The folly of it was seen in the murder of Margary and the repulse of Colonel Horace Browne, whose expedition was driven back at Tsurai within sight of Manyuen.

And this murder, known to all the world, is the typical instance cited in illustration of the barbarity of the Chinese.
China may be a barbarous country; many missionaries have said so, and it is the fashion so to speak; but let us for a moment look at facts.
During the last twenty-three years foreigners of every nationality and every degree of temperament, from the mildest to the most fanatical, have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the empire.

Some have been sent back, and there has been an occasional riot with some destruction of property.

But all the foreigners who have been killed can be numbered on the fingers of one hand, and in the majority of these cases it can hardly be denied that it was the indiscretion of the white man which was the exciting cause of his murder.

In the same time how many hundreds of unoffending Chinese have been murdered in civilised foreign countries?
An anti-foreign riot in China--and at what rare intervals do anti-foreign riots occur in its vast empire--may cause some destruction of property; but it may be questioned if the destruction done in China by the combined anti-foreign riots of the last twenty-three years equalled the looting done by the civilised London mob who a year or two ago on a certain Black Monday played havoc in Oxford-street and Piccadilly.