Early Letters 



establishment of missionaries constantly kept up by fresh 

 supplies who are taught the languages of the countries they 

 are going to at Penang or Singapore. In China there are 

 near a million Catholics, in Tonquin and Cochin China 

 more than half a million! One secret of their success is 

 the cheapness of their establishments. A missionary is 

 allowed about £30 a year, on which he lives, in whatever 

 country he may be. This has two good effects. A large 

 number of missionaries can be employed with limited 

 funds, and the people of the countries in which they 

 reside, seeing they live in poverty and with none of the 

 luxuries of life, are convinced they are sincere. Most are 

 Frenchmen, and those I have seen or heard of are well- 

 educated men, who give up their lives to the good of the 

 people they live among. No wonder they make converts, 

 among the lower orders principally. For it must be a 

 great comfort to these poor people to have a man among 

 them to whom they can go in any trouble or distress, whose 

 sole object is to comfort and advise them, who visits them 

 in sickness, who relieves them in want, and whom they see 

 living in daily danger of persecution and death only for 

 their benefit. 



You will think they have converted me, but in point 

 of doctrine I think Catholics and Protestants are equally 

 wrong. As missionaries I think Catholics are best, and I 

 would gladly see none others, rather than have, as in New 

 Zealand, sects of native Dissenters more rancorous against 

 each other than in England. The unity of the Catholics 

 is their strength, and an unmarried clergy can do as mis- 

 sionaries what married men can never undertake. I have 

 written on this subject because I have nothing else to write 

 about. Love to Thomas and Edward. — Believe me, dear 

 Fanny, your ever affectionate brother, 



Alfred R. Wallace. 

 63 



