ials,
but Turk and Mormon did not think it worth while to knock at the
door. Both are objects of contempt, and no nation whose family
life is formed on the same model can hope to be admitted to full
fraternity with Western peoples.

The abominations associated with such a type of society are inconsistent
with any but a low grade of civilisation--they are eunuchs, slavery,
unnatural vice, and, more than all, a general debasement of the female
sex. In Chinese society, woman occupies a shaded hemisphere--not
inaptly represented by the dark portion in their national symbol the
_Yinyang-tse_ or Diagram of the Dual principles. So completely
has she hitherto been excluded from the benefits of education that
a young man in a native high school recently began an essay with
the exclamation--"I am glad I am not a Chinese woman. Scarcely
one in a thousand is able to read!"

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If "Knowledge is power," as Bacon said, and Confucius before him,
what a source of weakness has this neglect of woman been to China.
Happily she is not excluded from the new system of national education,
and there is reason to believe that with the reign of ignorance
polygamy will also disappear as a state of things repugnant to
the right feeling of an intelligent woman. But would it not hasten
the enfranchisement of the sex, and rouse the fair daughters of
the East to a nobler conception of human life if the rulers would
issue a decree placing concubinage under the ban of law? Nothing
would do more to secure for China the respect of the Western world.

3. DOMESTIC SLAVERY

Since writing the first part of this paper, I have learned that
some of the Commissioners have expressed themselves in favour of
a change of costume. I have also learned that the regulation of
slavery is to have a place in the revised statutes, though not
referred to by the Commissioners. Had this information reached
me earlier, it might have led me to omit the word "unmentioned"
from my general title, but it would not have altered a syllable
in my treatment of the subject.

Cheering it is to the well-wishers of China to see that she has
a government strong enough and bold enough to deal with social
questions of this class. How urgent is the slave question may be
seen from the daily items in your own columns. What, for example,
was the lady from Szechuen doing but carrying on a customary
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form of the slave traffic? What was the case of those singing girls
unde