Said an intelligent Chinese official in Shantung: ``The whole trouble is not with the Protestants but with the Catholics. Protestant Christians do not go to law so often, and when they do, the Protestant missionary does not, as a rule, interfere unless he is sure they are right. But the Catholic Christians are constantly involved in lawsuits, and the priests invariably stand by them right or wrong. The priests seem to think that their converts cannot be wrong. The result is that many Chinese join the Roman Catholic Church to get the help of the priests in the innumerable lawsuits that the Chinese are always waging. And it is not surprising in such circumstances that Catholic Christians are a bad lot.'' When I asked the magistrate of Paoting-fu why the people had killed such kindly and helpful neighbours as the Congregational and Presbyterian missionaries, he replied:--``The people were angered by the interference of the Roman Catholics in their lawsuits. They felt that they could not obtain justice against them, and in their frenzy they did not distinguish between Catholics and Protestants.'' The Roman Catholic Mission in the prefecture of Paoting-fu, it should be remembered, is about two centuries old, and the Catholic population is about 12,000, so that the few hundreds of converts who have been gathered in the recent work of the Protestants are very small in comparison, while the splendid cathedral of the Roman Church, the spectacular character of its services and the official status and aggressiveness of its priests intensify the disproportion. The term Christian, therefore, to the average man of Paoting-fu naturally means a Roman Catholic rather than a Protestant. Perhaps we should make some allowance for Oriental forms of statement to one who was known to be a Protestant. The politeness of an Oriental host to a guest is not always limited by veracity, and it is possible that to Roman Catholics the officials may blame the Protestants. But such unanimity of testimony among so many independent and widely separated officials must surely count for something, especially when the grounds for it are so notorious. Undoubtedly, there are many sincere Christians among the Roman Catholic Chinese, but judging from the almost universal testimony that I heard in China, the Roman Church is a veritable cave of Adullam for unscrupulous and revengeful Chinese. The evidence does not rest upon the testimony of Protestants alone. If any one will take the trouble to look up the diplomatic correspondence on this subject, he will find ample and convincing testimony. February 9, 1871, the Tsung-li Yamen addressed to the Foreign Legations at Peking a memorandum together with eight propositions, the whole embodying the complaints and objections of the Chinese Government to missionaries and their work in China, and suggesting certain regulations for the future. This memorandum included the following paragraph:--