About a dozen additional ports, some in the heart of the empire, are now open to the foreigner, and extraterritoriality obtains throughout the vast region subject to the sway of the Son of Heaven--which, with other corresponding causes, seems to be effecting the dismemberment of that hoary empire. The regimen to which the oldest of nations is subjected, is fast placing it in the condition of the 'sick man' of the Bosphorus. As an evidence of the aggressive character of the foreigner, and of the desire of rendering extraterritoriality a means of subjugation, examine the claims set up within the past few months by mercantile interests. China, having surrendered her right over criminals in her territory, has been further called on to submit to British consular investigation and adjudication with the assistance of two assessors (British merchants), in all cases of seizure and confiscation by her customs authorities, whenever hardship or injustice is alleged--the custom-house officers to be cited before the consul to receive his judgment in the case! Again, there is a foreign as well as a native Shanghai. This settlement, or city of foreigners, adjacent to Shanghai proper, occupies a considerable space of territory, and is a place of great wealth. Its warehouses are palatial, it has beautiful public and private edifices, and is governed by a municipality chosen by property holders from among themselves. Its police, streets, piers, race-course, and all the appurtenances of a city, are admirably arranged. Nowhere, in the whole empire, is there so much security for life and property; hence natives, who can afford to hire, from foreigners, houses which have been erected on this conceded ground, are glad to do so; it has consequently become a place of resort for well-to-do natives, who thus become exempt from the extortion of the mandarins. Latterly the Chinese local authorities have undertaken to impose a tax upon these extraterritorial natives, which their foreign clients resist, although one of the reasons assigned by the mandarins, for the levying of taxes on their people residing in the foreign settlement, is an increase of expenditure consequent on the employment of the Anglo-Chinese flotilla. Happily the British Government has refused to enforce the claims of the merchants, as regards the exemption of their contraband goods from confiscation; and Sir F. Bruce, the British ambassador, and Mr. Burlingame, the United States ambassador, have admitted 'that the so-called foreign settlement of Shanghai is Chinese territory, and that the fact of Chinese occupying houses, which are the property of foreigners, does not in any way entitle such foreigners to interfere with the levying of taxes by Chinese officials.'