readily adjust. The conquest of Upper Burma opens to us the trade of south-western China, and there can be little doubt that when the British Government comes to discuss the arrangements under which this is to be conducted, it will be met by that of China in a liberal and accommodating spirit. We cannot, however, refrain from expressing our sense of the impolicy of allowing these frontier and suzerainty questions with China to remain unsettled, especially in view of the present troubled state of Burma. The mere fact, that these are open questions with China, gives heart to those now in insurrection in Upper Burma. The Pretenders' and others, who are not mere dacoits, recollect the recent occurrences in Tonquin, where the Black Flags were allowed to bear the brunt of the fight for months before China came to their help; but they know that China did ultimately enter the field. Applying this knowledge to their own situation, the leaders of the present disturbances in Burma hope and believe that China will in like manner come to their assistance, for they know that there are still demands of China which Great Britain has not satisfied, and accordingly they continue the fight, looking forward to Chinese support sooner or later. The present state of suspense in these negociations is all the more to be deplored, that the differences are in mere points of detail, and even as such are understood to be very trifling. On the importance of our trade with Upper Burma, we have spoken at some length in another article in our present number.*

No survey of the relations between China and the West, and especially of those between Great Britain and the Celestial Empire, would be complete without a reference to the recent settlement of the most complicated and difficult questions connected with Indian trade in opium. This was essentially a problem which could not be solved by heroic methods. Whatever the morality of the trade, however discreditable many of the incidents of the history of its growth may have been to those concerned, vast interests, British, Indian, and, by no means least, Chinese, had grown up around it. If Indian finance depended largely on the revenue derived from the drug, so did that of the Chinese Government. Its sudden cessation meant fiscal disaster to the two Empires; nevertheless some arrangement of questions connected with it was demanded no less by the Chinese than by an active and pertinacious (using the word in no offensive sense) party in England. Of the settlement little need be said here beyond this, which is

* See Art. IV. 'New Markets for British Industry,' p. 158.

the heart and root of the whole matter, that it was a Chinese settlement. It was offered by the Chinese Government and practically accepted as it stood by Lord Granville. Whether it is a good or a bad settlement, whether it succeed or fail in the future, no blame can be cast upon us. After the failure of many proposals, and after years of fruitless effort to reach a satisfactory arrangement, the Chinese came forward themselves and tendered this settlement, which was at once accepted, and which they are now engaged in working out with such results as time alone can bring forth. The keystone of the system under which the trade is in future to be conducted is that the likin, or octroi duty, is to be levied at the same time as the customs duty. It is, moreover, fixed at a certain sum (eighty taels per chest), instead of being left as heretofore to the cupidity, the whims, or the necessities of local officers in the interior. This principle is valuable, as showing us one of the early reforms which must be carried out in China in order to remove the obstacles to the expansion of trade with that country. There is no reason why all foreign merchandise should not be freed, as opium has been, from the exactions of the officers at the transit barriers-exactions which are all the more galling and injurious that they are practically indefinite. No merchant can tell with certainty how much his goods will have to pay in their journey between any two places, while the constant stoppages, especially of boats on rivers and canals, for the purposes of examination and assessment, add seriously to the cost of transit. It may be hoped that when this question is raised in a formal and authoritative manner, the Chinese will settle it as definitely as they have the opium question.

Space will not permit us here to refer at length to the recent policy of China with regard to Corea. This is a question of great importance, in view of the attitude of Russia towards the peninsula, and of her military and naval necessities on the Pacific; it is also one of interest on other grounds, for here we find two Asiatic nations, China and Japan, acting on a common understanding, and partially sinking their own rivalries, in order to meet a common danger. But, important and interesting though it is, it could hardly be dealt with here without entering into considerable detail, which is at present impossible.

Several other examples of the manner in which China is throwing off her old seclusion, and beginning to take her place amongst the nations of the world, might have been described; but enough has been said to show that the present rulers of China, for the first time in her recent history, are beginning to show an intelligent appreciation of the position of their country,

country, of the dangers to which it is exposed, and of the manner in which they are to be met. The Chinese never frankly accepted the situation in which their treaties with Western nations placed them, or the duties which they undertook thereby, until quite recently. They never regarded themselves as subject to the same conditions as other nations; it did not occur to them for many years (if it did, there was no sign of it), that their national existence was to be preserved and their national dignity secured by the same methods as were employed elsewhere for these purposes. They sent no representatives abroad, and treated the representatives sent to them with dislike and but scant courtesy. They refused to have anything to do with those inventions which are the most striking external marks of nineteenth-century civilization in the West. They granted redress not to argument and friendly representation, but at the cannon's mouth. How all this has changed we have endeavoured to show here. The impact of Russia on her borders has been the main instrument of the change. This has forced China to look around her for means to defend herself. If it be true that the two Asiatic Empires which are menaced by Russia have reached a common understanding, or a basis for an understanding, to meet future contingencies, so much the better for both. It is obvious from all that is now passing under our eyes in China, that in the political combinations of the future in Asia, she is going to play an active, an intelligent, and a leading part.

