Sxn,—I have not quite made up my mind to follow
your guidance on the Chinese, as I have on the fiscal, question, but such a defence as is used in the leading article of Monday's Times helps me to do so :—" They [the terms of the contract] involve also some restrictions such as confinement within certain boundaries : restrictions not greatly different in this respect from those which are enforced in most English public schools." Really, if a responsible journal has to descend to such a defence as this, the case must be weak. It is hardly worth saying, but since when have. the inhabitants of most English public schools been married men with wives and families? If there is no better defence for restricting the liberty of grown men than this—that they are only being treated as schoolboys (are they to be birched if they smoke opium ?)—then the case is a poor one. I suppose such sinful games as " Fan Tan " will be forbidden, and racquets (did you, Sir, ever play racquets, as I have done, with a China- man ?) on Sunday.—I am, Sir, &c., B. A. CIL&ELESWORTH. Gunton Hall, Lowestoft, Suffolk.
Previous page
