LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
LETTERS FROM 
 
 A CHINESE OFFICIAL- 
 BEING AN EASTERN VIEW OF 
 WESTERN CIVILIZATION 
 
 3 G, u>, I > 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 MCMXV 
 

 
 COPYEICHT, 1008, BY 
 
 DOUBLBDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN 
 EDITION 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN 
 EDITION 
 
 In venturing to lay the following letters before 
 the American public, I feel that I may be ex- 
 pected to preface them by a word of explana- 
 tion, if not of apology. Written originally for 
 the English, they touch upon specifically Eng- 
 lish institutions: and the few references they 
 contain to contemporary history and politics are 
 such as would naturally be of interest rather to 
 European than to American readers. Regarded 
 from this point of view, their publication in the 
 United States might seem to be irrelevant, and 
 even impertinent. And yet I venture to think 
 that, if they have any significance, it is of a 
 kind that should appeal with a peculiar force 
 to Americans. For their interest, such as it is, 
 depends, not upon topical allusions, but upon 
 the whole contrast suggested between Eastern 
 vii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 and Western ideals. And America, in a pre- 
 eminent degree, is representative of the West. 
 For a century past she has drawn to herself, by 
 an irresistible attraction, the boldest, the most 
 masterful, the most practically intelligent of the 
 spirits of Europe; just as, by the same law, she 
 has repelled the sensitive, the contemplative, and 
 the devout Unconsciously, by the mere fact of 
 her existence, she has sifted the nations; the 
 children of the Spirit have slipped through the 
 iron net of her destinies, but the children of the 
 World she has gathered into her granaries. 
 She h.is thns become, in a sense peculiar and 
 unique, the type and exemplar of the Western 
 world. Over her unencumbered plains the 
 (it'iiius of Industry ranges unchallenged, niked, 
 unashamed. Whereas, in Europe, it has still to 
 fight for its supremacy; for there it is con- 
 fronted with the debris of an earlier society, 
 with ideals, habits, institutions, monuments, tra- 
 ditions, alien to its achievement and incompre- 
 hensible to its aims. Cathedral churches, gray 
 in the north and sublime as the cliffs and the 
 viii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 clouds, exuberant in the south with color and 
 form like the lovely landscape they adorn, tes- 
 tify to the passage of a religion which, whatever 
 its defects, had at least the merit of spiritual 
 audacity. Splendid palaces, manors, and parks, 
 ancient moss-grown cottages, perpetuate the tra- 
 dition of ranks and orders, ancient, hereditary, 
 and fixed. Titles, forms, manners, habits, a whole 
 ritual of life, proclaim a standard, vanishing no 
 doubt, of merit and of duty, not yet convertible 
 into terms of money. A conception that leisure 
 may be noble, and that activity may be base, 
 that there is an inner, as well as an outer life, 
 and that the latter, on any reasonable estimate, 
 has value only as minister to the former, such a 
 conception still survives, efficient in individual 
 lives, and embodied in works of literature and 
 of art. In Europe, in a word, the modern spirit 
 has to contend with an ancient culture; and its 
 methods and results are modified and trans- 
 formed by the conflict. But in America it is 
 free; and whatever truth there may be in my 
 analysis of its character snd operation, should 
 ix 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 be illustrated, one would expect, on a larger 
 scale, in bolder and more uncompromising man- 
 ifestations, on this continent than in any of the 
 countries of Europe. Whether that be so or not, 
 I must leave to the candor of my American 
 readers. But if it be, then, as I cannot but 
 think, a serioys issue is raised as to the future 
 not merely of the United States, but of the whole 
 Western world. 
 
 For it is impossible not to recognize that the 
 destinies of Europe are closely bound up with 
 those of this country; and that what is at stake 
 in the development of the American Republic 
 is nothing less than the success or failure of 
 Western civilization. Endowed, above all the 
 nations of the world, with intelligence, energy, 
 and force, unhampered by the splendid ruins of 
 a past which, however great, does but encumber, 
 in the old world, with fears, hesitations, and re- 
 grets, the difficult march to the promised land 
 of the future, combining the magnificent enthu- 
 siasm of youth with the wariness of maturer 
 years, and animated by a confidence almost re- 
 x 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ligious in their own destiny, the American 
 people are called upon, it would seem, to deter- 
 mine, in a pre-eminent degree, the form that is 
 to be assumed by the society of the future. 
 
 Upon them hangs the fate of the Western world. 
 
 
 And were I an American citizen, the thought 
 
 would fill me, I confess, less with exultation than 
 with anxious and grave reflection. I should ask 
 myself whether the triumphs gained by my 
 countrymen over matter and space had been se- 
 cured at the cost of spiritual insight and force; 
 whether their immense achievement in the de- 
 velopment of the practical arts had been accom- 
 panied by any serious contribution to science, 
 literature, and art; whether, in a word, the soul 
 had grown with the body, or was tending to 
 atrophy and decay. And looking back over the 
 long history of mankind, considering the record 
 of the nations who have borne in succession the 
 torch of civilization which England, even now, 
 is handing across to America, considering all 
 that is disappearing in Europe and all that has 
 not yet begun to show itself here, I should feel 
 xi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 that Humanity is standing at the parting of the 
 ways, that it is confronted with an issue of a 
 gravity and importance unparalleled, perhaps, 
 since the fall of the Roman Empire. That issue 
 I would put somewhat as follows: Is that 
 which created the religion, the art, the specula- 
 tion of the Past ; that insatiable hunger for Eter- 
 nity which, by a sacramental mystery, has 
 transubstantiated into the heavenly essence of 
 the Ideal, the base and quotidian elements of the 
 Actual; that spirit of unquenchable aspiration 
 which has assumed, in its tireless quest for em- 
 bodiment, J"orms so alluring, so terrible, so di- 
 vine, which has luxuriated in the jungle of Hin- 
 doo myths, blossomed in the Pantheon of the 
 Greeks, suffered on the cross, perished at the 
 stake, wasted in the cloister and the cell, whicji 
 has given life to marble, substance to color, 
 structure to fugitive sound, which has fashioned 
 a palace of fire and cloud to inhabit for its de- 
 sire, and deemed it, for its beauty, more dear 
 and more real than kingdoms of iron and gold; 
 is that hunger, in the future as in the past, 
 xii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 to harass and hunt us from our styes? Is that 
 spirit to urge as of old the reluctant wheels of 
 our destiny? Or are we to fill our belly with 
 the husks of comfort, security, and peace? To 
 crush in the dust under our Juggernaut car that 
 delicate charioteer? Are we to be spirits or in- 
 telligent brutes; men or mere machines? That 
 is the question now put, as it has never been put 
 before, to the nations of the West, and pre-em- 
 inently to the people of these States. Doubtless, 
 were I an American, I should not question the 
 capacity of my countrymen to answer it, and to 
 answer it in the best and most fruitful sense. 
 Yet the consciousness of the immensity of the 
 problem would, I think, check at the birth any 
 tendency which I might otherwise have indulged 
 to premature exultation. For I should feel that 
 the work had hardly been begun, that the foun- 
 dations were barely laid ; nay, that the very plan 
 of the building was not yet drawn out. And 
 looking across the ocean, to Europe and to the 
 far East, I should be anxious, not indeed to im- 
 itate the forms, but to appropriate the inspira- 
 xiii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 tion of that ancient world which created man- 
 ners, laws, religion, art, whose history is the 
 record not merely of the body, but of the soul 
 of mankind, and whose spirit, already escaping 
 from the forms in which it had found a partial 
 embodiment, is hovering even now at your gates 
 in quest of a new and more perfect incarnation. 
 Will you not receive it ? I do not doubt that you 
 will, if not to-day, then to-morrow, if not to- 
 morrow, then the day after. And if, in any 
 smallest way, these few imperfect pages may 
 contribute to prepare for it a welcome among 
 you, you perhaps will pardon their defects, in 
 recognition of a sincere intention, and will tol- 
 erate, even from a stranger, a certain freedom 
 of speech which otherwise you might not unnat- 
 urally resent as an impertinence. 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
Recent events in China have brought into new 
 prominence at once the fundamental antagonism 
 between Eastern and Western civilization, and 
 that ignorance and contempt of the one for the 
 other which is mainly responsible for the present 
 situation. In the face of the tragedy that is being 
 enacted, I have long held my peace. But a grow- 
 ing sense of indignation, and a hope, perhaps 
 illusory, that I may contribute to remove certain 
 misunderstandings, have impelled me at last to 
 open my lips, and to lay before the British public 
 some views which have long been crying for ut- 
 terance. Of the immediate crisis I do not pro- 
 pose to speak. It is my object rather to pro- 
 mote a juster estimate of my countrymen and 
 their policy, by explaining, as far as I am able, 
 the way in which we regard Western civilization, 
 and the reasons we have for desiring to exclude 
 its influences. For such a task I conceive 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 to be not altogether unfit. A long residence in 
 England gives me some right to speak of your 
 institutions; while absence from my own country 
 has not disqualified me to speak of ours. A 
 Chinaman remains always a Chinaman; and 
 much as I admire in some of its aspects the 
 achievement of Western civilization, I have yet 
 seen nothing which could make me regret that I 
 was born a citizen of the East. To Englishmen 
 this may seem a strange confession. You are 
 accustomed to regard us as barbarians, and not 
 unnaturally, for it is only on the occasions when 
 we murder your compatriots that your attention 
 is powerfully drawn toward us. From such 
 spasmodic outbreaks you are apt overhastily to 
 infer that we are a nation of cold-blooded assas- 
 sins; a conclusion as reasonable as would be an 
 inference from the present conduct of your 
 troops in China to the general character of West- 
 ern civilization. We are not to be judged by 
 the acts of our mobs, nor even, I may add, by 
 those of our Government, for the Government in 
 C 1 ' -a does not represent the nation. Yet even 
 r - 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHIVES OFFICIAL 
 
 those acts (strongly as they are condemned by 
 all educated Chinamen) deserve, I venture to 
 think, on the part of Europeans, a consideration 
 more grave, and a less intemperate reprobation, 
 than they have hitherto received among you. 
 For they are expressions of a feeling which is, 
 and must always be, the most potent factor in 
 our relations with the West-C-our profound mis- 
 
 trust and dislike of your civilization.' This feel- 
 
 *-' _M^ ^ ^ ** 
 
 ing you, naturally enough, attribute to prejudice 
 and ignorance. In reality, I venture to think, it 
 is based upon reason ; and for this point of view 
 I would ask the serious and patient considera- 
 tion of my readers. 
 
