The social adjuster, or peace-talker, is a well-known institution, more generally employed within the hsiang (village) and guild, than the law. “To go to law is to put one’s estate in the ditch and one’s soul in hell,” is one of their sayings. Therefore, the importance of first engaging the services of the adjuster, or second, to meet the second of the offender, rather than to enter suit, and get into the hands of lawyers, court runners, grasping judges, etc. This heathen adjuster answers to the work that the lay deacon may have done in the early Christian church, in settling cases out of court. It is an institution that might well be copied from China in these days of criticism of the bench and bar by such authorities as Ex-presidents Roosevelt and Taft, and Mr. Bryan. The Chinese adjuster puts the case before, and settles it in accord with, public opinion, without any idea of fee; and certainly public opinion is a better judge than the law whose justice is built too much on fees, appeals and the maintenance of a large set of pettifoggers who live on the woes and ill temper of the unfortunate. In the revision of the Chinese code by Wu Ting Fang, Wang Chung Wei (educated at Yale), etc., long life to the social adjuster, the village Solon, whose ways are ways of peace, but whose path is not one of pleasantness! We have said that authorities have castigated the bar in China and America. Here is what Cicero said of Rome (the mother of laws) in the “Murena” oration: “For though many things have been settled excellently by the laws, yet most of them have been depraved and corrupted by the talkatively litigious genius of lawyers.” The method of “planting” forged evidence is met with in China where a powerful enemy wishes to ruin some victim. The Yuen Fung Yuen Bank, of Bonham Strand, is one of the largest native banks in Hongkong, in which colony it is illegal to import opium except through the Farm, which pays the government a large royalty. This valuable drug passes almost at bullion value. Anonymous information was sent to the Farm contractor that at 8:00 P. M. the bank would receive illicit opium. Detectives were put in ambuscade. At the hour mentioned a coolie bearing a basket rapped at the bank’s door and shouted: “A letter for you.” Then he ran, but was caught. An examination revealed a tin of opium at the bottom of a basket of eggs. Investigation disclosed the whole thing as a “plant” prepared by an old enemy of the Yuen Fung Bank. In the same way bodies of the dead and murdered are often secretly placed at the doors of innocent victims, and as much motive as possible is prepared so as to get them in trouble with law and popular indignation. In years now happily passed missionaries have been bothered in this way by “Boxer” conspirators.