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CHINESE RELIGIONS AND INSTITUTIONS. 167
Cool and reflective, these Asiatic Chinese are not slow to
forget that foreign Christian
nations introduced opium into
their empire, against the positive remonstrances of the Pekin
government. Out of this opium-trade business, grew the
first war, with a great slaughter of life. They also . well
understand that their countrymen have not been allowed to
testify in the civil and criminal courts of America only under
certain crippled conditions ;
and, fui-ther, they take a sort of
demoniac satisfaction in reminding Western nations of their
frequent drunkenness, theii* houses of prostitution, their city
dancing-dens, their immodest pictures, and their publication
of obscene books. . On the whole, they think Christian
nations not only terribly immoral, but downright hypocrites.
Sir John Davis sensibly wrote thus to Englishmen :
" The
most commendable portion of the Chinese system is the general
diffusion of elementary moral education^ among even the
lower classes. It is in the preference of moral to physical
instruction that we might perhaps wisely take a leaf out of
the Chinese books, and do something to reform this most
immoral age of ours."
THE MANDAHINS AND SCHOOLS.
Those known as mandarins are all scholars, having passed
the prescribed examinations. The important ofBces of the
empire are filled with mandarins only.
They may be recognized
by their
costly costume, insignia, and train of attendants.
Money does not, as in America, buy " honorable
positions. Bating the "blue-button" mandarins, — those
who, because of some signal service rendered, have received
a sort of " side honor, " — the others, the genuine, are often
popular in consideration of their scholarly attainments and
munificent gifts.
The court language is mandarin, being spoken by all
officials ; and although it is important as a written language,
being spoken all over Northern China, it is nevertheless but
one of the dialects of the empire.
As the Latin may be read