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PRECONVENTIONAL PERIOD

lists with better warrant if the sequence of incidents alone be considered. The British Government itself, when it essayed to state its cause at the bar of public opinion, could not find more plausible counts than that its subjects had been insulted and injured; that its merchants had sustained loss, and that tradal relations must be secured against such disturbance. Many apologists contended that the radical trouble lay in China's arrogant assumption of superiority to all outside nations and her refusal to associate with them on equal terms. As to that, it must be observed that the pettiest Occidental nation has always claimed to be immeasurably superior to China, and has always refused to associate with her on equal terms. Her pretensions are paralleled and surpassed by those of the peoples that condemn them most loudly. Every European and every American openly asserts his racial eminence above the Chinese, and to class him with them would be an unforgivable insult. It was not because China set herself above Great Britain that the latter failed to provide means for the due control of her subjects trading within the former's territories. It was because in China's case Great Britain acknowledged no obligation to conform with international usages never neglected in the Occident. Neither was it because of any pride of race that China gradually narrowed her association with foreigners until Canton became the sole lawful emporium of their trade. It was

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