thor of a recent and excellent work on China, and for a long time a resident of that country, inquired of one of the chief officers at Shanghai, how trade could be best promoted; he immediately and with great sternness answered, “Cease send

our people will have more money to purchase your manufactures."

upon the advances of other more powerful foreign nations, is to be expected; yet, in the history of foreign intercourse with China, the Tartar government has ever been foremost in its liberal policy, and has granted all that would be consistent with its own security in maintaining its holding us millions worth of opium, and then on the territories which its arms had conquered. It was so in the days of Kanghi, when the Jesuits made strong efforts to establish their missionary operations in the empire; and it was not until the conduct of these missionaries gave rise to the suspicion that they were plotting the subjugation of the empire, that they were driven from the territories of China. It was so in the early ages of the foreign trade, and nearly all the difficulties which have arisen in the progress of commercial intercourse have originated during the past half-century, during all which time the government has been unrelenting in its opposition to the opium traffic.

It was the testimony of Lord Napier, the first superintendent of British trade in China, that "the Chinese are most anxious to trade;" and on another occasion his lordship says, "It is a perfect axiom that the Chinese people are most anxious for our trade, from the Great Wall to the southern extremity of the empire." Why, then, is there not an extensive trade with this country, in European and American products? Why are the manufactures of Great Britain shut out from this trade, and why must the merchants of America cash their bills with specie in London instead of bartering in American products with China? Simply because the whole trade is absorbed in the opium traffic. For seventy years it has been interfering with the legitimate trade of this country; for seventy years it has been closing up the gates of this vast empire to the products of English and American industry; it has been absorbing the whole of the foreign trade of this country to fill the treasury of India, and to enrich a few dealers in opium; it has been exciting the fears and the enmity of the people against all foreigners; it has been draining the nation's resources, and rendering it impossible to purchase the legitimate merchandise of foreign countries. These important sentences are not bare assertions; they are truisms known well in China, and acknowledged by both natives and foreigners. Mr. Martin, au

It is a fact, that in proportion as the opium traffic has increased, that in foreign manufactures has decreased. Is it not strange that in a trade which amounts annually to $35,000,000 worth of products imported into China, but little more than two millions of dollars will cover the whole importation of British manufactures, and that this importation of legitimate products still continues on the de

crease.

It is well known that the Chinese, to the extent of their ability, are anxious to enjoy the elegance and comforts of foreign products. The grandee never exhibits such self-complacency as when, in summer, he can handle a foreign watch, and clothe his person in the fine cotton and linen products of other countries; and in winter his ambition is fully met when he can appear in a suit of foreign cloth. Every carpenter in the country would gladly exchange his rude implements for the handsome and delicate tools of the foreigner. Even the tailor is anxious to give up his needle, thimble, and scissors, for the superior articles which the foreigner can furnish him. Why, then, will not this trade yield profitable returns to British and American manufactures ? swer is obvious and undeniable. The manufacturer cannot compete with the opium smuggler. The resources of the country are preoccupied by the seductive drug of India. It is obvious that, since the only way in which a nation can buy the productions of other countries is with articles of its own industry, the constant drain of the productions of China in exchange for such an article as opium, must sooner or later cripple its means with which to trade at all; and this would have been the result in China before now, were not the waste partially supplied by the passing of the balance of the American trade through the hands of the Chinese into the hands of the opium dealers.

The an

It is evident, then, that but for this illicit traffic, in view of the vast resources

of the empire, now dissipated on a pernicious drug, and in view of the unquestionable desire that already exists in China for foreign products, not only would this great country afford a much more extensive market for these products, but the benefit of the trade thus established, instead of being monopolized, as the present contraband trade is, by a few British traders in China and India, would be generally spread over Great Britain and America, and prove a commerce worthy of the fostering care of both nations.

and has deprived three hundred millions of people of the ability to purchase lawful products, by draining the resources of the country and imbruting and destroying the people.

If it has thus wrought only injury to the general trade of Great Britain, and we are compelled to wonder at the apathy and indifference of the British public to the evils of this trade, what shall we say of America? How long will the merchants and people of America submit to be shut out from the vast trade which might be established with China? How long must American merchants be compelled to en

How long will the British public remain blind to these facts? How long will the people of England consent to be blind-gage in the unequal competition with folded by their government, and lulled to sleep and inaction by the precious opiates which come from India and China, and | from the House of Parliament, while that government is fostering, defending, and encouraging a trade which is working incalculable injuries to the morals, the health, the commerce, and the industry of a vast nation? The opium traffic is an undeniable injury to every other form of trade. It is an injury and a wrong to the commerce of every nation with China, not even excepting Great Britain itself. What, we ask, has the trade in opium done for England? Nothing. It has been of great advantage to India; it has paid an enormous revenue to the East India Company; it has saved British India from great financial embarrassments; it has sustained the armies, fought the battles, and cultivated the fields of India, while it has cursed and oppressed the wretched natives; it has enabled the government to pay to the proprietors of East India stock the high yearly dividend guaranteed to them by Parliament in the charter of 1834; it has enabled the Court of Directors very conveniently to draw their large remittances for home charges; it has given princely fortunes to a few British merchants, wrung from the wretchedness of millions of victimized opium smokers; but what has it done for England? Nothing. We say unhesitatingly, Nothing. It has been a wrong to the British public. It may have saved the government some embarrassment in legislating for India, but it has wronged the people. It has shut out London, and Liverpool, and Manchester, and Bristol, and Nottingham from the vast trade of China. It has supplanted the trade in British products and manufactures,

