diction over her proselytes, and takes civil and criminal cases out of Chinese courts. In order to put a stop to such insidious and crafty workings to gain temporal power in China, I put forth this proposition: to prohibit missionaries of any religious sect or denomination from exercising any kind of jurisdiction over their converts, in either civil or criminal cases. These four propositions were carefully drawn up, and were presented to Governor Ting for transmission to Peking.
Of the four proposals, the first, third and
fourth were put in to chaperone the second, in
which my whole heart was enlisted, and which
above all others was the one I wanted to be taken
up; but not to give it too prominent a place, at the
suggestion of my Chinese teacher, it was
assigned a second place in the order of the arrangement.
Governor Ting recognized this, and
accordingly wrote to Prime Minister Wen Seang
and forwarded the proposals to Peking. Two
months later, a letter from Ting, at Suchau, his
headquarters, gave me to understand that news
from Peking had reached him that Wen Seang's
mother had died, and he was obliged, according
to Chinese laws and customs, to retire from office
