CHEFOO CONVENTION.

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and the evidence acquired even as to the details of the murder was singularly meagre and conflicting. Sir Thomas Wade, who had received the well-earned honour of the Bath, refused to accept the lives of the men offered, whose complicity in the offence was known to be none at all, while its real instigators escaped without any punishment.

The new year, 1876, only opened, therefore, to reveal that the question was still unsettled, and that the solution which could not be discovered on the spot would have to be provided at the capital. Sir Thomas Wade again insisted in the most emphatic language that the Chinese would have to conform with the spirit and letter of their engagements, and that unless they proffered the full redress demanded for Mr. Margary's murder it would be impossible to continue diplomatic relations. To show that this was no meaningless expression, Sir Thomas Wade left Pekin, while a strong reinforcement of the English fleet demonstrated the resolve of the Government. In consequence of these steps, Li Hung Chang was, in August, 1876, or more than eighteen months after the outrage, entrusted with full powers for the arrangement of the difficulty; and the small seaport of Chefoo was fixed upon as the scene for the forthcoming negotiations. Even then the Chinese sought to secure a sentimental advantage by requesting that Sir Thomas Wade would change the place of treaty to Tientsin, or at least consent to pay Li Hung Chang a visit there. This final effort to conceal the fact that the English demanded as an equal and not as a suppliant having been baffled, there was no further attempt at delay. The Chefoo Convention was signed, and signed in that town, to which the Viceroy proceeded from Tientsin. Li Hung Chang entertained the Foreign Ministers at a great banquet; and the final arrangements were hurried forward for the departure of the Chinese Ambassador whose despatch had been decided upon in the previous year.

The most important passage in the Chefoo Convention was unquestionably that commanding the different viceroys and governors to respect, and afford every protection to, all foreigners provided with the necessary passport from the Tsungli Yamen, and warning them that they would be held

responsible in the event of any of these travellers meeting with injury or maltreatment.

The next most important passage was that arranging for the despatch of an Embassy to London bearing a letter of regret for the murder of the English official. The official selected for this duty was Kwo Sungtao, a mandarin of high rank, long experience, and unexceptionable character. The letter was submitted to Sir Thomas Wade in order that its terms should be exactly in accordance with Chinese etiquette, and that no phrase should be used showing that the Chinese Government attached less importance to the mission than the occasion demanded. The Embassy, with Sir Halliday Macartney attached as secretary and interpreter, proceeded to Europe, and, whatever may be thought of its immediate effect, it must be allowed that it established a precedent of friendly intercourse with this country, which promises to prove an additional guarantee of peace.*

The

While the Yunnan complication was passing through these different phases, the capital had been almost as much exercised at the funeral obsequies of the late Emperor Tungche as at the possible outbreak of a foreign war. young Empress Ahluta had died in March, but not until the month of October were all the arrangements completed for the removal of their bodies from their temporary restingplace in the Palace grounds to the permanent mausoleum among the members of the reigning family. Some attempt seems to have been made to induce the Two Empresses to abstain from accompanying the funeral party, but the champion of propriety met with a distinct rebuff. The State procession of mourners left the Palace on the 16th of October, and on the evening of the 25th the Court had returned to Pekin. In the attendant ceremonies the young Emperor, despite his tender age, took the most prominent part; and the whole event, as recorded in the pages of the Pekin

* One of the remaining clauses referred to the lekin or transit duties, but as the arrangement is practically inoperative it need not be detailed. Another stipulated for an English mission through Tibet, but this also was never carried out. Perhaps the most significant circumstance of all was that the Chefoo Convention was never ratified, and therefore, strictly speaking, all its unfulfilled clauses have lost their validity.

A GREAT LOTTERY.

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Gazette, is well worth attentive perusal as throwing light on the ways of a Court indisposed to admit the prying glances of inquisitive foreigners.

The Chinese are naturally inveterate gamblers, and in the gratification of their inclination they resort to the most puerile forms. Although the Board of Censors feels bound periodically to take notice of this national weakness whenever any catastrophe results from it, and to insist on the necessity of the Government adopting measures to put down the practice, the Chinese continued to indulge their favourite passion without fear of their rulers. No change took place in the ways of the people, and the action of the executive was not merely lax, but tolerant of the principal form of amusement prevalent among the masses. It is impossible to say how long this might have gone on, when the attention of the Pekin Government was attracted twenty-five years ago to this subject by a novel form of gambling, which not merely attained enormous dimensions, but which threatened to bring the system of public examination into disrepute. This latter fact created a profound impression at Pekin, and roused the mandarins to take unusually prompt measures.

