violation of the clause granted to the most favoured nation inserted in all Chinese treaties with European Powers. France had soon to recognise its futility on January 15th, 1896, at the time of the signing of the Anglo-French treaty relating to the affairs of Siam, by which, it is true, she profited little by the difficult circumstances in which Great Britain then found herself, and the two Governments of Paris and London agreed that all the rights and privileges acquired, or to be acquired, either in the Yunnan or more to the north at Sze-chuan, were to be equally shared. The profit which France might have obtained from the convention of June 20th, 1895, was thus reduced to little or nothing. During the following year the negotiations which were being persistently pursued at Peking brought about other results. The right to reconstruct the arsenal at Foochow established by the French in 1866, and which they destroyed in 1884 under Admiral Courbet, was again restored to them. Several naval engineers are working there at present, and French foundries are supplying material. Such has been the share derived by France in the concessions made by China, to obtain which the nations made such flattering advances to Li Hung-chang when that astute old gentleman made his recent famous tour through Europe and America. It certainly compensated after a fashion for the loss of the custom of Japan, who at one time gave frequent orders to French factories, but who now deals exclusively with England and America for the ships and cannon necessary for her greatly augmented fleet. Meanwhile, the French Minister at Peking has exerted himself in a creditable manner for the benefit of the Catholic missionaries. He has obtained the abrogation of those regulations which prohibited missionaries from purchasing estates in the interior of China, and exacted a promise that the next edition of the _Ta-tsing-lu-lieh_, a collection of laws issued by the Tsing Dynasty, should appear without the list of punishments against missionaries contained in the edition of 1892. Finally, he obtained authorization for the Lazarists to rebuild on the same spot the cathedral at Tien-tsin, burnt at the time of the massacre of the missionaries and nuns during the insurrection of June, 1870.