make no attempt to conceal or excuse, in fact rather exaggerate any
corruption in their public service generally, do not hesitate to declare
with striking unanimity that the conduct of their examination system is
above suspicion, and there appears to be no valid reason why we should
not accept this conclusion.

The whole system is now undergoing certain modifications, which,
if wisely introduced, should serve only to strengthen the national
character. The Confucian teachings, which are of the very highest order
of morality, and which have moulded the Chinese people for so many
centuries, helping perhaps to give them a cohesion and stability
remarkable among the nations of the world, should not be lightly cast
aside. A scientific training, enabling us to annihilate time and space,
to extend indefinitely the uses and advantages of matter in all its
forms, and to mitigate the burden of suffering which is laid upon the
greater portion of the human race, still requires to be effectively
supplemented by a moral training, to teach man his duty towards his
neighbour. From the point of view of science, the Chinese are, of
course, wholly out of date, though it is only within the past hundred
and fifty years that the West has so decisively outstripped the East. If
we go back to the fifteenth century, we shall find that the standard of
civilization, as the term is usually understood, was still much higher
in China than in Europe; while Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveller
of the thirteenth century, who actually lived twenty-four years in
China, and served as an official under Kublai Khan, has left it on
record that the magnificence of Chinese cities, and the splendour of the
Chinese court, outrivalled anything he had ever seen or heard of.

Pushing farther back into antiquity, we easily reach a time when the
inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom "held learning in high esteem, while