Even were China to pledge herself to grant us all the advantages which we should have to bargain for as a consideration for committing ourselves to the serious step of affording her aid, it may be doubted whether she is sufficiently strong to maintain her ground, not merely against Russia, but against any adventurer like Yakoob Beg or rebels like the Panthays, who may suddenly rise up and wrest her territory from her. Then, again, it must be remembered what an alliance with such a Government as that of China is likely to involve. Her civil administration, based although it may be on a system excellently well suited to a people like the Chinese, is so weakened, save in a few isolated instances, by the incapacity, and so debased by the venality of its executive, that it has long since forfeited the confidence and good-will of the masses, and rebellion has only to raise its head to find a fruitful soil for its speedy growth and development. Her army is numerically large, and can be recruited without difficulty, and she has constantly at command any quantity of the most approved war material, so long as there are foreigners to sell and she has the money to buy; to say nothing of what she can now to a certain extent manufacture for herself. But of strategy and the general science of war her officers are entirely ignorant, and beyond the capability of hurling huge masses of men at the enemy, irrespective of all consequences, she is in no way formidable as a military Power in the European sense of the term, nor could her troops permanently hope to hold their own against those of any Western State. Even the Japanese, in the little affair with China which threatened the peaceful relations of the two countries not long ago, showed themselves quite equal to the occasion, and their sailors and soldiers pined to exhibit their prowess, and prove the value of their recent acquirements in the art of war, as against the conservative and unpractical Chinese. If the rules of civilized warfare are to the Chinese a sealed book, still less can they be said to appreciate its humane side. Their officers fail to value the necessity, and indeed do not seem to possess the power, of protecting their own countrymen from the general license which marks the march of soldiery through, or the military occupation of, any peaceable district; and in the wholesale barbarities which invariably distinguish their triumphs over a conquered foe, they are scarcely to be surpassed by savages of the lowest type. Little more can be said in favour of the Chinese in respect of their relations with England and other Western nations. They have treaties of peace and commerce with the leading Powers, it is true, and they do not fail to act up to the strict letter of these engagements as construed by themselves. But the whole history of their foreign intercourse since 1842 has shown that the Chinese Government has borne with ill grace the