ity possible has been seized
for reentering upon possession, either by force or craft. The late
recovery of the province of Yunnan in China proper, and of Chinese
Turkestan in Central Asia, after crushing defeats and years of
alienation, affords notable instances of this tenacity of purpose. But
such successful reentries upon lost dominion have only been effected
where the usurping power has partaken of the same or a similar Asiatic
character with that of the Chinese themselves. Where circumstances have
brought the Government into collision with the more energetic and
enterprising people of the West, it has had no alternative but to make
material concessions, and to confirm these by treaties of perpetual
amity and commerce. Russia and England are the only Western Powers that
have thus benefited themselves at the expense of China: Russia, with a
view to the enlargement or rectification of her frontier, which from the
mouth of the Amour to the foot of the _Tien Shan_ is conterminous with
that of China; and England, for the protection and promotion of her
trade, which must have languished, if not perished, under the
constraints of the old _Co-hong_ system.

Whether the resubjugation of entire provinces by the Imperial Government
may be regarded as a blessing or a curse to the populations concerned,
it is difficult to decide. For them it is unhappily a mere choice
between being at the mercy of unscrupulous adventurers, elated with a
series of successes, and rendered ferocious by a life of rapine, but
utterly unprepared to introduce any serious system of reform; or being
restored to a rule which, although worn out and feeble, has the
advantage of an old-established organization, and can prove, by its
general policy at any rate, that it has the welfare of the governed
seriously at heart. On the whole, setting aside the wholesale cruelty
which has unhappily too often distinguished such governmental triumphs
on the part of the Chinese, and to which, indeed, the unlucky people
seem liable whichever party may happen to gain the ascendency, the
preferable conclusion would seem to be that resubmission to native
authority is perhaps the mildest fate that can be desired for those
subjects of China whose country has unfortunately been the scene of
civil war. But an entirely different result may be looked for when
foreign dominion--that is to say, European--has taken the place of
Chinese. In the case of England, there can be little fea