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Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2709, 2 March 1916, Page 7

, kir, A letter from Mr. Blackburne, which appears in your yesterday's issue, In reply to one from me, calls for some notice. As to. the facts he brings forward, they are interesting, and I am quite of his opinion as to our being altogether in the wrong in our dealings with China in those opium wars. °I venture, however, to think that he does not touch the point. .That is to say, where is the proof' that the present dreadful war is a punishment sent by Heaven for our sins? He tells us of some things our English Government did to China, and tells of some wars that followed, and adds, with reference to the Indian Mutiny ( "Can anyone doubt that this was a judgment on our nation?" Sir, I venture to think a good many persons are not at all confident on that poinfe We have heard of such occurrences as thirteen persons sitting down to dinner and of one of their number meeting his death before the year was out. Shall we say, "Can anyone doubt his fate, was due to there having been thirteen'at table?" Or, again, we have heard of a man upsetting the salt at the'table, of his going out, mounting his horse, Being thrown, and being brought home to die. Must we conclude that the disaster was duo to his upsetting the salt? Many people used to think so. Ido not wish to be sarcastic, but I submit, in ail earnestness, that the cases I name aro as much proofs as the matters adduced by Mr. Blackburne. There is alivays a tendency in the human mind, where one event follows another, to think of the first as the cause of the second. No doubt Mr. Blackburne is quite familiar. with the fallacy in logic known as "post hoc ergo propter hoc.® That is to say, the'tendency is so common-that the .words to describe it have become proverbial. If that gentleman has no better proof of tho horrors of the Indian Mutiny being a. punishment for the opium war than that tho one followed the other, I do not think his conclusion will commend itself to tho minds' of thoughtful men—l am, etc., RUSTICUS. Day's Bay, Maroh 1, 1916.