Much misconception appears to prevail as to the character of foreign residents in China, a misconception which has unfortunately been intensified of late by the condemnatory tone which the home press has taken up in respect to our relations with the Chinese during the past four years. Communities in China may be roughly divided into two main sections or classes, merchants and missionaries, and to these may be added as necessary concomitants the consular and customs authorities and unemployed persons or vagrants.

The term “merchant,” as applied to our countrymen in China, has been so long and so constantly associated with traffic in opium, and the alleged obtrusion of it upon the Chinese by force, that it has become in England almost a synonym for “adventurer,” and even “smuggler,” and the press has at times likewise distinguished it by such epithets as “rapacious,” “aggressive,” &c. It is unnecessary to enter here into the question of the morality or otherwise of the opium traffic; suffice it to say that no man who has the slightest spark of philanthropy in his heart but must deprecate the existence of the trade, and regret that the production of the drug in British territory is for the time being a political necessity, or that civilized and Christian traders must needs be the means of introducing it amongst a heathen people.