the life of the late Sir Harry Parkes, gave a short account of the political conditions in China which led up to the war of 1860. The Treaty which followed that war was an eminently reasonable one, and great things were expected of it. We had gone to war, nominally to avenge an insult to the flag, in reality to put an end once for all to a long series of insults and injuries inflicted on our merchants. The war was completely successful. Peking fell into our hands, the Emperor fled to Mongolia, and we might have imposed whatever terms we chose. As it was, we asked for nothing but a fair commercial bargain. We demanded a modest indemnity, but we exacted no humiliating terms, no cession of territory such as might rankle in the Chinese mind. The Treaty was meant on our side to be what it bore on its title page-a treaty of perpetual peace and friendship'; and it was hoped that as the advantages of an expanding commerce became more and more manifest, the Chinese would in time throw open inland markets and permit the marvellous resources of their country to be utilised alike for their own benefit and for the benefit of mankind.

Such hopes, however reasonable they may have appeared, were doomed to disappointment. It is not too much to say that the history of our diplomatic relations with China for the thirty-five years which followed the Treaty has been simply the history of our efforts to compel the Chinese to observe their treaty engagements. We have been but moderately successful even in this limited aim; while, as for anything outside the four corners of the Treaty, the mere idea of granting it was preposterous. No matter whether it was big or little, whether it tended to benefit China or not, the mere fact that it was asked for by a foreigner was sufficient to ensure a peremptory refusal. It is matter of regret both for China's sake and our own that this view was too readily accepted by our own authorities. The Treaty came to be looked upon as a sort of heaven-sent document, eternal and immutable. Had we occasionally reminded the Chinese of the origin of the pact and shown that it was capable of revision, they might have had cause to thank us to-day.

war.

As it was, we made practically no progress from the date of the Treaty till the rude awakening of China by the Japanese The conditions of trade remained the same year after year. Nothing was done on the part of the Chinese to encourage production, to facilitate transit, or to lighten the burdens on commerce. On the contrary, these burdens grew heavier and heavier every year, and they are now in some places all but prohibitive.

Viewed in the light of these remarks it will be seen how extremely important are the concessions which have recently been obtained. We shall first briefly state what they are, as appears from the Blue-books.*

1. The opening of several new Treaty ports, including Nanning, a city on the West River near the Tongking frontier. 2. The opening of the whole of the inland waterways to foreign-owned steam craft.

3. Grants to various British companies to build about 2800 miles of railway. Other railway concessions of a similar nature have been granted to companies of other nationalities to an extent altogether (excluding Manchuria) of about 2100 miles. With these, however, we are not concerned.

4. The grant to a British company (the Peking Syndicate) of a sixty years' lease of minerals (coal and iron) in Shansi and Honan. The coal field in Shansi is described as the largest and richest in the world, extending to over thirteen thousand square miles of best anthracitic coal.

The importance of these grants can hardly be over-estimated. They are precisely the measures which foreign merchants have all along been urging the Chinese Government to take. Their value is not so much that the individual concessionaires will profit by them-though that may be counted on too-as that an enormous impetus will be given to the trade and commerce of the country. Undeveloped as China is, she is, next to India, the largest market we have for Manchester cottons. We export yearly to China between five and six hundred million yards of cotton cloth, while India takes altogether nearly two thousand million yards. In natural resources China is altogether more favoured than India. She has a larger area, a soil on the whole more varied and fertile, and a more active and industrious population. It is clear that, if to all these advantages are added the benefits which a country derives from an efficient railway system, China presents immense possibilities of develop

ment.

All this is satisfactory so far as it goes. But the question arises, how can these grants-which are but paper-grants as yet -be utilised in a practical way for the common benefit? We speak now of the railway and mining concessions, which differ from other privileges, such as the opening of new ports and waterways. The latter may be called concessions pure and simple: they entail no expenditure on our part, and no risk need be run to secure the advantages, if advantages there be. But a

railway or mining concession is different: it is not so much a concession as a contract, under which the concessionaires, as well as the other side, have a duty to perform. They have to provide the capital to build the railway or to open up the mines; their reward is not immediate, but deferred; and deferred it may be over a long series of years. The important question therefore arises-what security has the Chinese Government to offer that capital thus invested will be safeguarded, and that British investors will be protected in the exercise of the rights and privileges they have acquired?

If we had only the Chinese Government to reckon with, we believe there need not be the slightest difficulty on that score. In our long intercourse with the Chinese their commercial honesty has become almost proverbial. The Government, as a whole, shares this enviable reputation with the mercantile classes. They have never shown the slightest disposition to go back on their monetary obligations. Much as we have had to complain about in other respects, this has never been a subject that required diplomatic intervention. Further, the country, as a whole, is pre-eminently one which offers a suitable field for the investment of capital. It possesses, indeed, all the requisites for the acquisition of wealth, except capital. It has a most fertile soil, capable of producing in abundance almost everything that mankind desires, including such special products as tea and silk, which only limited areas of the earth's surface can produce. It is inhabited by a swarming population, frugal, active, and industrious. It enjoys a benign climate, temperate over two-thirds of the area, and in no part trying for European residents. Lastly, there are untold treasures of mineral wealth lying underneath the surface, as yet entirely untouched.

