We are not entirely in favour in Asiatic countries of
what is
" equality " between Europeans and natives. It is some- times needful, in order to secure to the European his leadership, without which he can do nothing, to protect him against the in- justice of jealous rivals ; but occasionally he renders the task of supporting him intolerably difficult. He has an innate and apparently unconscious arrogance that is almost inexplicable. The China correspondent of the Times, for example, a well- informed man, often very moderate, complains this week that when Shanghai was formed, the land of the settlement was " unfortunately " not reserved exclusively for foreigners, and .rich Chinamen, flying before intestine troubles, actually bought bits of it. "Hence all our actual and potential difficulties, sanitary and political." That notion of our feebleness in allow- ing the Chinese to buy at our prices land in their dvrn country *mild be incredible, but that it is justice, compared with the ideas of South-African colonists. It is, we believe, a law in the diamond fields that though a native may dig for wages as much as he will, he must not own a "claim" or possess a diamond. If he does, he is flogged, the presumption being that he is a thief. He has not, of course, the claim of the Chinaman, being usually as much an immigrant as the Englishman ; but this cool denial a any right at all is monstrous. No wonder that in Canton the Chinese are suspicious of the equity of the Consular Courts, as suspicions as we are all over the world of any but European Judges.
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