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36 own, which treats all other authorities with whom it is brought into contact—Chinese provincial officials, foreign consuls, the legations at Peking—as so many external bodies to be met and dealt with upon terms of equality.

That it flourishes amazingly is a fact beyond dispute. Prosperity—arrogance the Chinese of to-day, flushed with his new-born spirit of nationality, would probably say—stares you in the face as you steam up the Whang-poo river lined with vast piles of modern architecture. Sir Henry Norman thought that at first sight Shanghai was superior to New York, far ahead of San Francisco, and almost as imposing as Liverpool itself. And it has increased prodigiously since Sir Henry Norman first cast his gaze upon it. At that time there were barely 5000 foreign residents; now there are upwards of 17,000. The first five years of the twentieth century saw an immense impetus given to the settlement, the foreign population nearly trebling itself in that time. Values have gone up in a way well calculated to delight the heart of the speculator in land. Plots on the