Per

All this has been waiting through the centuries, and is still waiting, for two things, capital and knowledge-capital to bring together the labour and the raw material, and knowledge how best to utilise the two for the benefit of the world. In China itself there is neither. For years the European world, scientific and industrial, has been standing by, waiting for permission from the Chinese Government to step in. mission has hitherto been refused, for reasons compounded of ignorance, timidity, and jealousy. It has at last been given. The right to set to work has been definitely granted, and, so far as the Chinese Government is concerned, it only remains that it should be kept up to its engagements—a task that ought not to be difficult of accomplishment.

But China is not the only Power we have to reckon with in the Far East. Before 1894 the main question before us was

how could China best be induced to join the general march of progress and open her doors to the civilisation of the world? Since 1895 the question has been-can China continue to hold her own as an independent State, or is she destined to be partitioned out among the Great Powers? As time goes on this last question becomes more and more pressing, and the doubts of her stability force themselves upon us. This leads us away from the commercial stand-point into the region of politics; and for the time being the political question is the dominating factor on which all the rest depends.

There never was, in truth, in the history of the world a question so fraught with momentous consequences as that which now confronts us in the Far East. Never was there a game where the stake was so gigantic, and where so many players were anxious to take a hand. The struggle for the Empire of India was a big thing. That we fought out with France alone; there were hardly even onlookers at the game; we ourselves only partially comprehended what the issue was, Now there is no doubt about the stakes. It is the destiny of a quarter of the human race that is now on the table, with the control, or at least predominance, over one half of the continent of Asia; and in the background, but looming out distinctly, there is the future of our Indian Empire and the dominion of the world; for the Power that can wield to its purposes the immense latent resources of China will come near to being master over at least the two continents of the Eastern hemisphere.

In these circumstances it becomes of the utmost importance to ask what is the policy of this country towards China, and how far it ought to be changed in view of the changes which are rapidly being made in the policy of other Powers. The importance and magnitude of the question have not failed to impress Her Majesty's Ministers, and have been insisted on by leading members of both parties. Speaking in 1895, shortly before resigning office, Lord Rosebery said :

'We have hitherto been favoured with one Eastern question, which we have always endeavoured to lull as something too portentous for our imagination, but of late a Far-Eastern question has been superadded, which I confess to my apprehension is in the dim vista of futurity infinitely graver than even that question of which we have hitherto known.'

But so quickly have events moved that what in 1895 was to Lord Rosebery's mind portentous only in the dim vista of futurity is to-day a practical and pressing problem.

Mr. Chamberlain, speaking at Birmingham in May 1898, in

regard to the assault on our commercial supremacy, said, with reference to China:

It is not a question of a single province; it is a question of the whole fate of the Chinese Empire; and our interests in China are so great, our proportion of the trade is so enormous, and the potentialities of that trade are so gigantic, that I feel that no more vital question has ever been presented for the decision of a Government and the decision of a nation.'

It would be easy to quote other passages showing that Ministers have been alive to the fact that serious movements are threatened which will imperil not only the existence of the Chinese Empire, but, with it, the commercial and industrial position which we have at so much cost and labour gained in the Far East. And yet what has our Government done to preserve or improve that position? The policy which they proposed to follow was indicated clearly enough in various speeches delivered about the beginning of 1898, notably in Mr. Balfour's speech at Manchester, and that of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach at Swansea. The former set forth generally that our objects in China were commercial, not territorial; that we desired to see the integrity of China maintained; and that we were determined to preserve intact the rights and privileges which we had acquired. The latter indicated more precisely the means by which these objects would be secured, and ventured to say that our rights would be insisted on even at the 'risk of war.' The country generally applauded these declarations, and they were accepted as satisfactory by all those interested in Eastern trade.

But much has happened since then, and the Government apparently have lapsed into quite a different groove. They have made up their minds that China is still a 'going concern,' and that the best thing to do is to do nothing. Their present policy has been defined in the words of Mr. Brodrick, who, speaking at the close of last session, described it as a policy of patience and watchfulness'—the patience, we presume, being directed towards China's dealings with ourselves, and the watchfulness towards her dealings with other Powers. In other words, it is a policy of generally letting things drift, but of maintaining that equality to which we are entitled by treaty, and of taking care that, if China grants concessions to other Powers, we get an equivalent in some way or another. This policy, says Mr. Brodrick, has produced good results; and Ministers point with pride and satisfaction to the fact that in the rivalry for concessions we have not come off second-best,