The United States, always disclaiming and discouraging all practices of unnecessary dictation and intervention by one nation in the affairs or domestic administration of another, do hereby freely disclaim any intention or right to intervene in the domestic administration of China in regard to the construction of railroads, telegraphs, or other material internal improvements. On the other hand, His majesty and the Emperor of China reserves to himself the right to decide the time, and manner, and circumstances of introducing such improvements within his dominions. With this mutual understanding it is agreed by the contracting parties that if at any time hereafter His Imperial Majesty shall determine to construct or cause to be constructed works of the character mentioned within the Empire, and shall make application to the United States or any other Western power for facilities to carry out that policy, the United States will, in that case, designate and authorize suitable engineers to be employed by the Chinese Government, and will recommend to other nations an equal compliance with such application, the Chinese Government in that case protecting such engineers in their persons and property, and paying them a reasonable compensation for their service.

Article 8 looks entirely unnecessary at a first glance. Yet to China—and afterward to the world at large—it is perhaps the most important article in the whole treaty. It aims at restoring Chinese confidence in foreigners, and will go far toward accomplishing it. Until that is done, only the drippings (they amount to millions annually) of the vast fountains of Eastern wealth can be caught by the Western nations. I have before spoken of an arrogant class of foreigners in China who demand of the Government the building of railways and telegraphs, and who assume to regulate and give law to the customs of trade, almost in open defiance of the constituted authorities. Their menacing attitude and their threatening language frighten the Chinese, who know so well the resistless power of the Western nations. They look upon these things with suspicion. They want railways and telegraphs, but they fear to put these engines of power into the hands of strangers without a guaranty that they will not be used for their own oppression, possibly their destruction. Even as it is now, foreigners can go into the interior and commit wrongs upon the people with impunity, for their “extra territorial” privileges leave them answerable only to their own laws, administered upon their own domain or “concessions.” These “concessions” being far from the scene of the crime, it does not pay to send witnesses such distances, and so the wrong goes untried and unpunished. There are other obstacles to the immediate construction of the demanded internal improvements—among them the inherent prejudice of the untaught mass of the common people against innovation. It is sad to reflect that in this respect the ignorant Chinese are strangely like ourselves and other civilized peoples. Unfortunately, the very day that the first message passed over the first telegraph erected in China, a man died of cholera at one end of the line. The superstitious people cried out that the white man's mysterious machine had destroyed the “good luck” of the district. The telegraph had to be taken down, otherwise the exasperated people would have done it themselves. How precisely like our civilized, Christianized, enlightened selves these Chinese “men and brethren” are! The farmers of great Massachusetts turned out en masse, armed with axes, and resisted the laying of the first railroad track in that State. Thirty years ago, the concentrated wisdom of France, in National Assembly convened, gravely pronounced railroads a “foolish, unrealizable toy.” In Tuscany, the people rose in their might and swore there should be bloodshed before a railroad track should be laid on their soil. Their reason was exactly the same as that offered by the Chinese—they said it would destroy the “good luck” of the country. Let us be lenient with the little absurd peculiarities of the Chinese, for manifestly these people are our own blood relations. Let us look charitably now upon a certain very serious obstacle which lies in the way of their sudden acceptance of a great railroad system. Let us remember that China is one colossal graveyard—a mighty empire so knobbed all over with graves that the level spaces left are hardly more than alleys and avenues among the clustering death-mounds. Animals graze upon the grass-clad graves (for all things are made useful in China), and the spaces between are carefully and industriously cultivated. These graves are as precious as their own blood to the Chinese, for they worship their dead as ancestors. The first railroad that plows its pitiless way through these myriads of sacred hillocks will carry dismay and distress into countless households. The railways must be built, though. We respect the griefs of the poor country people, but still the railways must be built. They will tear heartstrings out by the roots, but they lead to the sources of unimaginable wealth, and they must be built. These old prejudices must and can be eradicated—just as they were in Massachusetts. With such encouragement from foreigners, and such guaranties of good will and just intent as Article 8 offers by simply agreeing that China may transact her own private business unmolested by meddlesome interference, the Emperor will cheerfully begin to open up his country with roads and telegraphs. It seems a simple thing and an easy one to accord to a man such manifest and indisputable rights, but beyond all doubt this assurance is what China craves most. Article 8, indorsed by all the Western powers, would unlock the riches of 400,000,000 of Chinese subjects to the world. Hence, to all parties concerned, it is perhaps, the important clause of the treaty. That China is anxious to build railways is shown in the fact that by the latest news from there, just officially enunciated to our State Department, it appears that the Viceroy of the three chief provinces of the Empire is about to begin a railroad from Suchow to Shanghai—80 miles—or, at least, has the project under serious consideration. The new treaty with America will tend to strengthen and encourage him in his design.

This is the broadest, most unselfish, and most catholic treaty yet framed by man, perhaps. There is nothing mean, or exacting, or unworthy in any of its provisions. It freely offers every privilege, every benefit, and every concession the most grasping suitor could demand, to a nation accustomed for generations to understand a “treaty” as being a contrivance whose province was to extort as many “advantages” as possible and give as few as possible in return. The only “advantage” to the United States perceptible on the face of the document, perhaps, is the advantage of having dealt justly and generously by a neighbor and done it in a cordial spirit. It is something to have done right—a species of sentiment seldom considered in treaties. In ratifying this treaty the Senate of the United States did themselves high credit, and all the more so that they did it with such alacrity and such heartiness. This is a treaty with no specific advantages noted in it; it is simply the first great step toward throwing all China open to the world, by showing toward her a spirit which invites her esteem and her confidence instead of her customary curses. There is nothing in it about China ceding to us the navigation of an ocean in return for the navigation of a creek; nor the monopoly of silk for a monopoly of beeswax; nor a whaling-ground in return for a sardine-fishery. Yet it is a treaty which is full of “advantages.” It is more full of them than is any other treaty, but they are meted out with an even hand to all—to China upon the one hand, and to the world upon the other. It looks to the opening up, in China, of a vast and lucrative commerce with the world, and of which America will have only her just share, nothing more. It looks to the lifting up of a mighty nation and conferring upon it the boon of a purer religion and of a higher and better civilization than it has known before. It is a treaty made in the broad interests of justice, enlightenment, and progress, and therefore it must stand. It bridges the Pacific, it breaks down the Tartar wall, it inspires with fresh young blood the energies of the most venerable of the nations. It acquires a grand field for capital, labor, research, enterprise—confers science, mechanics, social and political advancement, Christianity. Is it not enough?

Mark Twain.