The subjects of our political and trade relations with China have been so ably and exhaustively treated by Lord Charles Beresford, M.P., and Mr. Colquhoun, and have been threshed out by so many other writers, that in these brief remarks I shall chiefly confine myself to the Chinese people and to my impressions of them, received in fifteen months of journeyings in three of the most important years in modern Chinese history.

I doubt very much whether China is “breaking up.” If she breaks up it will be owing to the policy of the great European nations in making her “lose face,” and thereby weakening the authority of the Central Government over the provinces, local risings and possible disintegrations being the result. The “sphere of influence” policy, if pursued in earnest, would undoubtedly break up the empire.

In the three years in which I was travelling, off and on, in China, the Dragon Throne reeled, but righted itself, and the Government survived the Japanese war, the heavy indemnity, the loss of the suzerainty of Korea, and the aggressions of Russia. It extinguished, in blood, the serious Mohammedan rebellion in Kansuh, and has lately brought about the collapse of the rebellion in Sze Chuan. The bond of union which connects the provinces with each other and with Peking has survived all these mishaps, and if it is broken, I believe it will be by foreign interference, and by the shifting and opportunist policy, enormous ambitions, and ill-concealed rivalries of certain foreign powers.