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194 sistent with safety and due and reasonable regard for the feelings of her subjects."

One other thing about this note is worth equal notice. No matter how benign and charitable an English secretary may become, none has ever been known to desert an Englishman. Let us hope none ever will. In another passage he made this plain:

"But her Majesty's Government is, moreover, entitled to expect from China as an indispensable condition of her good will, the fullest amount of protection to British subjects resorting to her dominions."

A howl whose echoes still sound in the China Sea went up when this order arrived. All the old traditions were thrown overboard. Everybody would be bankrupt. Business was ruined for ever. The world was delivered to the heathen, and was no longer habitable.

But the seal of authority had been put upon the mission. Napoleon III hastened to give it a royal reception. Bismarck, planning a raid in other quarters, was as soft as silk,