It cannot be predicated of the Government of China, at any rate at present, that it is greedy of territory. On the contrary, its responsibilities are already as serious as it must feel at all competent to fulfil with credit to itself and satisfaction to its people. But, on the other hand, it is remarkably tenacious of parting with a single rood of ground, to which it may claim the right of traditional possession or more recent conquest. When portions of its territory have been torn from its grasp by successful rebellion, it has for the moment yielded to the inevitable. But the earliest opportunity possible has been seized for reentering upon possession, either by force or craft. The late recovery of the province of Yunnan in China proper, and of Chinese Turkestan in Central Asia, after crushing defeats and years of alienation, affords notable instances of this tenacity of purpose. But such successful reentries upon lost dominion have only been effected where the usurping power has partaken of the same or a similar Asiatic character with that of the Chinese themselves. Where circumstances have brought the Government into collision with the more energetic and enterprising people of the West, it has had no alternative but to make material concessions, and to confirm these by treaties of perpetual amity and commerce. Russia and England are the only Western Powers that have thus benefited themselves at the expense of China: Russia, with a view to the enlargement or rectification of her frontier, which from the mouth of the Amour to the foot of the _Tien Shan_ is conterminous with that of China; and England, for the protection and promotion of her trade, which must have languished, if not perished, under the constraints of the old _Co-hong_ system.