparing for a life in Asia may acquaint themselves with the history, geography, and products, as well as the languages and literatures of the countries to which they are going.

These considerations bring me to the third division of my lecturethe future of our commercial relations with China. A glance at the map of the empire will show that while the treaty ports now existing place us in touch with the principal markets in the eastern, central, and southern provinces, there lies beyond the mountain barriers which form the western boundary of the great plain of Northern China, vast provinces which, by their geographical position, are practically cut off from the rest of the country. Of these provinces incomparably the richest are Szech'uen and Yunnan. Combined, these provinces occupy an area as large as that of France and half of Germany added to it; they are inhabited by a population of 40,000,000 or 50,000,000 souls, and they possess a soil which is singularly rich in minerals and in surface crops. All the copper used in the Imperial Mint is brought from Yunnan, as well as large supplies of silver, while the soil yields in abundance corn, tobacco, and opium. The level portions of Szech'uen are blessed with an even more fertile soil than Yunnan, and produce in superabundant quantities all that is necessary for the comfort and well-being of man, with the exception of cotton. The wealth of the inhabitants is attested by the substantial nature of their houses and the general comparative comfort in which they live. It is in these provinces, therefore, that we must chiefly look for the development of our trade in China in the near future. But the difficulty is to get at them. At the present time our frontier in Burma is conterminous with that of Yunnan, and for centuries a certain amount of trade has been carried on between the two countries by the footpaths which traverse the mountain ranges, separating Yunnan from Bhamo in Burma. This, therefore, would appear at first sight to be the natural route for us to adopt. As the crow flies the distance which divides the two termini is 375 miles, but "the avenues of precipices' which line the passes between them make it necessary to take so circuitous a route that the distance is lengthened to the traveller by the addition of 115 miles. This, however, is but a trifling difficulty compared with the impossibility of making the route available for aught else but