PROSPECTS OF OUR TRADE WITH CHINA. 411 



surprises the writer ; for barbarous or barbarian is always expressed 

 by a very different character, as we have shown above. Relying on 

 Mr. Lindsay's translation, at page 37, he says, " I might contend, 

 even on the authority of Confucius, that ' foreigner ' is the prefer- 

 able word. ' Barbarian ' is never used by us in the sense of ' out of 

 the pale of the empire,' and not almost always, but ahvays, in a de- 

 rogatory sense.'' 



It is now high time to take leave of Mr. Lindsay and Sir George 

 Staunton for the present, and hear what Soo-tung-po and Confucius 

 have to say. Soo-tung-po enquires of Confucius respecting the E 

 and Teih nations. Confucius replies, " The E and Teih nations, 

 which compass or press on China, cannot be governed by the same 

 laws as China, for they have neither a sovereign nor nobles, they are 

 all equal, like the brutes. When good government was conferred 

 on them it led to confusion. The ancient sovereigns of China knew 

 this, and therefore ruled them without fixed laws. This mode of 

 o-overning them pi'oved beneficial." Confucius was not speaking of 

 people in his own day ; he was giving his opinion of two govern- 

 ments that had existed a thousand years before his time, and whose 

 mode of government he disapproved of, because it was what is 

 termed a free government and not a monarchy. He had no occasion 

 to speak in contempt of them, or even to call them foreigners, be- 

 cause, in his day, they had become subject to China. Mr. Lindsay 

 may speak the Chinese language very well, but, before he again 

 cites quotations from the Four Books of Confucius, he should let them 

 be well imbued with exhalations of the lamp. 



The writer would be guilty of remissness did he not extract the fol- 

 lowino- judicious advice given by Sir George at page 37. He says : — 



" I cannot omit here also to protest against the nonsensical phrase ' bar- 

 barian eye.' The Chinese word, here translaled eye, is thus explained in Dr. 

 Morrison's Dictionary : — ' Moo or muh, the eye ; that which directs ; the 

 head or principal person.' Now, it is quite obvious that when this epithet 

 was applied to Lord Napier, the third, and not the first, of these senses was 

 intended ; and that therefore, in point of fact, his title of Foreign Superin- 

 tendent was very fairly translated. It is very difficult, therefore, to discover 

 any adequate reason for employing the phrase 'barbarian eye,' which has 

 been so much ridiculed and animadverted upon, except that of exaggerating 

 the offensive and ungracious character of the document in which it appeared. 

 I will not, however, impute to the translator any such intention, but merely 

 observe, that this plan of translating, as it were, in 'caricature,' may be very 

 harmless, as long as it is confined to cases in which it merely excites a laugh 

 at Chinese ignorance or absurdity ; but when it has the effect of producing or 

 increasing ill blood between our merchants and the authorities of the country, 

 and inflaming their minds with indignation at imagined insults, which nothing 

 but the sword or the bayonet can expiate, it cannot be too severely reprobated. 

 It is, unfortunately, but too true that the Chinese have often recourse to of- 

 fensive and insulting phraseology in speaking of foreigners ; and I am no ad- 

 vocate for dissembling the fact when it really occurs : but the phrase ' barbarian 

 eye' appears to me as false to the letter, as it is to the spirit of the original." 



Without making further extracts from the works that have been 

 noticed, it is presumed that what has been advanced by Messrs. 

 Mathe^on and Lindsay, as to the insolence of the Chinese in their 

 oflicial documents, has been satisfactorily refuted, and that conse- 

 quently such couqilainl.-i have arisen from our ignorance of their lan~ 



