They are also extremely obedient; their idea of the respect which should be paid to authority far exceeds that which prevails on this side of the globe. I think we may add with truth that great numbers of them are very loyal to their employers. But when this much has been said, the dark side of their civilisation must be added--it is essentially corrupt and cruel; the ideas of honour, purity, mercy are but too little understood. Missionaries assured us that there was no word for purity that could be applied to a man, while the same word stands for honesty and stupidity. Yet this nation is in many ways well fitted for the mechanical age in which we live. What the owner of the factory wants is an industrious, sober, and obedient man, and he does not want, or at least does not realise that he wants, an honourable, pure, and merciful man. The Chinaman will be in his element in the factory; the long hours of monotonous toil will not be unpleasant to him; he is always sober--in fact, he is by nature and culture the ideal factory hand; and yet this is what constitutes his danger. He will tend to introduce into Europe the vices which are now desolating his own country, unless, indeed, {62} the European teacher can help him to eradicate those vices. I have given you some idea of his corruption by the story told at the beginning of this chapter, but we heard many others all to the same effect. We went up the Yangtsze in one of the China Merchants' boats with an old Swedish captain who liked the Chinese and rather disliked the missionaries, so his evidence was not biassed by any wish to prove that our civilisation was more perfect than that of the Chinese. We asked him why it was that he being a European should be captain of a ship that was owned by Chinese, and largely used by them. He told us that the Chinese merchants had once tried to have a Chinese captain, but the moment the ship reached the first port of the Yangtsze, the custom officers were on board rummaging here and rummaging there. Very soon a large amount of contraband was found on the ship, put there with the knowledge of the captain. The consequence was the ship was fined and delayed. They tried Chinese captains again and again with the same result, and so they have been reduced to employ Europeans to secure honourable officers. He, however, had to confess that the Chinese distrusted the sobriety of the European officers, and assured us that the old comprador on board, one of whose duties apparently was to look after the passengers and take their tickets, was in reality a spy on them.