THE CHINESE INDEMNITY.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] Sne,—Your article upon "The Chinese Indemnity" in the Spectator of May 11th confirms a conviction, deep already in many minds, that missionary societies which have suffered pecuniary losses through the recent uprisings in China are making a grave mistake in claiming damages from the Chinese Government through Governments whose power to enforce the claim comes from war. European missionaries are citizens of Powers whose rapacity of Chinese territory has been naked and shameless ; and the Christian (?) States of Europe, we and our allies, have provoked the Chinese to a frenzy of cruelty and folly. The European missionaries may have all the rights to compensation from the Chinese that the European merchants have; but may it not be true policy for the Christian Churches to waive their pecuniary claims? Would it not give emphasis to the story of the hideous wrong which both missionaries and converts have suffered, and make prominent their separateness from all who would spoil China P If the Churches at home covered the losses of their missionaries, and explained why, the Court, the Mandarins, and the common people might be made to consider missionary motives. The race is not dense, as our statesmen discover. But now Protestant missions seem missing a great opportunity of preaching the Gospel in word and in deed to all this people. One is told (1) that such conduct would be construed as weakness. Is not the true Cross always in danger of that reproach? And (2) that compensation claimed will act as a deterrent in the future. May not the Allied Powers be trusted to punish enough and to exact enough without the assistance of missionary societies ? May not these serve the Gospel best by doing "more than others" who exact "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth " ? Are the Chinese too stupid to understand the distinction between law (at its best) and Gospel? And what would such Chinese discernment be worth to those who take them glad tidings? It might pay the Protestant Churches a hundred times over to forego their
pecuniary claims.—I am, Sir, &o., SAMUEL VINCENT. Woodside, Plymouth.
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