long continued to be the head quarters of European commerce, and the chief station of the Catholic missions.

The Spaniards first approached the coast of China in 1575, from the neighboring Philippine Islands, of which their recent conquest was as unfavorable a recommendation to Chinese hospitality as they could possibly have had. The injustice and impolicy of their government of the islands, and especially their cruelty to the numerous Chinese emigrants to Manila, produced later distinctly traceable effects upon the Chinese policy toward all Europeans.

The Dutch, too, did what they could to add to the evil reputation of Europe in China. At their first appearance they came as enemies of the Portuguese, and offended the government by an attack upon Macao, which was still Chinese territory, although tenanted by foreigners; being beaten off there, they seized upon the Pescadores, a cluster of islands lying just off the coast, a little farther to the north.

The first visit of the English, in 1637, was also attended with unfortunate circumstances, ominous of anything but harmony and a good understanding in the future: although, if we may trust the accounts given, the chief blame was this time with the Chinese; since the latter, led astray by the false and malicious representation of their intentions made by the Portuguese, commenced an unprovoked attack upon them. It was fiercely and successfully resented, and after the capture of the forts which had been guilty of the outrage, explanations were entered into, and apologies made, and the intruding vessels were allowed to exchange their cargoes before leaving the river. No farther intercourse was had with England or her colonies until 1664.

When we take duly into account all these untoward occurrences attendant upon the reopening of commercial intercourse between the East and the West, and the generally aggressive character, half freebooting, half conquest-making, belonging to the adventurous expeditions of the Western traders, we can hardly think it strange that the Chinese should have met the new foreign commerce in a very different spirit from that with which they had greeted the old. Distrust,

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R. fear, and aversion, became the determining motives of the policy which they adopted toward their visitors. That it was not based merely upon haughty and contemptuous self-sufficiency, indifference to commerce, and blind intolerance of foreigners and their manners and institutions, is clearly evident from what we have seen above respecting the earlier commercial relations between China and the West, and the long and peaceful occupation, by Moslems, Jews, and Christians, of domicils in all parts of the empire. Circumstances, however, did enable the government to give its policy a coloring of arrogant contempt. The foreign commerce was, in truth, a matter of relatively small consequence to China. Compared with the domestic trade, which made of the interior of the country one vast market for the exchange of the productions of different provinces, its amount and the revenue it yielded were, especially at the first, quite insignificant. It seemed to be carried on solely for the benefit of the stranger, who came to supply his poverty from the abounding resources of the empire, and was able to offer in return but little of value. It is well known that, until the poisonous drug, opium, was brought in to turn the scale, the balance of exchange was always terribly against the foreign trader, and the hard specie in which he was forced to pay for his purchases was of small account in the public economy of a country which knew no authorized currency save paper and copper. Hence the foreigners appeared as suppliants, begging to be allowed to enjoy and profit by an intercourse which it was a matter of indifference to the other party whether they granted or refused. The Chinese were not slow to perceive and to push the advantage. They habitually tried how much the foreigners would endure of imposition and of indignity under the pressure of a threat to stop the trade. Neither the latter nor the countries from which they came were suffered to make a dignified and imposing figure in Chinese eyes. Any difference between them and the petty, half-civilized and barbarous states which bordered upon the empire, was studiously ignored. Their embassies were made puppets of in the hands of a rigorous etiquette, were balked of all valuable

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results, and treated as acknowledgments of inferiority and vassalage. What, indeed, were the handfuls of subjects who acknowledged the authority of the Western monarchs, to the hundreds of millions who bowed to the throne of him who styled himself the Son of Heaven? And of the energy, knowledge, and capacity which made a few countries of Europe, small as was the space they occupied upon the earth's surface, a power greater than all the rest of the world together, the Chinese had little appreciation. They were content with and proud of their own culture, literature, and social and political institutions, all of immemorial antiquity; and, in the true spirit of a stiffened civilization, they misapprehended and condemned whatever was discordant with it: and what they were compelled to acknowledge only hightened their fear and distrust, and made their exclusive policy more stringent.

