This would naturally be the act of the Government. As to the people, it will continue to use the facilities introduced by Western civilization. The boats which ply along the coasts and up the Yang-tsze-Kiang are crowded with native passengers, who apparently enjoy the trip, and who pay the better share of the profits made by the various steam navigation companies, and the trains between Tien-tsin and Peking are always crowded. The Chinese also know perfectly well how to appreciate European administration, and three hundred thousand Chinese live upon the French, English, and American concessions at Shanghai, two hundred thousand at Hong-Kong, which was only inhabited by a few fishermen before the English occupation, and all the large towns belonging to the European colonies in the vicinity of China—Vladivostok, Manila, Saigon, Singapore, Batavia—are practically Chinese towns. They like to have their property and their commercial interests protected, and strongly object to being exploited and harassed as they are under their own Government. At the time of the occupation of Manchuria by the Mikado’s troops, an English missionary who had long resided in the country assured me that the Chinese were very glad to escape from the ‘squeezee’ system, and from the many vexations to which they had been subjected by the mandarins, and were amazed to see the Japanese pay for everything they required. The Chinese are not, therefore, unappreciative of our civilization, and since we afflict them with our presence, they think it wise to profit by the material advantages which we have introduced among them; but, with few exceptions, doubtless they would prefer the loss of these advantages to our company, and they never cease to despise us. From the moment that they can read they go to their old books as to a fountain-head, whence they drink intoxicating draughts of pride and vanity, and of profound contempt for all that is not of the wisdom of Confucius. After all, it is not by means of the ignorant classes, but through the initiative of a few thinkers, that progressive ideas gradually filter into a country and reform it. Unluckily, in the Chinese Empire, owing to a defective system of education, the very class which ought to benefit their fellows—the literati—is precisely that which is the most obstinately retrogressive.