ART.

ART. IV.-1. La Vérité sur la Fuite et l'Arrestation de Louis XVI à Varennes, d'après des documents inédits. Par E. A. Ancelon, D.M. Paris, 1866.

Par Eugène

2. Revue des Questions Historiques. Tome V. Paris, 1868. 3. La fuite du Roi Louis XVI à Varennes. Bimbenet. Paris, 1868.

4. Louis XVI, le Marquis de Bouillé et Varennes. Par L'Abbé Gabriel. Paris et Verdun, 1874.

Publiés

par

5. Mémoires de Madame la Duchesse de Tourzel. le Duc des Cars. Paris, 1883. English Translation, London, 2 vols.

S1

1886.

IXTY-THREE years ago the late Mr. Croker published in this Review his well-known account of the journey of King Louis XVI. to Varennes, and of the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII., to Brussels.* His narrative was founded mainly upon the 'Mémoires sur l'Affaire de Varennes,' then lately published in Brussels, which contained the relations of Comte Louis de Bouillé, of MM. de Raigecourt and de Damas, and of Captain Deslon, to which was added the evidence of the courier Valory. The apologies of the Marquis de Bouillé, and of the Duc de Choiseul, with the accompanying documents, had been printed the year before. Fourteen years later, Carlyle published his history of the French Revolution. The second volume of this work contains some chapters upon the Flight to Varennes, which are the most exciting portions of the whole work. Carlyle's narrative, which has been accepted as the standard English account of this momentous occurrence, is unfortunately both inaccurate and untrustworthy from beginning to end. Had Carlyle read Croker's article in the Quarterly Review,' he could not have possibly made the gross mistakes into which he falls. For instance, he reckons the distance from Varennes to Paris at sixty-nine miles, which Croker had already placed accurately at a hundred and fifty; he consequently makes the Royal travellers travel at a snail's pace instead of going as they actually did at a very reasonable rate. He relies implicitly upon the narrative of Choiseul, which Croker had already seen to be an apology for misbehaviour, and consequently untrustworthy. He applies He applies no criticism to the narrative of Bouillé, who was equally anxious to excuse himself and to throw the blame on others, and he accepts without question the foolish gossip of Madame Campan. He

6

This article was reprinted, with additions, in Mr. Croker's Essays on the early period of the French Revolution,' pp. 105, foll. London, 1857.

does

does not even take the pains to read with accuracy the authorities with which he was acquainted. It is not, however, our present purpose to criticize Carlyle, but to gather from the new authorities, which have been published since the appearance of his work, a trustworthy account of one of the most thrilling episodes in all history, whether it be regarded in its incidents or its results. This episode, which is fortunately known in all its details, is far more impressive in its naked truth than it ever could be in the most imaginative fiction.

After the capture of the Royal family, the chief actors in the flight were sent for trial to Orleans, where they underwent a searching examination. A full account of this evidence was published with facsimiles by M. Bimbenet in 1843, and re-published by him in 1868. In 1866 M. Ancelon published 'La Vérité sur la fuite et l'arrestation de Louis XVI à Varennes, d'après des documents inédits.' This work contains portions of the diary of Madame de Tourzel who accompanied the Royal family. In the fifth volume of 'Revue des Questions Historiques,' (1868) M. Victor Fournel submitted the evidence available at that time to a searching analysis. In 1874 the Abbé Gabriel published at Verdun, Louis XVI, le Marquis de Bouillé et Varennes,' the best narrative of the occurrences which had appeared up to that date. Before this, the Procès verbaux' of the principal towns concerned in the matter, of Châlons, Ste. Ménehould, Clermont, and Varennes, had been published either separately, or as appendices to other histories. These accounts, written at the very time of the occurrences, are of the highest value as irrefragable evidence. Lastly, the Memoirs of Madame de Tourzel were published in extenso in 1883, while the diary and letters of Count Fersen, published in 1877, although dealing but little with the subject, throw unexpected gleams of light on some of its darkest places. Almost every particular of the event is now discoverable, and it only remains for us to combine these scattered lights into a true and consistent narrative.

The flight to Varennes was not merely a picturesque and thrilling episode in the French Revolution, it was also a great crisis in European history. Europe at this time was trembling at the approach of Jacobinism. The émigrés were beseeching every court, not only to deliver their Sovereign from the durance in which he was placed, but to stamp out a fire which endangered their own security. The Comte d'Artois had formed a plan by which France was to be invaded from several sides, from the south by Spain, from the east by Savoy, from the north by the Austrians. The centre of this combination

was