o
prevent peculation by the native officers, and, the moment their
vigilant eyes were removed, drill and discipline were voted a nuisance
by officers and men alike, arms and accoutrements ceased to be kept in
order, and the force rapidly assumed its purely Chinese character.
Relics of these levies exist at this moment, but the most unremitting
patience and effort have been needed on the part of the foreign officers
to maintain them in a state of anything like respectable discipline or
effectiveness. A recent writer[1] calls attention to the stupendous
efforts which the Chinese Government has of late been making towards a
reorganization of its naval and military resources upon Western
principles, and to the remarkable success which has in consequence
attended its campaigns in Western China and Central Asia. But these
measures have all owed their conception and execution to foreign energy,
enterprise, and ability; and, as will be presently shown, wherever the
salutary influence of these is weakened or removed, disorganization and
relapse are sure to be the result. Something has, no doubt, been
accomplished within the last twenty years towards opening the eyes of
the Chinese Government to the wisdom of assuming a recognised place in
the comity of nations, and inducing it to introduce various domestic
measures of a useful and progressive nature. But, after all, pressure
from without, and that of the most painstaking and persistent character,
has been needed to effect what little has been done. Let this influence
be removed; let the able customs organization now in vogue be taken out
of alien hands; let foreign Ministers cease to impress upon the State
departments the imperative importance of waking up to international and
domestic responsibilities; let arsenals be deprived of foreign
superintendence; let steamers throw overboard their foreign masters,
mates, and engineers; in a word, let China try to keep afloat without
corks, and what will be the consequence? Corruption would inevitably
fatten on and extinguish foreign trade; foreign representatives would
find Pekin too hot to hold them; arsenals would gradually languish and
cease to work; native-owned steamers would leave off plying the waters;
and the whole country would eventually fall back into a condition of
even more rapid decadence than that in which it was found when England
first interfered to prop it up. What is perhaps more melancholy to
contemplate, there would