Mr. W. Jones, late Secretary of the English Peace Society,
has been honoured with an interview at Tien-thin with Li Hung Chang, the most powerful Viceroy in China, the result of which is not a little instructive as well as amusing. The object of Mr. Jones was to suggest the wrongfulness of war and the excellence of arbitration between States. Li Hung Chang, who probably ordered, and certainly sanctioned the extirpation of the Kashgarees, entirely agreed with Mr. Jones. He was more than civil, said China was always for peace, and even signed with his own hand and in the highest official style of China, a document which Mr. Jones carries about as his " credentials." Mr. Jones then turned to opium, but found the philanthropic Viceroy entirely indisposed to discuss that subject. He was satisfied, he said, with things as they stood ; the reason, explains Mr. Jones, who is shrewd, though he does hope for peace, being that China now derives a great revenue from the drug, and that Li is spending the money on a War Navy. A more delicately perfect illus- tration of the difference between practical life, and life as seen through the spectacles of enthusiasts, it would be hard to find. In the supra-sensual region, as the Hindoos say, the Viceroy of Tien-tsin is opposed to war and opium-smoking ; but in the region of the actual he taxes opium in order to construct a fighting fleet.
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