that this alleged ownership of the avenues of locomotion entails any corresponding duties in the way of repair, is not one which the Chinese mind, in its present stage of development, is capable of taking in at all. No one individual, even if he were disposed to repair a road (which would never happen), has the time or the material wherewith to do it, and for many persons to combine for this purpose would be totally out of the question, for each would be in deep anxiety lest he should do more of the work, and receive less of the benefit, than some other person. It would be very easy for each local magistrate to require the villages lying along the line of the main highways, or within a reasonable distance thereof, to keep them passable at almost all seasons, but it is doubtful whether this idea ever entered the mind of any Chinese official.
Not only do the Chinese feel no interest in that which belongs to the "public," but all such property, if unprotected and available, is a mark for theft. Paving-stones are carried off for private use, and square rods of the brick facing to city walls gradually disappear. A wall enclosing a foreign cemetery in one of the ports of China was carried away till not a brick remained, as soon as it was discovered that the place was in charge of no one in particular. It is not many years since an extraordinary sensation was caused in the Imperial palace in Peking by the discovery that extensive robberies had been committed on the copper roofs of some of the buildings within the forbidden city. It is a common observation among the Chinese that, within the Eighteen Provinces, there is no one so imposed upon and cheated as the Emperor.
The question is often raised whether the Chinese have any patriotism, and it is not a question which can be answered in a word. There is undoubtedly a strong national feeling, especially among the literary classes, and to this feeling much of the hostility exhibited to foreigners and their inventions is to