 Our civilization is the oldest in the world. It 
 does not follow that it is the best; but neither, I 
 submit, does it follow that it is the worst. On 
 the contrary, such antiquity is, at any rate, a 
 proof that our institutions have guaranteed to us 
 a stability for which we search in vain among the 
 nations of Europe. But not only is our civiliza- 
 tion stable, it also embodies, as we think, a moral 
 order ; while in yours we detect only an economic 
 
 Ul 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 chaos. Whether your religion be better than 
 ours, I do not at present dispute ; but it is certain 
 that it has less influence on your society. You 
 profess Christianity, but your civilization has 
 never been Christian; whereas ours is Confucian 
 through and through. But to say that it is 
 Confucian, is to say that it is moral; or, at least 
 (for I do not wish to beg the question), that 
 moral relations are those which it primarily con- 
 templates. Whereas, with you (so it seems to 
 us) economic relations come first, and upon these 
 you endeavor, afterward, to graft as much 
 morality as they will admit 
 
 This point I may illustrate by a comparison 
 between your view of the family and ours. To 
 you, so far as a foreigner can perceive, the f am- 
 ily is merely a means for nourishing and pro- 
 tecting the child until he is of age to look after 
 himself. As early as may be, you send your 
 boys away to a public school, where they quickly 
 emancipate themselves from the influences of 
 their home. As soon as they are of age, you send 
 them out, as you say, to "make their fortune"; 
 [6] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 and from that moment, often enough, as they 
 cease to be dependent on their parents, so they 
 cease to recognize obligations toward them. 
 They may go where they will, do what they will, 
 earn and spend as they choose ; and it is at their 
 own option whether or no they maintain their 
 family ties. x With you the individual is the unit; 
 and all the units are free/ No one is tied, but 
 also no one is rooted. Your society, to use your 
 own word, is "progressive"; you are always 
 "moving on." Everyone feels it a duty (and 
 in most cases it is a necessity) to strike out a 
 new line for himself. To remain in the position 
 in which you were born you consider a disgrace; 
 a man, to be a man, must venture, struggle, com- 
 pete, and win. To this characteristic of your so- 
 ciety is to be attributed, no doubt, its immense 
 activity, and its success in all material arts. 
 But to this, also, is due the feature that most 
 strikes a Chinaman its unrest, its confusion, 
 its lack (as we think) of morality. Among you 
 no one is contented, no one has leisure to live, 
 o intent are all on increasing the means of liv.- 
 [7] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 ing. The "cash-nexus" (to borrow a phrase of 
 one of your own writers) is the only relation you 
 recognize among men. 
 
 Now, to us of the East all this is the mark of 
 a barbarous society. We measure the degree of 
 civilization not by accumulation of the means of 
 living, but by the character and value of the life 
 
 lived, i Where there are no humane and stable 
 
 % 
 
 relations, no reverence for the past, no respect 
 even for the present, but only a cupidinous rav- 
 ishment of the future, there, we think, there is 
 no true society. And we would not if we could 
 rival you in your wealth, your sciences, and your 
 arts, if we must do so at the cost of imitating 
 your institutions. 
 
 In all these matters, our own procedure is the 
 opposite to yours. We look first to the society 
 and then to the individual. Among us, it is a 
 rule that a man is born into precisely those 
 relations in which he is to continue during the 
 course of his life. As he begins, so he ends, a 
 member of his family group, and to this condi- 
 tion the whole theory and practice of his life 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHIKEPR OFFICIAL 
 
 conforms. He is taught to worship his ancestors, 
 to honor and obey his parents, and to prepare 
 himself from an early age for the duties of a 
 husband and a father. Marriage does not dis- 
 solve the family; the husband remains, and the 
 wife becomes a member of his group of kinsmen. 
 And this group is the social unit. ' It has its 
 common plot of ground, its common altar and 
 rites, its tribunal for settling disputes among its 
 members. No man in China is isolated, save by 
 his own fault. If it is not so easy for him to 
 grow rich as with you, neither is it so easy for 
 him to starve; if he has not the motive to com- 
 pete, neither has he the temptation to cheat and 
 oppress. Free at once from the torment of am- 
 bition and the apprehension of distress, he has 
 leisure to spare from the acquisition of the means 
 of living for life itself. He has both the instinct 
 and the opportunity to appreciate the gifts of 
 Nature, to cultivate manners, and to enter into 
 humane and disinterested relations with his fel- 
 lows. The result is a type which we cannot but 
 regard as superior, both morally and aesthetically , 
 
 [91 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 to the great bulk of your own citizens in Europe. 
 And while we recognize the greatness of your 
 practical and scientific achievements, yet we find 
 it impossible unreservedly to admire a civiliza- 
 tion which has produced manners so coarse, 
 morals so low, and an appearance so unlovely as 
 those with which we are constantly confronted 
 in your great cities. Admitting that we are not 
 what you call a progressive people, we yet per- 
 ceive that progress may be bought too dear. 
 We prefer our own moral to your material ad- 
 vantages, and we are determined to cling to the 
 institutions which, we believe, insure us the for- 
 mer, even at the risk of excluding ourselves from 
 the latter. 
 
 1 10] 
 
II 
 
 In my last letter I endeavored to give some 
 general account of the salient differences be- 
 tween your civilization and ours. Such differ- 
 ences have led inevitably to conflict; and recent 
 events might seem to give some color to the idea 
 that in that conflict it is we who have been the 
 aggressors. But nothing in fact can be further 
 from the truth. ( Left to ourselves, we should 
 never have sought intercourse with the West. 
 We have no motive to do so ; for we desire neither 
 to proselytize nor to trade. We believe, it is 
 true, that our religion is more rational than yours, 
 our morality higher, and our institutions more 
 perfect; but we recognize that what is suited to 
 us may be ill adapted to others. We do not con- 
 ceive that we have a mission to redeem or to 
 civilize the world, still less that that mission is 
 to be accomplished by the methods of fire and 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 sword; and we are thankful enough if we can 
 solve our own problems, without burdening our- 
 selves with those of other peoples. 
 
 And as we are not led to interfere with you by 
 the desire to convert you, so are we not driven 
 to do so by the necessities of trade. Economi- 
 cally, as well as politically, we are sufficient to 
 ourselves. What we consume we produce, and 
 what we produce we consume. We do not re- 
 quire, and we have not sought, the products of 
 other nations; and we hold it no less imprudent 
 than unjust to make war on strangers in order 
 to oien their marketsi A society, we conceive, 
 that is to be politicallystable must be economi- 
 cally independent; and we regard an extensive 
 foreign trade as necessarily a source of social 
 demoralization, j 
 
 In these, &An all other points, your principle 
 is the opposite to ours. You believe, not only 
 that your religion is the only true one, but that it 
 is your duty to impose it on all other nations, if 
 need be, at the point of the sword. And this 
 motive of aggression is reinforced by another 
 [12] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 still more potent. Economically, your society is 
 so constituted that it is constantly on the verge 
 of starvation. You cannot produce what you 
 need to consume, nor consume what you need 
 to produce. It is matter of life and death to you 
 to find markets in which you may dispose of your 
 manufactures, and from which you may derive 
 your food and raw material. Such a market 
 China is, or might be; and the opening of this 
 market is in fact the motive, thinty disguised, of 
 all your dealings with us in recent years. The 
 justice and morality of such a policy I do not 
 propose to discuss. It is, in fact, the product of 
 sheer material necessity, and upon such a ground 
 it is idle to dispute. I shall confine myself there- 
 fore to an endeavor to present our view of the 
 situation, and to explain the motives we have for 
 resenting your aggression. 
 
 To the ordinary British trader it seems no 
 doubt a strange thing that we should object to 
 what he describes as the opening out of our 
 national resources. Viewing everything, as he 
 habitually does, from the standpoint of profit and 
 [13] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 loss, he conceives that if it can be shown that a 
 certain course will lead to the increase of wealth, 
 it follows that that is the course that ought to be 
 adopted. The opening of China to his capital 
 and his trade he believes will have this result; 
 and he concludes that it is our interest to wel- 
 come rather than to resist his enterprise. From 
 his point of view he is justified; but his point of 
 view is not ours. We are accustomed, before 
 adopting any grave measure of policy, to esti- 
 mate its effects not merely on the sum total of 
 our wealth, but (which we conceive to be a very 
 different thing) on our national well-being. 
 You, as always, are thinking of the means of 
 living; we, of the quality of the life lived. And 
 when you ask us, as you do in effect, to transform 
 our whole society, to convert ourselves from a 
 nation of agriculturists to a nation of traders 
 and manufacturers, to sacrifice to an imaginary 
 prosperity our political and economic indepen- 
 dence, and to revolutionize not only our industry, 
 but our manners, morals, and institutions, we 
 may b. pardoned if we first take a critical look 
 [14] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 at the effects which have been produced among 
 yourselves by the conditions you urge us to in- 
 troduce in China. 
 
