[*] Sir Edmund Hornley, after nine years' service as chief judge of the Supreme Court at Shanghai, delivered an opinion on the anti- opium movement in the following remarkable terms:--"Of all the nonsense that is talked, there is none greater than that talked here and in England about the immorality and impiety of the opium trade. It is simply sickening. I have no sympathy with it, neither have I any sympathy with the owner of a gin-palace; but as long as China permits the growth of opium throughout the length and breadth of the land, taxes it, and pockets a large revenue from it,--sympathy with her on the subject is simply ludicrous and misplaced."--(J. W. Walker v. Malcolm, 28th April 1875.) But the following extract from a letter to the _London and China Express_, of 5th July 1875, part of which we have ventured to reproduce in italics, surpasses, both in fiction and naivete, anything it has ever been our lot to read on either side of this much-vexed question:--"The fact is, that this tremendous evil is utterly beyond the control of politicians, or even philanthropists. Nothing but the divine power of Christian life can cope with it, and though this process may be slow, it is sure. Christian missions alone can deal with the opium traffic, now that it has attained such gigantic dimensions, and the despised missionaries are solving a problem which to statesmen is insoluble. Those, therefore, who recognise the evils of opium- smoking will most effectually stay the plague _by supporting Christian Protestant Missions in China_.--Yours faithfully, "An Old Residenter in China. "London, June 28, 1875." THIEVING