To understand the operation of extraterritorial jurisdiction, let us suppose the principle to be applied to ourselves. A European merchant or sailor inflicts corporal chastisement on one of our citizens in Broadway, and the prestige which the foreigner enjoys, precludes interference on the part of bystanders and police. If the New Yorker happens to be desirous of obtaining redress, he must first discover and identify the assailant, and next ascertain his nationality. [A Chinaman, in like circumstances, would find as much trouble in arriving at the truth, as if he were to attempt the investigation of the assailant's pedigree; he knows as little of our nationalities as we do of the forty tribes of Borneo.] Our persevering citizen succeeds at length in lodging a complaint at the consulate of the offender. The consul is perhaps a fellow merchant of the defendant, or head of the firm to which the offender is consigned. The complainant is accommodated with a blundering interpreter, and the case is tried according to the foreigner's code, which, on such occasions, is endowed with more than wonted elasticity. If, contrary to all probability, the foreigner is convicted, the citizen has the satisfaction of seeing the foreign assailant placed in confinement on the consul's premises, or perhaps mulcted to a small amount; and with this administration of justice, he and his country must be content. Who does not see that such an abdication of authority on our part would lead to the perpetration of wrongs that would soon become unendurable, even if we were first to become a broken spirited people? And, considering the arrogance and recklessness of many foreigners in China, and the pusillanimous character of the natives, what can be expected but contempt and aggression on one side, and mistrust and finesse on the other? What but a chronic discontent, wholly incompatible with healthful commerce and peaceful intercourse, can be expected from such a state of things? Consider further that this occurs among a people of the highest antiquity, with a history and a civilization of which they are justly proud; who, in political and moral science, were in advance of Greece and Rome, at a time when those, whom they now designate 'barbarians,' really were so. When our ancestors were half naked savages, the Chinese were a polished literary people. In calling attention to this subject we do so, not less in the interest of our oriental clients than in that of our own lands; for our relations with the empire of China will, with the growth of our power on the Pacific, assume such importance, that good policy demands that we should avoid any course likely to render hostile such a large portion of the human race. Many years ago we deprecated Chinese emigration into California, on the ground that, as _prolétaires_, they would degrade labor, and leave that State without its most important element of strength; yet to the Chinese, in their own country, we would pursue a conciliatory