of possible encounters with more formidable foes. They undoubtedly still retain the notion that they have an absolute right to do what they like with their own country and in it; and they are probably only preparing themselves to assert or defend this right when a suitable opportunity presents itself. Prince Kung, in despatch about the Woosung Bar at Shanghai, declined to dredge a channel to facilitate trade, and regarded the sand-bank as a barrier set there by Divine Providence to aid the Chinese in the defence of the country and its approaches. He further pointed out that each nation has a right to guard and protect its own territory by the means it alone deems best. It is perhaps very natural to suppose that China was made exclusively for the support of Chinamen, and that no other race has a right to question this divine arrangement, or to seek by the simple dredging of a sand-bar to thwart the plans of a kind Providence, who is thus closing up the river-courses against the commerce which furnishes millions of Chinese with means to feed and clothe themselves that formerly they could never have obtained.
In this narrow policy there is not the faintest recognition of that divine progress which, by a thousand telegraphs, railways and industries, is tending more and more to bind the nations of the earth together in one universal kinmanship, where, by free intercourse and liberal enlightened government, peoples of every nation, kindred and tongue, will be rendered mutually dependent on each other.
The inundations were predicted just as they happened, years before the swollen river burst its barriers at Lung-men-Kan, and might have been easily prevented by keeping clear "what has always been an artificial channel."[1] The business was put off,
- ↑ Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xl. p. 19.
