Delaware tribune. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1867-1877, 1870-07-28
New Castle County Ticket.
For SHERIFF-THoMAS HARVEY.
FoR CoRoNER-CHARLES A. WINSL0W.


The many ardent admirers of John or "Wo
Lee in this country, have one defence behind
which, as behind a rampant, they retreat when
ever closely pressed with arguments against
encouraging and stimulating Chinese immgra-
tom and that is, the assertion that every China
man can read and write. They even grow bold
enough, through the frequent reiteration of the
statement, to ask whether people which has
not brought its civilization up to this point is in
a position to 50 confidently assume its own
superiority? We have never been much affected
by the argument, as we do not consider the
diffusion Of knowledge about wise maxims and
little wooden gods, amongst people who have
remained ignorant of the character and extent
of the world In which they i've as any very high
evidence of civilization or enlightenment But
it seems that, after all, the Chinese are not gem
orally educated, or rather informed, even in what
they call knowledge, and that in fact very
small proportion of them can read and write.
Mr.. M. J. Knowlton who has resided for six
teen years in China, writes to the Boston Jour-
nal and for personal observation, after six
teen years of constant intercourse with the peo-
pie, denies the truthfulness of the assertion that
education is general i'll the Celestial Empire. He
says:
There are no schools in China for girls, and
with very rare exceptions no female can read OF
write. Thus we at once find at least half the
population utterly destitute of education. OF
the males, the tilers of the soil the mechanics,
the boatmen, the fishermen the coolies or the
burden-bearers- all these classes, embracing the
working population, with very few exceptions,
can neither read nor write. The Buddhist priests
ahpul1 also a a general illlp. lie plaSfpu
the non-readers. The merchants, the petty
tradesmen. the doctors, the fortune-tellers, and
mountebanks, and the official runners or lictors
can, for the most part, just read and write slii-
ciently TO keep accounts and conduct business
correspondence. Very few among these rlasset
can read and understand any Chinese book writ
ten i'll the usual classical or literary style. W.
sometimes see in their hands Chinese novels
which are writtent in more diifuse colloquia
style. The reason why so few can understand
the book language. is the fault, in part, of thu
bad system of teaching in the schools Tire,
or four years are spent by the pupils (Which il
rs much time as most boys can spend at school
in committing to memory the names and form
of characters, and in learning to write them. be
fore any explanation is given OF their meaning
He further declares that the classic or bool
language of China is a dead language, and as uli
like the colloquial dialects in use az Latin is I'm
like English, and that so far from everybod
being able to read and write, that in fact onl
about one in seyenty-fiye out Of the whole popu
lation is able TO do so. As to newspapers ther
is not one III the Empire, iii our sense of til
word the only thing resembling them printed
Chinese. being brief daily official bulletin, pull
lished at Pekin, and two or three published
foreigners at open ports. while new books vel
seldom appear.