The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-02-23

htltullOu hdS poeu Cbileu anew TO tQlS topic
by singularly clever article with grotesque
title, WEIGH we find in the Operldnd Monthly,
the very creditable California montely 1t
is written and signed by our late Minister
(last but one) to China, Mr. Browne. and has
the merit of telling the truth very plainly
1t of course relates exclusively 70 what has
occurred in China since the writer's official
functions ceased, for the rule of reserve as to
what is done during minister's actual SER
vice extends beyond it. The Government
alone can relax the rule-and that, in this in
stance, what is called an administration at
Washington does not choose to do For the
simple reason that Mr. Browne was appointed
by President johnson, the dominant folks not
only refuse to discharge their pecuniary in
debtedness to him, but deny him the poor
justice of printing his dispatches Diplomacy
in the East need have no secrets SO far as the
Chinese are affected, and few as to other
nations; and every American minister in that
region, good, bad, and indifferent-from
him who twenty seven years ago startled the
silent streets of Macao with the glare of the
uniform and clank of the sabre of a Massa-
chusetts major-general, down to the exodus
of Mr.. Burlingame and his white-buttoned
msndarins-has been in print. The flowers of
this last-named envoy's diplomatic rhetoric
did not, we are aware, bloom by themselves,
and were choked up and overshadowed by
the rank, weedy growth of Sewardism. Still
Mr.. Burlingame is in print. Mr.. Brownies
dispatches (and he is trained and practised
writer) would have had especial interest in
this, that he Immediately succeeded Mr..
Burlingame and reached China when the
occidental experiment was fresh. What
he thought of it then and what he
thinks of it now, when it has exploded
with an impotant fzzle, leaving literally no
trace behind it, is very manifest in the essay
which is our text What the World has
always said of it, in the very heyday of its
etfervescence, our readers are we'll aware.
Everybody, Se1cdrd duce went crazy about
it. Who has forgotten the New York and
Boston banquets? Who reads now the gor-
geous satin paper report? 1t was exactly the
sort of glittering imposture which suited Mr..
Seward. Coming from Boston, aside from
touching memories of 1866, it commended
itself naturally to Mr.. Sumner. But there
was one class of discreet men, experts
too, who were ominiously silent. These were,
with one exception, Mr.. Burlingame's pred de-
cessors in the East, of whom we need only
say that Mr.. Sumner himself, in a tremendous
puff of his friend in the atlantic Monthly
(whither for praise or sander Massachusetts
Senators naturally gravitate), has pronounced
to have been of the ablest of the land. They
held their peace persistently. Five of them
were within days journey-two in this very
city-when the Burlingame banquet was
given, and no one was invited to attend.
The one exception-and we give the Burlin-
gameites the full benefit of twas that emil
nent jurist who in 1914 was our first Minister
in China, and who, we have reason to know,
was quite willing in 1857 to go again, for
Boston was on hand to urge
hin-Mr. Gushing. The magnetism of New
England was too much for him. He could
net resist Faneuil Hall, and so he wrote a
letter or made a speech, portion of which
MIR. Browne rather maliciously reproduces, in
which, in his Sinansian enthusiasm, he ex-
celled everybody. Governor Fenton and Mr.
Whipple and the poet-surgeon were naught
to him who in 1915 had reported the "fren-
zied bigotry," 'the brutal ignorance" ''the
narrow-minded policy, ''the utter impossi-
bility of Christian nations holding relations
with them, and who had been as thoroughly
badgered and insulted as any of his success
sors. Long before this time Mr.. Cushing,
who is by no means destitute of discretion
and of that topical sagacity which snuffs
failure and discretion at a distance, must
have given Burlingsmism up in despair; and
now it has literally no advocates or even
apologists.
To Mr. Brownies essay we gladly direct
especial attention, and in his views, even of
the retrogression of the Chinese in anything
like culture fitting them for relations on
terms of equality with Christian nations, so
far as our lights go we fully concur. We are
glad to see it is the first of series, and we
trust that he will not be deferred from con-
tinuing it.