The Chinese are an _educated people_. They have vast libraries, large and broad, rich in literature. They have the lives of great men. They know about our Washington: they teach about him in their schools. Do we know anything about their Washingtons—about their great men who have guided the grandest nation, in some respects, that history has given us any account of for nearly 3,000 years, possibly more? We know about Yung Wing, who graduated at Yale College, taking the prizes in English composition. We know the standing of their students in our colleges generally. We know the fact that of the 75,000 Chinese in this country every one can read and write. In this country, according to the census before the last, we had over 5,000,000 who could not read and write; so that there are hardly Chinamen enough in this country to be schoolmasters to those of our number who cannot read and write! Dr. Hedge in Boston stated some years ago that, in a conversation with Charles Sumner, Sir John Bowring, the representative of Her Majesty at the Court of Pekin, said that when he was there the Chinese Ministers were the superiors of any European cabinet. Mr. Sumner replied: “I am astonished! You do not pretend to compare them with Lord Palmerston, Lord Derby and Mr. Gladstone?” Said he: “I mean precisely what I say, without any invidious comparison; I will add that the Prime Minister of China, during my residence in Pekin, has not, in my opinion, his intellectual superior upon the planet.” The Chinese are a _cleanly_ people, a _decent_ people. The Chinese laborer washes himself all over every day. As a rule they can come into our mission schools and sit beside our ladies with perfect propriety. When I was preaching in Indianapolis we had every Chinaman in the city in our schools. They are not a clannish people; they are glad for American society. They have crimes and vices. They are human. They lie and steal, and gamble, and have their peculiar method of getting intoxicated with opium. But I don’t know as it ever has been proven that they can carry on lying to such a magnificent extent as we do in an ordinary political campaign, and they have never risen to the refined plundering of Wall street. They say they take opium, and you know how they took it—they took it at the cannon’s mouth at first. England must make 400 per cent. profit in the poppy fields of India. It was shocking to them to the utmost; and their torment has gone on ever since in homes that were never addicted to any crazier drug than tea and knew nothing of a hell so orthodox as the delirium tremens. The Emperor petitioned England, in a document which I think has not its equal in all the documents of Governments, not to set fire to the morals of his people by loading them with their accursed opium. But they did.