We may shortly have a new question with China. The
Chinese seem immovable, but when they move, they move with energy, as we saw in the Panthay country and Kashgar. Their last idea is that they may as well have the carrying trade be- tween China and Great Britain as leave it to Englishmen, and they have started a line of trading steamers, the first of which arrived in the Thames this week from Shanghai, loaded with tea. She is owned, manned, and commanded by Chinese. That is very well, and if Chinese shippers can beat Anglo-Chinese shippers, so much the better for China; but if this line succeeds, we shall have Chinese immigrants by the thousand entering London. No one can compete with them in certain trades, particularly ship-carpentering and porterage, and we wonder whether the Californian and Australian feeling will break out here. London may, perhaps, be too vast, nationalities being lost here ; but if it does, we shall have questions to settle to which strikes are very trifling. The Chinese, with all their in- dustrial ability, have a talent for provoking their rivals which is matchless, and their emigrants are often very bad specimens of the results of Confucianism.
