``They (Roman Catholic converts) even go so far as to coerce the authorities and cheat and oppress the people. And the foreign missionaries, without inquiring into facts, conceal in every case the Christian evil-doer, and refuse to surrender him to the authorities for punishment. It has even occurred that malefactors who have been guilty of the gravest crimes have thrown themselves into the profession of Christianity, and have been at once accepted and screened (from justice). In every province do the foreign missionaries interfere at the offices of the local authorities in lawsuits in which native Christians are concerned. For example in a case that occurred in Sze-chuen in which some native Christian women defrauded certain persons (non-Christians) of the rent owing to them, and actually had these persons wounded and killed, the French Bishop took on himself to write in official form (to the authorities) pleading in their favour. None of these women were sentenced to forfeit life for life taken, and the resentment of the people of Sze-chuen in consequence remains unabated.'' Mr. Wade, the British Minister at Peking, in reporting this memorandum and its appended propositions to Earl Granville, June 8, 1871, said: ``The promiscuous enlistment of evil men as well as good by the Romish missionaries, and their advocacy of the claims advanced by these ill-conditioned converts, has made Romanism most unpopular; and the people at large do not distinguish between Romanist and Protestant, nor between foreigner and foreigner; not that Government has made no effort to instruct the people, but China is a large Empire.... Three- fourths of the Romish missionaries in China, in all, between 400 and 500 persons, are French; and Romanism in the mouths of non-Christian Chinese is as popularly termed the religion of the French as the religion of the Lord of Heaven.'' June 27th of that year, Earl Granville wrote to Lord Lyons that he had said to the French Charge d'Affaires:-- ``I told M. Gavard that I could not pretend to think that the conduct of the French missionaries, stimulated by the highest and most laudable object, had been prudent in the interest of Christianity itself, and that the support which had been given by the representatives of France to their pretensions was dangerous to the future relations of Europe with China.'' The Hon. Frederick F. Low, United States Minister at Peking, in communicating that memorandum and the attached propositions to the State Department in Washington, March 20, 1871, said:--