 The results of such a survey, we venture to 
 think, are not encouraging. Like the prince in 
 the fable, you seem to have released from his 
 prison the genie of competition^ only to find that 
 you are unable to control him/ Your legislation 
 for the past hundred years is a perpetual and 
 fruitless effort to regulate the disorders of your 
 economic system. J Your poor, your drunk, your 
 incompetent, your sick, your aged, ride you like 
 a nightmare. You have dissolved all human and 
 personal ties, and you endeavor, in vain, to re- 
 place them by the impersonal activity of the 
 State. The salient characteristic of your civili- 
 zation is its irresponsibility. You have liberated 
 forces you cannot control; you are caught your- 
 selves in your own levers and cogs. In every 
 department of business you are substituting for 
 the individual the company, for the workman 
 the tool. The making of dividends is the univer- 
 sal preoccupation; the well-being of the laborer 
 [15] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 is no one's concern but the State's. And this 
 concern even the State is incompetent to under- 
 take, for the factors by which it is determined 
 are beyond its control. You depend on varia- 
 tions of supply and demand which you can 
 neither determine nor anticipate. The failure 
 of a harvest, the modification of a tariff in some 
 remote country, dislocates the industry of mill- 
 ions, thousands of miles away. You are at the 
 mercy of a prospector's luck, an inventor's 
 genius, a woman's caprice nay, you are at the 
 mercy of your own instruments. Your capital 
 is alive, and cries for food ; starve it and it turns 
 and throttles you. You produce, not because 
 you will, but because you must; you consume, 
 not what you choose, but what is forced upon 
 you. Never was any trade so bound as this 
 which you call free ; but it is bound, not by a rea- 
 sonable will, but by the accumulated irrationality 
 of caprice. 
 
 Such is the internal economy of your State, as 
 it presents itself to a Chinaman; and not more 
 encouraging is the spectacle of your foreign re- 
 [16] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 lations. Commercial intercourse between na- 
 tions, it was supposed some fifty years ago, 
 would inaugurate an era of peace; and there 
 appear to be many among you who still cling to 
 this belief. But never was, belief more plainly 
 contradicted by the facts. The competition for 
 markets bids fair to be a more fruitful cause of 
 war than was ever in the past the ambition of 
 princes or the bigotry of priests.; The peoples 
 of Europe fling themselves, like hungry beasts 
 of prey, on every yet unexploited quarter of the 
 globe. Hitherto they have confined their acts 
 of spoliation to those whom they regard as out- 
 side their own pale. But always, while they di- 
 vide the spoil, they watch one another with a 
 jealous eye; and sooner or later, when there is 
 nothing left to divide, they will fall upon one 
 another. / That is the real meaning of your ar- 
 maments ; you must devour or be devoured. ) And 
 it is precisely those trade relations, which it was 
 thought would knit you in the bonds of peace, 
 which, by making every one of you cut-throat 
 rivals of the others, have brought you within 
 117] 
 
LETTERS FEOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 reasonable distance of a general war of exter- 
 mination. 
 
 In thus characterizing your civilization, I am 
 not (I think) carried away by a foolish Chauvin- 
 ism, I do not conceive the inhabitants of Europe 
 to be naturally more foolish and depraved than 
 those of China. On the contrary^ it is a cardinal 
 tenet of our faith, that human nature is every- 
 where the same, and that it is circumstances that 
 make it good or bad. If, then, your economy, 
 internal or external, be really as defective as we 
 conceive, the cause we think must be sought not 
 in any radical defect in your national character, 
 but in precisely those political and social institu- 
 tions which you are urging us to adopt at home. 
 Can you wonder, in the circumstances, that we 
 resist your influence by any means at our com- 
 mand; and that the more intelligent among us, 
 while they regret the violence to which your 
 agents have been exposed, yet feel that it weighs 
 as nothing in the scale, when set against the 
 intolerable evils which would result from the 
 success of your enterprise ? 
 [18] 
 
Ill 
 
 In one of your journals I recently read that 
 "the civilization of China" is the ultimate object 
 of the nations of Europe. If so, the methods 
 they adopt to attain their end are singular in- 
 deed: but of these I do not trust myself to speak. 
 Looting, wanton destruction, cold-blooded mur- 
 der, and rape, these are the things which you 
 do not, I know, here in England approve, which 
 you would prevent, I am convinced, if you could, 
 and which I am willing to set down to the license 
 of ill-disciplined troops. It is for another pur- 
 pose than that of idle deprecation that I refer 
 to them in this place. ( The question always be- 
 fore my mind when you speak of civilization is 
 this: What kind of men has your civilization 
 produced? And to such a question current 
 events in China seem to suggest an answer not 
 altogether reassuring. But that answer I do 
 not press. It may be that all culture, ours as 
 much as yours, is no more than a veneer; that 
 [19] 
 
LETTEUS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 deep in the den of every human heart lurks the 
 brute, ready to leap on its prey when chance or 
 design has unbarred the gates. We at any rate, 
 in China, lie 'under the same condemnation as 
 you; and our reproaches, like yours, fly back to 
 the mouths of them that utter them. I pass, 
 therefore, from scees like these to normal con- 
 ditions of life. /What manner of men, I ask, 
 are we, what manner of men are you, that you 
 shoulcl^take upon yourselves to call us barba- 
 rians ? 
 
 What manner of men are we? The question 
 is hard to answer. Turning it over in my 
 thoughts, hour after hour, day after day, I can 
 hit on no better device to bring home to you 
 something of what is in my mind than to en- 
 deavor to set down here, as faithfully as I can, 
 a picture that never ceases to haunt my memory 
 as I walk in these dreary winter days the streets 
 of your black Metropolis. 
 
 Far away in the East, under sunshine such as 
 you never saw (for even such light as you have 
 you tain and infect with sooty smoke), on the 
 [20] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 shore of a broad river stands the house where I 
 was born. It is one among thousands ; but every 
 one stands in its own garden, simply painted in 
 white or gray, modest, cheerful, and clean. For 
 many miles along the valley, one after the other, 
 they lift their blue- or red-tiled roofs out of a 
 sea of green; while here and there glitters out 
 over a clump of trees the gold enamel of some 
 tall pagoda. The river, crossed by frequent 
 bridges and crowded with barges and junks, 
 bears on its clear stream the traffic of thriving 
 village-markets. For prosperous peasants peo- 
 ple all the district, owning and tilling the fields 
 their fathers owned and tilled before them. 
 The soil on which they work, they may say, they 
 and their ancestors have made. For see ! almost 
 to the summit what once were barren hills are 
 waving green with cotton and rice, sugar, 
 oranges, and tea. Water drawn from the river- 
 bed girdles the slopes with silver; and falling 
 from channel to channel in a thousand bright 
 cascades, plashing in cisterns, chuckling in pipes, 
 soaking and oozing in the soil, distributes freely 
 [21] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 to all alike fertility, verdure, and life. Hour 
 after hour you may traverse, by tortuous paths, 
 over tiny bridges, the works of the generations 
 who have passed, the labors of their children of 
 to-day; till you reach the point where man suc- 
 cumbs and Nature has her way, covering the 
 highest crags with a mantle of azure and gold 
 and rose, gardenia, clematis, azalea, growing 
 luxuriantly wild. How often here have I sat 
 for hours in a silence so intense that, as one of 
 our poets has said, "you may hear the shadows 
 of the trees rustling on the ground"; a silence 
 broken only now and again from far below by 
 voices of laborers calling across the water- 
 courses, or, at evening or dawn, by the sound 
 of gongs summoning to worship from the tem- 
 ples in the valley. Such silence ! Such sounds ! 
 Such perfume! Such color! The senses re- 
 spond to their objects; they grow exquisite to 
 a degree you cannot well conceive in your north- 
 ern climate; and beauty pressing in from with- 
 out moulds the spirit and mind insensibly to 
 harmony with herself. If in China we have man- 
 [22] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 ners, if we have art, if we have morals, the 
 reason, to those who can see, is not far to seek. 
 ( Nature has taught us; and so far, we are only 
 more fortunate than you.X But, also, we have had 
 the grace to learn her lesson ; and that, we think, 
 we may ascribe to our intelligence. For, con- 
 sider, here in this lovely valley live thousands of 
 souls without any law save that of custom, with- 
 out any rule save that of their own hearths. 
 Industrious they are, as you hardly know indus- 
 try in Europe ; but it is the industry of free men 
 working for their kith and kin, on the lands they 
 received from their fathers, to transmit, enriched 
 by their labors, to their sons. They have no 
 other ambition ; they do not care to amass wealth ; 
 and if in each generation some must needs go 
 out into the world, it is with the hope, not com- 
 monly frustrated, to return to the place of their 
 birth and spend their declining years among the 
 scenes and faces that were dear to their youth. 
 Among such a people there is no room for fierce, 
 indecent rivalries. None is master, none servant ; 
 but equality, concrete and real, regulates and 
 [23] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 sustains their intercourse. Healthy toil, suffi- 
 cient leisure, frank hospit&Hty, a content born 
 of habit and undisturbed by chimerical ambi- 
 tions, a sense of beauty fostered by the loveliest 
 Nature in the world, and finding expression in 
 gracious and dignified manners where it is not 
 embodied in exquisite works of art such are 
 the char aj^teri sties of the people among whom I 
 was born. jD es m y memory flatter me? Do I 
 idealize tHe scenes of my youth? It may be so. 
 But this I know: that some such life as I have 
 described, reared on the basis of labor on the 
 soil, of equality and justice, does exist and 
 flourish frhpughout the length and breadth of 
 China. \ What have you to offer in its place, you 
 our would-be civilizers? Your religion? Alas! 
 it is in the name of that that you are doing un- 
 namable deeds ! Your morals ? Where shall 
 we find them ? Your intelligence ? Whither has 
 
 it led ? I What counter-picture have you to offer 
 
 "" ~*<J 
 over here in England to this which I have drawn 
 
 of life in China? That is the question which 
 I have now to endeavor to reply. 
 [24] 
 
