the receipts of the native customhouses at the unopened ports on the rivers and sea-board have alike fallen off considerably, in very many instances the sums fixed by Government not being made up. The money which formerly reverted to the inland custom-houses, now swells the foreign customs treasury, in the form of tariff duties and tonnage dues, while the transit dues are abstracted from the local war taxes and imposts.

'Moreover, the trade in the interior has fallen off very much. The larger portion of the hongs in such large marts as Ch'en-chow in Hunan, Ch'ang-shun in Che-kiang, and Yushan in Kiang-se have been closed, whilst the large junks on the Yangtsze are daily diminishing in number. Not only is the trade in the interior in this disastrous state, but the daily falling off of the number of the junks of Canton, Fokien, Ningpo, Shanghae, Shantung, and Tientsin shows a like state of affairs on the sea-board. The large profits formerly made by these vessels have been wholly swept away by the foreign steamers, while any stray fragments which remained are now picked up by the foreign sailing vessels.

Again, news is conveyed too quickly by steamers. In case rates rule high at any place on the coast, in five days' time the markets have fallen again. Our people have lost so much money that they are afraid to buy goods on speculation, and so a perfect stagnation of trade exists at the unopened ports, the goods accumulating until they block up the warehouses.

'Chinese junks go quickly or slowly, anchor or continue on their voyage, according to the dictates of the passengers. The reverse, however, is the case with foreign steamers. At Chinkeang, Anking, Kewkiang, and other places, no matter what wild storms may rage, the Chinese passengers are turned

out at any hour of the day or night, without a moment's time, at the peril of their lives. Then, again, if the captain's eye happens to fall on any eatables or fruit, or any little articles which are cheap and do not pay foreign customs dues, they are thrown overboard. In case two steamers race, the Chinese passengers have no voice in the matter, while, should the boilers burst, they and their property are liable to be blown to atoms at any moment. Cases of this have already occurred more than once at Shanghae.

'Moreover, on the river Yangtze, steamers often run down our native craft, drowning everyone on board, so that however much we may admire their speed, we are forced to perceive that they are fraught with extreme danger to our commerce.

The rivers in China gradually increase both in volume and rapidity during the summer and autumn. When storms arise, and the tide rushes in, the waves are fearful, and human strength utterly unavailing. At such times, should wood rafts and junks break loose from their moorings and foul foreign vessels, they are boarded, and made to pay fines several fold in excess of the cost of the damage they have done. Should the bowsprit of a foreign vessel be carried away after smashing a junk's poop, this being a case in which both parties receive damage, not only do the foreigners take away the cargo from the junk, but they exact expenses for repairs in addition.

Again, in case rafts or junks are seen floating out at sea, or even down rivers, without anyone on board, although they have not been in any collision whatever, the first foreign vessel passing by sends off some sailors in a small boat to take possession, and exacts before rendition a very heavy ransom, saying "that unless the craft had been saved, it would have been utterly

impossible to conceive what sad accidents might have happened." 'Now, when junks or rafts meet with accidents of this nature, one ought to be moved with compassion instead of exacting very heavy ransoms under the pretence of doing a great kindness. Therefore, when foreign steamers run aground, our people look upon it as an act of retribution, and, so far from sympathising, are exceedingly delighted.

'On account of this steamer traffic foreigners have been appointed to act as Commissioners of Customs at the open ports, who, forsooth, are under the sole control of a foreign chief residing at Peking. This personage ranks as a high Chinese official of the second or third class; and I was once told by a man who had seen his visiting card, that he styles himself Commissioner-General of Customs, a title equal to our Provincial Commissioners of Finances and Justice.

The foreign commissioners at the ports were formerly under the orders of our Intendants of Circuit, but of late years they have put themselves on a footing of equality with them, and often have the andacity to prevent their applying the customs money for public purposes. In international affairs they often address the foreign residents without any previous consultation with the Intendants. Now, our officers ought to put a stop to all such assumption as a flagrant breach of the treaties. Commissioners of Customs originally ranked with the native subordinate customhouse officials, who now, together with the native clerks, are, to their intense disgust, under the authority of the foreigner. Commissioners of Customs were originally intended to act as foreign clerks of our native Intendants, much the same as our people are employed as writers in the foreign legations. Were they called assistants, or secretaries, we should not object, but it is intoler

able that foreigners should be given the posts of Chinese officials.

