PREFACE. THE present critical state of China, and the attitude of European Powers, compel me to issue at once this popular form of a work meant to be of more pretentious proportions, for which the materials were i a large measure prepared. If rapidity of production has, as I fear, left signs of haste in composition, I trust that, in the circumstances, good intentions will be an excuse for imperfect performance. No statement of-fact has been made without good -authority, nor opinion expressed without careful thought. There are some subjects on which there are repetitions in statement of facts or expressions - of opinion, which are a fault in composition, but which I trust will be pardoned, if not approved of, on account of their importance in their bearing on the object of the work, I do not rest my claim to be heard, regarding - either the past or future of China, on a brief residence of a few years in that country-only long enough to impress a thoughtful student with the difficulties of the subject-but on a lifelong interest in Asiatic questions, especially those connected with China. To one who has pored over the records of the history of China, covering a period of 4,000 or 5,000 years, and studied its institutions-the nearest, in a continuous and living form, to those of the earliest known inhabitants of our world-it is impossible to read with philosophic calmness the pretensions of the upstart nations of Europe to carve out for themselves, from that vast and venerable empire, provinces larger and with populations more numerous than their own territories and people and that in the name of civilization of an empire which has civilized thousands of years before these nations had emerged from barbarisn. While I admit the superiority of Western civilization in many of its aspects, I may ask, in the strong language of a distinguished American writer Is China to be civilized by France, whose common sailors in a shipwreck clubbed drowning women and children who tried to get into the lifeboats whose Parisian gentlemen trampled under foot the highest and best ladies in the land, leaving them to perish in the flames of a burning bazaar and whose chivaIrous generaIs condemn an innocent and brave companion in arms to the life and death of a felon, for the -honour of the French army I may add, Is Germany to assist in this good work, whose merchants poison the natives of Africa with spirits fiery and noxious like turpentine whose greatest statesman gloried in the acts of deception by which he raised his third-rate kingdom to a first- rate empire and whose Emperor seizes a harbour and attempts to grasp a province of China as a solatium for the murder of a Christian missionary, while he claims as his dear friend the unspeakable Turk, though his hands are dripping with the blood of thousands of Christians Is Russia, only now in a state of transition from the serfdom or sIavery of her subjects, and the use of the Iash for the bare backs of women, persecuting and banishing Jews and Stundists at home, to aid in the civilization of China -a land that has been singularly free from the spirit of religious persecution. Even our own favoured country must wash her hands of all official connection with the opium trade, and do her best to arrest the evil it has inflicted on China. We must strive to undo the mischief caused by wars which have weakened the Government and disorganized the administration of the country-wars which the Christian politician can only defend by the use of what looks very like sophistry to soothe his conscience, which appears to the heathen a mere excuse for acts of high-handed cruelty and injustice...