One reason for this failure is that Chinese converts are for the most part men of poor station, men without power and possessing little or no influence with the high officials. Indeed many of them are destitute, the “rice-Christians” maintained by foreign charity, and despised by their fellows. The status of a Christian convert in China is similar to that of an avowed atheist in this country. His relations plead with him and reproach him, the bulk of the people contemn him, the officials despise him and are not ready to help him. If persuasion will not win him back to the conventions of the public his family try threats; the rage of his ancestors at his apostasy, the dishonour he has brought upon them and upon his living relatives; such wickedness as the gods will not allow to go unpunished. If he remain obdurate they tell him of the fate of other Christian converts, ask him if he wishes to be a tortured martyr, hint that there is a strong secret body of the orthodox faith, the old true believers of China, who mean to drive out of China the foreign devils, and destroy all who believe as the foreigners believe, and have forsaken the sacred faith of their forefathers and mock the true religion. And the Chinaman, timid by nature, is influenced at last; terrorized by these hints he goes to the missionary with a story of a secret society of blood-thirsty vegetarians, the fearful _tsiliti_, who are plotting to murder the missionaries and their converts. The same story in various forms comes from so many converts that the missionaries become alarmed, and write to the Consul, and if the Consul has many such communications he too takes fright and requests the presence of a gunboat, or some other drastic remedy, and at once you have all the ingredients of an ugly international incident. The Chinaman, of course, has not much chance if he tries to set the law in motion against the foreigner. He has just to suffer what they put on him. When I was in Tientsin there was a coolie staggering under a prodigious load of bricks, slowly pushing the barrow to which he was harnessed along the correct side of the road, when a Cossack rode up from behind, and finding a carriage coming the other way, so not allowing him room to pass until it had gone by the barrow, he commenced to lash the bare coolie with his whip for no other reason than that he was where he was, and where he had a perfect right to be. An Englishman interfered, but it was in the French Concession, and there, no more than in the British or the Russian Concessions, would the coolie be likely to obtain redress. The future of the Chinese empire is of less moment than the fate of the Chinese people. After so many attempts have been made to coerce the Government, and to influence the people, it seems hopeless that any plan will succeed.