IV 
 
 In attempting to lay before you a characteristic 
 scene of Chinese life I selected for the purpose a 
 community of peasants. I did so because it is 
 there that I find the typical product of our civ- 
 ilization. Cities, it is true, we have, and cities 
 as monstrous, perhaps, as yours; but they are 
 mere excrescences on a body politic whose es- 
 sential constitution is agricultural. With you all 
 this is reversed; and for that reason you have 
 no country life deserving the name. On the one 
 hand waste of common and moor, on the other 
 villas and parks, laborers poorly clad, wretch- 
 edly housed, and miserably paid, dreary villages, 
 decaying farms, squalor, brutality, and vice 
 such is the picture you give, yourselves, of your 
 agricultural districts. Whatever in England is 
 not urban is parasitic or moribund. If, then, I 
 am to give an impression that shall be candid 
 and just of the best results of your civilizationj 
 [25] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 I must turn from the country to the life of your 
 great cities. And in doing so I will not seek to 
 win an easy victory by dwelling unduly on those 
 more obvious points which you no less than I 
 admit and deplore. Your swarming slums, your 
 liquor-saloons, your poor-houses, your prisons 
 these, it is true, are melancholy facts. But the 
 evils of which they are symptoms you are set- 
 ting yourselves to cure, and your efforts, I do 
 not doubt, may be attended with a large measure 
 of success. It is rather the goal to which you 
 seem to be moving when you have done the best 
 you can that I would choose to consider in this 
 place. Your typical product, your average man, 
 the man you call respectable, him it is that I 
 wish to characterize, for he it is that is the nat- 
 ural and inevitable outcome of your civilization. 
 What manner of man, then, is he? It is with 
 some hesitation that I set myself to answer this 
 question. I am a stranger among you; I have 
 enjoyed your hospitality; and I am loath to 
 seem to repay you with discourtesy. But if there 
 be any service I can do you, I know none greater 
 [26] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 than to bring home to you, if I could, without 
 undue offence, certain important truths (so they 
 seem to me) to which you appear to be singularly 
 blind. Your feet, I believe, are set on the wrong 
 path ; I would fain warn you ; and useless though 
 the warning may be, it is offered in the spirit of 
 friendship, and in that spirit, I hope, it will be 
 received. 
 
 | When I review my impressions of the average 
 English citizen, impressions based on many 
 years' study, what kind of man do I see ? I see 
 one divorced from Nature, but unreclaimed by 
 Art; instructed, but not educated; assimilative, 
 but incapable of thought. | Trained in the tenets 
 of a religion in which he does not really believe 
 for he sees it flatly contradicted in every re- 
 lation of life he dimly feels that it is prudent 
 to conceal under a mask of piety the atheism 
 he is hardly intelligent enough to avow. His 
 religion is conventional; and, what is more im- 
 portant, his morals are as conventional as his 
 creed. jCharity, chastity, self-abnegation, con- 
 tempt of the world and its prizes these are the 
 [27] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 words on which he has been fed from his child- 
 hood upwardJ And words they have remained, 
 for neither has he anywhere seen them practised 
 by others, nor has it ever^occurred to him to 
 practise them himself. (Their influence, while 
 it is. strong enough to make him a chronic hypo- 
 crite, is not so strong as to show him the hypo- 
 crite he is. ^Deprived on the one hand of the 
 support of a true ethical standard, embodied 
 in the life of the society of which he is a mem- 
 ber, he is duped, on the other, by lip-worship 
 of an impotent ideal. Abandoned thus to his 
 instinct, he is content to do as others do, and, 
 ignoring the things of the spirit, to devote him- 
 self to material ends. He becomes a mere tool; 
 and of such your society is composed. By your 
 works you may be known. I Your triumphs in the 
 mechanical arts are the obverse of your failure 
 in all that calls for spiritual insightTl Machinery 
 of every kind you can make and use to perfec- 
 tion; but you cannot build a house, or write a 
 poem, or paint a picture; still less can you wor- 
 ship or aspire. Look at your streets! Row 
 [28] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 upon row of little boxes, one like another, lack- 
 ing in all that is essential, loaded with all that 
 is superfluous this is what passes among you 
 for architecture. Your literature is the daily 
 press, with its stream of solemn fatuity, of anec- 
 dotes, puzzles, puns, and police-court scandal. 
 Your pictures are stories in paint, transcripts of 
 all that is banal, clumsily botched by amateurs 
 as devoid of tradition as of genius. Your outer 
 sense as well as your inner is dead; you are 
 blind and deaf. Ratiocination has taken the 
 place of perception; ai^d your whole life is an 
 infinite syllogism from premises you have not 
 examined to conclusions you have not anticipated 
 or willed. Everywhere means, nowhere an end \) 
 Society a huge engine, and that engine itself out 
 of gear! Such is the picture your civilization 
 presents to my imagination. I will not say that 
 it is so that it appears to every intelligent China- 
 man; for the Chinese, unlike you, are constitu- 
 tionally averse to drawing up an indictment 
 against a nation. If I have been led into that 
 error, it is under strong provocation ; and already 
 129] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 I feel that I owe you an apology. Yet what I 
 have said I cannot withdraw; and I shall not 
 regret that I have spoken if I may hope that 
 my words have suggested to some among my 
 readers a new sense in the cry, "China for the 
 Chinese!" 
 
When I was first brought into contact with the 
 West what most immediately impressed me was 
 the character and range of your intelligence. I 
 found that you had brought your minds to bear, 
 with singular success, upon problems which had 
 not even occurred to us in the East; that by 
 analysis and experiment you had found the clue 
 to the operation of the forces of nature, and had 
 turned them to account in ways which, to my un- 
 travelled imagination, appeared to be little short 
 of miraculous. Nor has familiarity diminished 
 my admiration for your achievements in this 
 field. I recognize in them your chief and most 
 substantial claim to superiority, and I am not 
 surprised that some of the more intelligent of 
 my countrymen should be advocating with ardor 
 their immediate introduction into China. I sym- 
 pathize with the enthusiasm of these reformers, 
 but I am unable, nevertheless, to endorse their 
 [81] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 policy; and it may be worth while to set down 
 here the reasons which have led me to a conclu- 
 sion which may appear at first sight to be 
 paradoxical. 
 
 / The truth is that a study of your history 
 during the past century and a closer acquaint- 
 ance with the structure of your society has con- 
 siderably modified my original point of view/] I 
 have learnt that the most brilliant discoveries^ 
 the most fruitful applications of inventive 
 genius, do not of themselves suffice for the well- 
 being of society ) and that an intelligence which 
 is concentrated exclusively on the production of 
 labor-saving machines may easily work more 
 harm by the dislocation of industry than it can 
 accomplish good by the increase of wealth. 
 For the increase of wealth that is, of the 
 means to comfort is not, to my mind, neces- 
 sarily good in itself; everything depends on the 
 way in which the wealth is distributed and on 
 its effect on the moral character of the nation. 
 And it is from that point of view that I look 
 with some dismay upon the prospect of the in- 
 [32] 
 
LETTERS PROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 troduction of Western methods into China. An 
 example will best explain my point. When we 
 began to construct our first railway, from 
 Tientsin to Peking, the undertaking excited 
 among the neighboring populace an opposition 
 which quickly developed into open riot. The 
 line was torn up, bridges were destroyed, and it 
 was impossible to continue the work. We there- 
 fore, according to our custom in China, sent 
 down to the scene of action, not a force of police, 
 but an official to interview the rioters and ascer- 
 tain their point of view. It was as usual a per- 
 fectly reasonable one. They were a boating 
 population, subsisting by the traffic of the canal, 
 and they feared that the railway would deprive 
 them of their means of livelihood. The Gov- 
 ernment recognized the justice of their plea; 
 they gave the required guarantee that the traffic 
 by water should not seriously suffer, and there 
 was no further trouble or disturbance. The 
 episode is a good illustration of the way in which 
 we regard these questions. Englishmen to 
 whom I have spoken of the matter have invari- 
 [33] 
 
LETTERS FBOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 ably listened to my account with astonishment 
 not unmingled with indignation. To them it 
 seems a monstrous thing that Government should 
 pay any regard whatever to such representations 
 on the part of the people. They speak of the 
 laws of supply and demand, of the ultimate ab- 
 sorption of labor, of competition, progress, mo- 
 bility and the "long-run." To all this I listen 
 with more or less comprehension and acquies- 
 cence; but it cannot conceal from me the fact 
 that the introduction of new methods means, at 
 any rate for the moment, so much dislocation of 
 labor, so much poverty, suffering, and starvation. 
 Of this your own industiial history gives abun- 
 dant proof. And I cannot but note with regret 
 and disappointment that in all these years during 
 which you have been perfecting the mechanical 
 arts you have not apparently even attempted, 
 you certainly have not attempted with success, 
 to devise any means to obviate the disturbance 
 and distress to which you have subjected your 
 laboring population. This, indeed, is not sur- 
 prising, for it is your custom to subordinate life 
 [84] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 to wealth; but neither, to a Chinaman, is it en- 
 couraging; and I, at least, cannot contemplate 
 without the gravest apprehension the disorders 
 which must inevitably ensue among our popula- 
 tion of four hundred millions upon the intro- 
 duction, on a large scale, of Western methods 
 of industry. You will say that the disorder is 
 temporary; to me it appears, in the West, to be 
 chronic. But putting that aside, what, I may 
 ask, are we to gain? The gain to you is pal- 
 pable; so, I think, is the loss to us. But where 
 is our gain? The question, perhaps, may seem 
 to you irrelevant; but a Chinaman may be for- 
 given for thinking it important. You will an- 
 swer, no doubt, that we shall gain wealth. 
 Perhaps we shall; but shall we not lose life? 
 Shall we not become like you? And can you 
 expect us to contemplate that with equanimity? 
 1 What are your advantages ? Your people, no 
 doubt, are better equipped than ours with somr 
 of the less important goods of life; they eat 
 more, drink more, sleep more; but there their 
 superiority ends. They are less cheerful, less 
 [35] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 contented, less industrious, less law-abiding ; their 
 occupations are more unhealthy both for body 
 and mind; they are crowded into cities and fac- 
 tories, divorced from Nature and the ownership 
 of the soil/] On all this I have already dwelt at 
 length; I only recur to it here in explanation 
 of a position which may appear to you to be 
 perverse the position of one who, while gen- 
 uinely admiring the products of Western intel- 
 ligence, yet doubts whether that intelligence has 
 not been misapplied, or at least whether its di- 
 rection has not been so one-sided that it is likely 
 to have been productive of as much harm as good. 
 You may, indeed and I trust you will rectify 
 this error and show yourselves as ingenious in 
 organizing men as you have been in dominating 
 Nature. But meantime we may, perhaps, be 
 pardoned if even when we most admire we yet 
 hesitate to adopt your Western methods, and feel 
 that the advantages which might possibly ensue 
 will be dearly bought by the disorders that have 
 everywhere accompanied their introduction. 
 And there is another point which weighs with 
 [36] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFIClAl 
 
