consumption. The conclusion lies near at hand, and I have
heard it drawn--"What they want is a few centuries of British rule."
And, indeed, it is curious how constantly the Englishman abroad is
opposed, in the case of other nations, to all the institutions and
principles he is supposed to be proud of at home. Partly, no doubt, this
is due to his secret or avowed belief that the whole world ought to be
governed despotically by the English. But partly it is because he does
not believe that the results the English have achieved can be achieved
in any other way than theirs. They arrived at them without intention or
foresight, by a series of detached steps, each taken without prescience
of the one that would follow. So, and so only, can other nations arrive
at them. He does not believe in short cuts, nor in learning by the
experience of others. And so the watchwords "Liberty," "Justice,"
"Constitution," so dear to him at home, leave him cold abroad. Or,
rather, they make him very warm, but warm not with zeal but with
irritation.

Never was such a pourer of cold water on other people's enthusiasms. He
cannot endure the profession that a man is moved by high motives. His
annoyance, for example, with the "anti-opium" movement is not due to the
fact that he supports the importation into China of Indian opium. Very
commonly he does not. But the movement is an "agitation" (dreadful
word!). It is "got up" by missionaries. It purports to be based on moral
grounds, and he suspects everything that so purports. Not that he is not
himself moved by moral considerations. Almost invariably he is. But he
will never admit it for himself, and he deeply suspects it in others.
The words "hypocrite," "humbug," "sentimentalist" spring readily to his
lips. But let him work off his steam, sit quiet and wait, and you will
find, often enough, that he has arrived at the same conclusion as the
"sentimentalist"--only, of course, for quite different reasons! For
intellect he has little use, except so far as it issues in practical
results. He will forgive a man for being intelligent if he makes a
fortune, but hardly otherwise. Still, he has a queer, half-contemptuous
admiration for a definite intellectual accomplishment which he knows it
is hard to acquire and is not sure he could acquire himself. That, for
instance, is his attitude to those who know Chinese. A "sinologue," he
will tell you, must be an imbecile, for no one but a fool would give so
much t