2.  The prospect of admission to the full privileges of a member of the brotherhood of nations will act as an incentive to improvement.  But the subjection of foreigners to Chinese jurisdiction ought not to be conceded without a probation as long and thorough as that through which Japan had to pass.  In view of the treachery and barbarism so conspicuous in 1900—­head-hunting and edicts to massacre foreigners—­a probation of thirty years would not be too long.  During that time the reforms in law and justice should be fully tested, and the Central Government should be held responsible for the repression of every tendency to anti-foreign riots.

A government that encourages Boxers and other rioters as patriots does not merit an equal place in the [Page 280] congress of nations.  The alternative is the “gunboat policy,” according to which foreign powers will administer local punishment.  If the mother of the house will not chastise her unruly children, she must allow her neighbours to do it.

3.  Prior to legal reform, and at the root of it, the adoption of a constitution ought to be insisted on.  In such constitution a leading article ought to be not toleration, but freedom of conscience.  As long as China looks on native Christians as people who have abjured their nationality, so long will they be objects of persecution; self-defence and reprisals will keep the populace in a ferment, and peace will be impossible.  If China is sincere in her professions of reform, she will follow the example of Japan and make her people equal in the eye of the law without distinction of creed.

4.  All kinds of reform are involved in the new education, and to that China is irrevocably committed.  Reenforced by railroad, telegraph, and newspaper, the schoolmaster will dispel the stagnation of remote districts, giving to the whole people a horizon wider than their hamlet, and thoughts higher than their hearthstone.  Animated by sound science and true religion, it will not be many generations before the Chinese people will take their place among the leading nations of the earth.

[Page 281] APPENDIX

I.

THE AGENCY OF MISSIONARIES IN THE DIFFUSION OF SECULAR KNOWLEDGE IN CHINA[*]

[Footnote *:  This paper was originally written for Dr. Dennis’s well-known work on The Secular Benefits of Christian Missions.  As it now appears it is not a mere reprint, it having been much enlarged and brought down to date.]

While the primary motive of missionaries in going to China is, as in going to other countries, the hope of bringing the people to Christ, the incidental results of their labours in the diffusion of secular knowledge have been such as to confer inestimable benefit on the world at large and on the Chinese people in particular.  This is admitted by the recent High Commission.[**]

[Footnote **:  See page 263.]