194  THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE

closed  their  churches,  and  this  policy  was  continued  by  his
successor  Yungcheng  ;  in  the  Liangkiang  viceroyalty  alone
a  hundred  prosperous  churches  were  so  closed,  and  even  m
the  extreme  west,  in  Szechwan,  there  were  churches  no
a  few.  Upon  the  resumption  of  a  policy  of  toleration  the
pastors  returned  to  their  flocks,  and  the  nineteenth  centuiy
again  found  them  in  every  province  of  the  Empire.  The
edict  of  the  Emperor  Taokwang  in  1846  restored  to  the
missions  all  the  property  of  which  they  had  been  deprived
“  during  the  persecutions  ”  ;  and,  even  without  the  interpolated ­
  clause,  the  year  i860  found  the  Roman  Catholic
missions  owning  and  occupying,  by  right,  churches  and
houses  at  important  centres  in  all  parts  of  the  Empirejluuíjcb

  ax  important  centres  in  an  parts  ui  me
Apart  from  special  treaty  privilege,  they  have  had  a  right  o
,  ..  .  ....  ii  —  and

user,  dating  back  three  centuries  with  interruptions,  ai
uninterrupted,  except  by  massacre  and  arson,  foi  ovei
seventy  years  ;  this  right  was  confirmed  by  treaty  fortyseven
  years  ago,  and  upon  this  right,  sanctioned  by  accept
anee  for  that  period  and  strengthened  by  the  interpolate
clause,  is  based  the  further  right  to  acquire  new  property,
now  secured  by  the  later  commercial  treaties,  the  Brit  is

of  1902  and  the  American  of  1903.
What  is  permitted  to  one  nation  is  ipso  facto  granted  1#
China  to  all  nations,  the  privileges  of  one  Church  may  be
claimed  by  other  Churches,  and  what  is  conceded  to  the
Roman  Church  becomes  at  once  the  right  of  the  Protestant
Churches  of  Great  Britain  and  America.  The  earlier  Protestant ­
  missionaries  clung  to  the  ports  ;  but,  compelled  to
seek  their  hearers,  they  went  into  the  Chinese  cities  and  the
densely  populated  suburbs,  away  from  the  “  areas  reserved
for  foreign  residence,"  and  in  principle  as  much  in  "  the  interior
  ”  as  places  a  hundred  miles  away.  When  the  foreign
Legations  were  established  at  Peking,  the  Protestant  missionaries ­
  accompanied  them,  and  joined  the  Roman  Catholics
w  io  lad  been  there  for  three  centuries,  in  what  was  no
then  and  is  not  now  a  treaty  port  ;  and  in  the  sixties  and
seventies  they  too  spread  over  the  country,  wherever  they
could  find  men  to  listen  to  their  words.  But  besides  the