ir own oppression,
possibly their destruction. Even as it is now, foreigners can go into
the interior and commit wrongs upon the people with impunity, for their
"extra territorial" privileges leave them answerable only to their
own laws, administered upon their own domain or "concessions." These
"concessions" being far from the scene of the crime, it does not pay
to send witnesses such distances, and so the wrong goes untried and
unpunished. There are other obstacles to the immediate construction of
the demanded internal improvements--among them the inherent prejudice of
the untaught mass of the common people against innovation. It is sad
to reflect that in this respect the ignorant Chinese are strangely like
ourselves and other civilized peoples. Unfortunately, the very day that
the first message passed over the first telegraph erected in China, a
man died of cholera at one end of the line. The superstitious people
cried out that the white man's mysterious machine had destroyed the
"good luck" of the district. The telegraph had to be taken down,
otherwise the exasperated people would have done it themselves. How
precisely like our civilized, Christianized, enlightened selves these
Chinese "men and brethren" are! The farmers of great Massachusetts turned
out en masse, armed with axes, and resisted the laying of the first
railroad track in that State. Thirty years ago, the concentrated wisdom
of France, in National Assembly convened, gravely pronounced railroads a
"foolish, unrealizable toy." In Tuscany, the people rose in their might
and swore there should be bloodshed before a railroad track should be
laid on their soil. Their reason was exactly the same as that offered by
the Chinese--they said it would destroy the "good luck" of the country.
Let us be lenient with the little absurd peculiarities of the Chinese,
for manifestly these people are our own blood relations. Let us look
charitably now upon a certain very serious obstacle which lies in
the way of their sudden acceptance of a great railroad system. Let
us remember that China is one colossal graveyard--a mighty empire so
knobbed all over with graves that the level spaces left are hardly more
than alleys and avenues among the clustering death-mounds. Animals
graze upon the grass-clad graves (for all things are made useful
in China), and the spaces between are carefully and industriously
cultivated. These graves are as precious as their own blood to the
Chinese, f