No further outrages on Europeans are reported from China this
week, but it is stated on good authority that the Ambassadors in Pekin are seriously uneasy, and that the Government expects serious insurrection in the Valley of the Yangtse-Kiang. Incendiary documents are in circu- lation, and the Times prints one of them, in which un- known persons call on Chinamen to rise because the country is betrayed. The missionaries are accused of abducting children in order to cut them up, and of bribing the Magis- trates to avert punishment. The people are implored to rise and destroy every Catholic and Protestant place of worship, and the circular ends with a noteworthy piece of advice. The people are directed not to touch the Customs, and threatened with penalties if they do. That looks as if the draftsman of the circular were an official. The charge against unpopular religions everywhere is always that of kidnapping children, but we fancy the Catholic missionaries, in their eagerness to " save " dying children by baptism, are often a little im- prudent. It is hardly possible for them, or for the Protestants, to endure the Chinese practice of exposing supernumerary children ; and the Chinese, in their supreme callousness, cannot even understand why they should interfere. The Powers, fortunately, are acting together, and will, we doubt not, over- come the dilatoriness of the Chinese statesmen, who are afraid of being accused of yielding to foreign dictation.
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