privilege or immunity in respect to trade or navigation

within the Chinese dominions which may not have been

stipulated for by treaty, shall be subject to the discretion

of the Chinese Government, and may be regulated by it

accordingly, but not in a manner or spirit incompatible with

the treaty stipulations of the parties.

At a first glance, this clause would seem unnecessary--unnecessary

because the granting of any privilege not stipulated in a treaty with

China, must of course be a matter entirely subject to the pleasure of

the Chinese Government. Yet the clause has its significance. There is

in China a class of foreigners who demand privileges, concessions

and immunities, instead of asking for them--a class who look upon

the Chinese as degraded barbarians, and not entitled to charity--as

helpless, and therefore to be trodden underfoot--a tyrannical class who

say openly that the Chinese should be forced to do thus and so; that

foreigners know what is best for them, better than they do themselves,

and therefore it would be but a Christian kindness to take them by the

throat and compel them to see their real interests as the enlightened

foreigners see them. These people harass and distress the Government by

constantly dictating to it and meddling with its affairs. They beget and

keep alive a "distrust" of foreigners among the Chinese people. It

will surprise many among us to know that the Chinese are eminently

hospitable, by nature, toward strangers. It will surprise many whose

notion of Chinamen is that they are a race who formerly manifested their

interest in shipwrecked strangers by exhibiting them in iron cages in

The Treaty With China