'Perhaps it may be objected that we should meet with many difficulties if we did not employ the services of foreigners. To this I reply, that there is no necessity whatever for all this exorbitant expenditure. Japan opened her ports to foreign trade years after we did. How do they manage to collect their customs dues without the so-called invaluable aid of foreign officials? In short we have jumped at the conclusion that the services of foreigners are indispensable, without ever having made any effectual efforts of our own. Therefore the foreign commissioners are highly elated, saying, "Ha, ha! they cannot get on without us."

'It is also reported that the Commissioner-General of Customs, having nothing in the world to do at Peking, spends his time in urging the Department for Foreign Affairs to build war-steamers and establish arsenals along our coast. These recommendations once acted upon, he has, of course, more appointments to distribute amongst his favourites, and our people alike say that he is ignorant of the relative importance of affairs, and that he seeks his own private ends without any regard to the interests of our nation. Now does not this seem to be the case?

poned for a time, while, viewing that the troops have over and over again mutinied and disbanded through sheer hunger, the supplies of our armies in the west become day by day a matter of more pressing importance. In case these large sums expended on ship building were laid out on supplies for our armies and the relief of our poor, the one would not desert their camps, and the other their homes to turn bandits, while the stream being clear at its source, there would be no apprehension respecting ultimate tranquillity.

When our soldiers have been well drilled and properly cared for, it will be quite time enough to commence building war ships. Then all classes in our nation being actuated by the same sentiments, foreign nations will no longer despise us. It is extremely unlikely that any troops would go through the hardships of a journey of tens of thousands of miles to try their luck with us under those circumstances, without truly grave reasons for it.

"The facts I have mentioned under these five heads are literally true, while the opinions I have expressed are eminently impartial. Should Should you disbelieve me, ask of anyone who has lived in the neighbourhood of the open ports what is the general opinion of the gentry and people, and he will confirm my statements. In sum, the merchants and people of the various foreign nations on every occasion resort to might rather than appeal to the dictates of reason, but they transact their affairs with an energy

and firmness of purpose of which we Chinese are not capable. The acquisition of gain is their one object in life, and this they pursue with such an insatiable avidity as to appear a kind of disease. Could these above-mentioned causes of deep-seated resentment be gradually removed, Chinese and foreigners might maintain friendly relations, without either apprehension or dissimulation.'

The Stranger from Kansuh, rising with a profound obeisance :

'I am extremely grateful to you, sir, for your lucid explanation, and I feel convinced that your remarks must be quite fair and impartial. Still I am sure that there must be more than these five subjects of resentment, and therefore I must beg for some more details upon the subject. Besides, can you not devise some measures by which resentments may be turned to goodwill, and injuries transformed to benefits?'

The Graduate of Shanghae thereupon commenced a lengthened discourse, which was so admirable and so very much to the purpose that I, an accidental listener, wrote it down in my tablets from beginning to end. end. On some future occasion I will transcribe it in full, but at present I will merely place before the enlightened reader these five subjects of national resentment, in order that he may join with me in admiration of this specimen of the vast knowledge and lofty talent of the Graduate of Shanghae.

This conversation was overheard and transcribed by

A WANDERER ON A RAFT.

