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PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE. human race. The governing classes are hopelessly effete and corrupt, but the commercial classes stand high, and Gordon showed that the masses of the people contain splendid fighting material when led by European officers. The Chinese Empire is tottering to its fall. On the occasion of the recent palace revolution at Pekin, the friends of progress were decapitated, thrown into prison, or degraded. Whatever Power controls these 400 millions of people in the future will control the destinies of Asia, if not of the world. Russia has already got a grip on Manchuria; her Cossacks are patrolling the treaty-port of Newchwang. She will soon have her hand on Pekin, and unless stopped in time will overrun the whole of the interior of China. I condemned the policy adopted in our dealings with Russia earlier in the year as unwise. We should have cordially acquiesced in Russia's advance in the North—which we were in a position to stop—in return for recognition by Russia of British spheres of influence in Central and Southern China. It will be more difficult to obtain such a recognition now; but the attempt should none the less be made.

The questions we have been discussing to-night are of vital interest to the masses of the British people, Our ex p Or trade is declining, and year by year the country is less able to support itself. Did foreign countries pursue the same liberal policy in their colonies as that adopted in our own, there would not be so much need for us to peg out claims for the future. But we have to take things as they are; and we must jealously watch the extension of foreign dominion over regions from which we know that our own people will be excluded by every possible means. 242