The political condition of the empire was not without its influence upon the treatment of the foreigners. The dynasty of Ming had built itself up on the expulsion of a foreign domination, and the reassertion of Chinese nationality; and the Manchu dynasty, which succeeded it, itself intrusive, and conscious of its insecure hold upon power, was naturally jealous of the presence and influence of the races which were overturning and founding empires in so many other parts of Asia.

It was, then, as we conceive, mainly from apprehension, and in self-defense, that impediment after impediment was thrown in the way of free intercourse with Europeans, that the avenues of access were one after another closed, until, just a century since, European commerce was limited to the one port of Canton, and otherwise placed under severe and oppressive restrictions. And we are compelled to acknowledge that, however much there may have been in it of narrow-mindedness and ignorance, there was also political sagacity, and a true instinct of self-preservation. The consequences of a want of like foresight elsewhere are apparent, in the overthrow of native institutions, and the establishment of European supremacy, in the fairest portions of both

the Old and the New worlds. We can hardly avoid being touched with some compunction, at witnessing the final failure of a plan of national conduct so long and perseveringly pursued, and the forcible intrusion, on a scale that shakes the fabric of Chinese empire to its foundations, of the influence so anxiously excluded.

But before we go on to trace the development of the relations between China and the West from a simply commercial to a political phase, we will review the history of the efforts made since the epoch of modern intercourse to introduce Christianity into the country, or the history of the Catholic and Protestant missions.

During the sixteenth century, the Catholic church, although feeling at home the staggering effect of the severest blows ever struck at its supremacy, was in the midst of a career of active and successful propagandism abroad. This was especially the case after the foundation of the order of Jesuits, about the middle of the century. Jesuit missionaries accompanied nearly all the fleets which bore Spanish and Portuguese adventurers to the various parts of the newly opened world. One of Loyola's original associates, St. Francis Xavier, the apostle of the Indies and of Japan, made the earliest attempt to establish a mission in China; but he died in 1552, upon the borders of the empire, before he had succeeded in overcoming the difficulties thrown in his way, more by his own countrymen than by the Chinese. The Jesuit Ricci was the first who effected an entrance. He was suffered to pass the frontier about 1580, after years of delay and negotiation, and for a long time he preached and taught in the neighborhood of Canton. This, however, was to him only the school in which to fit himself for a higher and wider field of action. Not content with the precarious toleration which the provincial authorities allowed him, he sought to win for Christian missionaries such a position in the very heart of the country as should command universal toleration, and should recommend Christianity to the acceptance of the masses of the people. He pushed forward from point to point, more than once rebuffed and driven

back to his old place, until at last, in 1601, he was admitted into the capital, and was able to found there the Jesuit mission, which, for more than two hundred years, maintained an existence always remarkable and often full of honor and success. The character which he impressed upon the mission it retained through its whole history. He was a man of vast acquirements and no ordinary capacity; he was versed in literature, philosophy, and science, an accomplished representative of the best culture of the West. He felt the vast superiority of European knowledge and skill in its application over those of the Chinese, and his aim was to utilize that superiority in every possible way for the benefit of European religion. His science had won him great consideration at Nankin: the curious instruments which he brought as presents opened to him the gates of the capital and of the court: like influences procured him the imperial permission to remain, spite of the opposition of the Board of Rites, under whose jurisdiction such matters properly fell. Thus it continued to be from that time forth. The Pekin mission became a kind of European Academy, filled with men eminent for learning and ability, selected with reference to the wants, and often by the express request, of the emperor; men who placed themselves and their knowledge at the disposal of the state, filled high offices, executed important trusts, and by their usefulness as mathematicians, geographers, astronomers, mechanicians, artists, teachers, and by the respect and influence thereby assured to them, were able to maintain for a long time the struggle in behalf of Christianity against the ever growing fear and jealousy of it on the part of the general government of the empire. This was a bold and brilliant system of tactics, and it held out high hopes of success: had the times and the places been more propitious, it might have won such a triumph in the East as when, in the West, the Roman empire was converted to Christianity. But it was also not without its special dangers, as it brought the new faith and its defenders into more conspicuous opposition with the native institutions and their representatives, and awakened political and scientific, as well as religious, jealous