k in China: as elsewhere, affairs went
on well as regards filibuster, missionary, and ruler. Courts of justice,
hospitals, seminaries, and military posts were established. Natives
joined the colonists in large numbers, adopting the foreign dress,
customs, and religion, without a moment's hesitation. If the Chinese had
been as few in number as the Aztecs, a Portuguese dominion would soon
have arisen in Cathay; but the raids made by the colonists, the slaying
of villagers, the violation and carrying off of women, the cruelty and
robberies of the Christians, became so intolerable that the whole region
was aroused, and the colonists exterminated. From that period Europeans
were rigorously restricted to the port of Canton, and the coast enjoyed
quiet, except interrupted by an occasional buccaneer, until the present
century, when the opium traffic brought violent men to every port.

The Portuguese were not the only sufferers from trespassing upon the
soil of China. Twenty Japanese filibusters were boiled to death in the
streets of Ningpo, by order of an envoy of their country, who then
(1406) happened to be in Peking. All their intercourse with foreigners
seemed to confirm Chinamen in the belief that the barbarians were in
their dispositions like wild beasts, unamenable to reason, and to be
treated accordingly.

With feelings of mutual mistrust and hostility, commerce was long
conducted by Europeans and Chinese at Canton. The question of foreign
exemption from local jurisdiction only came up for discussion in cases
of homicide; but in every instance the Chinese insisted on their right
to punish the murderer. Foreign resistance to the claim was based only
on the unwillingness of the Chinese to distinguish between killing by
accident, in self-defence, or from malice. In the Chinese code such
distinctions exist; but life for life was the inexorable demand when a
native was slain by a foreigner; it was not, however, so much jealousy
of foreign jurisdiction, as a desire of revenge, that actuated them, as
was shown on many occasions. Whenever foreigners tried and executed one
of their number for a murder of a Chinaman, the mandarins and people
were satisfied. It was the practice of the local authorities to make a
representation to the emperor to the effect that such trials and
executions were in obedience to their orders, the foreigners being their
submissive agents. The real difficulties occurred when an accidental or
extenuating