"Since the missionaries established themselves there it is the sixth attempt made to drive them out of the region. The common people (from what I can gather) have no animus against the foreign preacher of the Gospel, and show none. On the contrary, whether moved to accept Christianity or not, they appear to recognize that missionaries are in any case there for benevolent and beneficial objects. Schools and hospitals are independent of proselytizing, and, even if the missionaries were never to make another convert, they would be doing good and useful work in spreading Western knowledge and healing the sick. In addition to this, the presence of missionaries in out-of-the-way places in China has one unquestionable advantage. To use the phrase of Sir Thomas Wade, they 'multiply the points of contact,' and familiarize the Chinese with the sight of the European. To the missionary, either as a preacher of the Gospel or as a dispenser of benefits, the populace at Kienning does not seem to have shown any aversion; yet six times this populace has risen and tried to drive the missionaries from the place. The logical inference is that the Kienning peasant, though tolerant by nature, is subject to some outside influence. He is moved, not by what he sees, but by what he is told exists beyond his range of vision; and these things are pointed out to him by such as he believes to be his intellectual superiors, and as have, therefore, the faculty of perceiving what is hid from himself. The history of almost every anti-missionary movement in China points to the same process. Why the educated classes of this land should be so inveterately hostile to the foreigner is a difficult question to answer. It has been suggested that the Chinese of this type have an ineradicable conviction that every European is at heart a 'land-grabber'; that missionaries are the advance agents of their Governments; that the Bible is the certain forerunner of the gun-boat; and that where the missionary comes as a sojourner he means to stay as a proprietor; consequently, that the only hope of integrity for China is that her loyal sons should on every occasion destroy the baneful germ. Extravagant and (in the instance of Kienning) far-fetched as these notions may seem, I am convinced that the literati and gentry have been at the root not only of the present outbreak, but of the others which have preceded it. While, therefore, I have insisted throughout that Kienning must be made a place of safe residence for the British missionary, I have considered that the only way to attain that result will be to shackle the hands of the gentry by making any further breach of the peace a sure precursor of punishment."