 me, one less obvious, perhaps, but not less im- 
 portant. In any society it must always be the 
 case that the mass of men are absorbed in me- 
 chanical labors. It is so in ours no less, though 
 certainly no more, than in yours; and, so far, 
 this condition does not appear to have been 
 affected by the introduction of machinery. But, 
 on the other hand, in every society there arej or 
 should be, men who are relieved from this servi- 
 tude to matter and free to devote themselves to 
 higher ends. In China, for many centuries past, 
 there has been a class of men set apart from the 
 first to the pursuit of liberal arts, and destined 
 to the functions of government. These men 
 form no close hereditary caste; it is open to 
 anyone to join them who_possesses the requisite 
 talent and inclination\ and in this respect our 
 society has long been theNnost democratic in the 
 world/ The education to which we subject this 
 official class is a matter of frequent and adverse 
 comment among you, and it is not my intention 
 here to undertake its defence. What I wish to 
 point out is the fact that, by virtue of this in- 
 187} 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 stitution, we have inculcated and we maintain 
 among our people of all classes a respect for 
 the things of the mind and of the spirit, to which 
 it would be hard to find a parallel in Europe, 
 and of which, in particular, there is no trace in 
 England. In China letters are respected not 
 merely to a degree but in a sense which must 
 seem, I think ; to you unintelligible and over- 
 strained. But there is a reason for it. Our 
 poets and literary men have taught their suc- 
 cessors, for long generations, to look for good 
 not in wealth, not in power, not in miscellaneous 
 activity, but in a trained, a choice, an exquisite 
 appreciation of the- most simple and universal 
 relations of life. / To feel, and in order to feel 
 to express, or at lenst to understand the expres- 
 sion of all that is lovely in Nature, of all that 
 is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in 
 itself a sufficient end. A rose in a moonlit gar- 
 den, the shadow of trees on the turf, almond 
 bloom, scent of pine, the wine-cup and the 
 guitar; these and the pathos of life and death, 
 the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, 
 the moment that glides for ever away, with its 
 [38] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 freight of music and light, into the shadow and 
 hush of the haunted past, all that we have, all 
 that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume 
 escaped on the gale to all these things we are 
 trained to respond, and the response is what we 
 call literature. This we have; this you cannot 
 give us; but this you may so easily take away. 
 Amid the roar of looms it cannot be heard; it 
 cannot be seen in the smoke of factories; it is 
 killed by the wear and the whirl of Western life. 
 And when I look at your business men, the men 
 whom you most admire; when I see them hour 
 after hour, day after day, year after year, toil- 
 ing in the mill of their forced and undelighted 
 labors; when I see them importing the anxieties 
 of the day into their scant and grudging leisure, 
 and wearing themselves out less by toil than by 
 carking and illiberal cares, I reflect, I confess, 
 with satisfaction on the simpler routine of our 
 ancient industry, .and prize, above all your new 
 and dangerous routes, the beaten track so fa- 
 miliar to our accustomed feet that we have leis- 
 ure, even while we pace it, to turn our gaze up 
 to the eternal stars. 
 
 1391 
 
VI 
 
 Among Chinese institutions there is none that 
 provokes the European mind to more hostile and 
 contemptuous comment than our system of 
 government. The inadequate salaries of our 
 officials and the consequent temptation, to which 
 they frequently succumb, to extort money by 
 illegitimate means, is productive of much annoy- 
 ance to foreigners ; nor have I anything to say in 
 defence of a practice so manifestly undesirable. 
 At the same time, I cannot but note that cor- 
 ruption of this kind is a far less serious evil in 
 China than it is, when it prevails, among your- 
 selves. I With you the function of government is 
 so important and so ubiquitous that you can 
 hardly realize the condition of a people that is 
 able almost wholly to dispense with it.^ Yet such 
 is our case. The simple and natural character 
 of our civilization, the peaceable nature of our 
 people (when they are not maddened by the ag- 
 [40] 
 
1ETTEBS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 gression of foreigners), above all, the institution 
 of the family, itself a little state a political, 
 social, and economic unit these and other facts 
 have rendered us independent of government 
 control to an extent which to Europeans may 
 seem incredible. Neither the acts nor the omis- 
 sions of the authorities at Peking have any real 
 or permanent effect on the life of our masses, 
 except so far as they register the movements of 
 popular sentiment and demand. Otherwise, as 
 you foreigners know to your cost, they remain 
 a dead-letter. The Government may make con- 
 ventions and treaties, but it cannot put them into 
 effect, except in so far as they are endorsed by 
 public opinion. The passive resistance of so 
 vast a people, rooted in a tradition so immemo- 
 rial, will defeat in the future, as it has done in 
 the past, the attempts of the Western Powers 
 to impose their will on the nation through the 
 agency of the Government. No force will ever 
 suffice to stir that huge inertia. The whirlwind 
 of war for a moment may ruffle the surface of 
 the sea, may fleck with foam its superficial cur- 
 (41) 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 rents; it will never shake or trouble the clear 
 unfathomable deep whieh is the still and brood- 
 ing soul of China. 
 
 If our people are ever to be moved, their rea- 
 son and their heart must be convinced; and this 
 lesson, which you in Europe are so slow to learn, 
 was embodied centuries ago in the practice and 
 theory of our State. Government with us is 
 based on the consent of the people to a degree 
 which you of the West can hardly understand, 
 much less imitate. What you have striven so 
 vainly to achieve by an increasingly elaborate 
 machinery happens among us by the mere force 
 of facts./ Our fundamental institutions are no 
 arbitrary ^inventions of power; they are the form 
 which the people have given to their life. No 
 Government created and no Government would 
 think of modifying them. And if from time 
 to time it becomes desirable to add to them such 
 further regulations as the course of events may 
 seem to suggest, these, too, are introduced only 
 in response to a real demand, and after proof 
 made of their efficacy and popularity. Law, in 
 [42] 
 
/^uUA- O OUV J&XW4JL iyw-45 U / 
 
 LETTERS FROJVI A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 a word, is not, with us, a rule imposed from 
 above ; it is the formula of the national life ; and 
 its embodiment in practice precedes its inscrip- 
 tion in a code. Hence it is that in China gov- 
 ernment is neither arbitrary nor indispensably 
 Destroy our authorities, central and provincial, 
 and our life will proceed very much as before. 
 The law we obey is the law of our own nature, 
 as it has been evolved by centuries of experience, 
 and to this we continue our allegiance, even 
 though the external sanction be withdrawn. 
 Come what may, the family remains, with all that 
 it involves, the attitude of mind remains, the 
 
 spirit of order, industry, and thrift. These it 
 
 " 
 is that make up China; and the Governments 
 
 we have passively received are Governments only 
 
 so long as they understand that it is not theirs 
 
 
 
 to govern, but merely to express in outward 
 show, to formulate and define, an order which 
 in essentials they must accept as they accept 
 the motions of the heavens. China does not 
 change. The tumults of which you make so 
 much, and of which you are yourselves the cause, 
 [43] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 are no signs of the break-up of our civilization. 
 You hear the breakers roaring on the shore; but 
 far away beyond your ken, unsailed by ship of 
 yours, stretch to the blue horizon the silent 
 spaces of the sea. 
 