The Crown might certainly grant a peerage for life, and in some instances the prerogative might be usefully exercised. LORD CAMPBELL, Lives of the Chancellors, vol. viii. p. 683.

progress towards despotism. It was they who first asserted against the Crown the principle of property, and of that hereditary descent which is one of its main incidents. It was

years a good deal directed to the Peerage, and there is no subject more worthy of attention, nor any which has greater historical interest or greater constitutional importance. Nor is there any which more requires to be studied by the light of history, or on which greater errors have arisen through the neglect of historical guidance. Perhaps one error, not uncommon, is in underrating the extent to which our laws and liberties are to be ascribed to the existence of the Peerage, and in imagining that the nobility as an order are necessarily dissociated from the nation. It would be much nearer the truth to say that our laws and liberties were originally won for the nation by the nobility, and have often in our history been nobly asserted and maintained by them. It is doubtful how far our laws or liberties could have been obtained or transmitted without their assistance and support, and it is certain that they were not. The nobles alone in early ages had a power and position which enabled them to afford any counterpoise to the power of the Crown, and present any barrier to its

1

Great Charter, of which a fundamental article was the right of the sons to the estates of their father,2 instead of these being arbitrarily seized and retained by the Crown. This great principle was asserted primarily for themselves, but also for all the freeholders of land in England; and no one can estimate how much the growth of our laws and charters was strengthened by the stability thus given to one of the principal private rights, the right of property.

Another error, however, and that to which we desire now to allude, is the notion that our peerage is necessarily hereditary.

It was so no doubt originally, but only because it was originally annexed to property, and therefore, of necessity, descended with property. When a dignity was annexed to an estate in land, as was the case with all our ancient baronies, of course it went with the land. And as, by the nature of property in land, the estates were hereditary, so were the dignities. But this is far from showing that dignities were necessarily hereditary. It only shows

Subject only to reasonable 'reliefs.'

VOL. III.-NO. XVI. NEW SERIES.

FF 2

that dignities annexed to estates were so. Those, however (the ancient baronies by tenure, as they were called), had already almost died out at an early period of our history. They had begun to die out at the time of Magna Charta, and to be replaced by personal dignities not usually hereditary, so that the real truth is just the contrary of what has been so often assumed, namely, that dignities, as such, have never been necessarily constitutionally hereditary, only became so usually at a comparatively recent period of our history. Nor has it ever been held or maintained until within the last few years that the peerage was necessarily hereditary. And it was then so maintained, as we shall show, in the face of all law and history to the contrary.

Mr. Selden long ago showed the ancient barons were barons by tenure, who originally sat in the great council of the realm merely by virtue of their baronies. At the close of the great contest between the Crown and the Barons, the House asserted the right of summoning barons to Parliament.

Mr. Cruise, the great authority on the subject, says:

It was always the practice, whenever

our monarchs were desirous of convening a Parliament, to call for the attendance of the nobility by writs of summons addressed to each. In consequence of an article in Magna Charta particular writs were sent only to the barones majores, who were possessed of considerable baronies; but after a law that none but the great barons and such others as were summoned by the King's writ should come to Parliament, the Crown assumed the prerogative of sending

out writs of summons to persons not pos

sessed of baronies, by virtue of which they were rated among the peers of the realm and acquired the title of baron.'

A dignity by writ therefore is where the Crown issues a writ of summons to a person who is not a peer, or tenant per baronam, requiring him to come and attend Parliament on a particular day, there to consult

Cruise On Dignities, c. iii. s. 1-3.

These dignities thus created by writ of summons alone were, it will be observed, purely personal, and not necessarily hereditary.

No doubt in the course of the long-continued struggle between the Peerage and the Crown, it was a great cause of its ultimate issue that the Peerage, like the Crown, was hereditary. This gave it strength from age to age to continue its opposition to the continuing power of the Crown; and but for this important element of permanence and strength, it is probable that the result would not have been so happily attained. But then the peerage was originally hereditary, because it was connected with the tenure of property which was hereditary. Barons by tenure,' as they were called-that is, barons who held their titles along with their estates-were the earliest and most ancient order of peers. As these, however, died out, and were destroyed in the course of their long

continued contests with the Crown, their places could only be supplied by new creations from the Crown. These creations were of two kinds, neither of them necessarily hereditary. The old system of baronies by tenure (which became obviously objectionable and absurd, for thereby who bought an estate from a poor a man, however ignoble in family, Peer might buy the Peerage with it) was not followed (except in cases of royal persons, as in the instances of the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, annexed to the Crown and only granted to princes of the blood), and so became obsolete and

2 Ibid. c. iii. s. 5.