to expend upon military preparations the money that would open up the country and would ameliorate the lives of the people. In these respects the economical condition of Russia is almost precisely the same as the economical condition of British India. The situation is a little harder in British India from the fact that the people are a subject people, and may imagine the hardships they suffer are in part the fault of the governing class. It is, on the other hand, harder in Russia from the fact that the money actually raised there in taxation is by no means so economically used as in British India.

The saving feature in British India is the economical perfection and the undoubted honesty of the public service. The saving point in Russia is that the nation is a homogeneous and a loyal nation. Yet the financial circumstances of the two countries are so far parallel that in the two most important respects the situation is quite the same. In Russia and in British India the margin that separates the people from starvation is small, while the public revenue is burdened with large expenditure for military purposes. There is no doubt the important difference that India has not forced military expenditure on Russia, while Russia has forced military expenditure on India. It was, perhaps, about time for the Tsar to issue the Peace Rescript. A 'Truce of God' would conveniently allow Russia to consolidate her strength and overcome her weakness.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE PRESSURE ON CHINA.

HAVING discussed the strength of Russia, I would now turn to note briefly the weakness of China. So great a weakness might be discussed at great length, but it is a weakness now so obvious to everyone that it seems unnecessary to examine it in detail. The Chinese inflation, no doubt, was first pricked by France and England in 1858 and 1860, but it was only a pin-prick that we administered, and the puncture was supposed to be more or less closed up. It was Japan that finally burst the bubble, and since then Russia, Germany and France have all from time to time taken opportunity to show that China has no resisting power whatsoever.

It may be worth while to trace very briefly the causes of this weakness. The principal cause within the purely Chinese race itself is the contempt in which fighting men have been held, and the undue position accorded to merely scholastic attainments. Then, we find that the Chinese race possess such an absorbing power that the conquering races

from the North, which certainly showed no contempt for fighting instincts, were absorbed by the spirit of the Chinese people. Concurrently with such absorption we have the decline of the Manchu dynasty, through those usual weaknesses and defects by which Asiatic dynasties fall. At the same time, we have an undue national self-conceit, based, as it happens, not upon want of reason, but upon reasoning that seemed good but was yet defective.

The geographical isolation of China, her absolute exclusion from the general life of the world, and the unimportant and suppliant manner in which China was approached by wandering adventurers from Europe, combined to cause the Chinese people to think, not unreasonably, that China was truly the Middle Kingdom, the centre of the earth, upon which there could be no improvement. The result of this attitude may be seen by comparing the position of Japan with that of China. The Japanese had not the self-conceit that the Chinese had, nor did they have much temptation to that self-conceit, in so far as they always knew that beside them was China, something bigger than themselves. As a consequence of that and other things, Japan accepted all such European methods and inventions as were necessary to a new Japan, while China remains to-day practically as anti-reforming as ever.

Thus it was but yesterday that the young Emperor, full of laudable though crude desires to reconstruct

his country, found himself practically thrust from power by an anti-reforming combination so strong that it can even afford to be merciful. The Government of China, while I write, is in the hands of the Dowager-Empress, whose chief advisers are two Manchus of the most non-progressive and unbending ideas. The Empress herself, being a person of capacity, is not unwilling to unbend occasionally, as the other day in receiving on terms of practical equality the wives of the Foreign Ministers; but her advisers are still full of the old and antiquated notions that were reasonable when China was isolated, and that are now the highway to destruction. In short, there is no hope at present of internal reform in China, and without internal reform China remains the helpless prey of any power that chooses to prey upon her.

Let me now recite very shortly, and for the reader's convenience of reference, the manner in which the strength of Russia has pressed upon the weakness of China. At the beginning both Chinaman and Slav were prostrate at the feet of the conquering Mongols. Later both Chinaman and Slav expelled the Mongols, but the Slav created for himself a dynasty of his own, while the Chinaman became subject to a semi-foreign dynasty from Manchuria. So far Slav and Chinaman had had no relations except that both had been harried by the Mongols. Their first relationships were about the middle of the sixteenth century, when some exploring Cossacks found their

way to Peking, and again, at the very beginning of the seventeenth century, when one or two Russians reached there; but from these visits nothing resulted. Then in 1653 the Emperor Alexis of Russia sent to Peking an embassy, the leader of which refused to submit to the humiliating ceremonial demanded by the Chinese Court, as a result of which the embassy was not received.

Meanwhile, frequent troubles took place between Russian pioneers and Chinese colonists in the district of the Amur River, to which at that time, as my chapter on Siberia notes, the Russians were advancing. These troubles resulted in some years of fighting between the forces of the respective powers, and in that fighting the Chinese had the advantage. The Manchu dynasty was then in its vigour; China had great latent capacities for power; the Russian kingdom was young and weak; the Amur River was a long way from Russia proper, and, in plain English, the Russians were beaten. They were beaten partly because China had the advantage of geographical position, and partly because she had the advantage that she possessed up till forty years ago—the advantage of being supposed to be very strong. The result was that by the Treaty of Nerchinsk, made in 1689, Russia agreed to retire from the Amur River.

Nothing further happened internationally between the two countries until 1720, when Peter the Great