AND THE FIRST CHINESE MISSION BY FREDERICK WELLS WILLIAMS NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS A HARVARD COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published September, 1912 PREFACE THIS is a study of a career and of an enterprise that were misconstrued by their own generation. They demand requital from generations that are to come. As a romance in the stirring period of American history the life of Anson Burlingame deserves a biographer capable of giving its epic movement lasting literary form. My purpose in these pages has been less ambitious. So far as the character of the man is concerned I have tried to show that it was justly estimated by few even of those who admired him; that the work he set out to perform was left uncompleted but did not end in failure. Yet the real importance of Anson Burlingame lies not so much in the man or in the endeavour as in the use of an idea which he made the guiding principle of his service abroad. He believed in the practical application to the business of diplomacy of one of those commandments upon which hang all the law and the prophets: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." With this precept in control I have endeavoured to show how |