EXTRATERRITORIALITY  201
foreign  assessor  of  the  day  is  bound  to  exercise  an  oversight.
On  both  sides  it  is  felt,  but  not  generally  admitted,  that
there  is  some  reason  in  the  contention  of  the  other  ,  and  the
assessor  is  generally  passive  unless  there  are  evidences  of
extortion  and  flagrant  injustice,  while  the  magistrate  generally ­
  puts  himself  into  agreement  with  the  assessor  when  a
municipal  regulation  comes  into  the  case,  neither  being  too
desirous  of  crystallising  the  differences  and  precipitating  a
conflict.  Occasionally,  however,  when  the  incompatibility
of  view  cannot  be  compromised,  a  sharply  defined  issue  is
made.*
The  Chinese  official  view  is  unimpeachable  ;  appeal  is
made  to  the  letter  of  the  treaty  stipulations  granting  to
foreign  powers  the  right  of  oversight  in  cases  in  which
a  foreign  interest  is  involved,  and  only  in  those  cases.  The
foreign  official  view  is  equally  unimpeachable.  When  in
1853  the  Taiping  rebels  devastated  the  country  for  hundreds
of  miles  around  Shanghai,  many  thousands  of  refugees  found
there  under  the  foreign  flags  the  protection  to  life  denied
them  under  their  own  flag.  In  the  ten  years  which  elapsed
before  the  restoration  of  order  these  thousands  were  sheltered ­
  within  the  area  reserved  for  foreign  residence,  from
which  it  would  have  been  inhuman  barbarity  to  expel  them  ;
and  while  there  police  and  sanitary  measures  were  necessarily
adopted  to  protect  the  foreign  residents  from  them,  and
them  from  each  other.  The  impetus  thus  given,  Chinese
continued  to  flock  to  the  foreign  settlement  of  Shanghai,
within  the  limits  of  which  there  are  to-day  over  half  a  million.
There  has  thus  grown  up  a  foreign  interest  in  real  estate
valued  at  over  two  hundred  million  taels,  and  a  foreign  interest ­
  in  the  maintenance  of  order  and  the  administration
of  justice  among  the  half-million  Chinese  living  under  the
same  jurisdiction  as  the  foreign  residents  ;  and  the  foreign
official  view  is  that  foreign  supervision  is  necessary  over
foreign  and  Chinese  residents  alike  in  the  interest  of
foreigners  ;  and,  further,  that  two  independent  police  and
justiciary  administrations  cannot  be  allowed  to  function
*  See  Appendix  E.