Sir H. Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, has telegraphed
to the Colonial Office a despatch which, to speak plainly, insists that the Mother-country shall obtain a treaty from China prohibiting the emigration of Chinese to Australia. Other- wise, he says, New South Wales will at once prohibit the entrance of Chinamen by a local law. The reasons he gives are identical with those we gave last week, and there is no reason to doubt that he expresses the final determination of all the Australian Colonies. We mentioned last week the terrible sanctions by which the Chinese Secret Societies
enforce their laws, which of themselves make them dangerous subjects, and the Liverpool Post of Wednesday furnishes a remarkable illustration. According to a report from the American Minister at Pekin, a man belonging to an association of gold-beaters at Soochow recently took more apprentices than one. This is forbidden, so the local Trades- Union took up the matter, and condemned the man to be bitten to death, and the sentence was literally carried out. "One hundred and twenty-three men had a bite at him before he expired." It would not strike the childlike and bland Chinee that there was anything specially horrible in such a form of murder. But that Singapore can be shelled, and that overt resistance to law is therefore impossible, the Hoeys would make that great entrepot almost uninhabitable.
