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176 however enlightened. My purpose is to show that when confronted with this problem Anson Burlingame undertook to decide it; and, as far as the United States and China were concerned, he succeeded in the manner I shall now relate.

From the day of his arrival he took the unique and bizarre attitude that the Chinese were real people, to be treated with courtesy and consideration. In spite of the fact that he was the representative of a foreign nation with "interests" to conserve or acquire he held the idea that the country belonged absolutely and entirely to the Chinese, and that it was their business as well as their privilege to conduct it. It took him about a week to discover the travesty in the Taiping's Christianity, and he encouraged the training and dispatch of Ward's forces to put them down. Upon reaching Pekin he sought out the other ministers, and became shortly the leading spirit in a diplomat quartette called by Frederick Wells Williams the "Four B's"—Count Balluzech, the Rus-