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ror, was beheaded; the native's crime being that he had assisted an alien to break the law; the alien's, that he had attempted to open trade at Ningpo in defiance of the Government's publicly proclaimed interdict. In short, justice was done all round according to Chinese lights, the wrongs of the foreigners being redressed, but the law-breaking agents of their remonstrances punished with mediæval severity. As for the foreign community at Canton, however, its simple verdict was that "the Mandarins were absolute villains."

In the margin of these salient incidents there was a tolerably copious catalogue of common assaults and deadly affrays, sometimes foreigners alone being concerned, but more frequently foreigners and Chinese. It was of course impossible for the local authorities to subject an alien to any intelligent form of trial. When the supposed perpetrator of a deed of blood was handed over to them by his own nationals,—and to the eternal shame of the Portuguese, the Americans, and the English such surrenders did actually take place,—they usually strangled him at once. The certainty that he would otherwise escape altogether tended doubtless to sharpen their animosity, but it is also reasonable to suppose that the very fact of his surrender amounted in their eyes to a verdict of guilty. On the other hand, inflamed by the injustices thus perpetrated, rendered desperate by a sense of helplessness to exact