India. Not only cannot it be remedied by mere philanthropy, but it is
absolutely certain--cruel and paradoxical though it may appear to say
so--that philanthropy enhances the evil. In the days of Akhbar or Shah
Jehan, cholera, famine, and internal strife kept down the population.
Only the fittest survived. Now, internal strife is forbidden, and
philanthropy steps in and says that no single life shall be sacrificed
if science and Western energy or skill can save it. Hence the growth of
a highly congested population, vast numbers of whom are living on a bare
margin of subsistence. I need hardly say that I am not condemning
philanthropy. On the contrary, I hold strongly that an
anti-philanthropic basis of government is not merely degrading and
inhuman, but also fortunately nowadays impracticable. None the less, the
fact that one of the greatest difficulties of governing the teeming
masses in the East is caused by good and humane government should be
recognised. It is too often ignored.

A partial remedy to the state of things now existing in China would be
to encourage emigration; but a resort to this expedient is impossible,
for Europeans and Americans alike, being scared by the prospect of
competing with Chinese cheap labour, which is the only real Yellow
Peril,[67] as also by the demoralisation consequent on a large influx of
Chinamen into their dominions, close their ports to the emigrants. That
Young China should feel this as a gross injustice can be no matter for
surprise. The Chinaman may, with inexorable logic, state his case thus:
"You, Europeans and Americans, insist on my receiving and protecting
your missionaries. I do not want them. I have, in Confucianism, a system
of philosophy, which, whatever you may think of it, suits all my
spiritual requirements, and which has been sufficient to hold Chinese
society together for long centuries past. Nevertheless, I bow to your
wishes. But then surely you ought in justice to allow free entry into