 How different is the conception and fact of 
 government in the West! Here there are no 
 fundamental laws, but an infinity of arbitrary 
 rules. Nothing roots except what has been 
 planted; nothing is planted but what must be 
 planted again. During the past hundred years 
 you have dismantled your whole society. Prop- 
 erty and marriage, religion, morality, distinctions 
 of rank and class, all that is most important 
 and most profound in human relationships, 
 has been torn from the roots and floats like 
 wreckage down the stream of time. Hence 
 the activity of your Governments, for it is only 
 by their aid that your society holds together at 
 all. Government with you is thus important to 
 an extent and degree happily inconceivable in 
 the East. This in itself appears to me an evil; 
 but it is one that I see to be inevitable. All the 
 [441 
 
SETTEES FKOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 more am I surprised at what I cannot but regard 
 as the extraordinary inefficiency of the machinery 
 on which you rely to accomplish so vast a work. 
 It is, I am aware, hard, perhaps impossible, to 
 discover or devise any sure and certain method 
 of selecting competent men; but surely it is 
 strange to make no attempt to ascertain or secure 
 any degree of moral or intellectual capacity in 
 those to whom you entrust such important func- 
 tions ! Our own plan in China of selecting our 
 rulers by competitive examination is regarded 
 by you with a contempt not altogether unde- 
 served. Yet you adopt it yourselves in the choice 
 of your subordinate officials; and it has at least 
 the merit of embodying the rational idea that 
 the highest places in the Government should be 
 open to all, rich or poor, who have given proof 
 of ability and talent, and that they should be 
 open to no others. Compared to the method of 
 election it appears to me to be reason itself. 
 For what does election mean? You say that it 
 means representation of the people; but do you 
 not know in your hearts that it means, and can 
 [45] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 mean, nothing of the kind? What is really rep- 
 resented is Interests. And in what are Interests 
 interested? Your reply, I suspect, will be, In 
 public abuses ! Landlords, brewers, railway di- 
 rectors is it not these that really rule you? 
 And must it not be so while your society is con- 
 stituted as it is? There is, I am aware, a party 
 which hopes to bring to bear against these the 
 brute and overwhelming force of the Mass. But 
 such a remedy, even if it were practicable, does 
 not commend itself to my judgment; for the 
 Mass in your society is itself an Interest. The 
 machinery which you have provided appears 
 to aim at bringing together in a cockpit egotistic 
 forces bent upon private goods, in order that 
 they may arrive, by dint of sheer fighting, at a 
 result which shall represent the good of the 
 whole. It is perhaps the inveterate respect, in- 
 herent in every Chinaman, for the authority of 
 morality and reason, that prevents me from re- 
 garding such a procedure with the enthusiasm 
 or even the toleration which it seems commonly 
 to arouse among yourselves. When problems of 
 [46] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 such vast importance have devolved upon, and 
 must be assumed by, a Government, I cannot but 
 think that some better means might have been 
 devised for interesting in their solution the best 
 talent of the nation. And I am confirmed in 
 this view by the reflection that I have met in 
 your universities and elsewhere men who have 
 profoundly studied the questions your Legis- 
 lature is expected to determine, whose intelli- 
 gence is clear, whose judgment unbiassed, whose 
 enthusiasm disinterested and pure, but who can 
 never hope for a chance of putting their wisdom 
 to practical effect, because their temperament, 
 their training, and their habit of life, have un- 
 fitted them for the ordeal of popular election. 
 To be a member of Parliament is, it would seem, 
 a profession in itself, and the qualities, intellect- 
 ual and moral, which open the door to a public 
 career appear to be distinct from, and even in- 
 compatible with, those which contribute to pub 
 lie utility. 
 
 [47] 
 
VII 
 
 To grave and fundamental distinctions of na~ 
 tional character and life commonly correspond 
 similar distinctions in religious belief. For re- 
 ligion is, or should be, the soul of which the 
 State is the body, the idea which informs and 
 perpetuates institutions. It is not, I am aware, 
 in this sense that the word is always understood, 
 for religion is not seldom identified with super- 
 stition. I propose, however, in this place to dis- 
 tinguish the two, and to concern myself mainly 
 with what I conceive to be properly termed re- 
 ligion. But I note, at the outset, that among 
 the masses of China superstition is as widely 
 spread as among those of any European country. 
 Buddhism and Taoism lend themselves with us 
 to practices and beliefs as regrettable and ab- 
 surd as any that are fostered by Christianity 
 among yourselves. Our people, like yours, hope 
 by ritual and prayer to affect the course of the 
 [48] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 elements or to compass private and material 
 benefits; they believe in spirits and goblins, as 
 Roman Catholics do in saints; they worship 
 idols, practise magic, and foster the impositions 
 of priests. But all this I pass by as extraneous 
 to true religion. I regard it merely as a mani- 
 festation of the weakness of human nature, a 
 vent for the peccant humors of the individual 
 soul. Different indeed is the creed and the cult 
 on which our civilization is founded; and it is 
 to this, which has been so much misunderstood 
 by Europeans, that I propose to devote a few 
 words of explanation. 
 
 Confucianism, it is sometimes said, is not a 
 religion at all; and if by religion be meant a set 
 of dogmatic propositions dealing with a super- 
 natural world radically distinct from our own, 
 the statement is, no doubt, strictly true. It was, 
 in fact, one of the objects of Confucius to dis- 
 courage preoccupation with the supernatural, 
 and the true disciple endeavors in this respect 
 to follow in his master's footsteps. "Beware of 
 religion," a Mandarin says, meaning "beware of 
 [49] 
 

 LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 superstition"; and in this sense, but in this sense 
 only, Confucianism is irreligious. Again, it is 
 said that Confucianism is merely an ethical sys- 
 tem; and this, too, is true, in so far as its whole 
 aim and purport is to direct and inspire right 
 conduct. But, on the other hand and this is 
 the point I wish to make it is not me r fly a 
 teaching, but a life. The principles it enjoins 
 are those which are actually embodied in the 
 structure of our society, so that they are incul- 
 cated not merely by written and spoken word, 
 but by the whole habit of everyday experience. 
 The unity of the family and the State, as ex- 
 pressed in the worship of ancestors, is the basis 
 not merely of the professed creed, but of the 
 actual practice of a Chinaman. To whatever 
 other faith he may adhere Buddhist, Taoist, 
 Christian this is the thing that really matters 
 to him. To him the generations past and the 
 generations to come form with those that are 
 alive one single whole. All live eternally, 
 though it is only some that happen at any mo- 
 ment to live upon earth. Ancestor-worship is 
 [50] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 thus the symbol of a social idea immense in its 
 force to consolidate and bind. Its effects in 
 China must be seen to be believed ; but you have 
 a further example in a civilization with which 
 you are better acquainted I mean, of course, 
 the civilization of Rome. 
 
 This, then, is the first and most striking 
 aspect of our national religion; but there is an- 
 other hardly less important in its bearing on 
 social life. Confucianism is the exponent of the 
 ideal of work. Your eighteenth-century obser- 
 vers, who laid so much stress on the ritual of the 
 Emperor's yearly ploughing, were nearer to the 
 heart of our civilization than many later and less 
 sympathetic inquirers. The duty of man to 
 labor, and primarily to labor on the soil, is a 
 fundamental postulate of our religion. Hence 
 the worship of Mother Earth, the source of all 
 increase ; hence the worship of Heaven, the giver 
 of light and rain ; and hence also that social sys- 
 tem whose aim is to secure a general access to 
 the soil. The willing dedication of all, in 
 brotherhood and peace, to labor blessed by the 
 [51] 
 
LETTERS FKOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 powers of heaven and earth, such is the simple, 
 intelligible ideal we have set before our people, 
 such is the conception we have embodied in our 
 institutions. And if you seek more than this, 
 a metaphysical system to justify and explain 
 our homely creed, that too we have provided for 
 our scholars. Humanity, they are taught, is a 
 Being spiritual and eternal, manifesting itself 
 in time in the series of generations. This Being 
 is the mediator between heaven and earth, be 
 tween the ultimate ideal and the existing fact. 
 By labor, incessant and devout, to raise earth to 
 heaven, to realize, in fact, the good that as yet 
 exists only in idea that is the end and purpose 
 of human life; and in fulfilling it we achieve 
 and maintain our unity each with every other, 
 and all with the Divine. Here, surely, is a faith 
 not unworthy to be called a religion. I do not 
 say that it is consciously held by the mass of 
 the people, for in no State does the mass of the 
 people reflect. But I claim for us that the life 
 of our masses is so ordered and disposed as to 
 accord with the postulates of our creed; that 
 [52] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 they practise, if they do not profess, the tenets 
 of our sages ; and that the two cardinal ideas on 
 which every society should rest, brotherhood and 
 the dignity of labor, are brought home to them 
 in direct and unmistakable form by the structure 
 of our secular institutions. 
 
 Such, then, in a few words, is the. essence of 
 Confucianism, as it appears to an educated 
 Chinaman. Far harder is it for me, though I 
 have spent so long in Europe, to appreciate the 
 significance of Christianity. But perhaps I may 
 be pardoned if I endeavor to record my im- 
 pressions, such as they are, gathered from some 
 study of your sacred books, your history, and 
 your contemporary life. In such observations as 
 I have made I have had in view the question not 
 so much of the truth of your religion of that 
 I do not feel competent to judge as of its 
 bearing upon your social institutions. And here, 
 more than anywhere, I am struck by the wide 
 discrepancy between your civilization and ours. 
 I cannot see that your society is based upon re- 
 ligion at all; nor does that surprise me, if I 
 [53] 
 
LETTERS FEOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 have rightly apprehended the character of 
 Christianity. For the ideal which I seem to find 
 enshrined in your gospels and embodied in the 
 discussions of your divines is one not of labor 
 on earth, but of contemplation in heaven; not 
 of the unity of the human race, but of the com- 
 munion of saints. Whether this be a higher ideal 
 than our own I do not venture to pronounce; 
 but I cannot but hold it to be less practicable. 
 It must be difficult, one would think, if not im- 
 possible to found any stable society on the con- 
 ception that life upon earth is a mere episode 
 in a drama whose centre of action lies elsewhere. 
 An indifference to what, from a more mundane 
 
 point of view, must appear to be fundamental 
 ^k. ^^ 
 
 considerations, a confusion of temporal distinc- 
 tions in the white blaze of eternity, a haphazard 
 organization of those details of corporate life 
 the serious preoccupation with which would be 
 hardly compatible with religion such would 
 appear to be the natural result of a genuine 
 profession of Christianity. And such, if I un- 
 derstand it aright, was the character of youi 
 [54] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 civilization in what you describe as the Ages of 
 Faith. Asceticism, monastic vows, the domina- 
 tion of priests, the petty interests of life and 
 
 I Mk/^4 / ^^ 
 
 death overshadowed and dwarfed by the tre- 
 mendous issues of heaven and hell, beggary t^J*^ 
 sanctified, wealth contemned, reason stunted, vjji^ 
 imagination hypertrophied, the spiritual and 
 temporal powers at war, body at feud with soul, 
 everywhere division, conflict, confusion, intel- f\ki 
 
 lectual and moral insanity such was the char- 
 acter of that extraordinary epoch in Western 
 history when the Christian conception made a 
 bid to embody itself in fact. It was the life- 
 and-death struggle of a grandiose ideal against 
 
 ^ ,vA ta^t^ 
 
 all the facts of the material and moral universe. 
 And in that struggle the ideal was worsted. 
 From the dust of battle the Western world 
 emerged, as it had entered, secular: avowedly 
 worldly, frankly curious, bent with a passionate 
 zeal on the mastery of all the forces of nature, 
 on beauty, wealth, intelligence, character, power. 
 From that time on, although you still profess 
 Christianity, no attempt has been made to chris- 
 [55] 
 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAI 
 
 tianize your institutions. On the contrary, it has 
 been your object to sweep away every remnant 
 of the old order, to dissociate Church from 
 State, ritual and belief from action. You have 
 abandoned your society frankly to economic and 
 political forces, with results which I have en- 
 deavored in an earlier letter to characterize. 
 
