The practice of marking out a special quarter for each nationality is an old one in China, adopted for convenience.  When, after the first war, the British exacted the opening of ports, they required the grant of a concession in each, within which their consuls should have chief, if not exclusive authority.  Other nations made the same demands; and China made the grants, not as to the British from necessity, but apparently from choice—­the foreign consul being bound to keep his people in order.  Now, however, the influx of natives into the foreign settlements, and the enormous growth of those mixed communities in wealth and population, have led the Chinese Government to look on the ready compliance of its predecessors as a blunder.  Accordingly, in opening new ports in the interior it marks out a foreign quarter, but makes no “concession.”  It does not as before waive the exercise of jurisdiction within those limits.

[Page 258] The above question relates solely to the government of Chinese residing in the foreign “concessions.”  But there is a larger question now looming on the political sky, viz., how to recover the right of control over foreigners, wherever they may be in the Empire.  If it were in their power, the Chinese would cancel not merely the franchises of foreign settlements, but the treaty right of exemption from control by the local government.  This is a franchise of vital interest to the foreigner, whose life and property would not be safe were they dependent on the native tribunals as these are at present constituted.

Such exemption is customary in Turkey and other Moslem countries, not to say among the Negroes of Africa.  It was recognised by treaty in Japan; and the Japanese, in proportion as they advanced in the path of reform, felt galled by an exception which fixed on them the stigma of barbarism.  When they had proved their right to a place in the comity of nations, with good laws administered, foreign powers cheerfully consented to allow them the exercise of all the prerogatives of sovereignty.

How does her period of probation compare with that of her neighbour?  Japan resolved on national renovation on Western lines in 1868.  China came to no such resolution until the collapse of her attempt to exterminate the foreigner in 1900.  With her the age of reform dates from the return of the Court in 1902—­as compared with Japan four years to thirty!  Then what a contrast in the animus of the two countries!  The one characterised by law and order, the other [Page 259] by mob violence, unrestrained, if not instigated, by the authorities!

When the north wind tried to compel a traveller to take off his cloak, the cloak was wrapped the closer and held the tighter.  When the sun came out with his warm beams, the traveller stripped it off of his own accord.

The sunrise empire has exemplified the latter method; China prefers the former.  Is it not to be feared that the apparent success of the boycott will encourage her to persist in the policy of the traveller in the north wind.  She ought to be notified that she is on probation, and that the only way to recover the exercise of her sovereign rights is to show herself worthy of confidence.  The Boxer outbreak postponed by many years the withdrawal of the cloak of ex-territoriality, and every fresh exhibition of mob violence defers that event to a more distant date.