But the whole scheme is so purely utopian that one marvels that a practical thinker could have shown such contempt for his audience as to propound it. Hong-Kong is the model on which Mr. Cobden would shape his new colonies; very flattering to Hong-Kong, perhaps, but betraying an incredible forgetfulness of the whole history of that colony. The "London and China Telegraph," of 13th June last, in commenting on Mr. Cobden's speech, shows clearly that the advancement of Hong-Kong as a port of trade was due to purely adventitious circumstances; and that for many years, when it rested on its own merits for success, it was an absolute failure, and a constant expense to the country. If Mr. Cobden aspires to be a second Stamford Raffles, he is beginning at the wrong end. Our policy in China will be more safely left to the chapter of accidents than to visionaries. We have hard facts to deal with, and not phantoms of a lively imagination. The suppression of the Taeping rebellion cannot fail to produce remarkable effects on the condition of the Chinese people. They are ripe for great changes, not in the government or social institutions (the first is of little or no importance to the people, and the second are stereotyped), but in their relation to the progress of the world. Amid all political convulsions the people have remained unchanged, and that mainly because they are a non-political people. They are indifferent to affairs of state, but intent on their own business. Yet they have the faculty of self-government developed in an eminent degree. They are quiet, orderly, and industrious; averse to agitation of any kind, and ready to endure great sacrifices for the sake of peace. Such a people are easily governed, and their instinct of self-government is one important element in their longevity as a nation; it has enabled successive dynasties, often weak and vacillating, arbitrary and corrupt, to control three hundred millions of people. This constitutes the elasticity by which they regain lost ground after any temporary disturbance. Let the present reign of brigandage be destroyed, and the people will soon rise again; like pent-up waters they will flow into their former channels, and in a few years scarcely a trace of desolation would be left. In this prediction we have the experience of various episodes, even of the present rebellion, to guide us. The rapidity with which the city of Shanghae was re-built, after its destruction during the rebel occupation of 1853-5, was astonishing. Other cities have been re-built and re-peopled with equal rapidity. Han-Kow, on the great river, has been several times sacked and destroyed by the rebels, and in a short time after each visitation it was worth plundering again. The important city of Soo-chow, captured from the rebels last December, is reported in June following to be showing signs of commercial life, although the surrounding country was still the theatre of war.