England by citing the case of Governor Eyre. He says: "Moral phenomena of the same kind marked the controversy arising out of the Jamaica massacre; the enthusiastic supporters of Governor Eyre perfectly recognized in him an organ of the sanguinary vengeance of the dominant race, even if they did not believe that he had committed a foul judicial murder."
But still the question is, Upon whom is this savagery chargeable? Professor Smith says it is a result of the present predominance of evolution supplanting Christian morality. He utters "the thing that is not." Who was it that held up Governor Eyre to reprobation, prosecuted him, and demanded his punishment? And who was it that excused his conduct and organized to defend him? It was Carlyle, the great apostle of the brute-force philosophy, who was very properly chairman of the committee of defense; and he was backed up solidly by the Christian lord-bishops. But no one, except under the desperate necessity of making out a case, will charge that either Carlyle or the bishops were animated by evolutionary sentiments. On the other hand, John Stuart Mill, the agnostic, was chairman of the committee that prosecuted Governor Eyre, and on that committee, and among the most earnest and vigorous in its work of resisting the control of brute force, were the eminent evolutionists, Charles Darwin, Professor Huxley, and Herbert Spencer. Professor Smith ought to have more respect for the facts of his case.
MORALITY AMONG THE CHINESE.
Early in his article in the "Atlantic," Professor Goldwin Smith says: "Be the significance of the fact what it may, a fact it seems to be, that only men with a religious belief and a sanction for morality which they believe to be divine, have been able to live under a government of law." Yet a few pages further on he remarks: "China is without any real religion; she is thoroughly positive."
Professor Smith will reconcile these propositions as best he can with the fact that China is the oldest government and the largest nation in the world. She has a recorded history of more than four thousand years, and gives law to one third of the human race. It will be instructive to glance briefly at the state of morality among these "positivists," that we may see how it compares with that of confessedly religious countries.
It will be remembered that our information concerning the Chinese is largely from prejudiced sources—from missionaries who went there to get them out of their heathenism, and the official representatives of foreign governments bound to open this dark region to the light of civilization. These witnesses will, at any rate, not be biased in favor of the Chinese.
In the last edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" it is said, "Education is probably more widely spread among the male population in China than in any other country." The British Governor, Sir John Davis, in his able work on this country,[1] says: "It is deserving of remark that the general prosperity and peace of China have been very much promoted by the diffusion of intelligence and education through the lower classes. Among the countless millions that constitute the empire, almost every man can read and write sufficiently for the ordinary purposes of life, and a respectable show of these acquirements goes low down in the scale of society." S. Wells Williams, missionary, interpreter, and secretary to the British Legation in China, in his "Middle Kingdom" says, "Education has always been highly esteemed and exerted a dominant influence on the manners and tastes of the people."
- ↑ Davis's "China," addressed to Lord Palmerston, vol. i., p. 257.
