o live
in secret and are subject to persecution, expulsion, and often death,
yet every province, even those farthest in the interior of China, have
their regular establishment of missionaries constantly kept up by fresh
supplies who are taught the languages of the countries they are going to
at Penang or Singapore. In China there are near a million Catholics, in
Tonquin and Cochin China more than half a million! One secret of their
success is the cheapness of their establishments. A missionary is
allowed about L30 a year, on which he lives, in whatever country he may
be. This has two good effects. A large number of missionaries can be
employed with limited funds, and the people of the countries in which
they reside, seeing they live in poverty and with none of the luxuries
of life, are convinced they are sincere. Most are Frenchmen, and those I
have seen or heard of are well-educated men, who give up their lives to
the good of the people they live among. No wonder they make converts,
among the lower orders principally. For it must be a great comfort to
these poor people to have a man among them to whom they can go in any
trouble or distress, whose sole object is to comfort and advise them,
who visits them in sickness, who relieves them in want, and whom they
see living in daily danger of persecution and death only for their
benefit.

You will think they have converted me, but in point of doctrine I think
Catholics and Protestants are equally wrong. As missionaries I think
Catholics are best, and I would gladly see none others, rather than
have, as in New Zealand, sects of native Dissenters more rancorous
against each other than in England. The unity of the Catholics is their
strength, and an unmarried clergy can do as missionaries what married
men can never undertake. I have written on this subject because I have
nothing else to write about. Love to Thomas and Edward.--Believe me,
dear Fanny, your ever affectionate brother,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

TO HIS SISTER, MRS. SIMS

_Macassar. December 10, 1856._

My dear Fanny,--I have received yours of September, and my mother's of
October, and as I am now going out of reach of letters for six months I
must send you a few lines to let you know that I am well and in good
spirits, though rather disappointed with the celebrated Macassar.... For
the last fortnight, since I came in from the country, I have been living
here rather luxu