Canton was the head-quarters of the gambling confederacy which established the lotteries known as the Weising, but its ramifications extended throughout the whole of the province of Kwantung. The Weising, or Examination sweepstakes, were based on the principle of drawing the names of the successful candidates at the official examinations. They appealed, therefore, to every poor villager, and every father of a family, as well as to the aspirants themselves. The subscribers to the Weising lists were numbered by hundreds of thousands. It became a matter of almost as much importance to draw a successful number or name in the lottery as to take the degree. The practice could not have been allowed to go on without introducing serious abuses into the system of public examination. The profits to the owners of the lottery were so enormous that they were able to pay not less than eight hundred thousand dollars as hush-money to the Viceroy and the other high officials of Canton. In order to shield his own participation in the profits, the Viceroy

declared that he devoted this new source of revenue to the completion of the river defences of Canton.

The attention of the Pekin authorities had been directed to this matter in 1874, when the whole system was declared illegal, and severe penalties were passed against those aiding, or participating in any way in, the Weising company. The local officers did not enforce with any stringency these new laws, and the Weising fraternity enjoyed a further but brief period of increased activity under a different name. The fraud was soon detected, and in an Edict of 11th August, 1875, it was very rightly laid down that "the maintenance of the purity of Government demands that it be not allowed under any pretext to be re-established." But the most emphatic evidence of the anxiety of the Government to put down the evil was afforded by the disgrace and recall of the Viceroy Yinghan and several of the highest officials in Canton. By a subsequent Edict of 13th September in the same year they were all stripped of their official rank. In the following years more stringent Acts were passed against gambling of all kinds; but although they failed to eradicate the passions of the lower and idler orders in the great city of the south, they certainly availed to prevent the resuscitation in any form of the great popular fraud and imposition known as the Weising lotteries.

No Chinese official had attracted the same cordial

sympathy among Englishmen as the Grand Secretary Wansiang. A Manchu of the most honourable Banner, he added to the uprightness and vigour of the Tartar all the polish and refinement of the Chinaman; while he possessed a naturally genial temper, which was still more agreeable and rare. Latterly, although hardly to be considered as oppressed by the weight of years, his health had been bad. In 1874 he had to petition the Throne for leave to retire from active work; and during the whole of the following year it was evident to his friends that he was not in a fit state to perform his onerous duties. He lingered on until May, 1876, when his death was recorded in a decree, summing up his virtues and services in language upon which it would be difficult to improve. He was described as a man "who shone by the

purity and integrity of his character, no less than by the sedulous devotion of his intellect to the interests of the State. Loyal and stainless, far-seeing and straightforward, he was at once thorough in the earnestness that actuated his conduct, and inspired by sentiments of unselfish wisdom." In him Prince Kung lost a staunch ally and colleague, while the Foreign Ministers felt that they were deprived of a Chinese statesman with whom it was possible to transact business harmoniously and with despatch.

Great as had been the suffering from civil wars, there yet remained for China still greater suffering from the visitation of famine; and the year 1876 witnessed the commencement of a dearth in the two great provinces of Honan and Shansi which has probably never been surpassed as the cause of a vast amount of human suffering. Although the provinces. named suffered the most from the prevalent drought, the suffering was general over the whole of Northern China, from Shantung and Pechihli to Honan, and the course of the Yellow River. At first the Government, if not apathetic, was disposed to say that the evil would be met by the grant of the usual allowance made by the Provincial Governors in the event of distress; but, when one province after another was absorbed within the famine area, it became no longer possible to treat the matter as one of such limited importance, and the high ministers felt obliged to bestir themselves in face of so grave a danger. Li Hung Chang, in particular, was most energetic, not merely in collecting and forwarding supplies of rice and grain, but also in inviting contributions of money from all those parts of the Empire which had not been affected by famine. Allowing for the general sluggishness of popular opinion in China, and for the absence of any great amount of currency, it must be allowed that these appeals met with a large and liberal response. The foreign residents also contributed their share, and even the charity of London found a vent in sending some thousands of pounds to the scene of the famine in Northern China. This evidence of foreign sympathy in the cause of a common humanity made more than a passing impression on the mind of the Chinese people, and in many parts of the country a distinct