. We may be too pessimistic, but the news from
China strikes us as becoming increasingly serious. The Mandarins are raising large fresh taxes to pay the interest on the Indemnity, and are explaining blandly that the exactions are not their fault, but that of the foreigners and of the native Christians, whom they protect. The Indemnity, moreover, has been increased, both as regards principal and interest, by 15 per cent., for it has to be paid in gold, and it is collected in silver, which has fallen in comparative value since the Treaty was signed by nearly that proportion, and is sinking still. The managers of the collections on behalf of the Powers have no power to make remissions, and the Mandarins, who argue, and perhaps believe, that they are only responsible for silver, declare that they positively cannot raise the additional money. The people, who have to pay for the Indemnity, for the loss by exchange, for the bribes to the Mandarins, and for the keep of the collectors sent among them, are exasperated beyond endurance, and threaten the Christians, whom they regard as the ultimate cause of their oppressions, in a way which the experienced Roman Catholic missionaries regard as most alarming. The Viceroys, though anxious to protect the foreigners, are not equally anxious to protect men whom they at heart regard as traitors, and a general popular rising in which Christianity might be extirpated in China, as it was in Japan in the seventeenth century, is by no means out of the question.
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