We have to record the death of Sir Robert Hart,
one of the most remarkable among the many great Ulstermen who have distinguished themselves in the world of action and administration. Entering the Consular service in China in 1854, he accepted a post in the Chinese Customs four years later, becoming Inspector-General in 1863. Under his administration, which lasted forty-five years, the value of the foreign trade was quadrupled, the home trade increased sevenfold, and the revenue of the Customs was trebled. But, as a writer in the Times reminds us, these figures give only an inadequate notion of the enormous development of a service " which undertook the lighting of the coast and inland waterways of China, which disposed of a fleet of revenue cruisers, instituted a European University in Peking, and which of late years became the sheet-anchor of Chinese finance." His long residence in China brought him like other Englishmen under the spell of the East, and the gross ingratitude with which he was treated by the Chinese Government never impaired his loyalty or inspired him to a word of recrimination or com- plaint.
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