hip by all.

Heathen China may possibly fall under the yoke of foreign powers, but
the spirit of Christianity, bringing with it reformation and progress,
having once been breathed into her nostrils, it would be just as
possible to chain the waters of the ocean as to hold her in lasting
bondage, and Christian China would be free.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CHANCES.]

Forty odd years ago, at the close of the second great war, China was a
veritable Eldorado for Europeans, where all turned to gold beneath the
lightest touch of alien hands. Fortunes were made with startling
rapidity, and money came in so freely that the standard of living
amongst foreign merchants and their _employes_ reached to such
preposterous heights of luxuriousness, that when the inevitable
reaction set in, want, and even ruin, supervened where plenty should
have been found.

From that date to this the descent from an inflated prosperity to a
mean working level has been gradual and sure.

What has been the cause of this descent?

Forty years ago the foreign trade was practically monopolised by
Englishmen, who had only to place their goods on the market of any
newly-opened port for them to be snapped up at almost any price by
Chinese merchants, who then possessed but little knowledge of foreign
wares and were exceedingly timid of their own officials. As time wore
on this ignorance and timidity grew less and less, until the Chinese
purchaser came to close quarters with the English importer,
eliminating middlemen at the small ports and transferring operations
chiefly to the great emporiums of Hongkong and Shanghai. Americans and
Continentals of all nationalities arrived in rapidly-increasing
numbers, bringing merchandise for the Chinese market, thus giving
native buyers a much larger variety of goods from which to choose, and
introducing a competition fatal to the former enormous profits.

Although the volume of both import and export trade shows a continuous
yearly increase, it tends more and more to centre in the hands of a
comparatively few large European firms with which Chinese merchants
from all parts of the Empire directly negotiate, to the exclusion of
foreigners in a small way of business.

Another reason for the decrease of profitable commercial openings is
the practical extinction of China's tea trade with England, Ceylon and
India now supplying the home-market, and although as great a quantity
of tea is s