It is of the character of our representatives in Turkey, Africa, India, China, and other places _in partibus infidelium_ that we have most reason to complain. These American envoys and consuls seem to become volunteer lay evangelizers; and if, like our friends of the Methodist and Presbyterian missionary societies of this city, they do not succeed in converting the benighted heathen from the error of their ways, they endeavor, by the exercise of all their delegated authority, to thwart and depreciate the labors of those who can—the Catholic missionaries from other countries. Take, for example, India and China, the great missionary fields of the world, containing as they do at least one-half of the whole human race in a comparative state of civilization. The former being a province of Great Britain, it is natural that sectarian missions should receive at least a semi-official recognition and protection from the appointees of the head of the Protestant Church “as by law established”; but even in this respect the English officials have been outdone in zeal and officiousness by our own agents in the Indian Peninsula, as we learn from a late work on that country.[44] But in China, with its four or five hundred millions of idolaters, the case is different. There the Catholic priest and the devoted Sister of Charity, unsupported by the temporal arm, and unawed by threats, torture, and death, have been most active and most successful in advancing the standard of the cross and winning souls to Christ. Their converts are numbered by tens of thousands, and their churches, schools, and orphanages dot the southern and western coasts; while the sectarian missionaries, lacking the sustaining power of the state, have practically done nothing. This has long been a source of much chagrin to the various dissenting proselytizing societies in England and the United States, as it also seems to have been the cause of exasperation to our Minister at Peking, Mr. Frederick F. Low. That gentleman’s mission to China appears to have embraced but three objects, if we except his attempt and absurd failure to bring the Coreans into communication with the outside world. The first of these was the protection of American Protestant missionaries, and them only; the second, to convince the Chinese officials that the United States have nothing to do with Catholics, or, as he is pleased to style them on all occasions, “Romanists”; and the third, to send home false despatches and mistranslated documents.