 But while thus, on the one hand, your society 
 has evolved on a purely material basis, on the 
 other religion has not ceased to be recognized 
 among you. Only, cut off from its natural root 
 in social institutions, it has assumed forms which 
 I cannot but think to be either otiose or dan- 
 gerous. Those who profess Christianity and 
 there are few who, in one way or another, do 
 not either profess it only with their lips, and 
 having in this way satisfied those claims of the 
 ideal from which no human being is altogether 
 free, turn back with an unencumbered mind and 
 conscience to the pursuit of egotistic ends; or 
 else, being seriously possessed by the teachings 
 of Christ, they find themselves almost inevitably 
 driven into the position of revolutionists. For 
 [56] 
 
 IV 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 those teachings, if they be fully accepted and 
 fairly interpreted, must be seen to be incom- 
 patible with the whole structure of your society. 
 Enunciated, centuries ago, by a mild Oriental 
 enthusiast, unlettered, untravelled, inexperienced, 
 they are remarkable not more for their tender 
 and touching appeal to brotherly love than for 
 their aversion or indifference to all other ele- 
 ments of human excellence. The subject of 
 Augustus and Tiberius lived and died unaware 
 of the history and destinies of imperial Rome; 
 the contemporary of Virgil and of Livy could 
 not read the language in which they wrote. 
 Provincial by birth, mechanic by trade, by tem- 
 perament a poet and a mystic, he enjoyed in the 
 course of his brief life few opportunities, and he 
 evinced little inclination, to become acquainted 
 with the rudiments of the science whose end is 
 the prosperity of the State. The production 
 and distribution of wealth, the disposition of 
 power, the laws that regulate labor, property, 
 trade, these were matters as remote from his 
 interests as they were beyond his comprehension. 
 [57] 
 
LKTTEES FKOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 N^ver was man better equipped to inspire a re- 
 ligious sect; never one worse to found or direct 
 a commonwealth. Yet this man it is whose naive 
 maxims of self-abnegation have been accepted 
 as gospel by the nations of the West, the type 
 of all that is predatory, violent, and aggressive. 
 No wonder your history has been one long and 
 lamentable tale of antagonism, tumult, carnage, 
 and confusion ! No wonder the spiritual and 
 temporal powers have oscillated between open 
 war and truces as discreditable to the one as to 
 the other! No wonder that down to the present 
 day every man among you who has been gen- 
 uinely inspired with the spirit of your religion 
 has shrunk in horror from the society which 
 purports to have adopted its principles as its 
 own ! It is the Nemesis of an idealist creed that 
 it cannot inform realities; it can but mass to- 
 gether outside and in opposition to the estab- 
 lished order the forces that should have shaped 
 and controlled it from within. The spirit re- 
 mains uneinbodied, the body uninformed. So 
 is has been and so it is with this polity of yours. 
 [58) 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 It purports to represent a superhuman ideal ; in 
 reality, it does not represent even one that is 
 human. It is of the earth, earthy; while from 
 heaven far above cries, like a ghost's, the voice 
 of the Nazarene, as pure, as clear, as ineffectual, . 
 as when first it flung from the shores of Galilee 
 its challenge to the world-sustaining power of 
 Rome. 
 
 The view which I have thus ventured to give, 
 candidly, as I feel it, of the relation of your 
 society to your religion, will, I am aware, be re- 
 ceived by most of my readers with astonishment, 
 if not with indignation. Permit me, then, to 
 illustrate and confirm it by an example so patent 
 and palpable that it cannot fail, I think, to make 
 some appeal even to those who are most unwill- 
 ing to face the truth. 
 
 If there is one feature more marked than 
 another in the teaching of Christ it is his con- 
 demnation of every form of violence. No one 
 can read the Gospels with an unprejudiced mind 
 without being struck by the emphasis with which 
 he reiterates this doctrine. "Whosoever shall 
 [59] 
 
 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the 
 other also." These are his words, and they are 
 spoken in sober earnestness, not in metaphor, 
 nor yet as a counsel of perfection, something 
 that should be but cannot be put into effect. 
 No ! they are the words of conviction and truth, 
 backed by the whole character and practice of 
 their author. The principle they embody may, 
 of course, be disputed. It may be held as in 
 fact it always has been held by the majority of 
 men in all ages that force is essential to the 
 preservation of society; that without it there 
 could be no security, no order, no peace. But 
 one who holds this view cannot be a Christian, 
 in the proper sense of a follower of Christ. If, 
 then, as is undoubtedly the case, this view has 
 been universally held throughout their whole 
 history by the nations of the West, then, what- 
 ever they may call themselves, they cannot be 
 truly Christian. Yet this consequence they have 
 always refused to accept. They have inter- 
 preted the words of their founder to mean the 
 reverse of what they say, and have conceived 
 
 [60] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 him, apparently without any sense of the sole- 
 cism they were perpetrating, to be the defender 
 and champion not only of their whole system 
 of law, based as it is on the prison and the scaf- 
 fold, but of all their wars, even of those which 
 to the natural sense of mankind must appear to 
 be the least defensible and the most iniquitous. 
 In proof of what I say if proof be required 
 I need not recur to historical examples. It will 
 be enough to refer to the case which is naturally 
 most present to my mind the recent attack of 
 the Western Powers on China. That there was 
 grave provocation, I am not concerned to deny, 
 though it was not with us that the provocation 
 originated. But what fills me with amazement 
 and even, if I must be frank, with horror, is 
 the fact that the nations of Europe should at- 
 tempt to justif}^ their acts from the standpoint 
 of the Gospel of Christ; and that there should 
 be found among them a Christian potentate who, 
 in sending forth his soldiers on an errand of 
 revenge, should urge them, in the name of him 
 who bade us turn the other cheek, not merely 
 [61] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 to attack, not merely to kill, but to kill without 
 quarter! What further proof is needed of the 
 truth of my general proposition that the religion 
 you profess, whatever effect it may have on in- 
 dividual lives, has little or none on public policy ? 
 It may inspire, here and there, some retired 
 saint; it has never inspired those who control 
 the State. What use is it, then, to profess that, 
 in essence, it is a religion higher than ours? I 
 care not to dispute on ground so barren. "By 
 their fruits ye shall know them," said your own 
 prophets; and to their fruits I am content to 
 appeal. Confucianism may, as you affirm, be 
 no religion at all; it may be an inferior ethical 
 code; but it has made of the Chinese the one 
 nation in all the history of the world who gen- 
 uinely abhor violence and reverence reason 2nd 
 right. And here, lest you think that I am 
 biassed, let me call to my aid the testimony of 
 the one among your countrymen who has known 
 us intimately and long, and whose services to 
 our State will never be forgotten by any patriotic 
 Chinaman. In place of the ignorant diatribes 
 [62] 
 
 o-- 
 
 j, 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 of your special correspondents, listen for a mo- 
 ment to the voice of Sir Robert Hart: 
 
 "They are/' he says of the Chinese, "well- 
 behaved, law-abiding, intelligent, -economical, 
 and industrious; they can learn anything and 
 do anything; they are punctiliously polite, they 
 worship talent, and they believe in right so 
 firmly that they scorn to think it requires to be 
 supported or enforced by might; they delight 
 in literature, and everywhere they have their lit- 
 erary clubs and coteries for learning and dis- 
 cussing each other's essays and verses; they 
 possess and practise an admirable system of 
 ethics, and they are generous, charitable, and 
 fond of good works; they never forget a favor, 
 they make rich return for any kindness, and, 
 though they know money will buy service, a man 
 must be more than wealthy to win public esteem 
 and respect; they are practical, teachable, and 
 wonderfully gifted with common-sense; they 
 are excellent artisans, reliable workmen, and of 
 a good faith that everyone acknowledges and 
 admires in their commercial dealings; in no 
 [63] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 country that is or was, has the commandment 
 'Honor thy father and thy mother' been so re- 
 ligiously obeyed, or so fully and without excep- 
 tion given effect to, and it is in fact the keynote 
 of their family, social, official, and national life, 
 and because it is so 'their days are long in the 
 land God has given them/ ' 
 
 Thus Sir Robert Hart. I ask no better testi- 
 monial. Here are no superhuman virtues, no 
 abnegation of self, no fanatic repudiation of 
 fundamental facts of human nature. But here 
 is a life according to a rational ideal ; and here 
 is a belief in that ideal so effective and profound 
 that it has gone far to supersede the use of force. 
 "They believe in right," says Sir Robert Hart 
 let me quote it once more "they believe in right 
 so firmly that they scorn to think it requires to 
 be supported or enforced by might." Yes, it 
 is we who do not accept it that practise the 
 Gospel of peace; it is you who accept it thai 
 trample it underfoot. And irony of ironies ! it 
 is the nations of Christendom who hav come 
 to us to teach us by sword and fire that Right 
 [64] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINJbSE OFFICIAL 
 
 in this world is Dowerless unless it be supported 
 by Might ! Oh, do not doubt that we shall learn 
 the lesson! And woe to Europe when we have 
 acquired it! You are arming a nation of four 
 hundred millions ! a nation which, until you 
 came, had no better wish than to live at peace 
 with themselves and all the world. In the name 
 of Christ you have sounded the call to arms! 
 In the name of Confucius we respond! 
 
