A Subscriber.
Answer.—The first American treaty with China was made at Wang-hia, a suburb of Macao, July 3, 1844, by the Hon. Caleb Cushing, Minister Plenipotentiary for the United States, and Commissioner Ki-ying, on the part of the Chinese. It was soon after the close of the Anglo-Chinese war known as the “Opium war,” because it grew out of the persistent smuggling of opium into China by the East India Company, and resulted in the agreement of the Chinese Government to admit opium as an article of legitimate commerce. It also resulted in the opening of five ports to English trade. Thus the forcing of the Chinese “at the cannon’s mouth” was done by the English, against a sincere desire of the former both to keep out opium and to have nothing more to do with Europeans that they could possibly help. The negotiations between Mr. Cushing and Ki-ying were amicable and highly creditable to both nations from first to last. Strange to say, to the utter astonishment of the English, Mr. Cushing, with the arguments of reason only, gained many important concessions not contained in the British treaty, besides all that was conceded in that instrument. The next treaty between the United States and China was signed at Tientsin, China, June 15, 1858. It contained a number of important additional concessions, all obtained without any violence or serious warlike demonstration on the part of our own government, but coincident with the English and French treaties extorted from the Chinese by the bloody war that had been waged for the two preceding years. Had not the English and French waged that war it is quite certain that neither they nor the Americans would have gained any new concessions, and they might have had to yield some of those granted in the old treaties. But having been forced to make concessions to their hated foes, it must be said that the Chinese Government yielded to Americans equal rights and privileges in a manner which showed plainly that they had no desire to withhold anything from a friendly power which they had granted to their enemies. The first article of the treaty recites, among other things: “There shall be, as there always has been, peace and friendship between the United States and the Ta-Tsing (Chinese) Empire, and between their people respectively. They shall not insult or oppress each other,” etc. The next, known as the Burlingame treaty, was negotiated at Washington and ratified by the United States Senate July 16, 1868, when Mr. Anson Burlingame was here at the head of the first Chinese Embassy to this country. It was negotiated on the highest plane of American statesmanship, and breathes throughout the spirit of true republicanism, the spirit of the highest Christian civilization. It is sad to think that it was too high for the majority of our politicians to stand on, and has been lowered and narrowed to accommodate them in the present treaty, negotiated in 1880, at the dictation of Denis Kearney and the Sinophobists of California.
CATTLE IN UNITED STATES.
Ellsworth, Kan.
Will you please tell how many cattle there were in the United States, according to the last census; also, the number for four years past?
Wm. Ashmead.
Answer.—The census gives the number of working oxen in the United States in 1880 as 993,841; the milch cows as 12,443,120; other cattle as 22,488,550; total, 35,925,511. The Statistician of the Agricultural Department gives the numbers for the past four years as shown below:
| Jan. 1, 1879— | |
| Milch cows | 11,826,400 |
| Oxen and other cattle | 21,408,100 |
| Jan. 1, 1880— | |
| Milch cows | 12,027,000 |
| Oxen and other cattle | 21,231,000 |
| Jan. 1, 1881— | |
| Milch cows | 12,368,653 |
| Oxen and other cattle | 20,937,702 |
| Jan. 1, 1882— | |
| Milch cows | 12,611,632 |
| Oxen and other cattle | 23,280,238 |