British opium dealers? We do not intend to insinuate that American merchants in China are wholly free from connection with the illicit traffic. We know to the contrary; and wish all the strictures we have made on the traffic, and all the evils we have adduced as arising from it, to fall with equal weight upon our countrymen, who, free from the temptation and the greater inducements presented to the English minds, still, for mere purposes of selfish gain, engage in the unlawful trade. Still the American trade in opium is insignificant compared with the gigantic traffic of the English; and we have reason to believe that most of the American houses engaged in it would gladly withdraw from it, if they could in any other way compete with the great English houses trading in opium. It is known to all that the traffic is a great injury to the American trade; that it shuts out from this vast empire nearly all lawful products; that while the American trade gives a balance in favor of the Chinese for several millions of dollars annually, which in other circumstances might be paid in American products, the merchants of our country must pay this balance in specie, by exchange between the United States and England. The American merchant can scarcely do otherwise than try to meet this balance against him by entering the lists with his British competitor in opium. The British dealer in opium has closed up the gates of the empire against lawful American products, and leaves the American the only alternative of carrying on his trade in teas, silks, &c., with specie, or of joining his guilty rival in the suicidal work of deluging the country with opium.

Thus the American name has become

L

BADGES-THEIR HISTORY AND

VARIETIES.

a silver chain. Unlike the device, which was assumed at pleasure, and merely expressed the peculiar design, sentiment, or

HE French knight, who in his metri- inclination of the person who bore it, the

66

authoritative historical record-has left us
such an interesting account of the sudden
and tragical downfall of the second Rich-
ard, one of the most unfortunate of Eng-
land's monarchs, relates that when the
king's only attendants were sorrows,
sadness, afflictions, mournings, weepings,
and lamentations, there was one Jenico, a
Gascon squire, who showed well the true
love he had for King Richard; for never
for threats, nor for any entreaty whatever,
would he put off the badge of his lord the
king, to wit, the hart, saying: 'Now God
forbid that for mortal man I should put
off the order of my rightful lord.' So that
at last it came to the knowledge of the
Duke of Lancaster, who caused him to be
shamefully and basely led to the castle of
Chester, where he expected day by day to
lose his head." The chronicler proceeds |
to state, that he could not ascertain wheth-
er Jenico was executed or not. It is
gratifying to us to know, however, that
the loyalty and fidelity of the Gascon did
not cost him his life. During the three
subsequent reigns, he can be occasionally
espied through the dim mists which envel-
op the by-ways and out-of-the-way places
of history. At one time, we read of him
defeating with great slaughter the Magyn-
nys, and other wild Irishry, in Ulster; at
another, in conjunction with the Bishop
of Down, making treaties with the redoubt-
able Donald of the Isles, and otherwise
comporting himself as an approved good
soldier and servant of the state. The
white hart was Richard's favorite cogni-
zance: he wore it in honor and remem-
brance of his mother, the beauteous Joan
Holand, the renowned Fair Maid of Kent.
The coat-armor of a royal or noble
family being considered of far too sacred a
character to be worn as a personal orna-
ment or distinction by a retainer of inferior
rank, unless a herald, the badge, cogni- And that Somerset replied :—
zance, or sign of company, as it was va-
riously termed, worn by all, from king or
baron down to the menial, served as a
recognition and distinction of party, of
feudal allegiance and dependency, to both
friends and foes. It was worn on the arm
or cap the minstrel was distinguished by
wearing his suspended round the neck by

ry, and was assumed in commemoration
of daring feats of arms, or family alliances,
as an emblem of territorial tenure and
possessions; and, in some instances, it
even indicated the name or title of the
chief by whom it was worn. Nor was it
worn on the person alone; the mansions
of the great, the ecclesiastical edifices they
founded or endowed, their tombs, furni-
ture, armor, vassals, all were marked by
the distinguishing badge. Yet, like the
device, it was not recognized by the her-
alds, though in course of time it has sur-
reptitiously crept into coat-armor as a her-
aldic charge.

The two most ancient badges in English history are the White and Red Roses of the rival houses of York and Lancaster. The white rose of York was the territorial distinction and tenure of the Castle and Honor of Clifford, a possession of that royal house. It is difficult to say why it is more particularly mentioned as their war-badge during the devastating civil war; probably it was selected, as such, from the other badges of the family, mere ly in contradistinction and opposition to the red rose of Lancaster. Shakspeare, in his historical dramas, closely follows the text of the old chroniclers; yet we have not been able to find, among any of those black-letter historians, any allusion to the famous scene in the Temple Garden; but a tradition of such an occurrence might have been extant in the great poet's day, nor does it seem at all improbable that Richard Plantagenet said :

|

"Since you are tongue-tied, and so loath to
speak,

In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts:
Let him that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honor of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me."

"Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me."

Theobald IV., King of Navarre, and Count of Champaigne and Brie, the famous troubador, poet, patron of poets, song-maker and song-singer, as the old writers term him, returning from the Holy