Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/288

220 Mr Joseph G. Alexander, who was travelling in Ssŭch'uan prior to attending the centenary conference of Protestant missions at Shanghai, found the local anti-opium committee at Ch'ung-k'ing militant and determined. "Would their officials," he asked them, "being so corrupt as they had been telling him, and interested in the traffic, carry out the Imperial decree?" A merchant stood up to answer for the rest. "Tell your people in England," he said, "that whether the officials want to carry out the decree or not, we shall make them do so." These are gratifying examples of a growing and salutary public opinion; but despite such welcome symptoms, to imagine that an insidious national vice can be out-rooted from the character of a people by a mere stroke of the vermilion pencil, is to postulate for human nature a standard of virtue which everyday experience goes to show that it does not possess.