 ^ 
 
 to 
 
VIII 
 
 Hitherto I have avoided any discussion in de- 
 tail of the existing political and commercial 
 relations between ourselves and the West, and 
 of the events which led up to the situation we 
 all deplore. I have endeavored rather to enlist 
 your sympathies in the general character of our 
 civilization, to note the salient points in which 
 it differs from your own, and to bring into relief 
 the more fundamental and permanent conditions 
 which render an understanding between us so 
 difficult and so precarious. I cannot, however, 
 disguise from myself that even a sympathetic 
 reader may fairly demand of me something 
 more; and that if I am to satisfy him, I am 
 bound, however unwillingly, to enter upon the 
 field of current controversy. For, he may rea- 
 sonably inquire, If it be really true that your 
 people possess the qualities you ascribe to them, 
 if they be indeed so just, so upright, so averse 
 [66] 
 
LETTEKS FEOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 to violence, how is it that they have committed 
 
 the greatest breach of international comity that 
 
 is known in the history of the civilized world ? -^.^KiAM 
 
 How is it that they have been guilty of acts 
 
 which have shocked and outraged the moral sense r^jj^ 
 
 of communities, according to you, less cultured 
 
 and humane than themselves? 
 
 In reply, I will urge that I have never as- 
 
 ,AJL '\ 
 
 serted that the Chinese are saints. I have said, 
 and I still maintain, that if they are left to 
 themselves, if the order to which they are ac- 
 customed is not violently disturbed, they are the 
 most peaceful and law-abiding nation on the 
 face of the earth. If, then, they have broken 
 loose from their secular restraints, if they have 
 shown for a moment those claws of the brute 
 which no civilization, be it yours or ours, though 
 it may sheathe, will ever draw, the very violence 
 
 of the outbreak serves only to prove how intense J^ 
 
 must have been the provocation. Do you realize 
 what that provocation was? I doubt it! Per- 
 mit me then briefly to record the facts. 
 
 When first your traders came to China it was 
 [67] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 not at our invitation; yet we received them, if 
 not with enthusiasm, at least with tolerance. So 
 long as they were content to observe our regu- 
 lations we were willing to sanction their traffic, 
 but always on the condition that it should not 
 disturb our social and political order. To this 
 condition, in earlier days, your countrymen con- 
 sented to conform, and for many years, in spite 
 of occasional disputes, there was no serious 
 trouble between them and us. The trouble arose 
 over a matter in regard to which you yourselves 
 have hardly ventured to defend your own con- 
 duct. A considerable part of your trade was 
 the trade in opium. The use of this drug, we 
 observed, was destroying the health and the 
 morals of our people, and we therefore pro- 
 hibited the trade. Your merchants, however, 
 evaded the law; opium was smuggled in; till at 
 last we were driven to take the matter into our 
 own hands and to seize and destroy the whole 
 stock of the forbidden drug. Your Government 
 made our action an excuse for war. You in- 
 [68] 
 
 
LETTEBS FBOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 vaded our territory, exacted an indemnity, 
 and took from us the island of Hong-Kong. 
 Was this an auspicious beginning? Was it 
 calculated to impress us with a sense of the 
 justice and fair play of the British nation? 
 Years went on; a petty dispute about the 
 privileges of the flag a dispute in which 
 we still believe that we were in the right 
 brought us once more into collision with you. 
 You made the unfortunate conflict an excuse for 
 new demands. In conjunction with the French 
 you occupied our capital and imposed upon us 
 terms which you would never have dared to 
 offer to a European nation. We submitted be- 
 cause we must; we were not a military Power. 
 But do you suppose our sense of justice was not 
 outraged? Or later, when every Power in 
 Europe on some pretext or other has seized and 
 retained some part of our territory, do you sup- 
 pose because we cannot resist that we do not 
 feel? To a Chinaman who reviews the history 
 of our relations with you during the past sixty 
 
 169] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 years and more must you not naturally appear 
 to be little better than robbers and pirates? 
 True, such a view is unduly harsh, and I do not 
 myself altogether share it. A study of your 
 official documents has convinced me that you 
 genuinely believe that you have had on your 
 side a certain measure of right, and I am too 
 well aware of the complexity of all human affairs 
 to deny that there may be something in your 
 point of view. Still, I would ask you to consider 
 the broad facts of the situation, dismissing the 
 interminable controversies that arise on every 
 point of detail. Which of us throughout has 
 been the aggressor we who, putting our case 
 at the worst, were obstinately resolved to main- 
 tain our society, customs, laws, and polity 
 against the influences of an alien civilization, or 
 you who, bent on commercial gains, were deter- 
 mined at all cost to force an entrance into our 
 territory and to introduce along with your goods 
 the leaven of your culture and ideas? If, in 
 the collision that inevitably ensued, we gave 
 cause of offence, we had at least the excuse of 
 [70] 
 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 self-preservation. Our wrongs, if wrongs they 
 were, were episodes in a substantial right; but 
 yours were themselves the substance of your 
 action. 
 
 Consider for a moment the conditions you 
 have imposed on a proud and ancient empire, 
 an empire which for centuries has believed itself 
 to be at the head of civilization. You have 
 compelled us, against our will, to open our ports 
 to your trade; you have forced us to permit the 
 introduction of a drug which we believe is ruin- 
 ing our people; you have exempted your subjects 
 residing among us from the operation of our 
 laws; you have appropriated our coasting traf- 
 fic; you claim the traffic of our inland waters. 
 Every attempt on our part to resist your demands 
 has been followed by new claims and new ag- 
 gressions. And yet all this time you have posed 
 as civilized peoples dealing with barbarians. 
 You have compelled us to receive your mission- 
 aries, and when they by their ignorant zeal have 
 provoked our people to rise in mass against 
 them, that again you have made an excuse for 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 new depredations, till we, not unnaturally, have 
 come to believe that the cross is the pioneer of 
 the sword, and that the only use you have for 
 your religion is to use it as a weapon of war. 
 Conceive for a moment the feelings of an Eng- 
 lishman subjected to similar treatment; conceive 
 that we had permanently occupied Liverpool, 
 Bristol, Plymouth; that we had planted on your 
 territory thousands of men whom we had ex- 
 empted from your laws; that along your coasts 
 and navigable rivers our vessels were driving 
 out yours; that we had insisted on your admit- 
 ting spirits duty free to the manifest ruin of 
 your population; and that we had planted in all 
 your principal towns agents to counteract the 
 teachings of your Church and undermine the 
 whole fabric of habitual belief on which the 
 stability of your society depends. Imagine that 
 you had to submit to all this. Would you be 
 so greatly surprised, would you really even be 
 indignant, if you found one day the Chinese Le- 
 gation surrounded by a howling mob and Con- 
 fucian missionaries everywhere hunted k death? 
 172] 
 
LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 What right then have you to be surprised, what 
 right have you to be indignant at even the worst 
 that has taken place in China? What is there 
 so strange or monstrous in our conduct? A 
 Legation, you say, is sacrosanct by the law of 
 nations. Yes; but remember that it was at the 
 point of the sword that you forced us to receive 
 Embassies whose presence we have always re- 
 garded as a sign of national humiliation. But 
 our mobs were barbarous and cruel. Alas! yes. 
 And your troops? And your troops, nations of 
 Christendom? Ask the once fertile land from 
 Peking to the coast; ask the corpses of murdered 
 men and outraged women and children; ask 
 the innocent mingled indiscriminately with the 
 guilty; ask the Christ, the lover of men, whom 
 you profess to serve, to judge between us who 
 rose in mad despair to save our country and you 
 who, avenging crime with crime, did not pause 
 to reflect that the crime you avenged was the 
 fruit of your own iniquity ! 
 
 Well, it is over over, at least, for the mo- 
 ment. I do :ot wish to dwell upon the past. 
 [73] 
 
LETTERS FRQM A CHINESE OFFICIAL 
 
 Yet the lesson of the past is our only guide to the 
 policy of the future. And unless you of the 
 \^est will come to realize the truth; unless you 
 will understand that the events which have 
 shaken Europe are the Nemesis of a long course 
 of injustice and oppression; unless you will 
 learn that the profound opposition between your 
 civilization and ours gives no more ground why 
 you should regard us as barbarians than we you; 
 unless you will treat us as a civilized Power and 
 respect our customs and our laws ; unless you 
 will accord us the treatment you would accord 
 to any European nation and refrain from ex- 
 acting conditions you would never dream of 
 imposing on a Western Power unless you will 
 do this, there is no hope of any peace between 
 us. You have humiliated the proudest nation in 
 the world; you have outraged the most upright 
 and just; with what results is now abundantly 
 manifest. If ignorance was your excuse, let it 
 be your excuse no longer. Learn to understand 
 us, and in doing so learn better to understand 
 yourselves. To contribute to rtris end has been 
 

 I 
 
 GENERAL LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the 
 
 date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 9 Mar'550W 
 
 Jurf 
 
 JUH 
 
 290ct'630W 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 OCT 1 6'63 -10 AM 
 
 t { ' 
 
 OCI 2 2 1994 
 
 LD 21-100m-l,'54(1887sl6)476 
 
&UB3B&& 
 
 
 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRAR'