Ceylon and China

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

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    Ceylon

    THERE is in the science and process of colonization, as in every complex act of man, a secret philosophy - which is first suspected through results, and first expounded by experience. Here, almost more than anywhere else, nature works in fellowship with man. Yet all nature is not alike suited to the purposes of the early colonist; and all men are not alike qualified for giving effect to the hidden capacities of nature. One system of natural advantages is designed to have a long precedency of others; and one race of men is selected and sealed for an eternal preference in this function of colonizing to the very noblest of their brethren. As colonization advances, that ground becomes eligible for culture - that nature becomes fill of promise - which in earlier stages of the science was not so; because the dreadful solitude becomes continually narrower under the accelerated diffusion of men, which shortens the space of distance - under the strides of nautical science, which shortens the time of distance - and under the eternal discoveries of civilization, which combat with elementary nature. Again, in the other element of colonization, races of men become known for what they are; the furnace has tried them all; the truth has justified itself; and if, as at some great memorial review of armies, some solemn armilustrum, the colonizing nations, since 1500, were now by name called up - France would answer not at all; Portugal and Holland would stand apart with dejected eyes - dimly revealing the legend of Fuit Ilium; Spain would be seen sitting in the distance, and, like Judaea on the Roman coins, weeping under her palm-tree in the vast regions of the Orellana; whilst the British race would be heard upon every wind, coming on with mighty hurrahs, full of power and tumult, as some 'hail-stone chorus,' and crying aloud to the five hundred millions of Burmah, China, Japan, and the infinite islands, to make ready their paths before them. Already a ground-plan, or ichnography, has been laid down of the future colonial empire. In three centuries, already some outline has been sketched, rudely adumbrating the future settlement destined for the planet, some infant castrametation has been marked out for the future encampment of nations. Enough has been already done to show the course by which the tide is to flow; to prefigure for languages their proportions, and for nations to trace their distribution.

    In this movement, so far as it regards man, in this machinery for sifting and winnowing the merits of races, there is a system of marvellous means, which by its very simplicity masks and hides from us the wise profundity of its purpose. Oftentimes, in wandering amongst the inanimate world, the philosopher is disposed to say - this plant, this mineral, this fruit, is met with so often, not because it is better than others of the same family, perhaps it is worse, but because its resources for spreading and naturalizing itself, are, by accident, greater than theirs. That same analogy he finds repeated in the great drama of colonization. It is not, says he pensively to himself, the success which measures the merit. It is not that nature, or that providence has any final cause at work in disseminating these British children over every zone and climate of the earth. Oh, no! far from it! But it is the unfair advantages of these islanders, which carry them thus potently ahead. Is it so indeed? Philosopher, you are wrong. Philosopher, you are envious. You speak Spanish, philosopher, or even French. Those advantages, which you suppose to disturb the equities of the case - were they not products of British energy? Those twenty-five thousands of ships, whose graceful shadows darken the blue waters in every climate - did they build themselves? That myriad of acres, laid out in the watery cities of docks - were they sown by the rain, as the fungus or the daisy? Britain has advantages at this stage of the race, which makes the competition no longer equal - henceforwards it has become gloriously 'unfair' -but at starting we were all equal. Take this truth from us, philosopher; that in such contests the power constitutes the title; the man that has the ability to go ahead, is the man entitled to go ahead; and the nation that can win the place of leader, is the nation that ought to do so.

    This colonizing genius of the British people appears upon a grand scale in Australia, Canada, and, as we may remind the else forgetful world, in the United States of America; which States are our children, prosper by our blood, and have ascended to an overshadowing altitude from an infancy tended by ourselves. But on the fields of India it is, that our aptitudes for colonization have displayed themselves most illustriously, because they were strengthened by violent resistance. We found many kingdoms established, and to these we have given unity; and in process of doing so, by the necessities of the general welfare, or the mere instincts of self-preservation, we have transformed them to an empire, rising like an exhalation, of our own - a mighty monument of our own superior civilization.

    Ceylon, as a virtual dependency of India, ranks in the same category. There also we have prospered by resistance; there also we have succeeded memorably where other nations memorably failed. Of Ceylon, therefore, now rising annually into importance, let us now (on occasion of this splendid book, the work of one officially connected with the island, bound to it also by affectionate ties of services rendered, not less than of unmerited persecutions suffered) offer a brief, but rememberable account; of Ceylon, in itself, and of Ceylon in its relations, historial or economic, to ourselves.

    Mr. Bennett says of it, with more or less of doubt, three things —of which any one would be sufficient to detain a reader's attention; viz., 1. That it is the Taprobane of the Romans.; 2. That it was, or has been thought to be, the Paradise of Scripture; 3. That it is 'the most magnificent of the British insular possessions,' or in yet wider language, that it is an 'incomparable colony.' This last count in the pretensions of Ceylon is quite indisputable; Ceylon is in fact already, Ceylon is at this moment, a gorgeous jewel in the imperial crown; and yet, compared with what it may be, with what it will be, with what it ought to be, Ceylon is but that grain of mustard-seed which hereafter is destined to become the stately tree, where the fowls of heaven will lodge for generations. Great are the promises of Ceylon; great already her performances. Great are the possessions of Ceylon; far greater her reversions. Rich she is by her developments, richer by her endowments. She combines the luxury of the tropics with the sterner gifts of our own climate. She is hot; she is cold. She is civilized; she is barbarous. She has the resources of the rich; and she has the energies of the poor.

    But for Taprobane, but for Paradise, we have a word of dissent. Mr. Bennett is well aware that many men in many ages have protested against the possibility that Ceylon could realize all the conditions involved in the ancient Taprobane. Milton, it is true, with other excellent scholars, has insinuated his belief that probably Taprobane is Ceylon; when our Saviour in the wilderness sees the great vision of Roman power, expressed, inter alia, by high officers of the Republic flocking to, or from, the gates of Rome, and 'embassies from regions far remote,' crowding the Appian or the Emilian roads, some

    'From the Asian kings, and Parthian amongst these;

    From India and the olden Chersonese,

    And utmost Indian isle Taprobane;

    * * * * *

    Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;'

    it is probable, from the mention of this island Taprobane following so closely after that of the Malabar peninsula, that Milton held it to be the island of Ceylon, and not of Sumatra. In this he does but follow the stream of geographical critics; and, upon the whole, if any one island exclusively is to be received for the Roman Taprobane, doubt there can be none that Ceylon has the superior title. But, as we know that, in regions less remote from Rome, Mona did not always mean the Isle of Man, nor Ultima Thule uniformly the Isle of Skye or of St. Kilda - so it is pretty evident that features belonging to Sumatra, and probably to other oriental islands, blended (through mutual misconceptions of the parties, questioned and questioning) into one semi-fabulous object not entirely realized in any locality whatever. The case is precisely as if Cosmas Indicopleustes, visiting Scotland in the sixth century should have placed the scene of any adventure in a town distant six miles from Glasgow and eight miles from Edinburgh. These we know to be irreconcilable conditions, such as cannot meet in any town whatever, past or present. But in such a case many circumstances might, notwithstanding, combine to throw a current of very strong suspicion upon Hamilton as the town concerned. On the same principle, it is easy to see that most of those Romans who spoke of Taprobane had Ceylon in their eye. But that all had not, and of those who really had, that some indicated by their facts very different islands, whilst designing to indicate Ceylon, is undeniable; since, amongst other imaginary characteristics of Taprobane, they make it extend considerably to the south of the line. Now, with respect to Ceylon, this is notoriously false; that island lies entirely in the northern tropic, and does not come within five (hardly more than six) degrees of the equator. Plain it is, therefore, that Taprobane, if construed very strictly, is an ens rationis made up by fanciful composition from various sources, and much like our own medieval conceit of Prester John's country, or the fancies (which have but recently vanished) of the African river Niger, and the golden city Tombuctoo. These were lies: and yet also, in a limited sense, they were truths. They were expansions, often fabulous and impossible, engrafted upon some basis of fact by the credulity of the traveller, or subsequently by misconception of the scholar. For instance, as to Tombuctoo, Leo Africanus had authorized men to believe in some vast African city, central to that great continent, and a focus to some mighty system of civilization. Others, improving on that chimera, asserted, that this glorious city represented an inheritance derived from ancient Carthage; here, it was said, survived the arts and arms of that injured state; hither across Bilidulgerid, had the children of Phoenicia fled from the wrath of Rome; and the mighty phantom of him whose uplifted truncheon had pointed its path to the. carnage of Cannae, was still the tutelary genius watching over a vast posterity worthy of himself. Here was a wilderness of lies; yet, after all, the lies were but so many voluminousfascice, enveloping the mummy of an original truth. Mungo Park came, and the city of Tombuctoo was shown to be a real existence. Seeing was believing. And yet, if, before the time of Park, you had avowed a belief in Tombuctoo, you would have made yourself an indorser of that huge forgery which had so long circulated through the forum of Europe, and, in fact, a party to the total fraud.

    We have thought it right to direct the reader's eye upon this correction of the common problem as to this or that place - Ceylon for example - answering to this or that classical name - because, in fact, the problem is more subtle than it appears to be. If you are asked whether you believe in the unicorn, undoubtedly you are within the letter of the truth in replying that you do; for there are several varieties of large animals which carry a single horn in the forehead. But, virtually, by such an answer you would countenance a falsehood or a doubtful legend, since you are well aware that, in the idea of an unicorn, your questioner included the whole traditionary character of the unicorn, as an antagonist and emulator of the lion, &c.; under which fanciful description, this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon, and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, but by both at once; it is, and it is not. Taprobane includes much of what belongs to Ceylon, but also more, and also less. And this case is a type of many others standing in the same logical circumstances.

    But, secondly, as to Ceylon being the local representative of Paradise, we may say, as the courteous Frenchman did to Dr. Moore upon the Doctor's apologetically remarking of a word which he had used, that he feared it was not good French - ' Non, Monsieur, il ne l’est pas; mais il mérite bien de l'être.' Certainly, if Ceylon was not, at least it ought to have been, Paradise; for at this day there is no place on earth which better supports the paradisiacal character (always excepting Lapland, as an Upsal professor observes, and Wapping, as an old seaman reminds us) than this Pandora of islands, which the Hindoos call Lanka, and Europe calls Ceylon. We style it the 'Pandora' of islands, because, as all the gods of the heathen clubbed their powers in creating that ideal woman —clothing her with perfections, and each separate deity subscribing to her dowery some separate gift - not less conspicuous, and not less comprehensive, has been the bounty of Providence, running through the whole diapason of possibilities, to this all-gorgeous island. Whatsoever it is that God has given by separate allotment and partition to other sections of the planet, all this he has given cumulatively and redundantly to Ceylon. Was she therefore happy, was Ceylon happier than other regions, through this hyper-tropical munificence of her Creator? No, she was not; and the reason was, because idolatrous darkness had planted curses where Heaven had planted blessings; because the insanity of man had defeated the graciousness of God. But another era is dawning for Ceylon; God will now countersign his other blessings, and ripen his possibilities into great harvests of realization, by superadding the one blessing of a dove-like religion; light is thickening apace, the horrid altars of Moloch are growing dim; woman will no more consent to forego her birthright as the daughter of God; man will cease to be the tiger-cat that, in the noblest chamber of Ceylon, he has ever been; and with the new hopes that will now blossom amidst the ancient beauties of this lovely island, Ceylon will but too deeply fulfil the functions of a paradise. Too subtly she will lay fascinations upon man; and it will need all the anguish of disease, and the stings of death, to unloose the ties which, in coming ages, must bind the hearts of her children to this Eden of the terraqueous globe.

    Yet if, apart from all bravuras of rhetoric, Mr. Bennett seriously presses the question regarding Paradise as a question in geography, we are sorry that we must vote against Ceylon, for the reason that heretofore we have pledged ourselves in print to vote in favor of Cashmeer; which beautiful vale, by the way, is omitted in Mr. Bennett's list of the candidates for that distinction already entered upon the roll. Supposing the Paradise of Scripture to have had a local settlement upon our earth, and not in some extra-terrene orb even in that case we cannot imagine that anything could now survive, even so much as an angle or a curve, of its original outline. All rivers have altered their channels; many are altering them for ever. Longitude and latitude might be assigned, at the most, if even those are not substantially defeated by the Miltonic' pushing askance,' of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. But, finally, we remark, that whereas human nature has ever been prone to the superstition of local consecrations and personal idolatries, by means of memorial relies, apparently it is the usage of God to hallow such remembrances by removing, abolishing, and confounding all traces of their punctual identities. That raises them to shadowy powers. By that process such remembrances pass from the state of base sensual signs, ministering only to a sensual servitude, into the state of great ideas - mysterious as spirituality is mysterious, and permanent as truth is permanent. Thus it is, and therefore it is, that Paradise has vanished; Luz is gone; Jacob's ladder is found only as an apparition in the clouds; the true cross survives no more among the Roman Catholics than the true ark is mouldering upon Ararat; no scholar can lay his hand upon Gethsemane; and for the grave of Moses the son of Amram, mightiest of law-givers, though it is somewhere near Mount Nebo, and in a valley of Moab, yet eye has not been suffered to behold it, and 'no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.'

    If, however, as to Paradise in connection with Ceylon we are forced to say 'No,' if as to Taprobane in connection with Ceylon we say both 'Yes' and 'No,' - not the less we come back with a reiterated 'Yes, yes, yes,' upon Ceylon as the crest and eagle's plume of the Indies, as the priceless pearl, the ruby without a flaw, and (once again we say it) as the Pandora of oriental islands.

    Yet ends so glorious imply means of corresponding power; and advantages so comprehensive cannot be sustained unless by a machinery proportionately elaborate. Part of this machinery lies in the miraculous climate of Ceylon. Climate? She has all climates. Like some rare human favorite of nature, scattered at intervals along the line of a thousand years, who has been gifted so variously as to seem

    'Not one, but all mankind's epitome.'

    Ceylon, in order that she might become capable of products without end, has been made an abstract of the whole earth, and fitted up as a panorganon for modulating through the whole diatonic scale of climates. This is accomplished in part by her mountains. No island has mountains so high. It was the hideous oversight of a famous infidel in the last century, that, in supposing an Eastern prince of necessity to deny frost and ice as things impossible to his experience, he betrayed too palpably his own non-acquaintance with the grand economies of nature. To make acquaintance with cold, and the products of cold, obviously he fancied it requisite to travel northwards; to taste of polar power, he supposed it indispensable to have advanced towards the pole. Narrow was the knowledge in those days, when a master in Israel might have leave to err thus grossly. Whereas, at present, few are the people amongst those not openly making profession of illiteracy, who do not know that a sultan of the tropics - ay, though his throne were screwed down by exquisite geometry to the very centre of the equator - might as surely become familiar with winter by ascending three miles in altitude, as by travelling three thousand horizontally. In that way of ascent, it is that Ceylon has her regions of winter and her Arctic districts. She has her Alps, and she has her alpine tracts for supporting human life and useful vegetation. Adam's Peak, which of itself is more than seven thousand feet high (and by repute the highest range within her shores,) has been found to rank only fifth in the mountain scale. The highest is a thousand feet higher. The maritime district, which runs round the island for a course of nine hundred miles, fanned by the sea-breezes, makes, with these varying elevations, a vast cycle of secondary combinations for altering the temperature and for adapting the weather. The central region has a separate climate of its own. And an inner belt of country, neither central nor maritime, which from the sea belt is regarded as inland, but from the centre is regarded as maritime, composes another chamber of climates; whilst these again, each individually within its class, are modified into minor varieties by local circumstances as to wind, by local accidents of position, and by shifting stages of altitude.

    With all this compass of power, however (obtained from its hills and its varying scale of hills), Ceylon has not much of waste ground, in the sense of being. irreclaimable- for of waste ground, in the sense of being unoccupied, she has an infinity. What are the dimensions of Ceylon? Of all islands in this world which we know, in respect of size it most resembles Ireland, being about one-sixth part less. But, for a particular reason, we choose to compare it with Scotland, which is very little different in dimensions from Ireland, having (by some hundred or two of square miles) a trifling advantage in extent. Now, say that Scotland contains a trifle more than thirty thousand square miles, the relation of Ceylon to Scotland will become apparent when we mention that this Indian island contains about twenty-four thousand five hundred of similar square miles. Twenty-four and a half to thirty -or forty-nine to sixty —there lies the ratio of Ceylon to Scotland. The ratio in population is not less easily remembered: Scotland has now (October 1843) hard upon three millions of people: Ceylon, by a late census, has just three half millions. But strange indeed, where everything seems strange, is the arrangement of this Ceylonese territory and people. Take a peach: what you call the flesh of the peach, the substance which you eat, is massed orbicularly around a central stone —often as large as a pretty large strawberry. Now in Ceylon, the central district, answvering to this peach-stone, constitutes a fierce little Liliputian kingdom, quite independent, through many centuries, of the lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds it, and perfectly distinct by the character and origin of its population. The peach-stone is called Kandy, and the people Kandyans. These are a desperate variety of the tiger-man, agile and fierce as he is, though smooth, insinuating, and full of subtlety as a snake, even to the moment of crouching for their last fatal spring. On the other hand, the people of the engirdling zone are called the Cinghalese, spelled according to the fancy of us authors and compositors, who legislate for the spelling of the British empire, with an S or a C. As to moral virtue, in the sense of integrity or fixed principle, there is not much lost upon either race: in that point they are'much of a muchness.' They are also both respectable for their attainments in cowardice; but with this difference, that the Cinghalese are soft, inert, passive cowards; but your Kandyan is a ferocious little bloody coward, full of mischief as a monkey, grinning with desperation, laughing like a hyena, or chattering if you vex him, and never to be trusted for a moment. The reader now understands why we described the Ceylonese man as a tiger-cat in his noblest division: for, after all, these dangerous gentlemen in the peach-stone are a more promising race than the silky and nerveless population surrounding them. You can strike no fire out of the Cinghalese: but the Kandyans show fight continually, and would even persist in fighting, if there were in this world no gunpowder (which exceedingly they dislike), and if their allowance of arrack were greater.

    Surely this is the very strangest spectacle exhibited on earth: a kingdom within a kingdom, an imperium in imperio, settled and maintaining itself for centuries in defiance of all that Pagan, that Mahommedan, that Jew, or that Christian, could do. The reader will remember the case of the British envoy to Geneva, who being ordered in great wrath to 'quit the territories of the republic in twenty-four hours,' replied, 'By all means: in ten minutes.' And here was a little bantam kingdom, not much bigger than the irate republic, having its separate sultan, with full-mounted establishment of peacock's feathers, white elephants, Moorish eunuchs, armies, cymbals, dulcimers, and all kinds of music, tormentors, and executioners; whilst his majesty crowed defiance across the ocean to all other kings, rajahs, soldans, kesars,' flowery' emperors, and' golden-feet' east or west, be the same more or less; and really with some reason. For though it certainly is amusing to hear of a kingdom no bigger than Stirlingshire with the half of Perthshire, standing erect and maintaining perpetual war with all the rest of Scotland, a little nucleus of pugnacity, sixty miles by twenty-four, rather more than a match for the lazy lubber nine hundred miles long, that dandled it in its arms; yet as the trick was done, we cease to find it ridiculous.

    For the trick was done: and that reminds us to give the history of Ceylon in its two sections, which will not prove much longer than the history of Tom Thumb. Precisely three centuries before Waterloo, viz., Anno Domini 1515, a Portuguese admiral hoisted his sove. reign's flag, and formed a durable settlement at Columbo, which was, and is, considered the maritime capital of the island. Very nearly halfway on the interval of time between this event and Waterloo, viz., in 1656, (ante-penultimate year of Cromwell,) the Portuguese nation made over, by treaty, this settlement to the Dutch; which, of itself, seems to mark that the sun of the former people was now declining to the west. In 1796, now forty-seven years ago, it arose out of the French revolutionary war - so disastrous for Holland - that the Dutch surrendered it perforce to the British, who are not very likely to surrender it in their turn on any terms, or at any gentleman's request. Up to this time, when Ceylon passed under our flag, it is to be observed that no progress whatever, not the least, had been made in mastering the peach-stone, that old central nuisance of the island. The little monster still crowed, and flapped his wings on his dunghill, as had been his custom always in the afternoon for certain centuries. But nothing on earth is immortal: even mighty bantams must have their decline and fall; and omens began to show out that soon there would be a dust with the new master at Columbo. Seven years after our debut on that stage, the dust began. By the way, it is perhaps an impertinence to remark it, but there certainly is a sympathy between the motions of the Kandyan potentate and our European enemy Napoleon. Both pitched into us in 1803, and we pitched into both in 1815. That we call a coincidence. How the row began was thus: some incomprehensible intrigues had been proceeding for a time between the British governor or commandant, or whatever he might be, and the Kandyan prime minister. This minister, who was a noticeable man with large gray eyes, was called Pilamé Tilawé. We write his name after Mr. Bennett: but it is quite useless to study the pronunciation of it, seeing that he was hanged int 1812 (the year of Moscow)- a fact for which we are thankful as often as we think of it. Pil. (surely Tilawé cannot be pronounced Garlic?) managed to get the king's head into Chancery, and then fibbed him. Why Major General M'Dowall (then commanding our forces) should collude with Pil. Garlic, is past our understanding. But so it was. Pil. said that a certain prince, collaterally connected with the royal house, by name Mootto Sawmeé, who had fled to our protection, was, or might be thought to be, the lawful king. Upon which the British general proclaimed him. What followed is too shocking to dwell upon. Scarcely had Mootto, apparently a good creature, been inaugurated, when Pil. proposed his deposition, to which General M'Dowall consented, and his own (Pil.'s) elevation to the throne. It is like a dream to say, that this also was agreed to. King Pil. the First, and, God be thanked! the last, was raised to the — musnud, we suppose, or whatsoever they call it in Pil.'s jargon. So far there was little but farce; now comes the tragedy. A certain Major Davie was placed with a very inconsiderable garrison in the capital of the Kandyan empire, called by name Kandy. This officer, whom Mr. Bennett somewhere calls the 'gallant,' capitulated upon terms, and had the inconceivable folly to imagine that a base Kandyan chief would think himself bound by these terms. One of them was — that he (Major Davie) and his troops should be allowed to retreat unmolested upon Columbo. Accordingly, fully armed and accoutred, the British troops began their march. At Wattépolowa a proposal was made to Major Davie, that Mootto Sawmé (our protégé and instrument) should be delivered up to the Kandyan tiger. Oh! sorrow for the British name! he was delivered. Soon after a second proposal came, that the British soldiers should deliver up their arms, and should march back to Kandy. It makes an Englishman shiver with indignation to hear that even this demand was complied with. Let us pause for one moment. Wherefore is it, that in all similar cases, in this Ceylonese case, in Major Baillie's Mysore case, in the Cabool case, uniformly the privates are wiser than their officers? In a case of delicacy or doubtful policy, certainly the officers would have been the party best able to solve the difficulties.; but in a case of elementary danger, where manners disappear, and great passions come upon the stage, strange it is that poor men, laboring men, men without education, always judge more truly of the crisis than men of high refinement. But this was seen by Wordsworth —thus spoke he, thirty-six years ago, of Germany, contrasted with the Tyrol:-

    'Her haughty schools

    Shall blush; and may not we with sorrow say

    A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules,

    Among the herdsmen of the Alps have wrought

    More for mankind at this unhappy day,

    Than all the pride of intellect and thought.'

    The regiment chiefly concerned was the 19th (for which regiment the word Wattépolowa, the scene of their martyrdom, became afterwards a memorial war-cry). Still, to this hour, it forces tears of wrath into our eyes when we read the recital of the case. A dozen years ago we first read it in a very interesting book, published by the late Mr. Blackwood - the Life of Alexander Alexander. This Alexander was not personally present at the bloody catastrophe; but he was in Ceylon at the time, and knew the one sole fugitive from that fatal day. The soldiers of the 19th, not even in that hour of horror, forgot their discipline, or their duty, or their respectful attachment to their officers. When they were ordered to ground their arms (oh, base idiot that could issue such an order!) they remonstrated most earnestly, but most respectfully. Major Davie, agitated and distracted by the scene, himself recalled the order. The men resumed their arms. Alas! again the fatal order was issued; again it was recalled; but finally, it was issued peremptorily. The men sorrowfully obeyed. We hurry to the odious conclusion. In parties of twos and of threes, our brave countrymen were called out by the horrid Kandyan tiger-cats. Disarmed by the frenzy of their moonstruck commander, what resistance could they make? One after one the parties called out to suffer, were decapitated by the executioner. The officers, who had refused to give up their pistols, finding what was going on, blew out their brains with their own hands, now too bitterly feeling how much wiser had been the poor privates than themselves. At length there was stillness on the field. Night had come on. All were gone

    —'And darkness was the buryer of the dead.'

    The reader may recollect a most picturesque murder near Manchester, about thirteen or fourteen years ago, perpetrated by two brothers named M'Kean, where a servant woman, whose throat had been effectually cut, rose up, after an interval, from the ground at a most critical moment (so critical, that, by that act, and at that second of time, she drew off the murderer's hand from the throat of a second victim), staggered, in her delirium, to the door of a room where sometimes a club had been held, doubtless under some idea of obtaining aid, and at the door, after walking some fifty feet, dropped down dead. Not less astonishing was the resurrection, as it might be called, of an English corporal, cut, mangled, re-mangled, and left without sign of life. Suddenly he rose up, stiff and gory; dying and delirious, as he felt himself, with misery from exhaustion and wounds, he swam rivers, threaded enemies, and moving day and night, came suddenly upon an army of Kandyans; here he prepared himself with pleasure for the death that now seemed inevitable, when, by a fortunate accident, for want of a fitter man, he was selected as an ambassador to the English officer commanding a Kandyan garrison and thus once more escaped miraculously.

    Sometimes, when we are thinking over the great scenes of tragedy through which Europe passed from 1805 to 1815, suddenly, from the bosom of utter darkness, a blaze of light arises; a curtain is drawn up; a saloon is revealed. We see a man sitting there alone, in an attitude of alarm and expectation. What does he expect? What is it that he fears? He is listening for the chariot-wheels of a fugitive army. At intervals he raises his head - and we know him now for the Abbé de Pradt - the place, Warsaw - the time, early in December, 1812. All at once the rushing of cavalry is heard; the door is thrown open; a stranger enters. We see, as in Cornelius Agrippa's mirror, his haggard features; it is a momentary king, having the sign of a felon's death, written secretly on his brow; it is Murat; he raises his hands with a gesture of horror as he advances to M. l'Abbe. We hear his words - 'L'Abbé, all is lost!'

    Even so, when the English soldier, reeling fiom his anguish and weariness, was admitted into the beleaguered fortress, his first words, more homely in expression than Murat's, were to the same dreadful purpose: 'Your honor,' he said,' all is dished;' and this being uttered by way of prologue, he then delivered himself of the message with which he had been charged, and that was a challenge from the Kandyan general to come out and fight without aid from his artillery. The dismal report was just in time; darkness was then coming on. The English officer spiked his guns; and, with his garrison, fled by night from a fort in which else he would have perished by starvation or by storm, had Kandyan forces been equal to such an effort. This corporal was, strictly speaking, the only man who escaped, one or two other survivors having been reserved as captives, for some special reasons. Of this captive party was Major Davie, the commander, whom Mr. Bennett salutes by the title of 'gallant,' and regrets that 'the strong arm of death' had intercepted his apology.

    He could have made no apology. Plea or palliation he had none. To have polluted the British honor in treacherously yielding up to murder (and absolutely for nothing in return) a prince whom we ourselves had seduced into rebellion - to have forced his men and officers into laying down their arms, and suing for the mercy of wretches the most perfidious on earth; these were acts as to which atonement or explanation was hopeless for him, forgiveness impossible for England. So this man is to be called 'the gallant' - is he? We will thank Mr. Bennett to tell us who was that officer subsequently seen walking about in Ceylon, no matter whether in Western Columbo, or in Eastern Trincomalé, long enough for reaping his dishonor, though, by accident, not for a court-martial? Behold, what a curse rests in this British island upon those men, who, when the clock of honor has sounded the hour for their departure, cannot turn their dying eyes nobly to the land of their nativity - stretch out their hands to the glorious island in farewell homage, and say with military pride - as even the poor gladiators (who were but slaves) said to Caesar, when they passed his chair to their death - 'Morituri te salutamus!' This man, and Mr. Bennett knows it, because he was incrusted with the leprosy of cowardice, and because upon him lay the blood of those to whom he should have been in loco parentis, made a solitude wherever he appeared; men ran from him as from an incarnation of pestilence; and between him and free intercourse with his countrymen, from the hour of his dishonor in the field to the hour of his death, there flowed a river of separation —there were stretched lines of interdict heavier than ever Pope ordained — there brooded a schism like that of death, a silence like that of the grave; making known for ever the deep damnation of the infamy, which on this earth settles upon the troubled resting-place of him who,. through cowardice, has shrunk away from his duty, and, on the day of trial, has broken the bond which bound him to his country.

    Surely there needed no arrear of sorrow to consummate this disaster. Yet two aggravations there were, which afterwards transpired, irritating the British soldiers to madness. One was soon reported, viz., that one hundred and twenty sick or wounded men, lying in an hospital, had been massacred without an motive by the children of hell with whom we were contending. The other was not discovered until 1815. Then first it became known, that in the whole stores of the Kandyan government (a fortiori then in the particular section of the Kandyan forces which we faced), there had not been more gunpowder remaining at the hour of Major Davie's infamous capitulation than seven hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois; other munitions of war - having been in the same state of bankruptcy. Five minutes more of resistance, one inspiration of English pluck, would have placed the Kandyan army in our power - would have saved the honor of the country - would have redeemed our noble soldiers - and to Major Davie, would have made the total difference between lying in a traitor's grave, and lying in Westminster Abbey.

    Was there. no vengeance, no retribution for these things? Vengeance there was, but by accident. Retribution there was, but partial and remote. Infamous it was for the English government at Columbo, as Mr. Bennett insinuates, that having a large fund disposable annually for secret service, between 1796 and 1803, such a rupture could have happened and have found us unprepared. Equally infamous it was, that summary chastisement was not inflicted upon the perfidious court of Kandy. What real power it had, when unaided by villany amongst themselves, was shown in 1804; in the course of which year, one brave officer, Lieutenant Johnstone of the 19th, with no more than one hundred and fifty men, including officers, marched right through the country, in the teeth of all opposition from the king, and resolutely took Kandy in his route. However, for the present, without a shadow of a reason, since all reasons ran in the other direction, we ate our leek in silence; once again, but now for the last time, the bloody little bantam crowed defiance from his dunghill, and tore the British flag with his spurs. What caused his ruin at last, was literally the profundity of our own British humiliation; had that been less, had it not been for the natural reaction of that spectacle, equally hateful and incredible, upon a barbarian chief, as ignorant as he was fiendish, he would have returned a civil answer to our subsequent remonstrances. In that case, our government would have been conciliated; and the monster's son, who yet lives in Malabar, would now be reigning in his stead. But Diis aliter visum est - earth was weary of this Kandyan nuisance; and the infatuation, which precipitated its doom, took the following shape. In 1814, certain traders, ten in number, not British but Cinghalese, and therefore British subjects, entitled to British protection,. were wantonly molested in their peaceable occupations by this Kandyan king. Three of these traders one day returned to our frontier, wearing upon necklaces, inextricably attached to their throats, their own ears, noses, and other parts of their own persons, torn away by the pincers of the Kandyan executioners. The seven others had sunk under their sufferings. Observe that there had been no charge or imputation against these men, more or less: stet pro ratione voluntas. This was too much even for our all-suffering English administration. They sent off a kind of expostulation, which amounted to this - 'How now, my good sir? What are you up to?' Fortunately for his miserable subjects (and, as this case showed, by possibility for many who were not such), the vain-glorious animal returned no answer; not because he found any diplomatic difficulty to surmount, but in mere self-glorification and in pure disdain of us. What a commentary was that upon our unspeakable folly up to that hour!

    We are anxious that the reader should go along with the short remainder of this story, because it bears strongly upon the true moral of our Eastern policy, of which, hereafter, we shall attempt to unfold the casuistry, in a way that will be little agreeable to the calumniators of Clive and Hastings. We do not intend that these men shall have it all their own way in times to come. Our Eastern rulers have erred always, and erred deeply, by doing too little rather than too much. They have been too long-suffering; and have tolerated many nuisances, and many miscreants, when their duty was - when their power was - to have destroyed them for ever. And the capital fault of the East India Company - that greatest benefactor for the East that ever yet has arisen - has been in not publishing to the world the grounds and details of their policy. Let this one chapter in that policy, this Kandyan chapter, proclaim how great must have been the evils from which our 'usurpations' (as they are called) have liberated the earth. For let no man dwell on the rarity or on the limited sphere, of such atrocities, even in Eastern despotisms. If the act be rare, is not the anxiety eternal? If the personal suffering be transitory, is not the outrage upon human sensibilities, upon the majesty of human nature, upon the possibilities of light, order, commerce, civilization, of a duration and a compass to make the total difference between man viler than the brutes, and man a little lower than the angels?

    It happened that the first noble, or 'Adikar,' of the Kandyan king, being charged with treason at this time, had fled to our protection. That was enough. Vengeance on him, in his proper person, had become impossible; and the following was the vicarious vengeance adopted by God's vicegerent upon earth, whose pastime it had long been to study the ingenuities of malice, and the possible refinements in the arts of tormenting. Here follows the published report on this one case: - ‘The ferocious miscreant determined to be fully revenged, and immediately sentenced the Adikar's wife and children, together with his brother and the brother's wife, to death after the following fashion. The children were ordered to be decapitated before their mother's face, and their heads to be pounded in a rice-mortar by their mother's hands; which, to save herself from a diabolical torture and exposure,' (concealments are here properly practised in the report, for the sake of mere human decency),'she submitted to attempt. The eldest boy shrunk (shrank) from the dread ordeal, and clung to his agonized parent for safety; but his younger brother stepped forward, and encouraged him to submit to his fate, placing himself before the executioner by way of setting an example. The last of the children to be beheaded was an infant at the breast, from which it was forcibly torn away, and its mother's milk was dripping from its innocent mouth as it was put into the hands of the grim executioner.' Finally, the Adikar's brother was executed, having no connection (so much as alleged) with his brother's flight: and then the two sisters-in-law, having stones attached to their feet, were thrown into a tank. These be thy gods, O Egypt! such are the processes of Kandyan law, such is its horrid religion, and such the morality which it generates! And let it not be said, these were the excesses of a tyrant. Man does not brutalize, by possibility, in pure insulation. He gives, and he receives. It is by sympathy, by the contagion of example, by reverberation of feelings, that every man's heart is moulded. A prince, to have been such as this monster, must have been bred amongst a cruel people: a cruel people, as by other experience we know them to be, naturally produce an inhuman prince; and such a prince reproduces his own corruptors.

    Vengeance, however, was now at hand: a better and more martial governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, was in the field since 1812. On finding that no answer was forthcoming, he marched with all his forces. But again these were inadequate to the service; and once again, as in 1803, we were on the brink of being sacrificed to the very lunacies of retrenchment. By a mere god-send, more troops happened to arrive from the Indian continent. We marched in triumphal ease to the capital city of Kandy. The wicked prince fled: Major Kelly pursued him - to pursue was to undertake - to overtake was to conquer. Thirty-seven ladies of his zenana, and his mother, were captured elsewhere: and finally the whole kingdom capitulated by a solemn act, in which we secured to it what we had no true liberty to secure, viz., the inviolability of their horrid idolatries. Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's - but this was not Caesar's. Whether in some other concessions, whether in volunteering certain civil privileges of which the conquered had never dreamed, and which, for many a long year, they will not understand, our policy were right or wrong - may admit of much debate. Oftentimes, but not always, it is wise and long-sighted policy to presume in nations higher qualities than they have, and developments beyond what really exist. But as to religion, there can be no doubt, and no debate at all. To exterminate their filthy and bloody abominations of creed and of ritual practice, is the first step to any serious improvement. of the Kandyan people: it is the conditio sine qua non of all regeneration for this demoralized race. And what we ought to have promised, all that in mere civil equity we had the right to promise, was - that we would tolerate such follies, would make no war upon such superstitions as should not be openly immoral. One word more than this covenant was equally beyond the powers of one party to that covenant, and the highest interests of all parties.

    Philosophically speaking, this great revolution may not close perhaps for centuries: historically, it closed about the opening of the Hundred Days in the annus mirabilis of Waterloo. On the 13th of February, 1815, Kandy, the town, was occupied by the British troops, never again to be resigned. In March, followed the solemn treaty by which all parties assumed their constitutional stations. In April, occurred the ceremonial part of the revolution, its public notification and celebration, by means of a grand processional entry into the capital, stretching for upwards of a mile; and in January, 1816, the late king, now formally deposed, 'a stout, good-looking Malabar, with a peculiarly keen and roving eye, and a restlessness of manner, marking unbridled passions,' was conveyed in the governor's carriage to the jetty at Trincomalee, from which port H. M. S. Mexico conveyed him to the Indian continent: he was there confined in the fortress of Velore, famous for the bloody mutiny amongst the Company's sepoy troops, so bloodily suppressed. In Vellore, this cruel prince, whose name was Sree Wickremé Rajah Singha, died some years after; and one son whom he left behind him, born during his father's captivity, may still be living. But his ambitious instincts, if any such are working within him, are likely to be seriously baffled in the very outset by the precautions of our diplomacy; for one article of the treaty proscribes the descendants of this prince as enemies of Ceylon, if found within its precincts. In this exclusion, pointed against a single family, we are reminded of the Stuart dynasty in England, and the Bonaparte dynasty in France. We cannot, however, agree with Mr. Bennett's view of this parallelism - either in so far as it points our pity towards Napoleon, or in so far as it points the regrets of disappointed vengeance to the similar transportation of Sree.

    Pity is misplaced upon Napoleon, and anger is wasted upon Sree. He ought to have been hanged, says Mr. Bennett; and so said many of Napoleon. But it was not our mission to punish either. The Malabar prince had broken no faith with us: he acted under the cursed usages of a cruel people and a bloody religion. These influences had trained a bad heart to corresponding atrocities. Courtesy we did right to pay him, for our own sakes as a high and noble nation. What we could not punish judicially, it did not become us to revile. And finally, we much doubt whether hanging upon a tree, either in Napoleon's case or Sree's, would not practically have been found by both a happy liberation from that bitter cup of mortification which both drank off in their latter years.

    At length, then, the entire island of Ceylon, about a hundred days before Waterloo, had become ours for ever. Hereafter Ceylon must inseparably attend the. fortunes of India. Whosoever in the East commands the sea, must command the southern empires of Asia; and he who commands those empires, must for ever command the Oriental islands. One thing only remains to be explained; and the explanation, we fear, will be harder to understand than the problem: it is - how the Portuguese and Dutch failed, through nearly three centuries, to master this little obstinate nucleus of the peach. It seems like a fairy tale to hear the answer: Sinbad has nothing wilder. 'They were,' says Mr. Bennett, 'repeatedly masters of the capital.' What was it, then, that stopped them from going on? 'At one period, the former (i. e. the Portuguese) had conquered all but the impregnable position called Kandi Udda .' And what was it then that lived at Kandi Udda? The dragon of Wantley? or the dun cow of Warwick? or the classical Hydra? No; it was thus:- Kandi was 'in the centre of the mountainous region, surrounded by impervious jungles, with secret approaches for only one man at a time.' Such tricks might have answered in the time of Ali Baba and the forty thieves; but we suspect that, even then, an 'open sesame' would have been found for this pestilent defile. Smoking a cigar through it, and dropping the sparks, might have done the business in the dry season. But, in very truth, we imagine that political arrangements were answerable for this long failure in checkmating the king, and not at all the cunning passage which carried only one inside passenger. The Portuguese permitted the Kandyan natives to enter their army; and that one fact gives us a short solution of the case. For, as Mr. Bennett observes, the principal features of these Kandyans are merely 'human imitations of their own indigenous leopards - treachery and ferocity,' as the circumstances may allow them to profit by one or the other. Sugarcandy, however, appears to have given very little trouble to us; and, at all events, it is ours now, together with all that is within its gates. It is proper, however, to add, that since the conquest of this country in 1815, there have been three rebellions, viz.: in 1817-18, in 1834, and finally in 1842. This last comes pretty well home to our own times and concerns; so that we naturally become curious as to the causes of such troubles. The two last are said to have been inconsiderable in their extent. 'But the earlier of the three, which broke out so soon after the conquest as 1817, must, we conceive, have owed something to intrigues promoted on behalf of the exiled king. His direct lineal descendants are excluded, as we have said, from the island for ever; but his relatives, by whom we presume to be meant his cognati or kinspeople in the female line, not his agnati, are allowed to live in Kandy, suffering only the slight restriction of confinement to one street out of five, which compose this ancient metropolis. Meantime, it is most instructive to hear the secret account of those causes which set in motion this unprincipled rebellion. For it will thus be seen how hopeless it is, under the present idolatrous superstition of Ceylon, to think of any attachment in the people, by means of good government, just laws, agriculture promoted, or commerce created. More stress will be laid, by the Ceylonese, on our worshipping a carious tooth two inches long, ascribed to the god Buddha (but by some to an ourang-outang), than to every mode of equity, good faith, or kindness. It seems that the Kandyans and we reciprocally misunderstood the ranks, orders, precedences, titular distinctions, and external honors attached to them in our several nations. But none are so deaf as those that have no mind to hear. And we suspect that our honest fellows of the 19th regiment, whose comrades had been murdered in their beds by the cursed Kandyan 'nobles,' neither did nor would understand the claim of such assassins to military salutes, to the presenting of arms, or to the turning out of the guard. Here, it is said, began the ill-blood, and also on the claim of the Buddhist priests to similar honors. To say the simple truth, these soldiers ought not to have been expected to show respect towards the murderers of their brethren. The priests, with their shaven crowns and yellow robes, were objects of mere mockery to the British soldier. 'Not to have been kicked,' it should have been said, 'is gain; not to have been cudgelled, is for you a ground of endless gratitude. Look not for salutes; dream not of honors.' For our own part - again we say it - let the government look ahead for endless insurrections. We tax not the rulers of Ceylon with having caused the insurrections. We hold them blameless on that head; for a people so fickle and so unprincipled will never want such matter for rebellion as would be suspected, least of all, by a wise and benevolent man. But we do tax the local government with having ministered to the possibility of rebellion. We British have not sowed the ends and objects of conspiracies; but undoubtedly, by our lax administration, we have sowed the means of conspiracies. We must not transfer to a Pagan island our own mild code of penal laws: the subtle savage will first become capable of these, when he becomes capable of Christianity. And to this we must now bend our attention. Government must make no more offerings of musical clocks to the Pagan temples; for such propitiations are understood by the people to mean - that we admit their god to be naturally stronger than ours. Any mode or measure of excellence but that of power, they understood not, as applying to a deity. Neither must our government any longer wink at such monstrous practices as that of children ejecting their dying parents, in their last struggles, from the shelter of their owns roofs, on the plea that death would pollute their dwellings. Such compliances with Paganism, make Pagans of ourselves. Nor, again, ought the professed worship of devils to be tolerated, more than the Fetish worship, or the African witchcraft, was tolerated in the West Indies. Having, at last, obtained secure possession of the entire island, with no reversionary fear over our heads (as, up to Waterloo, we always had), that possibly at a general peace we might find it diplomatically prudent to let it return under Dutch possession, we have no excuse for any longer neglecting the jewel in our power. We gave up to Holland, through unwise generosity, already one splendid island, viz., Java. Let one such folly suffice for one century.

    For the same reason - namely, the absolute and undivided possession which we now hold of the island - it is at length time that our home government should. more distinctly invite colonists, and make known the unrivalled capabilities of this region. So vast are our colonial territories, that for every class in our huge framework of society we have separate and characteristic attractions. In some it is chiefly labor that is wanted, capital being in excess. In others these proportions are reversed. In some it is great capitalists that are wanted for the present; in others almost exclusively small ones. Now, in Ceylon, either class will be welcome. It ought also to be published everywhere, that immediately after the conquest of Kandy, the government entered upon the Roman career of civilization, and upon that also which may be considered peculiarly British. Military roads were so carried as to pierce and traverse all the guilty fastnesses of disease, and of rebellion by means of disease. Bridges, firmly built of satin wood, were planted over every important stream. The Kirimoe canal was completed in the most eligible situation. The English institution of mail-coaches was perfected in all parts of the island. At this moment there are three separate modes of itinerating through the island - viz., by mail-coach, by buggy, or by palanquin; to say nothing of the opportunities offered at intervals, alone the maritime provinces, for coasting by ships or boats. To the botanist, the mineralogist, the naturalist, the sportsman, Ceylon offers almost a virgin Eldorado. To a man wishing to combine the lucrative pursuits of the colonist with the elegances of life and with the comforts of compatriot society, not (as in Australia, or in American back settlements) to weather the hardships of Robinson Crusoe, the invitations from the infinite resources of Ceylon are past all count or estimate.' For my own part,' says Mr. Bennett, who is now a party absolutely disinterested, 'having visited all but the northern regions of the globe, I have seen nothing to equal this incomparable country.' Here a man may purchase land, with secure title and of a good tenure, at five shillings the acre; this, at least, is the upset price,, though in some privileged situations it is known to have reached seventeen shillings. A house may be furnished in the Morotto style, and with luxurious contrivances for moderating the heat in the hotter levels of the island, at fifty pounds sterling. The native furniture is both cheap and excellent in quality; every way superior, intrinsically, to that which, at five times the cost, is imported from abroad. Labor is pretty uniformly at the rate of sixpence English for twelve hours. Provisions of every sort and variety are poured out in Ceylon from an American cornucopia of some Saturnian age. Wheat, potatoes, and many esculent plants, or fruits, were introduced by the British in the great year (and for this island, in the most literal sense, the era of a new earth and new heavens) - the year of Waterloo. From that year dates, for the Ceylonese, the day of equal laws for rich and poor, the day of development out of infant and yet unimproved advantages; finally - if we are wise, and they are docile - the day of a heavenly religion displacing the avowed worship of devils, and giving to the people a new nature, a new heart, and hopes as yet not dawning upon their dreams. How often has it been said by the vile domestic calumniators of British policy, by our own anti-national deceivers, that if to-morrow we should leave India, no memorial would attest that ever we had been there. Infamous falsehood! damnable slander! Speak, Ceylon, to that. True it is, that the best of our gifts - peace, freedom, security, and a new standard of public morality - these blessings are like sleep, like health, like innocence, like the eternal revolutions of day and night, which sink inaudibly into human hearts, leaving behind (as sweet vernal rains) no flaunting records of ostentation and parade; we are not the nation of triumphal arches and memorial obelisks; but the sleep, the health, the innocence, the grateful vicissitudes of seasons, reproduce themselves in fruits and products, enduring for generations, and overlooked by the slanderer only because they are too diffusive to be noticed as extraordinary, and benefiting by no light of contrast, simply because our own beneficence has swept away the ancient wretchedness that could have furnished that contrast. Ceylon, of itself, can reply victoriously to such falsehoods. Not yet fifty years have we held this island; not yet thirty have we had the entire possession of the island; and (what is more important to a point of this nature) not yet thirty have we had that secure possession which results from the consciousness that our government is not meditating to resign it. Previously to Waterloo, our tenure of Ceylon was a provisional tenure. With the era of our Kandyan conquest coincides the era of our absolute appropriation, signed and countersigned for ever. The arrangements of that day at Paris, and by a few subsequent Congresses of revision, are like the arrangements of Westphalia in 1648 - valid until Christendom shall be again convulsed to her foundations. From that date is, therefore, justly to be inaugurated our English career of improvement. Of the roads laid open through the island, we have spoken. The attempts at improvement of the agriculture and horticulture furnish matter already for a romance, if told of any other than this wonderful labyrinth of climates. The openings for commercial improvement are not less splendid. It is a fact infamous to the Ceylonese, that an island, which might easily support twenty millions of people, has been liable to famine, not unfrequently, with a population of fifteen hundred thousand. This has already ceased to be a possibility: is that a blessing of British rule? 4 Not only many new varieties of rice have been introduced, and are now being introduced, adapted to opposite extremes of weather and soil - some to the low grounds warm and abundantly irrigated, some to the dry grounds demanding far less of moisture - but also other and various substitutes have been presented to Ceylon. Manioc, maize, the potato, the turnip, have all been cultivated. Mr. Bennett himself would, in ancient Greece, have had many statues raised to his honor for his exemplary bounties of innovation. The food of the people is now secure. And, as regards their clothing or their exports, there is absolutely no end to the new prospects opened before them by the English. Is cotton a British gift? Is sugar? Is coffee? We are not the men lazily and avariciously to anchor our hopes on a pearl fishery; we rouse the natives to cultivate their salt fish and shark fisheries. Tea will soon be cultivated more hopefully than in Assam. Sugar, coffee, cinnamon, pepper, are all cultivated already. Silk worms and mulberry-trees were tried with success, and opium with virtual success (though in that instance defeated by an accident), under the auspices of Mr. Bennett. Hemp (and surely it is wanted!) will be introduced abundantly: indigo is not only grown in plenty, but it appears that a beautiful variety of indigo, a violet-colored indigo, exists as a weed in Ceylon. Finally, in the running over hastily the summa genera of products by which Ceylon will soon make her name known to the ends of the earth, we may add that salt provisions in every kind, of which hitherto Ceylon did not furnish an ounce, will now be supplied redundantly; the great mart for this will be in the vast bosom of the Indian ocean; and at the same time we shall see the scandal wiped away — that Ceylon, the headquarters of the British navy in the East, could not supply a cock-boat in distress with a week's salt provisions, from her own myriads of cattle, zebus, buffaloes, or cows.

    Ceylon has this one disadvantage for purposes of theatrical effect; she is like a star rising heliacally, and hidden in the blaze of the sun: any island, however magnificent, becomes lost in the blaze of India. But that does not affect the realities of the case. She has that within which passes show. Her one calamity is in the laziness of her native population; though in this respect the Kandyans are a more hopeful race than the Cinghalese. But the evil for both is, that they want the motives to exertion. These will be created by a new and higher civilization. Foreign laborers will also be called for; a mixed race will succeed in the following generations; and a mixed breed in man is always an improved breed. Witness every where the people of color contrasted with the blacks. Then will come the great race between man indefinitely exalted, and a glorious tropical nature indefinitely developed. Ceylon will be born again; in our hands she will first answer to the great summons of nature; and will become, in fact, what, by Providential destiny, she is - the queen lotus of the Indian seas, and the Pandora of islands.

     

     

     

     

     

    CHINA.

    PRELIMINARY NOTE.

    WHAT is the justifying purpose of this pamphlet1 at this moment? Its purpose is to diffuse amongst those of the middle classes, whose daily occupations leave them small leisure for direct personal inquiries, some sufficient materials for appreciating the justice of our British pretensions and attitude in our coming war with China. It is a question frequently raised amongst public journalists, whether we British are entitled to that exalted distinction which sometimes we claim for ourselves, and which sometimes is claimed on our behalf, by neutral observers, in the national practice of morality. There is no call in this place for so large a discussion; but, most undoubtedly, in one feature of so grand a distinction, in one reasonable presumption for inferring a profounder national conscientiousness, as diffused among the British people, stands upon record, in the pages of history, this memorable fact, that always at the opening (and at intervals throughout the progress) of any war, there has been much and angry discussion amongst us British as to the equity of its origin, and the moral reasonableness of its objects. Whereas, on the Continent, no man ever heard of a question being raised, or a faction being embattled, upon any demur (great or small) as to the moral grounds of a war. To be able to face the trials of a war - that was its justification; and to win victories -that was its ratification for the conscience.

    The dispute at Shanghai, in 1848, equally as regards the origin of that dispute, and as regards the Chinese mode of conducting it, will give the reader a key to the Chinese character and the Chinese policy. To begin by making the most arrogant resistance to the simplest demands of justice, to end by cringing in the lowliest fashion before the guns of a little war-brig, there we have, in a representative abstract, the Chinese system of law and gospel. The equities of the present war are briefly summed up in this one question: What is it that our brutal enemy wants from us? Is it some concession in a point of international law, or of commercial rights, or of local privilege, or of traditional usage, that the Chinese would exact? Nothing of the kind. It is simply a license, guaranteed by ourselves, to call us in all proclamations by scurrilous names; and, secondly, with our own consent, to inflict upon us, in the face of universal China, one signal humiliation. Amongst the total household of Christians, who is he that is most pointedly insulted and trampled under foot? It is the Cagot of the Pyrenees. Amongst Christian nations, again, which is the most fanatically arrogant? It is the Spanish. Yet this fanatic Spaniard does not inflict upon this downtrodden Cagot an insult so deep as that which is insisted on by the Chinese towards us. The Spaniard never disputed the Cagot's participation in Christian hopes; never meditated the exclusion of the poor outcast from his parish church; he contented himself with framing a separate door for the Cagot, so low that he could not pass underneath its architrave, unless by assuming a cringing and supplicating attitude. But us - the freemen of the earth by emphatic precedency —us, the leaders of civilization, would this putrescent2 tribe of hole-and-corner assassins take upon themselves, not to force into entering Canton by an ignoble gate, but to exclude from it altogether, and forever. Briefly, then, for this licensed scurrility, in the first place; and, in the second, for this foul indignity of a spiteful exclusion from a right four times secured by treaty, it is that the Chinese are facing the unhappy issues of war. And if any apologist for the Chinese, such as Mr. Cobden, denies this view of the case, let him be challenged to name that Chinese object which has been here overlooked. Simply this one statement, if it cannot be contradicted, settles all questions as to the justice (on our side) of the coming war.

    PREFACE.

    THE Chinese question is that which, at this moment [April 5, 1857], possesses the public mind, almost to the exclusion of all others, and is likely to do so for the next six months3 This paramount importance of the two-headed Chinese question is now speaking through organs that, in the most eminent sense, are nationally representative. China it is that has moulded, with a decision liable to no misinterpretation, the character of the new Parliament. Suddenly, summarily, without notice or warning, five leading members of the last Parliament, Messrs. Cobden, Bright, Gibson, Miall, and Fox, all charmed against any ordinary assault by the strength of their personal claims, having not only great services to plead, but talents of the quality peculiarly fitted for senatorial duties, have been thrown out and rejected, with the force of a volcanic explosion, by distinguished electoral bodies, on the sole ground of their ruinous and unpatriotic votes with respect to China.

    Not one of these gentlemen would seem to have at all expected his doom. And this strengthens the inference, which other indications favor, that they have not studied Chinese politics, or in any reasonable degree acquainted themselves with the Chinese character. Blind to these main elements in the question, Messrs. Cobden, &c., were unavoidably blind also to the value likely to be put upon those elements by constituents who were not blind. This ignorance about China manifests itself everywhere. In the Upper House of Parliament the most eminent statesmen, Lords Derby, Grey, Malmesbury, and others, betrayed inexcusable ignorance. Not that China is naturally entitled to any very large proportion of attention from our public men, - the questions raised by China being generally too few and simple to require it, - but in the agitation of a sudden crisis, throwing deep shadows of uncertainty over the immediate prospects of our far-distant brethren, and calling for strong measures on our part, most undoubtedly no man should have come forward to advise without earnest study of the case; much less to flatter with encouragement, from the bosom of our Senate, the infamous policy of our Cantonese enemies. Even profounder ignorance of everything Chinese is exhibited by Mr. Roebuck. Would it have been credible, one month back, that an upright, high-minded, public servant like Mr. Roebuck, sometimes giving way to an irritable temperament too much for his own dignity, but always under the control of just intentions, would, upon any possible temptation from partisanship,. have allowed himself to speak in a complimentary tone of the ruffian, larcinous, poisoning Canton? Mr. Roebuck, by way of describing and appraising this Chinese city, tells the manly and honorable people of Sheffield that it is very much like their own. town; that its main characteristic is, to have a strong will of its own, and to be bold in expressing' it. And he leaves it altogether doubtful whether the compliment, in this comparison of the two cities, is meant for Canton or for Sheffield. Sheffield, like many towns whose population is chiefly composed of ingenious and self-dependent artisans, I have long known and admired as a stubborn, headstrong, sometimes, perhaps, turbulent community, but always moving under the impulse of noble objects. the Sheffield that I have known never had its streets incrusted with layers of blood from unoffending foreigners, never offered bribes for wholesale ;murder, never gave occasion to its chief magistrate or alleging that, in tempting men to poison un-.known strangers, he had simply yielded to the coercion of the town mob. Canton has risen on foundations laid by British money. As a city distinguished from its port, Canton was nothing until reared and cherished by English gold. And the vile population of the place, which has furnished a by-word of horror to all European residents in the Chinese seas, has been fed and supported in every stage of its growth by our British demand for tea. The sorters, the packers, the porters, the boatmen, and multitudes beside in ministerial trades, live and flourish upon what virtually are English wages. And it is these English, above all other foreigners, but else in default of English any foreigners whatsoever, that the indigenous murderer of Canton cuts -to pieces as often as he finds him alone in the lanes of Canton, or feebly accompanied. Such a roll-call of murders as pollutes the annals of Canton is not matched by any other city, ancient or modern. And yet Mr. Roebuck assured Sheffield, from the hustings, that she was favorably distinguished among cities by her resemblance to Canton. And in the midst of all this, whilst ignoring the testimony o0L our able and experienced countrymen resident on. the spot, and locally familiar with every foot of the ground, and with every popular rumor that blows:, never once had Mr. Roebuck the candor to acknowledge, for the arrest of judgment among his auditors, that every Frenchman, Belgian, American, and men of most other European nations, had abetted us, had joined us in warfare, when the circumstances had allowed (as the Americans4, for instance, though not with all the success that might have been expected); and finally, whether joining our arms or not (which., in fact, until equally insulted with ourselves, they could not do), all the official representatives of France — consul, superintendent, and naval officer - had. subscribed the most cordial certificates of our intolerable provocations, of our forbearance in calling fox reparation, and of our continued moderation in exacting that reparation when it could no longer be hoped' for from the offenders. Is Mr. Roebuck himself aware that the two great leaders of civilization ill. Western Christendom have joined in justifying ou-i conduct in the Canton waters? If he is, how came it that, in fair dealing, he did not mention this at Sheffield? If not aware of it, how came he to think himself qualified for discussing this Chinese question?

    It is but a trifle, after this flagrant body of misrepresentation, to cite the errors of Lord Dalkeith, when speaking from the county hustings in Edinburgh (Tuesday, March 31). It does honor to his conscientiousness that, whilst erroneously supposing the Arrow to be confessedly no British vessel, from the premature letter of Sir John Bowring to Consul Iarkes, he gave his vote in that way which seemed test to mark his sense of what then appeared to be our British injustice; and it does honor to his candor that, on having since seen reason to distrust the impression which originally governed him, he now declares from the hustings that the case is doubtful. "' I will not give my opinion," says the earl, " as to whether we were right or wrong in the question of the lorcha: it was argued both ways by the most eminent lawyers in both houses of Parliament." Yes; but being argued, with whatever legal skill, -upon a false report of the facts, thus far the whole debate goes for nothing. But Lord Dalkeith adds a sentence (I quote from the " Scotsman's" report) which must have perplexed his hearers and readers: It was argued," he says, "that, in dealing with a barbarous people like the Chinese, - for, though they are a people learned in mathematics, and in some of the erudite sciences, they yet are a barbarous people, — we ought," &c. As to the barbarism, nobody will contradict his lordship there; but as to the mathematics and erudite sciences, this is the first time they were ever heard of; and I cannot but suppose that the error may be owing to some equivocal -phrases in the " Lettres Edifiantes," or other works to that early date. No native Chinese, educated at Gs, native school, ever advanced, I have good reason -for believing, to the Fourth Book of "Euclid." When the Roman Catholic Missionaries, about 1640, and especially the Jesuits, to whom all Europe is so much indebted for the diffusion of education, and, above all, of mathematics (for by Jesuits it was that the " Principia " of the heretic Newton were first popularized by a commentary), the Chinese were in. too abject a state to calculate a lunar eclipse, and. many times the astronomer-royal was bambooed in: punishment of his miscalculations. But what did. these horrid savages want with mathematics? It is perfectly impossible that any insulated love of speculative truth can ever arise. One mode of abstract. truth leads into another, and collectively they flourish from reciprocal support. Mathematics!- how could those men have, who had no navigation, no science of projectiles, no engineering, no land-surveying, no natural philosophy, nor any practical. discipline that depends upon mathematics? To determine "the fortunate hour" 5 for any inaugural act, that was the ultimate object of "science " contemplated in China. Anything more than this was left to the Jesuits. In fact, a lively picture of the temporary light spread by the Jesuits might be drawn. from the relations of Prospero to Caliban. The mighty wizard first taught the carnal dog to distinguish the greater and the lesser light - in fact, to understand the cause of day and night. But beyond, a certain point he could not go: all teaching was thrown away upon one who could not be taught to wove knowledge. Caliban, however, was at least made tractable to discipline —he understood the meaning of a kick. But the Chinese Caliban,

    "Abhorred slave,

    That any print of goodness would not take,"

    was visited by successions of Prosperos, and persecuted them all whenever the casual caprice that protected them for the hour had burned itself out. Erroneous praise given to such vile burlesques of intellectual humanity forces a man to lodge his protest. Had the Chinese ever been inoculated with any true science, they would have learned to appreciate those who have more. Once let them, in any one pursuit, manifest a sense or a love of anything really intellectual, and we shall then have a hank over them - then first they will rise out of that monkey tribe, capable of mimicry, but of no original creative act, to which they now belong.

    Impressed with this general want of knowledge as to China and its habits of feeling, which is due to mere want of study applied to that subject, I have allowed myself to suppose that it might be serviceable to abstract, and to make accessible for the mass of readers, the Parliamentary Blue Books, which are constantly filled with instructive details, but are seldom effectually published so as to reach readers not wealthy, nor having much time to seek after works lying out of the ordinary track. As one mode of doing this, I have here reprinted a paper of my own from TITAN, which embodies a good deal of circumstantial knowledge originally drawn, in great part, from Blue Books of several years back. To this I have prefixed what will be found a seasonable account of an angry dispute with China in the year 1848, drawn from the ample report made officially to government. At a moment when the subject of China is sure to be universally discussed, no case can possibly present more instructive features; for it was conducted, from first to last, by a man of unrivalled energy and resolution, the Consul Rutherford Alcock; and it serves, in every stage, for a representative picture of the Chinese policy in dealing with foreigners. It has also this separate value, that it rehearses and anticipates, as in a mirror, the main features of our present dispute, some nine years younger, with Yeh and the "literati" (as we absurdly call the poisoning knaves) of Canton. Here we find the same insolent disposition to offer insults, the same extravagant obstinacy in refusing all real redress, and the same silly attempt to cheat us with a sham redress. Here, also, we find anticipated the late monstrous doctrine put forward in Parliament - namely, that no retaliatory measures must be undertaken by the delegated officers - consul or plenipotentiary - until the whole case has been submitted to the home government. On such extravagant terms, no outrage, however atrocious, could be redressed; the opportunity would have lapsed; the sense of injury would have faded away, and the sense of justice in the, reprisals would be blunted, long before. Lord Dalkeith, indeed, most aristocratically suggests that the disqualification of Sir J. Bowring for instant retaliation arose out of his station: he was not of rank sufficient to undertake hostilities War demanded a baron at the least. If that were so, then government had been greatly to blame in not originally appointing a man of adequate rank to fill the situation. The public service suffers, danger is allowed to ripen, the reparable becomes irreparable, under such a doctrine as this. To what excess would our interests have been damaged in Burmah, in Scinde, in Afghanistan, and many other places, had such a doctrine operated! Let us hear, on this subject, two men of the most appropriate experience.

    First, in 1848, on March 31, thus writes Consul Alcock on the supposed propriety of his seeking instructions from Hong-Kong (a thousand miles off) before he was at liberty to move: " Too distant to refer for instructions, I have been compelled, without delay or hesitation; to do all that seemed possible with the means at my disposal. If fear of responsibility had deterred me, I conscientiously believe that, long before your Excellency's better judgment could have been brought to bear upon the circumstances, our position would have been materially deteriorated, and our security would have been seriously endangered." And this, he adds, is the opinion also of all the foreigners, of the naval officer on the station, and all other men of any experience.

    Secondly, on March 29, 1848, thus write the consular representatives of foreign powers, addressing our admirable British Consul, Mr. Rutherford Alcock: "Il est certain que si vous eussiez tardé d'un seul jour à exiger et obtenir la punition exemplaire des misérables qui s'étoient rendus coupables, &c., la vie et les propriétés de tous les étrangers étoient sérieusement compromises." A single day's delay would, it seems, have been dangerous, might have been ruinous; and yet people would have life-and-death arrangements to wait for communication between Shanghai and London!

    Shanghai, as is well known to those few persons who have made themselves acquainted with our Chinese treaties, is one of the five ports laid open to our commercial shipping —that is, extorted from the terrors of China by our ten thousand expostulating bayonets; and next after Canton it is the most important. Here we British had, upon the whole, lived very much unmolested; for a thousand miles, laid between us and the murdering ruffians of Canton, had availed to' cleanse the air from the reeking fumes of human shambles. Early, however, in the spring of 1848, six years after our drums and trumpets were heard no more, this happy calm was interrupted by a ferocious outrage, which is of the last importance for reasons of permanent diplomatic value. The reader must not understand that, in its immediate features of violence and wantonness, this case transcended many others in or near Canton. On the contrary, by an accident no life was lost on this occasion; whereas in Canton as many as six of our countrymen have been murdered outright in one and the same minute. But the Shanghai case moved regularly through all the stages of judicial inquest under the most resolute, vigilant and prudent of public officers. The consul at Shanghai, Mir. Rutherford Alcock, fortunately for the interests of' justice on this particular occasion,- yet that was a trifle by comparison with the interests of our general position in China, — followed up the criminal inquest, hunted back upon the traces of the ruffians with the energy of some Hebrew avenger of blood.

    On Wednesday, the. 8th of March, 1848, three British missionaries - Medhurst, Lockhart, and Muirhead - made an excursion into the country from Shanghai, for the purpose of distributing Protestant tracts,- a purpose quite unintelligible to the Celestial intellect. The furthest point of their journey was Tsing-poo, distant about ninety-six le [that is, according to the usual valuation, 9 6 English miles6 ] The exact distance became a question of importance, since naturally it must everywhere be desirable for sustaining a complaint against wrong-doers, that the plaintiff should not himself be found trespassing upon any regulation of law. Now, the treaty limited our journeys to a day's extent. But on this point there seems to be no room for demur, since the consul (whose authority is here unimpeachable) exonerates the missionaries from having at all exceeded the privileged distance. On leaving Tsingpoo, the missionaries were hustled by a mob - not, perhaps, ill-disposed in any serious extent, but rough and violent. Yet this moderation might be merely politic; for thus far the mob was under the eye of the town and its police. But, on leaving the town, another mob was seen coming after them - apparently, by its angry and menacing gestures, of a more dangerous character. Two of the missionaries, Medhurst and Lockhart, being able to converse fluently in Chinese, thought it best to expostulate with this mob; and, accordingly, to await their coming up.. Any expression of courage was likely to do service, but in this case it failed.

    It is not necessary to repeat minutely the circumstances of the outrage. The missionaries were knocked down, trampled on, robbed of their watches and all other personal effects, and then dragged back to Tsing-poo, with the avowed intention of either forcing them severally to pay a ransom of one thousand dollars, or else (which, on the whole, they preferred) of striking off their heads on reaching the other side of the city.

    Who were these wretches, thus capable of meditating the last violence against a party of inoffensive strangers, that had come to Tsing-poo on a mission unintelligible, it is true, to them, but still wearing on its face a purpose of disinterested kindness? A few words will explain their position with regard to the government, and the danger which attached to their enmity. The tributes of rice, sent to Peking by the southern provinces, had usually been conveyed to Peking by way of the grand canal. This method, as compared with the conveyance by sea, was costly, but had been forced upon the government as the one sole resource in their hands for employing a turbulent body of junk-men. At this crisis, however, an extraordinary shallowness 7 affected the grand canal, and the grain was put on board ships. The boatmen, amounting to thirteen thousand, but by some accounts to twenty thousand, were thus thrown out of employ. flow were they to live, or to support their families? The wicked government (which Mr. Roebuck treats as specially paternal) allowed them to understand that they must live at free quarters, as privileged marauders, upon the surrounding district; to which district they had accordingly become a terrific abomination.

    On March 9, the day immediately following the outrage, the proper steps were taken for obtaining satisfaction by the consul resident at Shanghai. A demand was instantly lodged with the Ta-oo-tae, or sheriff, for the arrest of the persons criminally implicated in the attack, for their trial, for their punishment, and for the restoration of the stolen property. Very soon it became evident that the magistrate had not the remotest intention of attending to any one of these demands. " With a singular inaptitude," says the consul, "he wasted time so precious to him in mere subterfuges, and miserable attempts at trick and evasion. And the arrests, which were prevented at first only by his want of will, would soon pass out of his power." Once convinced that nothing was to be hoped for from the voluntary aid of the Ta-oo-tae, the consul sat down to calculate his means of compulsion. These lay chiefly in such coercion or restraint as might be found applicable to a vast fleet of junks " on the eve of departure for Peking, and at that moment lying ready laden in the anchorage above H.M.S. Childers. Of these junks there were more than a thousand. Of all that vast number, not one," said the consul, "shall pass the Childers," until satisfaction shall have been given as to the arrest of the Tsing-poo criminals.

    This embargo had been maintained for several days, when the Ta-oo-tae attempted to intimidate the consul by suborning two deputy officers to suggest the probability of an attack from a Shanghai mob. This suggestion was made by way of letter, and the men asked for a personal interview, at which they would have attempted to enforce their alarms more effectually. But the consul contemptuously refused to see them. " I have," said he, "a wife and family living in the very centre of Shanghai. They and I are at your mercy; but that will not frighten me from my duty."

    On March 12, the consul writes to say, "That, up to yesterday evening, three days since the outrage had elapsed without result. All the parties implicated had been seen by hundreds, must be known to the policemen who assisted in the release of the British so cruelly maltreated; and, finally, that all the junkmen are in the employ of the Chinese government. The consul is bound to inform the Ta-oo-tae that, under these circumstances, any hesitation or any delay amounts to a denial of justice."

    On the day following, namely, March 13, the consul writes again: " The ringleaders in the late murderous attack upon British subjects have not yet been seized. It is now, therefore, the consul's duty to inform the chief magistrate, that between nation and nation, in all countries not thoroughly barbarous, it is a recognized law, when an injury is inflicted for which reparation is refused, the nation aggrieved may do itself justice, when justice cannot otherwise be obtained." The consul then shows, that for him the dilemma has arisen, either to see the highest interests of his nation sacrificed by the impunity granted to these criminals; or ---

    And then he states distinctly the other horn of the dilemma in these following terms: "If, within forty-eight hours reckoned from noon of this present day, ten of the ringleaders are not in Shanghai for trial and punishment, the consul will, in that case, take other steps to obtain that reparation which the honorable Ta-oo-tae must then be understood solemnly to have refused."

    But was justice to linger through these forty-eight hours? By no means: provisional steps were to be taken instantly -- namely, these two:

    First, " No duties for British ships can be paid over to the custom-house;"

    Secondly, " Nor can it be permitted that the grain junks now in the river shall leave the port; and I trust that you, the honorable Ta-oo-tae, may see the prudence of forbidding them to make the attempt."

    The consul then wisely reminds the magistrate, whose doing it is virtually that these resolute measures are adopted; let him - let the dispenser of justice - cease to cherish murderers, and all will return to its natural channels. Indispensable is this continued moral memento; for else the knave would too surely forget that anybody was accountable for the pressure on the Chinese finances except Her Britannic Majesty's representative.

    The consul winds up by these two paragraphs, that must have carried with them the poison of scorpions:

    First, with regard to the evasion attempted of late more and more by the Chinese authorities, and which, with their usual silliness, they fancy to be a knockdown blow to the British, such as cannot be parried, - namely, that they, the Chinese, find themselves in a mere inability to control their own mob, and that nobody can justly be summoned to the performance of impossibilities, -the consul simply requests the Ta-oo-tae to observe that in that case the treaty lapses, and becomes so much waste paper. It had then, confessedly, been the crime of the Peking government, in an earlier stage of the intercourse with Britain, to undertake that which, if now aware, then and always it'must have been aware, of inability to perform. If this inability is not to be regarded as a sharper's trick, then the British reenter upon those rights of self-indemnification which, upon mendacious pretences, they had consented to withdraw; and the Chinese reenter upon those evils from which, under a fraudulent representation, we consented to deliver them. Nothing was exacted from Peking except the withdrawal of patronage from murder.

    The closing paragraph, ominous in Chinese ears as the bell of St. Sepulchre in past times to the poor Newgate convict, ran thus:" I entreat you, whilst it is yet time, to put an end to this untoward state of affairs BY PRODUCING THE CRIMINALS;" [there lay the sum of our demand;] "but, if this be not done, it remains for me to announce my determination to redress the injury inflicted." The consul then announces the arrival of H.M.S. Childers, and the immediate approach of her comrade, the Espiègle.

    "And should further insult, molestation, or injury be offered to British subjects, I will summon every British ship within reach to the anchorage; and the consequences will rest on your Excellency's head, whose acts will have been the cause of all that may follow."

    ____

    Let us pause a moment to review the case so far as. it has even yet travelled. I have noticed in another part of this pamphlet the inhuman obstinacy of the Chinese, quite unparalleled in human annals, agreeably to which experience it is a common remark of Europeans in China, that no good ever comes of reasoning with a Chinaman; for what he says at first, though by mere accident, that he fancies it a point of nobility to insist on at the last. - But at what price? Let this be judged by the present case. This dog, now playing his antics before us in a style to make the angels weep, is pretending to think it a meritorious distinction in his public history, that he has screened, and will continue to screen, from justice a gang of bloody criminals. Why? On what allegation? Allow him even the benefit of what is essential to the comfort of a Chinese, namely, falsehood, upon what mendacious pretence does he build his patronage of these thieves? Is it that he takes some separate and eccentric view of their murderous acts? Is it as a hair-splitting casuist that he comes forward? Not at all; he admits the very worst of what is alleged against them by ourselves. Is it. then simply that he shrinks from the trouble that may chance to be connected with the arrest of the accused? But as yet he has not made an attempt to arrest them; and already, even at this early stage of the case, it has become evident enough that trouble incalculably greater will attend the refusal to arrest. Is it then that he has been bribed by, or on behalf of, the wrong-doers? Neither case is possible There is nobody who takes any interest in the ruffians; and they, individually, are paupers. The sole reason which governs the Ta-oo-tae is derived from the impulse of demoniac obstinacy. From the first he had sworn to himself that the consul should not obtain his demand. And, in fact, it will not be obtained through this officer, though it is daily becoming clearer that it will be obtained in spite ot this officer, to the signal injury of this officer, anc (unless he should have the fiend's luck as well as hi, own), probably, to his ruin. Yet all this plain summons of common sense is overthrown by the single impulse of Chinese currish restiveness.

    Considered as a morbid phenomenon in the history of human nature, the case [that is, not the individual case, but the Chinese case generally] is interesting; and it is worth while arraying before the reader that series of mortifications which had already followed out of the Ta-oo-taed obstinacy, and was likely ever week to thicken its gloomy shadows:

    First, he had been baffled —and, which was still more mortifying, he had been exposed as a baffled agent - in a little intrigue for undermining the official rights and dignity of the consul, Rutherford Alcock. The Ta-oo-tae had written privately to Mr. Medhurst, with a view to some secret hole-and-cor ner settlement of the case, such as might evade the call for the criminals, and supersede, as a res judicata, the official interference of the consul. With summary decision, the consul showed him that his manoeuvres were known to him, and were too frivolous (as being founded in total ignorance of international diplomacy) to cause him any serious concern.

    Secondly, he had hoped that this refusal of the Tsing-poo delinquents would operate most prejudi5ially to the British interests, in so far as they depended upon public opinion. And this result really would have followed, but for the powerful counteraction effected by the consul. Hle was fully aware of the intense interest in this affair taken by the whole population between Shanghai and Tsing-poo. The Chinese in this province, previously perplexed in extremity by the counter indications of British character, had been impressed profoundly by reports ito the disadvantage of our power and credit from Canton; they were generally in a state of suspense upon the true tendencies of our influence and weight with the supreme government; and this contest with the local government, tending (as apparently it did) to an open rupture, was naturally watched by the whole population over an area 8 of a thousand square miles (that is, over all the interjacent country connecting Shanghai and Tsing-poo, and round each of these neighboring cities as a centre). But this vigilant interest was trained into currents favorable. to the British name by placards (in the Chinese language for the native population, in the English language for the European population), emanating from the judicious pen of the consul. These placards were, in one special feature, most skilfully framed -- that so far from arrogantly or ostentatiously arraying before their readers the vast British resources, on the contrary, they sought to apologize for the painful necessity of employing them. Nevertheless, in the very act of thus apologizing, unavoidably they rehearsed and marshalled those terrors which they deprecated. How painful to summon this eighty-four-gun ship! How disagreeable to call up tha dreadful Nemesis steamer, which revives so mans angry memorials! Yet in deprecating he records them.

    It was not that the consul really felt the confidence, or not all the confidence, which patriotically he simulated. But he knew that it would be ruinous to manifest any fears; upon the least encouragement in that way a Chinese populace becomes unmanageable, for the Chinese is a natural connoisseur in cowardice; by sympathetic instinct he understands and appreciates every movement of fear. The consul, therefore, suffered the ladies of his family to traverse the city every day at high noon, and ir every direction, not hiding from himself or them, meantime, that upon any hostile demonstration from the mob of Shanghai, he and they were lost; for their dwelling was in the very centre of the city, from which no escape was possible. Let the reader, meantime, in estimating this attempt to work upon the consul's fears. for his family, transfer the situation in his imagination to London, and figure to himself our own sheriffs of London and Middlesex, under instructions from the Foreign Office, and from the Privy Council, striving to terrify a Chinese envoy from his duty, by suggesting dangerous mobs.

    This dodge having failed, the Ta-oo-tae (whom for sake of brevity, permit me henceforward to call9 by the well-known name of Mr. Toots) tried another. He had pledged his word at ten A.M., that in return for notorious forbearances on the part of the consul, he would himself abstain from all underhand intrigues with the rice-junks. At eleven A. M. on the same day he issued secret orders that these junks should drop down, and try to slip out by threes and fours, hoping thus to distract the little Childers. This ruse, also, having failed, next he practised others more and more childish. He caused, for instance, bricks to be piled elaborately above the rice. But Jack, on board the Childers, found prime larking in watching and baffling all these wiles. The little Childers proved herself "a brick " in maintaining the consul's embargo; and upon the whole it was certain that the merest trifle, if any at all, of the rice had slipped through.

    An interdict having simultaneously been put upon the payment of the usual British dues to the customhouse, those who sat at the receipt of custom began to hold a sinecure office. Fine holiday times there were now in Shanghai, which made the Chinese Mr. Toots very popular at that port; but, on the other hand, at Peking, and all around the Imperial Exchequer, which showed all the symptoms of galloping consumption, he would have been cursed by bell, book, and candle, had it been known distinctly who caused the stoppage. Toots, therefore, fancied that he would try his hand at a new swindle, which could cost him only two dollars and a lie. So, one fine morning, he said to the consul, What is it you want? Cons. What is it? Why, I should think you knew pretty well by this time: what I want is, the Tsing-poo knaves. - Toots. Well, I've got'em. - Cons. How many? - Toots. Two; but, as they were the ringleaders, that ought to do. - Cons . No. It's too little, by eight. However, as a payment to account, I'll take it. We'll call it a first instalment. But let's have a look at the men; are you sure they are genuine? - Toots. O, quite. - Cons . Well, I'll send for the missionaries. These, on arriving, were introduced, together with the consul, to the supposed ruffians; but the whole pretence was instantaneously detected as a hoax. Neither of the men could be recognized by any of the missionaries; and, by an ingenious artifice of the consul, they were conclusively exposed as swindlers. Concerting his plan with the missionaries, the consul challenged both the knaves to answer him this question, - one most rememberable incident in the course of the outrage, - Had it happened at the east (otherwise the Shanghai) gate, or at the north gate? After an embarrassed pause, both men said, At the north gate. Now, in fact, it had happened at neither, but in the very centre of the town, two miles removed from any gate. This dodge, therefore, would not work, any more than the brick-masked rice. The two scoundrels were exploded from the stage with peals of laughter10, whilst Mr. Toots walked off re infecta, saying, It's of no consequence, not of the very least consequence, not the slightest in the world.

    But nobody could say that of the next move in the game. The consul had by this time become weary of the fool's play, which, because it was childish and girlish beyond all belief to European minds, was not on that account the less knavish or the less dangerous. He was therefore now prepared to play his last and capital card. Neither the rice embargo nor the customs' interdict was of a nature to be long continued-the pressure, growing every hour more severe, would have found a vent in riots, such as neither prudence nor conscience, on our British side, was likely to contemplate steadfastly. The last resource, therefore, in a case where the subordinate magistrates showed no signs of yielding, must be an armed appeal to the higher. This was tried: it was tried instantly; instantly it met with the amplest acquiescence; instantly satisfaction was awarded on each several article of our complaint; and to all appearance (though such appearances are hard to spell in trick-trick-tricking China) the celestial pigtail curled up wrathfully against Mr. Toots, and frowns mantled on the celestial countenance, though Mr. Toots persisted in saying that it was of no consequence - not the least; no, I assure you, not of the slightest conceivable consequence. The arch little gypsy, the saucy Espiègle, thought otherwise. She and Mr. Toots differed in opinion. For she it was that worked the whole revolution; she it was that carried a certain letter from the consul, and also the consul's compliments, into the great river Yang-tse-Keang; and from pure forgetfulness (which I can allow for, being myself subject to frequent absence of mind), she carried at the same time hei whole armament of guns. This little ship, finding herself in this huge river, danced a few cotillons up and down; but, at last, night coming on, -she settled down to business; ran up to Nanking; asked if the viceroy lived there; and, finding he did, Jack handed in his papers, saying that the viceroy would find a writ inside for himself. It is inconceivable what a fright and what a termashaw were caused by this little Espiègle. For hundreds of miles on both banks of the river were seen men peering into honeycombed guns, like magpies into a marrow-bone, cleaning muskets, sharpening swords, drying damp gunpowder. Some reason there was for all this alarm, since the Espiègle had her guns with her; she showed her teeth; and the last time that the "Son of the Ocean11" - or any of his children could have seen such teeth had been sixteen years ago: at which date results had followed never to be forgotten by China; for, beyond all doubt, the great social swell, the restlessness, and the billowy state of insurrectionary uproars, that have agitated China ever since their war with us, owe their origin to that war. They trace not only their time origin, but their causal origin to that war. That war pierced as with Ithuriel's spear the great bloated carcass of China, and what followed? The old Miltonic Ithuriel dislodged the mighty form of a leading warrior angel from what had seemed to be a bloated toad; but Great Britain, the Ithuriel of 1842, simply reversed this process; and that which, under old traditional superstitions, had masqueraded as a warrior angel, collapsed, at one touch of the mighty spear, into a bloated toad. The blindness of China prompted him to come (and needlessly to come) into collision with a power the mightiest upon earth; or, under any estimate, mightiest of those that speak from a double centre of land and sea. The title of leader among terraqueous potentates, no rival (however jealous) will refuse to Great Britain; and exactly such a power it was that China should have shunned: because the great nations that are strong only in armies cannot, from the cost and other causes, transfer one-fortieth part of their forces to regions so remote as China. Even St. Petersburg is above six thousand miles distant (and therefore Moscow not five hundred miles less) from the very nearest (that is, the northernmost) of the Chinese capitals — namely, Peking; consequently much more from the southern capitals of China; and, meantime, all the populous and most available part of Russia is divided from China by vast (often fountainless) deserts, and by vast (often pathless) steppes. No potentate, therefore, on whom the sun looks down was more to be feared by China as her evil genius than Great Britain: none ever showed so much -forbearance; none so much forgot her own majesty in desire to conciliate this brutal megatherium. Yet upon folly that is doomed all advantages are thrown away. And Britain - that asked nothing from China, but, 1, not to swindle by means of a Commissioner Lin; 2, not to patronize murder; 3, to keep a better tongue in her head —could not obtain these most reasonable demands in return for vast commercial benefits. At length that Britain, which China so insolently rejected as a friend, was made the instrument of her chastisement. Not meaning to do more than to repress her insolence, which at length had become an active and contagious nuisance, we probed and exposed her military weakness to an extent that is now irrevocable. Seeking only to defend our own interests, unavoidably we laid bare to the whole world, and therefore to her own mutinous children, the condition of helpless wreck in which China had long been lying prostrate. The great secret (whispered no doubt in Asia for some generations) was broadly exposed. As some parliamentary candidate rightly expressed it, China is now in a general state of disintegration -rotten in one part, she is hollow in another. On this quarter you detect cancer; on that quarter you find nothing on which cancer could prey. Neither is there any principle of relf-restoration. Vital stamina there are none; and amongst the children of the state, cruel subjects of a cruel and wicked government, it is vain to count upon any filial tenderness or reverential mercy towards their dying mother. Mercy there is (to use Shakspeare's language) about "as much as there is milk in a male tiger;" and as to principles that might do the work of alienated affections, who has ever witnessed such springs of action amongst the Chinese? Gone, therefore - burned out - in China, is any one principle of cohesion to which you can look for the restoration of a government. Since our war, there has been no general government- none but a local and fractured one: and what has disguised, or partially masked, this state of anarchy, is simply the vast extent of China; secondly, the comatose condition of what are called the literati; and thirdly, the discontinuous currency of all public movements, from the want of any real Press; and the want of any such patriotic interests as could ever create a Press.

    We therefore having been the organs by which this fatal revolution was effected in China, and our triumph in 1842 having been sealed by the martial events that occurred in the Yang-tse-Keang, naturally enough our reaippearance upon that stage awakened memories and fears accounting for a great body of agitation. A generation partly new was growing up, that had heard of us, and read of us, as terrific water-monsters, sharks, or crocodiles, but many of whom had not seen us. In those circumstances, naturally, the rush was great to see our jolly tars of the Espiègle; and disappointed were many that our heads did not grow beneath our shoulders. The presents, and gages d'amitié , which we received from the mob, were painfully monotonous - too generally assuming the shape of paving-stones. However, it was pleasant to find that in the distribution of these favors their own countrymen, the mandarins, went along with us - share and share alike: indeed, some thought they got seven to our six, which was inhospitable. Such was our reception from the mob; but from the viceroy, and what elsewhere we call the literati, distinguished was our welcome, and oily the courtesies at our service.

    But the great result of the trip to Nanking was, that we gained all the objects contemplated by the consul in a degree, and with a facility, that no man could have counted on; so that no act of vigor ever perhaps so fully justified itself by the results as did this of the consul. The fact was, they were all alarmed at our presence. Vainly we spoke words of friendship and assurance. The emperor himself was not very far off, and was agitated by the visit of the little Espiègle; which the crew could not understand, saying, "' Bless your heart, the little pet wouldn't harm a fly; she's as quiet as a lamb." She might be so, but the literati were all anxious that the lamb should seek her pastures in some other river. This uneasiness was our greatest auxiliary: aided by this, we obtained almost instant despatch; and, that the lamb might have no pretence for coming back to attack the wolves, everything asked for was conceded. Had we asked for Toots' head, we should probably have got it.

    Within three days, those ten ringleaders, whom Toots had found it so dire an impossibility to produce for trial, were paraded with the cangue (or portable pillory) about their necks in the centre of Shanghai; and subsequently provided with chambers suited to their various walks of study, in select dungeons. The thousand junks, in number, roominess, and elegance of accommodation, probably well representing the thousand "black ships " that followed-Admiral Agamemnon to the Troad, were all in one minute suffered to unmoor by the little Childers, whose wrath exhaled as suddenly as that of Diana at Aulis. Consequently rice was suddenly "looking down" to a horrible extent in Peking. The customs, which had seemed frozen up, now thawed freely into the celestial breeches-pocket, though sadly intercepted by ravenous mandarins on the way. Concerning all which, though everybody else was pleased, Toots remarked that it was n't of much consequence; in fact, speaking confidentially, wasn't of any, not the least in the world, of no consequence whatever. So terminated, in such triumphant style, and with reparation so ample, this affair of Shanghai, which, left to itself, or confided to any other hands than those of Rutherford Alcock, naturally and rapidly tended to a new war. That tendency it was which so much alarmed the viceroy. Of all diplomatists, this masterly Rutherford Alcock is least open to the charge of having operated by means of war; since, of all men in China, he happens to be the one who prospered exclusively by preventing a war. An anonymous writer in the "Scotsman" of April 7 (having, however, no sanction12 whatever to plead from the Editor of the "Scotsman"), is most bitter in his reflections on Consul Alcock; so bitter, that all readers will suspect a personal feud as underlying such intemperate language. This I will not repeat; but will content myself with summing up, as a suitable close to the Shanghai narrative. Nine years have now passed since the drama (at one time looking very like a tragedy) closed in a joyous and triumphant catastrophe. There was an anagnorisis [Greek here] just such as the Stagirite approves: the Tsing-poo ruffians were all recognized and identified to the satisfaction of a crowded audience by the three missionaries; they were punished to the extent of what the Chinese law allows, except that death (which that law awards in the case of robbery) was remitted with the cordial assent of the injured parties. And, finally, the consul, who may be regarded as the hero of this drama, was crowned with universal praise, and by none more than his official superiors, Sir George Bonham and Lord Palmerston, who had blamed or doubted his policy at first, but had now the candor to allow that its headlong boldness had constituted its main ground of success.

    Meantime, no dealing of ours with men born in China could ever pass without a characteristic kick from some Chinese hoof. In this particular case, indeed, all things told so ill for the flowery people, whether gentle or simple, master or man, that the whole might have been expected for once to pass in solemn silence. But this was not to be. The viceroy had been too thoroughly frightened by Her Majesty's brig Espiègle, not to take out his vengeance in a private letter [marked confidential] to the Emperor. How this letter transpired, is no business of mine: it did; and well it exemplifies the scoundrelism of the Chinese nature in high quarters equally as in lowest.

    The viceroy describes the Tsing-poo robbery and meditated murder as a brawl between the missionaries and some boatmen, leaving it to be collected that all the parties were perhaps drunk together, and got to what in Westmoreland is called scraffling. And next he insinuates that the wounds of the missionaries were mere romances for coloring the pecuniary claim13. It is probable that few of us who read this chapter of Chinese spoliation altogether go along with these missionaries in their proselytizing views upon a people so unspiritual as our brutal friends the Chinese. But we all know the self-denying character of missionaries as a class, who risk their lives in lands such as China. Poor Mr. Medhurst did not live to recover the blessings of English society; for he died immediately after landing in England: but his book speaks for itself. He is wrong, in my opinion, upon various Chinese questions, as particularly in his elaborate chapters upon the probable population of China; and he too much palliates the Chinese follies, when he apologizes for our own English faith in Francis Moore. Only the lowest of the low in England ever do make profession of believing in Moore. Whilst buying his almanac, which (in the common pirated editions of Belfast) was cheap, and met the ordinary purposes of an almanac, the rustic purchaser generally laughed. But, whether wrong or right in trifles, Medhurst was a most generous and a pious man; and the affair at Tsing-poo shows him to have been as brave a man as ever existed; for all the accounts show that, when Mr. Lockhart, by dropping behind, had fallen into great peril, Mr. Medhurst did not hesitate an instant in turning back and meeting an infuriated mob for the purpose of aiding his friend.

    But now, dismissing the past, let us come to our immediate British prospects in China. Gloomy, indeed, are these; and it might seem greatly to lighten this burden, if I should say (which with great truth I can say) that we owe our difficulties to our own deplorable want of energy; and, by one act of resolution, might effect an instantaneous conquest of the two great obstacles to such a settlement as, under the social disorganization of China, can now be had. What two obstacles are those which I speak of? They are - the emperor: the most stolid of all known princes, and by force of very impotence an obstructive power; secondly, the city of Canton. I will take this last-mentioned nuisance first. Mr. Roebuck puts forward five separate ministers as having urged upon us the policy of forbearing to press our treaty-rights with regard to Canton. One only of the five is really answerable for such counsels - namely, Lord Aberdeen. He held very dangerous and unpatriotic language. The other four may be well represented by Lord Palmerston, whose real language was this: he advised us to keep up our right of free entrance into this city; separately for itself he thought the right of real importance; and also distinctly so, as a treaty concession to us. What he said in the other direction amounted simply to this: that no harm would perhaps arise from consenting to suspend our claim during a period of refractoriness in the Canton mob. More than this Lord Palmerston could not consistently have said, since he had himself counselled earnestly that the claim should never be dropped, or even intermitted, but only withdrawn to the rear for a short period.

    But now, listen, reader, to the arguments upon which it is, past all doubting, that the noble viscount would at present hold an altered tone. When he counselled delay, he did so under the impression (as openly he avowed) that no immediate benefit was lost through such a momentary suspension of the claim. But now, first of all, as regards both America and ourselves, there have arisen special alud intolerable grievances, from the want of building ground in the interior of Canton. The United States agents are complaining more and more upon his head. But what is that by comparison with the moral effect from the growing diffusion over all China of our exclusion for the express purpose of degrading us?

    I have reported circumstantially the behavior of the Chinese magistracy, ordinary and extraordinary, on occasion of the Tsing-poo outrage, in order that it may be seen what sort of new treaties we need for the security of our British brethren in China. Had Mr. Consul Alcock failed in his last measure, the lives and property of all our countrymen at Shanghai would not have been worth a year's purchase. Now, lastly, knowing what is wanted, let it be inquired what prospect there is of obtaining it in face of the existing obstacles. What obstacles? Those to which I have already mentioned — the wicked city of Canton, and the wicked emperor; both wicked, both wholesale dealers in murder, but, unfortunately, both stolid and ignorant in an excess, which makes them unmanageable, except by war, or by menaces of war.

    I will begin with the first obstacle, - namely, Canton, - which, without a personal experience of the evil, is hardly appreciable.

    To tolerate a notorious and systematic degradation to any body of men, cannot be wise anywhere, but least of all in a nation so ignorant as the Chinese, having no historic knowledge by which to correct any false impressions derived from accident. Crowds of men from Canton flock incessantly to Amoy and Shanghai, where they diffuse the most degrading opinions of the British; and, to some extent, confirm them by the undeniable fact of our stern exclusion from their city14 .

    Secondly, amongst a people that cannot be thought to have reached a higher stage of intellectual development than that which corresponds to childhood, it is not prudent to suffer any one article of a treaty to be habitually broken. Such infractions are contagious; the knavish counsellors of the emperor, finding that we submit coolly to one infraction, that aims at nothing confessedly beyond a bitter insult to us, this only, and no dream of any further advantage being proposed, are tempted into trying another infraction, and so onwards. For fourteen years we have allowed ourselves to tolerate this burning scandal; and all the while the successive governors of Canton have been amusing us with moonshine visions that " the time may come " when they can think of fulfilling their engagements15 Canton, therefore, has two values - first, on its own account, separately: secondly, on account of its relation to the treaty. Upon this latter point I have spoken. But, as to the other, it is not possible to find words strong enough for the occasion. Mr. Consul Alcock, when reviewing the circumstances which, on the one side, constitute, or which, on the other, tend to control, the danger attaching to the British position in China, where a little household, counted by hundreds, is scattered amongst hostile millions, thus brings the weight of his official experience to bear upon the question. He is speaking at the moment of Shanghai; but what he says applies to any and every English station alike: "Our position is so deeply compromised, and our security from molestation so light, that Shanghai will be no better than Canton in an incredibly short period."

    But what, then, was it that caused this gradual assimilation of a port, previously reputed safe, to that one which had always been a city of violence and danger? Simply the example (published over all China) of Canton. The example of itself kindled evil thoughts, without, however, concealing the accompanying dangers of public chastisement or of private retaliation. But the record of its impunity whispered to the malignity of all China, encouraging thoughts of a possible gratification, liberated from the pursuing Nemesis. What this experienced consul thought upon the subject, even Lord Palmerston, in the midst of his overwhelming labors, may find time to read. It is this: "Too many incidental circumstances have been generally observed in the demeanor and acts of the people and authorities, since the last catastrophe of Canton, for those who have them daily under their eyes, to avoid the conviction that our position at that port has exercised a most prejudicial influence upon the minds of both people and authorities,. I have long been fully convinced, from the result of my observations at all the three ports where I have resided, that Canton, and our relations there, have the most serious efect upon our position at all the other ports, and our standing (with the authorities, at least) throughout the empire16."

    We need a solid arrangement for securing both the safety and the respectability of the British; for at present we hold equally the unsafe position, and the degraded position, of Jews in the middle ages. Strange it seems that at this day any man should have it in his power to expose a new feature in the administration of the Chinese government; and yet, apparently, it was never noticed by either of our two ambassadors; most certainly it never entered practically into any chapter of their remedial provisions, that a mysterious darkness surrounds the emperor, fatal to ourselves. In Afghanistan we found ourselves in this hopeless embarrassment, that no organ existed in the state with which it was possible to form a treaty. He that for the moment had power was the man that could locally give effect to a treaty, but only for his own district; and even there, possibly, only for a few weeks. This terrible defect proclaimed ruin to any party whose hopes lay in negotiating. Now, a similar defect exists in China. The emperor, for most purposes, is a cipher, and cannot give effect to his own wishes, though occasionally they seem just. In 1836, and on some other occasions, he issued an edict, evidently founded on his own dim suspicions that the authorities at Canton were misleading him, and perhaps were themselves causing the turbulent movements which they charged upon the English, by their own attempts to pillage these foreigners. It is plain, from what transpires at long intervals, that an indistinct glimmering of the truth reaches him at times. But too generally no truth ever penetrates to the imperial cabinet17 .

    It is therefore our sad necessity in China, as things stand at present, that we cannot in any satisfactory or binding sense negotiate. In order to figure adequately our embarrassment in this respect, we have only to remember that the particular perplexity which ruined a detachment of our army at Cabul, and cost us four thousand Sepoys, together with nearly five hundred British infantry, - namely, the absence of any representative authority capable of guaranteeing the execution of a treaty, - exists virtually in China, under a far less remediable form. It is a misery attaching to all barbarous lands that are under no control from the fraternal responsibilities acknowledged by nations under a system of international law. But the evil which at Cabul oppressed us for a few weeks, in China exists forever. Nor will it be at all mitigated until the present convulsions, consequent upon our sharp handling of China in 1842, have accomplished their secret mission of disorganizing the hulk, which must be shattered into fragments before it can be usefully recast.

    An American merchant

    (so he describes himself on the title-page) wrote a pamphlet on British relations with China in 1834. As a neutral observer, he obtained some attention in England, and one remark of his deserves to be quoted; it is this: " We have seen that the Emperor of China cannot be approached by embassies18." This is true; he cannot, and he will not. In reality, though conspiracies against the person of the emperor are unaccountably rare, it is probable that, if le did not receive ambassadors brutally and superciliously, - if he consented to regard them as representing potentates standing on an equality with himself, he would not reign very long. On the pretence that he had degraded the nation, the next heir would be raised to the throne.

    An amusing instance of this inflexible arrogance occurred during Lord Amherst's embassy in 1816. The letter from our Regent, of which Lord Amherst was the bearer, began in the form usual amongst sovereign princes —" Sir, my Brother; " but the great mandarins, who most impertinently opened the letter, protested that they could not present such a letter without risk of decapitation. This and a thousand similar anecdotes show us that we cannot send an embassy in the ordinary form, without a gratuitous sacrifice of our own dignity, where there is no prospect of advantage. How, then, does our government propose to proceed? I will briefly array before the reader the only three modes of action which lie within our choice. Under any one of the three it is to be presumed that we shall open the drama by taking military possession of Canton. Toward this object, it is fortunate that partial reinforcements from the Persian Gulf and India will have enabled the present commanders to have made some considerable martial advances before any trader in "moderation" and pacific measures, which have so continually proved ruinous when operating upon oriental tempers, can have arrived to prejudge the question. Any man who tries the effect of opposite measures will find his surest punishment in general defeat, and in the necessity of soon abruptly changing his policy. After the occupation of Canton, and the summary expulsion of Yeh, whose degradation and signal punishment it is to be hoped will be instantly demanded from the emperor, we might proceed with a fleet of steam-frigates, and smaller craft, to the mouth of the river Peiho, from which the distance is but small to Peking. Steam transports will carry some land forces; how many will depend upon the particular scheme of tactics, one out of three, which our government may elect for its policy.

    First, although it is true, in the words of the American merchant, that the Emperor of China cannot be approached by embassies, - understanding by that term pacific and ceremonial agents prepared to discuss and to arrange international concerns, - that is no reason for his declining to receive an armed embassy. Our naval force at the mouth of the Peiho will need in that case to be strengthened; and we shall carry in the transports perhaps seven thousand picked land troops. With these we shall probably occupy Peking; in which case the emperor would be found to have fled to his Tartar hunting-seat. From him personally we should gain nothing. But his flight would by itself publish his defeat, and go far to stamp a character of emptiness upon all his subsequent gasconades. He could, however, as little be dispensed with for any continued period, as the queen-bee from a hive. To stay away, would be to interrupt the whole currency of the national administration. Yet, sometimes, it will be alleged, he does stay away for six or eight weeks, doing what he conceives to be "hunting; " for the Russian chargé d'affaires had the honor to behold his majesty, when belted with fourteen thousand men, bravely fire his rifle at a tiger. But in these hunting expeditions, it must be remembered, the intercourse with Peking was kept open by couriers continually on the road; whereas, under our occupation of the capital, the only available road would be interdicted by a British military post at the Wall, through which lies, of necessity, the sole avenue of communication with Mantchoo Tartary. An emperor who was so effectually frightened by the little saucy Espiègle would be brought upon his knees, and himself "knock head," at the summons of such an expedition as this.

    But this policy requires money and energy, more, I fear, than we are yet prepared to spend upon our Chinese interest, until a great massacre of our British brethren at Amoy or Shanghai shall have abolished forever all policies suggested by the sons of the feeble.

    Secondly, the next policy is that which works by bribery. This method, in times when the East India Company domineered over the China trade, was employed largely, but unfortunately under Chinese compulsion, so that it availed us only in a negative way - that is, we were not kicked out of China; but had no positive returns for our one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Little gratitude or service was conceived to be due for money given protestingly, and under the screw. Here was the very gall and wormwood of robbery — that nothing was earned apparently by submitting to it. But the Chinese robber thought otherwise, and parried our complaints in the spirit of Esop's wolf, when replying to the crane's complaint that she had received no fee for her surgical service in extracting a bone from his throat: "How? No fee? Do you count it none to have withdrawn that long bill of yours in safety from my mouth? " The pretence was, that a toleration of this commerce had been purchased at court by bribes judiciously planted. Mr. Matheson (of the Canton firm, Jardine & Matheson) showed, in a very valuable pamphlet, published in 1836, that the whole sum distributed amongst the emperor's mother, and a quadrille of other old ladies, &c., amounted annually to one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Think, therefore, arithmetical reader, what sad hypocrisy it was in the imperial court, that reaped so largely where it had not sown, to talk in its grandiloquent strain about the infinite pettiness of this commerce in celestial eyes. No single person's family in China, where all splendor is an unknown thing, and the imperial gifts are seldom worth separately as much as three half-crowns, could spend so much as three thousand pounds a year. Such a sum, therefore, as one hundred and fifty thousand pounds per annum must mine its way through the court ranks like so many miners' blastings; and, if it has been discontinued since the war, there is no need to wonder that Yehs, and such cattle, are employed.' Little doubt but Yeh was sent as a mischief-maker, to remind us, by rough practice, of the need we stand in of a protector at Peking.

    This bribery system, however, as shown by Mr. Matheson in his excellent pamphlet of 1836, has always ruinously recoiled upon our own interests. In one chief instance19, the Canton knaves who pocketed the bribes actually employed those very bribes - how? Let the reader guess. Actually in purchasing at Peking, by re-bribery, the license to coerce and limit our commerce in modes never before attempted.

    Finally, there is a third course - namely, again to attempt a pacific embassy, such as Lord Macartney's and Lord Amherst's; but - and prudence even on his own behalf will now speak loudly to any man undertaking such an embassy - with great modifications. The two lords of past times had this excuse: they did not know the government to which they were accredited, as we of this generation know them; and the British government, ignorant, even as these lords were ignorant, upon the true condition of China, sent them out most inadequately furnished and instructed for the mission before them. In this miserable perplexity, it should never be forgotten, to their praise, that both resisted the killing degradation of the ko-tow; and Lord Amherst, in particular, dealing with a more savage emperor, under a sense of personal danger. If this plea may palliate their conduct for having submitted to be carted about like commercial bales, and at first to be conveyed in junks, bearing banners, inscribed "The English tribute-bearers," we must have no more of such passive acquiescences in studied insults offered to our national honor. Sir G. Staunton20 attempts to palliate this compliance on the ground that Lords Macartney and Amherst stood firm upon greater questions. There is none greater. It is through these unthinking concessions that we are now reduced to miserable straits. Most truly does Mr. Matheson say (pp. 8, 9), " It is humiliating to reflect that our present degradations in the eyes of China are self-imposed.

    ‘The thorns which we have reaped are of the tree

    We planted; they have torn us, and we bleed.'"

    The Memorials addressed to government in the year 1836, first by the Mianchester Chamber of Commerce, soon after by the Glasgow East India Association, next by the Liverpool East India Association, all speak the same determined language; strictly applicable to this time. But I quote by preference from the "Canton Memorial." This excellent paper, after insisting indignantly upon the brutal Chinese treatment of Lord Napier21, which persecuted him into a condition of misery that terminated in his death, and urging that ample reparation should be exacted for this outrage, and also "for the arrogant and degrading language used towards your Majesty, and our country, in edicts of the local authorities, wherein your Majesty was represented as the 'reverently submissive tributary of the Emperor of China,' and your Majesty's subjects as profligate barbarians," goes on to suggest that with a small naval force namely, one ship of the line, two frigates, and four armed vessels of light draught, together with a steam vessel, all fully manned - there would be found no difficulty in putting a stop to the greater part of the external and internal commerce of the Chinese Empire, of intercepting its revenues in their progress to the capital, and in taking possession of all the armed vessels of the country. And such measures, so far from being likely to lead to a more serious collision, would be the surest course for avoiding it.

    The Memorial then goes on to this wise counsel: " We would further urgently submit, that, as we cannot but trace the disabilities under which our commerce labors, to a long acquiescence in the arrogant assumption of supremacy over the monarchs and people of other countries, claimed by the Emperor of China for himself and his subjects, we are forced to conclude that no beneficial result can be expected to arise fromn negotiations in which such pretensions are not decidedly repelled." Finally, I will quote a passage more closely and ominously applicable to any inconsiderate undertaker of this arduous office: "We would therefore beseech your Majesty not to leave it to the discretion of any future representative of your Majesty, as was permitted in the case of Lord Amherst, to swerve in the smallest degree from a calm and dispassionate, but determined, maintenance of the true rank of your Majesty's empire in the scale of nations."

    And the Memorial concludes with this emphatic sentence, just as wise now as it was then: Our counsel is, "not to permit any future commissioner to set his foot on the shores of China, until ample assurance is afforded of a reception and treatment suitable to the dignity of a minister of your Majesty, and to the honor of an empire that acknowledges no superior on earth."

    Who is to go out as our ambassador has not, I believe, as yet been officially made known. But whoever he may be, it is pretty certain that he will fail. Were there no other reason for saying so, how is the following dilemma to be met? A man of rank must be appointed, or the Chinese emperor will hold himself affronted. Yet, on the other hand, all the Englishmen who speak Chinese are not men of rank, but are either supercargoes (some actually serving as such, some emeriti), or else missionaries. There is no time to learn Chinese; and interpreters are perfectly useless, except on a mere mission of ceremony. How is that fix to be treated? Œdipus and the Sphinx combined could not solve it.

    ____

    CHINA.

    IN the days of Grecian Paganism, when morals (whether social or domestic) had no connection whatever with the National Religion, it followed that there could be no organ corresponding to our modern PULPIT (Christian or Mahometan) for teaching and illustrating the principles of morality. Those principles, it was supposed, taught and explained themselves. Every man's understanding, heart, and conscience, furnished him surely with light enough for his guidance on a path so plain, within a field so limited, as the daily life of a citizen - Spartan, Theban, or Athenian. In reality, this field was even more limited than at first sight appeared. Suppose the case of a Jew, living in pre-Christian Judea, under the legal code of Deuteronomy and Leviticus or suppose a Mussulman at this day, living under the control of Mahometan laws, he finds himself left to his own moral discretion hardly in one action out of fifty; so thoroughly has the municipal law of his country (the Pentateuch in the one case, the Koran in the other) superseded and swallowed up the freedom of individual movement. Very much of the same legal restraint tied up the fancied autonomy of the Grecian citizen. Not the moral censor, but the constable was at his heels, if he allowed himself too large a license. In fact, so small a portion of his actions was really resigned to his own discretion, that the very humblest intellect was equal to the call upon its energies. Under these circumstances, what need for any public and official lecturer upon distinctions so few, so plain, so little open to casuistic doubts? To abstain from assault and battery; not to run away from battle relicta non bene parmula; not to ignore the deposit confided to his care, - these made up the sum of cases that life brought with it as possibilities in any ordinary experience. As an office, therefore, the task of teaching morality was amongst the ancients wholly superfluous. Pulpit there was none, nor any public teacher of morality. As regarded his own moral responsibility, every man walked in broad daylight, needed no guide, and found none.

    But Athens, the marvellous city that in all things ran ahead of her envious and sullen contemporaries, here also made known her supremacy. Civilization, not as a word, not as an idea, but as a thing, but as a power, was known in Athens. She only through all the world had a theatre, and in the service of this theatre she retained the mightiest by far of her creative intellects. Teach she could not in those fields where no man was. unlearned; light was impossible where there could be no darkness; and to guide was a hopeless pretension when all aberrations must be wilful. But, if it were a vain and arrogant assumption to illuminate, as regarded those primal truths which, like the stars, are hung aloft, and shine for all alike22, neither vain nor arrogant was it to fly her falcons at game almost as high. If not light, yet life; if not absolute birth, yet moral regeneration, and fructifying warmth - these were quickening forces which abundantly she was able to engraft upon truths else slumbering and inert. Not affecting to teach the new, she could yet vivify the old. Those moral echoes, so solemn and pathetic, that lingered in the ear from her stately tragedies, all spoke with the authority of voices from the grave. The great phantoms that crossed her stage all pointed with shadowy fingers to shattered dynasties and the ruins of once-regal houses, Pelopidae or Labdacidae, as monuments of sufferings in expiation of violated morals, or sometimes which even more thrillingly spoke to human sensibilities of guilt too awful to be expiated. And in the midst of these appalling records, what is their ultimate solution? From what keynote does Athenian Tragedy; trace the expansion of its own dark impassioned music? [Greek here] (hybris) - the spirit of outrage and arrogant self-assertion - in that temper lurks the original impulse towards wrong; and to that temper the Greek drama adapts its monitory legends. The doctrine of the Hebrew Scriptures as to vicarious retribution is at times discovered secretly moving through the scenic poetry of Athens. His own crime is seen hunting a man through five generations, and finding him finally in the persons of his innocent descendants. "Curses, like young fowls, come home in the evening to roost." This warning doctrine, adopted by Southey as a motto to his " Kehama," is dimly to be read moving in shadows through the Greek legends and semi-historic traditions. In other words, atrocious crime of any man towards others in his stages of power comes round upon him with vengeance in the darkening twilight of his evening. And, accordingly, upon no one feature of moral temper is the Greek Tragedy more frequent or earnest in its denunciations, than upon all expressions of self-glorification, or of arrogant disparagement applied to others.

    What nation is it, beyond all that ever have played a part on this stage of Earth, which ought, supposing its vision cleansed for the better appreciation of things and persons, to feel itself primarily interested in these Grecian denunciations? What other than China? When Coleridge, in lyric fury, apostrophized his mother-country in terms of hyperbolic wrath, almost of frenzy,

    "The nations hate thee!"

    every person who knew him was aware that in this savage denunciation he was simply obeying the blind impulse of momentary partisanship; and nobody laughed more heartily than Coleridge himself, some few moons later, at his own violence. But in the case of China, this apostrophe - The natlions hate thee! - would pass by acclamation, without needing the formality of a vote. Such has been the inhuman insolence of this vilest and silliest amongst nations towards the whole household of man, that (upon the same principle as governs our sympathy with the persons and incidents of a novel or a drama) we are pledged to. a moral detestation of all who can be supposed to have participated in the constant explosions of unprovoked contumely to ourselves. A man who should profess esteem for Shakspeare's Iago, would himself become an object of disgust and suspicion. Yet Iago is but a fabulous agent; it was but a dream in which he played so diabolic a part. But the offending Chinese not only supported that flesh-and-blood existence which Iago had not, but also are likely (which Iago is not, in any man's dreams) to repeat their atrocious insolences as often as opportunities offer. Our business at present with the Chinese is - to speculate a little upon the Future immediately before us, so far as it is sure to be colored by the known dispositions of that people, and so far as it ought to be colored by changes in our inter-relations, dictated by our improved knowledge of the case, and by that larger experience of Chinese character which has been acquired since our last treaty with their treacherous executive. Meantime, for one moment let us fix our attention upon a remarkable verification of the old saying adopted by Southey, that "Curses come home to roost." Two centuries have elapsed, and something more, since our national expansion brought us into a painful necessity of connecting ourselves with the conceited and most ignorant inhabitants of China. From the very first our connection had its foundations laid in malignity; so far as the Chinese were concerned, in affected disdain, and in continual outbreaks of brutal inhospitality. That we should have reconciled ourselves to such treatment, formed, indeed, one-half of that apology which might have been pleaded on behalf of the Chinese. But why, then, did we reconcile ourselves? Simply for a reason which offers the other half of the apology, - namely, that no thoroughly respectable section of the English nation ever presented itself at Canton in those early days as candidates for any share in so humiliating a commerce. On reviewing that memorable fact, we must acknowledge that it offers some inadequate excuse on behalf of the Chinese. They had seen nothing whatever of our national grandeur; nothing of our power; of our enlightened and steadfast constitutional system; of our good faith; of our magnificent and ancient literature; of our colossal charities and provision for every form of human calamity; of our insurance system, which so vastly enlarged our moneyed power; of our facilities for combining and using the powers of all (as in our banks the money of all) common purposes; of our mighty shipping interest; of our docks, arsenals, lighthouses, manufactories, private or national. Much beside there was that they could not have understood, so that not to have seen it was of small moment; but these material and palpable indications of power and antiquity, even Chinamen, even Changs and Fangs, Chungs and Fungs, could have appreciated; yet all these noble monuments of wisdom and persevering energy they had seen absolutely not at all. And the men of our nation who had resorted to Canton were too few at any time to suggest an impression of national greatness. Numerically, we must have seemed a mere vagrant tribe; and, as the Chinese even in 1851, and in the council-chamber of the emperor, settled it as the most plausible hypothesis that the English people had no territorial home, but made a shift (like some birds) to float upon the sea in fine weather, and in rougher seasons to run for "holes," upon the whole, we English are worse off than are the naked natures that affront the elements:

    " If on windy days the raven

    Gambol like a dancing skiff,

    Not the less he loves his haven

    On the bosom of a cliff. "

    Though almost with eagle pinion

    O'er the rocks the chamois roam,

    Yet he has some small dominion

    Which no doubt he calls his home."

    Yes, no doubt. But, worse off than all these, than sea-horse, raven, chamois, - the Englishman, it seems, of Chinese ethnography has not a home, except in crevices of rocks. What are we to think of that nation, which by its supreme councils could accredit such follies? We in fact suffer from the same cause, a thousand-fold, exaggerated, as that which injured the French in past times amongst ourselves. Up to the time when Voltaire came twice to England, no Frenchman of eminence, or distinguished talents, had ever found a sufficient motive for resisting his home-loving indolence so far as to pay us a visit. The court had been visited in the days of James I. by Sully; in those of Charles II. by De Grammont; but the nation for itself, and with an honorable enthusiasm, first of all by Voltaire. What was the consequence? No Frenchman ever coming amongst us, —except' (1) as a cook; (2) as a hair-dresser; (3) as a dancing-master, - was it unnatural in the English to appreciate the French nation accordingly?

    "Paulum sepultu distat inertira

    Celata virtus."

    What they showed us, that, in commercial phrase, we carried to their account; what they gave, for that we credited them; and it was unreasonable to complain of our injustice in a case where so determinately they were unjust to themselves. Not until lately have we in England done any justice to the noble qualities of our French neighbors. But yet, for this natural result of the intercourse between us, the French have to thank themselves. With Canton the case was otherwise. Nobody having freedom could be expected to visit such a dog-kennel, where all alike were muzzled, and where the neutral ground for exercise measured about fifteen pocket-handkerchiefs. Accordingly, the select few who had it not in their power to stay away, proclaimed themselves ipso facto as belonging to that class of persons who are willing to purchase the privilege of raising a fortune at any price, and through any sacrifice of dignity, personal or national. Almost excusably, therefore, the British were confounded for a time with the Portuguese and the Dutch, who had notoriously practised sycophantic arts, carried to shocking extremities. The first person who taught the astonished Chinese what difference might happen to lurk between nation and nation was Lord Anson - not yet a lord; in fact, a simple commodore, and in a crazy old hulk; but who, in that same superannuated ship, had managed to plough up the timbers of the Acapulco galleon, though by repute23 bullet-proof, and eventually to make prize of considerably more than half-a-million sterling for himself and his crew. Having accomplished this little feat, the commodore was not likely to put much value upon the "crockery ware" (as he termed the forts) of the Chinese. Not come, however, upon any martial mission, he confined himself to so much of warlike demonstration as sufficed for his own immediate purposes. To place our Chinese establishments upon a more dignified footing was indeed a most urgent work; but work for councils more deliberate, and for armaments on a far larger scale. As regarded the present, such was the vast distance between Canton and Peking, that there was no time for this Anson aggression to reach the ears of the emperor's council, before all had passed off. It was but a momentary typhoon, that thoroughly frightened the flowery people, but was gone before it could influence their policy. By a pleasant accident, the Manilla treasure captured by Anson was passing in wagons in the rear of St. James' Palace, during the natal hour of the Prince of Wales (George IV.); consequently we are within sight, chronologically, of the period which will round the century dated from Lord Anson's assault. Within that century is comprised all that has ever been done by war or by negotiation to bring down upon their knees this ultra-gasconading, but also ultra-pusillanimous, nation. Some thirty and more years after the Anson skirmish, it was resolved that the best way to give weight and splendor to our diplomatic overtures was by a solemn embassy, headed by a man of rank. At that time the East India Company had a monopoly interest in the tea trade of Canton, as subsequently in the opium trade. What we had to ask from the Chinese was generally so reasonable, and so indispensable to the establishment of our national name upon any footing of equality, that it ought not for a moment to have been tolerated as any subject for debate. There is a difficulty, often experienced even in civilized Europe, of making out any just equations between the titular honors of different states. Ignorant people are constantly guided in such questions by mere vocal resemblances. The acrimonious Prince Pücker Muskau, so much irritated at being mistaken in France for an Englishman, and in fifty ways betraying his mortifying remembrances connected with England, charges us with being immoderately addicted to a reverential homage towards the title of "Prince;" in which, to any thoughtful man, there would be found no subject for blame; since with us there can be no prince24 that is not by blood connected with the royal family; so that such a homage is paid under an erroneous impression as to the fact, but not the less under an honorable feeling as to the purpose; which is that of testifying the peculiar respect in a free country cheerfully paid to a constitutional throne. But, if we had been familiarized with the mock princes of Sicily and Russia (amongst which last are found some reputed to have earned a living in St. Petersburg as barbers), we should certainly moderate our respect towards the bearers of princely honors. Every man of the world knows how little a French marquise or comtesse can pretend to rank with a British marchioness or countess; as reasonably might you suppose an equation between a modern consul of commerce and the old Roman consul of the awful S. P. Q. R.

    In dealing with a vile trickster like the Chinese executive, - unacquainted with any one restraint of decorum or honorable sensibility, - it is necessary for a diplomatist to be constantly upon his guard, and to have investigated all these cases of international equation, before coming abruptly to any call for a decision in some actual case. Cromwell was not the man to have attached much importance to the question of choosing a language for the embodying of a treaty, or for the intercourse of the hostile envoys in settling the terms of such a treaty; and yet, when he ascertained that the French Court made it a point of honor to use their own language, in the event of any modern language being tolerated, he insisted upon the adoption of Latin as the language of the treaty25. With the Chinese, a special, almost a superstitiously minute, attention to punctilios is requisite, because it has now become notorious that they assign a symbolic and representative value to every act of intercourse between their official deputies and all foreign ambassadors. Does the ambassador dine at some imperial table - the emperor has been feeding the barbarians. Do some of the court mandarins dine with the ambassador - then the emperor has deigned to restore happiness to the barbarians, by sending those who represent his person to speak words of hope and consolation. Does the ambassador convey presents from his own sovereign to the emperor - the people of Peking are officially informed that the barbarians are bringing their tribute. Does the emperor make presents to the ambassador -in that case his majesty has been furnishing the means of livelihood to barbarians exhausted by pestilence, and by the failure of crops. Huc, the French missionary, who travelled in the highest north latitudes of China, traversing the whole of the frightful deserts between Peking and Lassa (or, in his nomenclature, La Sae), the capital of Thibet, and who, speaking the Mongol language, had the rare advantage of passing for a native subject of the Chinese emperor, and therefore of conciliating unreserved confidence, tells us of some desperate artifices practised by the imperial government. In particular, he mentions this: Towards the close of the British war, a Tartar general —reputed invincible —had been summoned from a very distant post in the north to Peking, and thence immediately despatched against the detested enemy. Upon this man's prestige of invincibility, and upon the notorious fact that he really had been successful in repressing some predatory aggressors in one of the Tartarys, great hopes were built of laurel crops to be harvested without end, and of a dreadful retribution awaiting the doomed barbarian enemy. Naturally this poor man, in collision with the English forces, met the customary fate. M. Huc felt, therefore, a special curiosity to learn in what way the Chinese government had varnished the result in this particular case, upon which so very much of public interest had settled. This interest being in its nature so personal, and the name of the Tartar hero so notorious, it had been found impossible for the imperial government to throw their mendacity into its usual form of blank denial, applied to the total result, or of intricate transformation, applied to the details. The barbarians, it was confessed, had, for the present, escaped. The British defeat had not been of that vast extent. which was desirable. But why? The reason was, that, in the very paroxysm of martial fury, on coming within sight of the barbarians, the Tartar general was seized by the very impertinent 26 passion of pity. He pitied the poor wretches; through which mistake in his passions, the red-haired devils effected their escape, doing, however, various acts of mischief in the course of the said escape; such being the English mode of gratitude for past favors.

    With a government capable of frauds like these, and a people (at least in the mandarin class) trained through centuries to a conformity of temper with their government, we shall find, in the event of any more extended intercourse with China, the greatest difficulty in maintaining the just equations of rank and privilege. But the difficulty as regards the people of the two nations promises to be a trifle by comparison with that which besets the relations between the two crowns. We came to know something more circumstantially about this question during the second decennium of this nineteenth century. The unsatisfactoriness of our social position had suggested the necessity of a second embassy. Probably it was simply an accidental difference in the temper of those forming at that time the imperial council, which caused the ceremonial ko-tou of court presentation to be debated with so much more of rancorous bigotry. Lord Amherst was now the ambassador, a man of spirit and dignity, to whom the honor of his country might have been safely confided, had he stood in a natural and intelligible position; but it was the inevitable curse of an ambassador to Peking, that his official station had contradictory aspects, and threw him upon incompatible duties. His first duty was to his country; and nobody, in so many words, denied that. But this patriotic duty, though a conditio sine qua non for his diplomatic functions, and a perpetual restraint upon their exercise, was not the true and efficient cause of his mission. That lay in the commercial interests of a great company. This secondary duty was clearly his paramount duty, as regarded the good sense of the situation. Yet the other was the paramount duty, as regarded the sanctity of its obligation, and the impossibility of compromising it by so much as the shadow of a doubt or the tremor of a hesitation. Nevertheless, Lord Amherst was plied with secret whispers (more importunate than the British public knew) from the East India Company, suggesting that it was childish to lay too much stress on a pure ceremonial usage, of no more weight than a bow or a curtsey, and which pledged neither himself nor his country to any consequences. But, in its own nature, the homage was that of a slave. Genuflections, prostrations, and knockings of the ground nine times with the forehead, were not modes of homage to be asked from the citizen of a free state, far less from that citizen when acting as the acknowledged representative of that state.

    For one moment, let us pause to review this hideous degradation of human nature which has always disgraced the East. That no Asiatic state has ever debarbarized itself, is evident from the condition of WOMAN at this hour all over Asia, and from this very abject form of homage, which already in the days of Darius and Xerxes we find established, and extorted from the compatriots of Miltiades and Themistocles27 .

    There cannot be any doubt that the ko-tou had descended to the court of Susa and Persepolis from the elder court of Babylon, and to that from the yet elder court of Nineveh. Man in his native grandeur, standing erect, and with his countenance raised to the heavens

    [Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri],

    presents a more awful contrast to man when passing through the shadow of this particular degradation, than under any or all of the other symbols at any time devised for the sensuous expression of a servile condition — scourges, ergastula, infibulation, or the neck-chains and ankle-chains of the Roman atriensis. "The bloody writing" is far more legible in this than any other language by which the slavish condition is or can be published to the world, because in this only the sufferer of the degradation is himself a party to it, an accomplice in his own dishonor. All else may have been the stern doom of calamitous necessity. Here only we recognize, without an opening for disguise or equivocation, the man's own deliberate act. He' has not been branded passively (personal resistance being vain) with the record of a master's ownership, like a sheep, a mule, or any other chattel, but has solemnly branded himself. Wearing, therefore, so peculiar and differential a character, to whom is it in modern days that this bestial yoke of servitude as regards Christendom owes its revival? Without hope, the Chinese despot would not have attempted to enforce such a Moloch vassalage upon the western world. Through whom, therefore, and through whose facile compliance with the insolent exaction, did he first conceive this hope?

    It has not been observed, so far as we know, that it was Peter I. of Russia, vulgarly called Peter the Great, who prepared for us that fierce necessity of conflict, past and yet to come, through which we British, standing alone, - but henceforth, we may hope, energetically supported by the United States, if not by France, - have, on behalf of the whole western nations, victoriously resisted the arrogant pretensions of the East. About four years after the death of our Queen Anne, Peter despatched from St. Petersburg (his new capital, yet raw and unfinished) a very elaborate embassy to Peking, by a route which measured at least ten thousand versts; or, in English miles, about two-thirds of that distance. It was, in fact, a vast caravan, or train of caravans, moving so slowly that it occupied sixteen calendar months in the journey. Peter was by natural disposition a bully. Offering outrages of every kind upon the slightest impulse, no man was so easily frightened into a retreat and abject concessions as this drunken prince. He had at the very time of this embassy submitted tamely to a most atrocious injury from the eastern side of the Caspian. The Khan of Khivaa place since made known to us all as the foulest of murdering dens -had seduced by perfidy the credulous little army despatched by Peter into quarters so widely scattered, that with little difficulty he had there massacred nearly the whole force; about three or four hundreds out of so many thousands being all that had recovered their vessels on the Caspian. This atrocity Peter had pocketed, and apparently found his esteem for the khan greatly increased by such an instance of energy. He was now meditating by this great Peking embassy two objects: first, the ordinary objects of a trading mission, together with the adjustment of several disputes affecting the Russian frontier towards Chinese Tartary and Thibet; but, secondly, and more earnestly, the privilege of having a resident minister at the capital of the Chinese emperor. This last purpose was connected with an evil result for all the rest of Christendom. It is well known to all who have taken any pains in studying the Chinese temper and character, that obstinacy - obstinacy like that of mules is one of its foremost features. And it is also known, by a multiplied experience, that the very greatest importance attaches in Chinese estimate to the initial movement. Once having conceded a point, you need not hope to recover your lost ground. The Chinese are, as may easily be read in their official papers and acts, intellectually a very imbecile people; and their peculiar style of obstinacy is often found in connection with a feeble brain, and also (though it may seem paradoxical) with a feeble moral energy. Apparently, a secret feeling of their own irresolution throws them for a vicarious support upon a mechanic resource of artificial obstinacy. This peculiar constitution of character it was, on the part of the Chinese, which gave such vast importance to what might now be done by the Russian ambassador.

    Who was he? He was called Mr. De Ismaeloff, an officer in the Russian guards, and somewhat of a favorite with the czar. What impressed so deep a value upon this gentleman's acts at this special moment was, that a great crisis had now arisen for the appraisal of the Christian nations. None hitherto had put forward any large or ostentatious display of their national pretensions. Generally for the scale of rank as amongst the Chinese, who know nothing of Europe, they stood much upon the casual proportions of their commerce, and in a small degree upon old concessions of some past Chinese ruler, or upon occasional encroachments that had become settled through lapse of time. But in the East all things masqueraded and belied their home character. Popish peoples were, at times, the firmest allies of bigoted Protestants; and the Dutch, that in Europe had played the noblest of parts as the feeble (yet eventually the triumphant) asserters of national rights, everywhere in Asia, through mean jealousy of England, had become but a representative word for hellish patrons of slavery and torture. All was confusion between the two scales of appreciation, domestic and foreign, European and Asiatic. But now was coming one that would settle all this in a transcendent way; for Russia would carry in her train, and compromise by her decision, most of the other Christian states. The very frontier line of Russia, often conterminous with that of China, and the sixteen months' journey, furnished in themselves exponents of the Russian grandeur. China needed no interpreter for that. She herself was great in pure virtue of her bigness. But here was a brother bigger than herself. We have known and witnessed the case where a bully, whom it was found desirable to eject from a coffee-room, upon opening the window for that purpose, was found too big to pass, and also nearly too heavy to raise, unless by machinery; so that in the issue the bully maintained his ground by virtue of his tonnage. That was really the case oftentimes of China. Russia seemed to stand upon the same basis of right as to aggression. China, therefore, understood her, and admired her; but for all that meant to make a handle of her. She judged that Russia, in coming with so much pomp, had something to ask. So had China. China, during that long period when M. De Ismaeloff was painfully making way across the steppes of Asia, had leisure to think what it was that she would ask, and through what temptation she would ask it. There was little room for doubting. Russia being incomparably the biggest potentate in Christendom (for as yet the United States had no existence), seemed, therefore, to the Chinese mind the greatest, and virtually to include all the rest. What Russia did, the rest would do. M. De Ismaeloff meant doubtless to ask for something. No matter what it might be, he should have it. At length the ambassador arrived. All his trunks were unpacked; and then M. De Ismaeloff unpacked to the last wrapper his own little request. The feeble-minded are generally cunning; and therefore it was that the Chinese council did not at once say yes, but pretended to find great difficulties in the request, which was simply to arrange some disorders on the frontier, but chiefly to allow of a permanent ambassador from the czar taking up his residence at Peking. At last this demand was granted —but granted conditionally. And what now might be the little condition? "O, my dear fellow - -between you and me, such old friends," said the Chinese minister, "a bauble not worth speaking of: would you oblige me, when presented to the emperor, by knocking that handsome head of yours nine times - that is, you know, three times three - against the floor? I would take it very kindly of you; and the floor is padded to prevent contusions." Ismaeloff pondered till the next day; but on that next day he said, "I will do it." —" Do what, my friend? "" I will knock my forehead nine times against the padded floor." Mr. Bell, of Antermony (which, at times, he writes Auchtermony), accompanied the Russian ambassador, as a leading person in his suite. A considerable section of his travels is occupied with this embassy. But, perhaps from private regard to the ambassador, whose character suffers so much by this transaction, we do not recollect that he tells us in so many words of this Russian concession. But M. De Lange, a Swedish officer, subsequently employed by the Czar Peter, does. A solemn court-day was held. M. De Ismaeloff attended. Thither came the allegada, or Chinese prime minister; thither came the ambassador's friends and acquaintances; thither came, as having the official entree, the ambassador's friend Hum-Hum, and also his friend Bug-Bug; and, when all is said and done, this truth is undeniable-that there and then (namely, in the imperial city of Peking, and in Anno Domini 1720), M. De Ismaeloff did knock his forehead nine times against the floor of the Tartar khan's palace. M. De Lange's report on this matter has been published separately; neither has the fact of the prostration and the forehead knockings to the amount of nine ever been called in question.

    Now, it will be asked, did Ismaeloff absolutely consent to elongate himself on the floor, as if preparing to take a swim, and then knock his forehead repeatedly, as if weary of life - somebody counting all the while with a stop watch, No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and so on? Did he do all this without capitulating that is, stipulating for some ceremonial return upon the part of the Chinese? O, no; the Russian ambassador, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and our own at the end of it, both bargained for equal returns; and here are the terms: The Russian had, with good faith, and through all its nine sections, executed the ko-tou; and he stipulated, before he did this, that any Chinese seeking a presentation to the czar, should, in coming to St. Petersburg, go through exactly the same ceremony. The Chinese present all replied with good faith, though doubtless stifling a little laughter, that when they or any of them should come to St. Petersburg, the ko-tou should be religiously performed. The English lords, on the other hand,- Lord Macartney, and subsequently Lord Amherst,- declined the ko-tou, but were willing to make profound obeisances to the emperor, provided these obeisances were simultaneously addressed by a high mandarin to the portrait of George III. In both cases a man is shocked: by the perfidy of the Chinese in offering, by the folly of the Christian envoys in accepting, a mockery so unmeaning. Certainly the English case is better; our envoy escaped the degradation of the ko-tou, and obtained a shadow; he paid less, and he got in exchange what many would think more. Homage paid to a picture, when counted against homage paid to a living man, is but a shadow; yet a shadow wears some semblance of a reality. But, on the other hand, for the Russian who submitted to an abject degradation, under no hope of any equivalent, except in a contingency that was notoriously impossible, the mockery was full of insult. The Chinese do not travel; by the laws of China they cannot leave the country. None but starving and desperate men ever do leave the country. All the Chinese emigrants now in Australia, and the great body at this time quitting California in order to evade the pressure of American laws against them, are liable to very severe punishment (probably to decapitation) on reentering China. Had Ismaeloff known what a scornful jest the emperor and his council were enacting at his expense, probably he would have bambooed some of these honorable gentlemen, on catching them within the enclosed court of his private residence28 .

    However, in a very circuitous way, Ismaeloff has had his revenge; for the first step in that retribution which we described as overtaking the Chinese was certainly taken by him. Russia, according to Chinese ideas of greatness, is the greatest (that is, broadest and longest) of Christian states. Yet, being such, she has taken her dose of ko-tou. It followed, then, a fortiori, that Great Britain should take hers. Into this logic China was misled by Ismaeloff. The English were waited for. Slowly the occasions arrived; and it was found by the Chinese, first doubtfully, secondly beyond all doubt, that the ko-tou would not do. The game was up. Out of this catastrophe, and the wrath which followed it, grew ultimately the opium-frenzy of Lin, the mad Commissioner of Canton; then the vengeance which followed; next the war, and the miserable defeats of the Chinese. All this followed out of the attempt to enforce the ko-tou , which attempt never would have been made but for the encouragement derived from Ismaeloff, the ambassador of so great a power as Russia. But finally, to complete the great retribution, the war has left behind, amongst other dreadful consequences, the ruin of their army. In the official correspondence of a great officer with the present emperor, reporting the events of the Tae-ping rebellion, it is repeatedly declared that the royal troops will not fight, run away upon the slightest pretext, and in fact have been left bankrupt in hope and spirit by the results of their battles with the British. -Concurrently with this ruin of the army, the avowed object of this great rebellion is to exterminate the reigning dynasty; and, if that event should be accomplished, then the whole of this ruin will hate been due exclusively to its memorable insolence (the demoniac hybris of Greek tragedy) towards ourselves. Should, on the other hand, the Tae-ping rebellion, which has now stood its ground for five years, be finally crushed, not the less an enormous revolution - possibly a greater revolution - will then have been accomplished in China, virtually our own work; and fortunately it will not be in our power to retreat, as hitherto, in a false spirit of forbearance, from the great duties which will await us. The Tae-ping faction, however, though deadly and tiger-like in the spirit of its designs, offers but one element amongst many that are now fermenting in the bosom of Chinese society. We British, as Mr. Meadows informs us (p. 137 of "The Chinese and their Rebellions"), were regarded by the late emperor —by him who conducted the war against us - as the instruments employed "by Heaven " for executing judgment on his house. He was in the right to think so; and our hope is that in a very few years we shall proclaim ourselves through Southern Asia as even more absolutely the destroyers of the wicked government which dared to promote and otherwise to reward that child of hell who actually flayed alive the unhappy Mr. Stead. That same government passed over without displeasure the similar atrocity of the man who decapitated nearly two hundred persons - white, brown and black, but all subjects of Great Britain, and all confessedly and necessarily unoffending, as being simply shipwrecked passengers thrown on the shore of China from the Nerbudda Indiaman. That same government gave titles, money, and decorations, to a most cowardly officer, on the sole assumption (whether simply false, or only exaggerated) that he had secretly poisoned one thousand British troops stationed in the island of Chusan29.

    ____

    Hardly a few weeks have passed since our initial notice of China, before already a new interest has gathered round the subject-: a foreign interest, and a domestic interest; an interest derived from atrocities that are accomplished; an interest derived from perils that are impending; an interest such as the intelligent counted upon from the known perfidy of the Chinese; an interest more embittered than any of us expected from the factious violence of our own senate. Let not this expression be taxed with disrespect. Critical cases have a privilege; and we do but echo the clamor of the nation in its main centres of wealth and population, in London, Manchester, Liverpool, when we denounce the recent intrusions of our Legislature upon our old Chinese policy, by means of a tumultuary cabal, as tending, too palpably, to a collusion with the vilest purposes of our vilest oriental enemy. Have we forgot our experience? Fifteen years ago it cost Great Britain an average of three pitched battles for the unrooting fiom the Chinese intellect of each separate childish conceit or traditional fraud, that risked, that fettered, or that degraded (according to the caprice of the hour), one great commercial interest of the civilized earth.

    To revise a treaty with China, to correct the text even of a solitary paragraph, or to introduce a supplementary clause, you must make your estimate for so many cannon-shot, rockets and shells, one or two campaigns, general actions counted by the dozen, and suicides by the thousand30. In a land, therefore, where the most reasonable alterations are not effected otherwise than at the point of the bayonet, too painfully we are reminded that any encouragement to the aggressors from ourselves, as arguing internal feuds in our own camp, will tend to perpetuate the dispute.

    On the 8th day of October, 1856, about eight o'clock in the morning, a very complex outrage was perpetrated near Canton by Chinese agents, some of them mandarins, wearing their official costume, upon a commercial vessel apparently, and, according to all legal presumption, BRITISH. In that word lay the virus of the offence. What the Chinese governor of Canton hungered and thirsted to put on record was, his hatred and contempt of our national flag - hatred that was real, contempt that was affected. In this branch of the offence merged all the rest, as by comparison trivial misdemeanors that might have been redeemed by a money payment; else the wrong was not trivial suffered by the crew - that is, by twelve men out of fourteen - arrested upon a doubt (probably simulated), affecting, at most, one man of the whole dozen31; secondly, the injury was not trivial suffered by the master in command of the ship, Thomas Kennedy, a British subject of good repute, born at Belfast; thirdly, the injury was not trivial suffered by some owner (as yet not clearly indicated) from an indefinite interruption to the commercial uses of his ship and cargo. These were wrongs, infamous when viewed as the promptings of one solitary official man, placed by his sovereign at the head of a great province for the maintenance of order and for the distribution of justice; but yet trifles, when ranked against other acts of the same ruler, and against the unprovoked insult which he had offered to our national flag.

    This insult being accomplished, next came the judicial investigation, on our part, into its circumstances; after which began the punishment inflicted by Admiral Seymour; and that, though exemplary, is far indeed from having yet reached its consummation. In both chapters of the avenging work which ran so fast upon the heels of the abominable outrage, there occurred circumstances which merit notice. Let me cite two. The particular vessel which furnished the arena for Governor Yeh's atrocity was locally classed as a lorcha , and known by the name of the Arrow. It is immaterial to pause for a description or definition of a " lorcha,"' since no allegation whatever, on one side or on the other, is at all affected by the classification of the ship. But any fair and upright reviewer of the case, who wishes earnestly to hold the scales even between the parties, is likely enough to find himself perplexed by the contradictory statements as to the past history of the particular lorcha concerned. He will find in the Blue-book32 recently laid before Parliament on this Canton explosion, a letter from Sir J. Bowring himself, in which he seems to admit that all was not sound in the pretensions of the Arrow; and, at first sight, the English reader is met by a most painful impression that Sir John is confidentially confessing to Mr. Consul Parkes something or other which he describes as unknown to the Chinese, but which (the natural inference is) would have bettered the case of Yeh, had it been known to him. Precisely at this point it is that one of two fatal blunders committed by Lord Derby, in abstracting the sum of the Canton reports, has misled all who relied on his authority. At p. 10 of the Blue-book, Sir John Bowring says [Hong-Hong, October 11]: " It appears, on examination, that the Arrow had no right to hoist the British flag; the license to do so expired on the 27th of September " [thirteen days before the Chinese outrage]. And Sir John then goes on to say: "But the Chinese had no knowledge of the expiry of the license33 "" Immediately, with rash haste, Lord Derby presumes the logic of the case to stand thus: "Between ourselves," he supposes Sir John to say, " you and I, Mr. Consul Parkes, are quite in the wrong box. If the Chinese knew all, we should n't have a leg to stand on. But luckily they don't know all. So let us keep our own counsel." Strange that Lord Derby could have ascribed such a meaning to any man in his senses that was not personating the character of a stage-villain. What Sir John wishes to say is this: that, as a matter of fact, there really was an irregularity (as it happened) in the case of the Arrow; but that this irregularity could be of no avail to Yeh as an excuse for the outrage, since it was entirely unknown to Yeh. Being unknown, therefore, it was immaterial whether the supposed irregularity had existed or not. However, Sir John had scarcely written his letter before he became aware that there had really been no irregularity at. all. The sailing license had indeed lapsed, but under circumstances which legally sustained its continued validity until the vessel should reach the port at which the license could be renewed. Sir John had made a mistake; but such a mistake as could lend no countenance to Yeh. The brief logic of the case, as understood by Lord Derby, is: " Yeh does not know the truth, therefore let us keep him in the dark." But the true logic, in Sir John's meaning, was: " Yeh does not know the truth, therefore let him not presume to plead it as the ground of his violence." Suppose that the Arrow had been, by oversight, stripped in part of her particular privileges, was it from this unguarded point - was it from this heel of Achilles - that the villain Yeh would have sought to steal his advantage? Not at all. In such a case, by moving under the sanction of a treaty, he would altogether have missed his triumph. Those persons totally misconceive the governor's purpose who impute to him a special pleader's subtlety in construing severely the terms on which we grant indulgences and dispensations. Yeh was not in search of a case where he really might find us trespassing a little to the right or left; on the contrary - and in the very broadest sense on the contrary - he sought for a case in which our right was clear and unequivocal. Else, if our right had been doubtful, his triumph would have been doubtful in trampling on it. But how, then, did Yeh purpose to give any even colorable or momentary air of equity to his outrage? Simply by drawing upon the old infamous times for precedents of violence, which the treaty of 1842, and the supplementary treaty had forever abolished. Before the war of 1841 and 1842, the unlimited despot who sat in Canton arrested whom, and when, and how, he pleased. In this affair of the Arrow, the old obsolete system was suddenly revived. The pretence was, that amongst the crew of the Arrow were two men who had once been pirates. But such a pretence, whether true or false, was no longer valid. Neither we nor the Chinese were left at liberty in future to right ourselves. Had we complaints to urge? Had we criminals to apprehend? For all such purposes the treaty opened to us both a regular and pacific course. It was not alleged that we, on our part, had at all obstructed the fluent movement ef public justice. The sole motive to Yeh's manoeuvre was a determination on his part to humble us, and, as a preliminary step, to degrade our national honor. The late debates in both Houses betrayed a state of ignorance as to our relations with China, and as to the temper and profligacy of the Chinese people, which few were aware of. The subject was first treated in the Upper House; consequently, in the natural course of things, it was a lord, and really a brilliant lord, that first launched upon the public stage of politics the following almost inconceivable blunder. The noble orator was insisting upon the stupendous crop of wickedness which we British had recently grown in the neighborhood of Canton; and the proof which he cited was this - namely, that the "rebels," by which unexplained term he meant evidently the Tae-pings, had actually joined their forces and made common cause with the imperial army. Anything more desperately extravagant was never heard of amongst men. All who know anything of the soi-disant Christian rebels, commonly called the Tae-pings, are well aware that the one sole object of their political existence is the violent and bloody extermination of the reigning dynasty - that is, the family of Mantchoo Tartars, now, and since 1644, insecurely seated on the Peking throne. Not a proclamation have these rebels ever published, which has not fiercely proclaimed a twofold mission upon earth - namely, 1, to establish a monstrous form of corrupt Christianity upon the ruins of the several idolatries (often Fetish worships) in China; 2, to exterminate [note well, not to expel into their native regions of Eastern Tartary, but to decollate, to decapitate, to strangle, or more commonly to exterminate] the Tartar race, root and branch; and, having accomplished that mission (in which there really is some flavor of a religious purpose), to restore the old Ming or native Chinese dynasty. The very principle by which the Tae-ping rebellion exists (not merely acts and legislates, but actually has its being) is the unsparing destruction of the reigning house. And yet between that reigning house it is, and these rebels who have sworn its destruction, that Lord Derby supposes a coalition. It is true that a body of pirates calling themselves rebels did immediately take advantage of the troubles at Canton- not in any form of hostility to the British; on the contrary, in the very humblest attitude of suppliants. They pretended to connect themselves with the Tae-pings, simply on the conceit that we, being at feud with the imperial authority, must naturally seek alliance with all people in the same predicament. But we had some years ago, in the time of Sir George Bonham, had very unsatisfactory interviews with the Tae-pings, and the pretended brother of Jesus Christ. We had found them weak, cruel, without systematic policy, and altogether as incomprehensibly arrogant as the reigning family. These new pretenders, however, were not even Tae-pings. Even as "rebels " they were spurious. Nor was there any appearance that they were at all better than a swell-mob. The ludicrous position of these pretended "rebels," whom Lord Derby represents as having suddenly joined the Imperialists against us, is, that, on being questioned with regard to the grounds and objects of their rebellion, they could not even assign the person against whom, or in support of whom, they were rebelling. Where, in our English-slang, " these leaders hung out," or in what camps they proposed to establish head-quarters, were insoluble questions. Generally, it was collected, that wherever a man could be indicated as having probably ten dollars in his purse, against that man they were prepared to "rebel34 " 34

    Although the absurdity and drollery of the case, and the extreme disproportion between the grave realities of our official experience at Canton, and the romantic legends of Her Majesty's opposition, have the effect of drawing off the lightning of the national displeasure from the House of Lords, yet not the less it cannot be disguised that the accrediting of such nursery fables by dignified leaders and accomplished statesmen must operate, through many channels, injuriously upon the character of our senate, and would, were not such a result intercepted by the savage duncery of Chinese mandarins, make us a by-word for credulity in the councils of Canton. To be objects of derision and banter to a nation of what, in old English, would have been styled Half-wits! Heavens! what a destiny! In a memorable little poem of Donne's, entitled the " Curse," which perhaps offers the most absolute chef d'oeuvre extant of condensation as to thinking and expression, one massy line is this:

    " May he be scorned by one whom all else scorn."

    Such an imprecation would assuredly be realized for any of our senators whom Hansard might transfer in a comprehensible form to the make-believe literati of China. It should be remembered by our senators that " Nescit vox missa reverti;" or else centuries hence the mortified descendants of distinguished leaders may read with astonishment the monstrous memorials of ancestral credulity.

    At page 118 of the Blue-book occurs the first notice of the pretended rebels. In Sir J. Bowriing's letter, printed partially on this page, and dated November 25, 1856, it is first of all noticed that Yeh, amongst his other hateful falsehoods, was "industriously circulating " that we, the British, are " in league with the rebel forces." At page 119 occurs the second notice: On December 12, 1856, Sir J. Bowring makes the following entry into his journal meant for Lord Clarendon: "I have received from Mr. Secretary Wade a report (dated yesterday) to the effect that, in consequence of the withdrawal " (meaning by Mr. Governor Yeh) "of the troops from the open country 35 for the defence of Canton, crowds of bandits, calling themselves rebels, have devastated large districts, committing every sort of violence and excess." It is, indeed, most strange that the imperial commissioner should not have foreseen how certainly his rash quarrel with the treaty powers would encourage movements such as those now described, and imperil the imperial authority, probably beyond redemption. These were counterfeit rebels, and others on the sea, of the same lawless character, who made advances to us, seeking shelter under our power, and the benefit of our countenance, aided by their most ambiguous name of rebels. Had these rebels been less determinately cruel, and had they been willing to renounce their mysterious pretensions to some ridiculous superiority, which Sir G. Bonham, in his sole conference with their chief, treated, as usual, with nothing of the requisite disdain, it was at one time (say four years ago) really becoming a question whether it might not be advisable to form a provisional alliance with them, rather than continue our support to the mouldering family at present on the throne. In the wickedness of wholesale murder the two factions are exactly on a level; and with our aid either party would be sure of a triumph. It happens, however, that, in fact, we never did make any overture of alliance. Never once, by the slightest expression of approval or collusion, have we given countenance or ground of hope to the Tae-pings; far less to the sham rebels, and, no doubt, as we had made a treaty with the reigning house, this line of policy (due to no merits of that house) is, upon the whole, the most becoming to our position.

    At this moment we see the extraordinary spectacle in the English capital of a large party, composed of distinguished Englishmen, laboring to establish a charge of murder and multiplied incendiarism against their own compatriots in the East; and for no other purpose than that of reaching one obnoxious leader, Sir John Bowring, we see them involving in the charge a gallant sailor, whose reputation, if tainted by shadows of doubt, touches the interests of the British navy. On the other side, ranged against Sir John and the admiral, we behold a real and undoubted murderer, the Governor of Canton, whom any coroner's inquest in England would assuredly find guilty of murder; not as having by military means killed an English subject acting against him in open combat, but as having by two separate bribes36 encouraged and suborned murderers. Three37men have already been assailed under this incitement. One, a Portugese in the English naval service, was saved (though wounded) by the aid which answered critically to his call. But early in the quarrel two others, both Englishmen, perished. Charles Bennet was seized suddenly by a crowd, whom he had approached without distrust, and was instantly decapitated. The other, too sure of the fate awaiting him, leaped into the sea, as a gentler and nobler enemy that neither tempted nor betrayed, and he died in solitary quiet.

    Now, let us pause for a moment and consider. There have been cases, past all numbering, of men individually or in factions setting prices on the heads of their rivals, whom they chose or had reason to denounce as their enemies. History rings with such cases. But these were always the cases - or if excused, it was because they were presumed to be the cases - of men contending for some great prize, generally a crown, whose existence and security had become reciprocally incompatible. One or other, it was felt, must perish; and it was the supreme authority of self-preservation which conferred the right of inflicting death upon the baffled competitor. Even these were viewed oftentimes by all parties as afflicting necessities, which under that name only could be reconciled to human feelings. Turn from such conflicts, so natural and so deeply palliated, to the hellish atrocity of this inhuman murderer at Canton. What, let us ask briefly, had been his provocation? And supposing that he might, in his meagre faculty of judgment, have misconceived his own rights and position, or read in a false sense the steps taken by Sir J. Bowring and the British admiral, what men are those whom he has selected for the victims of his vengeance? He could scarcely hope that his pretended retaliation should alight upon the leaders of the British; and for all the rest, they were poor men without power, the very humblest in kind or in degree for disputing the orders of their superiors. But what was the provocation? It is worth the reader's while to follow the explanation as it unfolds itself to any one who reviews the whole. connection and relations between the Governor of Canton and the controllers of the British interests. Let us briefly sketch it. The war in 1841-2, which followed close upon the heels of the abominable oppressions exercised by Commissioner Lin, and of his lawless confiscations, did not unseal the eyes of the Chinese government,- nothing on this side the grave could do that,- but it left the whole aristocratic part of the nation lost in horror, astonishment, and confusion. For us also it brought strange light and revolutionary views upon the true available resources of China. The wretched government of Peking had neither men nor money, and entirely through its own vices of administration. We ourselves never brought above nine thousand infantry into the field, no cavalry (which, in some instances, would have been worth its weight in gold), and at the utmost three thousand miscellaneous reserves, artillery, marines, sailors, &c. The Chinese, by a great effort, sometimes brought five men to our two; though never in one instance were they able to make good their ground, although often aided by the advantage of lofty walls, which our men had to scale. Pretty nearly the greatest number that they were able to manceuvre on one field against us ran up to seventeen or eighteen thousand. Think, reader, with astonishment (but with horror when you consider the cause) of this awful disproportion to the reputed population of this vast empire. Grant, as readily one may grant, that this population is hyperbolically exaggerated, still there is ground for assuming eighty millions, or one-fifth part of the ridiculous four hundred millions, which some writers assume; and, even on this diminished scale, you have a population larger perhaps by fourteen millions, certainly by ten millions, than that of martial Russia. It is a fact in the highest degree probable, that neither Circassia nor Algerine Arabia has brought into the field forces numerically smaller than this monstrous China, whose area is hard upon one million three hundred thousand square English miles- that is, about eleven times larger38 than the Britannic Isles. Inconceivable, therefore, is the martial poverty of China; and even yet the worst has not been said. Of the ridiculously small armies produced by China, only the Tartar section displayed any true martial qualities; and one fact which demonstrates the paucity of this meritorious section is, that on the approach of the final panic39 it was found necessary to summon five thousand of these Tartars from Thibet, and other extramural regions, as we learn from the French missionaries, MM. Hue and Gabet. For the very last re6nforcement, on which the Mantchoo throne was likely to depend, a summons was requisite to regions beyond the Wall, at distances of one, two, and even three thousand miles!

    In 1842 the war had come to an end, through the absolute exhaustion of the Chinese in every possible resource. Men, money, munitions of war, even provisions locally, all were drained. Three great aggravations of the case had arisen almost simultaneously: the emperor had incautiously suffered himself, in a sudden paroxysm of rabid fury against the British, to say, "Spare no cost in exterminating' (such was his uniform word) "the profligate barbarians; " upon which the two maritime provinces of Chekeang and Fokien took him at his word, in a few months had run up an account of eleven million taels (three taels to one pound sterling), which in the spring of 1842 called for instant liquidation; and, meantime (which was the most dismal feature of the case), nothing whatever had the provinces to show ill return for such a fearful expenditure, except indeed a few shameless romances of Bobadil victories, which even the stolid emperor now began to see through as mockeries; whilst daily it became more certain that four-fifths of the eleven millions had been embezzled by the mandarins. LIere was one exasperation of the public calamity. A second was, that whilst the English at Chusan and Koolangsoo lived generally on the very best terms with the inhabitants, never pillaged them, and never imposed fines or pecuniary contributions upon them, the pauper part of the native population (a very numerous part in many provinces of China) followed our army like carrion crows, blackening the whole face of the land as they settled upon the derelict property, to which unavoidably our victorious troops had laid open the road. Always the pillagers of China were the Chinese. A third aggravation of the ruin was, that vast floods were abroad, in many cases destroying the crops. In our own country, comparatively so limited, at a certain critical part of the autumn, it is often said that unseasonable weather makes a difference to the nation of one million pounds sterling in each successive period of twenty-four hours; inmm China, where there is so much less of vicarious dependence upon animal diet, it may be guessed in how vast an excess of range must operate any derangement of the cereal crops. Such was the misery which, amidst infinite gnashing of teeth, compelled the emperor to make a hasty and humiliating peace. The misery of this period might be received as a solemn foretaste of deeper woes awaiting this wicked prince and nation in coming times. It needs no spirit of prophecy to denounce this. Such tempers as govern those who are here concerned carry with them to a certainty their own fearful chastisements, when brought (as now at last they are) upon a wider stage of action, and forced into daylight.

    Peace, then, was made; and peace, to the deadly mortification of the Chinese court, was followed by a treaty. We were not going to let the impression of our victories exhale; we insisted, therefore, on such results from our martial successes as our experience had then taught us to be requisite; but unhappily, such is our general spirit of moderation in dealing with those who cannot appreciate moderation, we demanded far too little, as now we find. And even of that little we have allowed the Chinese fraudulently to keep back all that displeased the mobs in great cities.

    The peace, therefore, and the treaty were finished; and things should have settled back, it was fancied, into their old grooves at Canton. Hieavens! what a mistake! Not until all parties resumed their old habits at the southernmost point of China, did any of them realize experimentally the prodigious revolution. There - where heretofore the haughty ruler of Canton issued his superb ukase, "Go, and he goeth - do this, and he doeth it " - now walked, in conscious independence and admitted equality, a British plenipotentiary, having rights of his own, and knowing how to maintain them. Instead of flying for a few hours' shelter from Chinese wrath to poor trembling Macao, this plenipotentiary had now a home and a flag that nobody could violate with impunity. Hong-Kong was, for itself, little better than a rock; but, which was a point of more importance to us, the harbor attached to that rock was worthy of England. In a map of China what a pin's point is IHong-Kong! And yet, through all that vast empire, there is not one refuge so impregnable to the whole embattled Orient.

    Now, then, exactly in proportion as we had become almost as invulnerable as the air to the idle weapons of the governor, more frantic grew his morbid craving for wounding us. But how? Nothing was left to him but a crime. To violate our flag - that was the only way in which he could sting. But it was a way in which he could not sting twice. Measures of repression and measures of chastisement followed instantly. It was felt most justly by all the official people on the spot that the spirit of aggression was nursed by the submission, on our part, to exclusion from free access to Canton - this being at once a traditional insult to ourselves, and a flagrant violation of four separate treaties. All the defences, therefore, of Canton, one after another, were destroyed; and not merely in their fittings and immediate capacity for service, as had too often been tolerated before; they were now mined and blown up, so as to leave them heaps of ruins. It had been a trial of strength between ourselves and Yeh. He had declared that we should not enter Canton; we had replied that we would. Accordingly, Admiral Seymour and the plenipotentiary not only walked over the ruined defences into that city, but into the residence (Yamun) of Yeh, sat down on Yeh's sofas, and redeemed their vow. Mere frenzy seems then to have taken possession of Yeh; he looked round for some weapon of retaliation, but could find none —none that was tolerated by the usages of any nation raised above savagery. Then it was -and in an evil hour for himself, if we prove faithful to our duty —that Yeh dispersed everywhere his offers of blood-money to murderers. Yet, in Mr. Cobden's eyes, Yeh is an injured man. Now, on the other side, hear Admiral Seymour's vigilant interposition on behalf of the Cantonese. In the very midst of the excitement at the moment of storming the breach in the Canton wall, on tile -morning of November 29, the admiral took the following precautions: "Before the landing took place, I assembled the officers, and urgently impressed upon them (as I had previously done by written orders) the necessity of restraining the men fiom molesting the persons and property of the inhabitants, confining warlike operations against the troops only; and I have pleasure in bearing testimony to the forbearance of the seamen and marines."

    Again, on the capture of the Bogue and Anunghoy Forts, mounting jointly four hundred and ten guns, the dastardly mandarins in command had secured boats for their own escape, but had left their followers unprovided for. Upon this the several Chinese garrisons had rushed into the water, as their sole resource against our victorious stormers. What course, in these circumstances, did the admiral adopt? He declined even to make prisoners of the men (a generosity perhaps indiscreet, considering the pressure everywhere upon the Chinese government for troops); and, without even amputating the tails of the men, a measure sometimes adopted by us in 1842 to braver men than the Chinese, - namely, to the Tartar troops,- the admiral most kindly took them all on board, and put them ashore uninjured. In many other cases, the anxious care of this admiral-whom Mir. Cobden involves in the same reproaches as the plenipotentiary - was to stand between the Chinese and all injury that it was possible to avoid, though many of these Chinese were those very Cantonese who had converted their city into a den of murder. And the return for this forbearance is, that secret murderers are hired by Yeh, not merely against soldiers and marines, indicated by their uniforms, but against non-combatants utterly disconnected from the diplomatic interests at issue, or the warlike service ministerial to those interests. Mr. Cobden will probably find reason hereafter to repent of his motion as the worst day's work he ever accomplished; and the more-so because, first, in order to protect the very existence of the British in China, it will be indispensable to pursue the same virtual policy as that of Sir J. Bowring, whatever change may be made in names or forms; secondly, because our supreme government at home is already committed to this policy, by the formal approbation given to the whole of the warlike proceedings40 against Canton, under the official seal of Lord Clarendon. (See his letter to the lords of the Admiralty in reference to Sir M. Seymour.)

    Now, let us come to the practical suggestions which the past, in connection with the known knavery of the Chinese administration through all its ranks and local subdivisions, imperatively prescribes. First, as to an appeal, which is talked of generally, to the emperor at Peking. Nothing will come of this -nothing but evil, if it is managed as hitherto it has been. Here it is, and perhaps here only, that Sir J. Bowring has failed in his duty. We make a treaty with this emperor, or at least with his father. Finding it insufficient, we make four treaties -one in 1842, one in 1843, a third in 1846, and a final one in 1847. Every one of these in succession has recognized our right to move freely in and out of Canton. But always we have permitted the governor for the time to set aside this right, upon an assurance that the obstacle lay in the irritable temper of the mob; that this mob could not be controlled for the present; but that, in some mysterious way (never explained), at an indefinite period in futurity, the requisite subordination would probably be developed. Upon this, at various times, appeals have been presented to the emperor (not the emperor under whom the treaties were extorted, but the present emperor, his son; and uniformly these appeals have taken the form of petitions, to which uniformly the Peking reply has been by one insolent No, sans phrase. Now, what child's play is this! We make a treaty; we begin by permitting the public officers to evade the fulfilment of it, without so much as a plausible pretext. The mob is not satisfied, that is the curt diplomatic reply; and mighty thrones are instructed to await the pleasure (now through fourteen years) of a vile murdering populace for the concession of their primary rights. A treaty has been obtained, at the cost of a war, and therefore of many thousand lives; and then we send a humble petition to the beaten prince that he will graciously fulfil the terms of this treaty. Sir J. Bowring has been blamable in this; but in the very opposite direction to that indicated by Mr. Cobden. Briefly, then, the national voice cries loudly, " No more petitions to Peking! " Once for all, a stern summons to the fulfilment of the Chinese undertakings. Every year the smarting of the wounds inflicted by the war is cooling down, the terror is departing; and a new war will become necessary, which would have been made unnecessary by the simple course of building on the terrors of the first war. It cannot be denied by the whole body of our official people -consuls, plenipotentiaries, &c. - that they have in this point acted foolishly namely, that whenever the swindling commissioners of the Quantung province or city have been called on to assign the plea under which they claim further indulgence, they have always replied, " O, the mob! " without further comment, neither showing through what channel the mob exercised any present influence, nor by what unspeakable agency it was pretended that the friends of this mob looked reasonably for its amendment. We have, in short, allowed ourselves to be trifled with, and to furnish a standing jest to all the diplomatic people of China.

    Secondly, next as to a resident ambassador of high rank in Peking. We know not what we ask. The thing has been amply tried. As great a power as ourselves, though moulded on a different model, - the mighty Court of St. Petersburg, - tried this scheme with much patience, and swallowed affronts that would have injured the prestige of the czar, had they been reported through Europe. But all came to nothing, through the insurmountable chicanery of the highest Chinese officers, and through the inhuman insolence of the court. It is true the Russian envoy was not of the very highest rank; and that was a dismal oversight of the czar. But, possibly, the czar shrank from compromising his own grandeur in the person of a higher- representative. However, the envoy was high enough to be held presentable at court, and was invited to hunting-parties. But the mortifications and affronts put upon him passed all count and valuation. Soldiers were quartered in his house, and stationed at his gate, to examine, by inquisitorial (often tormenting) modes, what might be the business of every visitor. Sometimes they horsewhipped these visitors for presuming to come at all, on any errand whatever. Sometimes they hustled the visitor violently. Sometimes (indeed always, as regarded their true purposes) they insisted on large money bribes. In short, they made the envoy weary of his existence. The same infamous trick, so ignoble and scoundrelish, was practised upon the Russian as upon the British ambassador. The emperor, through pure insolence, insisted on feeding the embassy. Well, this was brutal; but, if the embassy really were fed, the main end was answered. But oftentimes the supply of provisions was utterly neglected. On the one hand, it was construed into an affront to the emperor if his guests purchased provisions - it was even dangerous to do so under so capricious a despotism; and yet, on the other hand, if provisions were not purchased, frequently the servants suffered absolute starvation. In the Russian case the Chinese agent laid down the imperial allowance on the ground of the court-yard; nor was the service ever much improved. And in the case of Lord Amherst, after a fatiguing day's travel, the embassy was introduced to a court, in which was fixed a table bearing a dish of broken meat, such as in England would be offered to itinerant beggars; and for all the beverage that waited upon this sumptuous repast, the gentlemen were referred to a number of horse-buckets filled with water. On remonstrating, - for it was too evident that an indignity was designed, - the mandarin in attendance wilfully heightened the affront by pleading, with mock humility, that the horse-buckets were introduced on the special assurance that such was the usage of our country. The main object, meantime, of this puerile insult was altogether baffled, since nobody, but a Chinese servant or two, condescended to touch anything. It was a most unfortunate arrangement for the Russian envoy that he was too closely connected with the commercial business of his countrymen. Upon this the Chinese, as usual, took occasion to build every form of insult. They did not condescend to matters of trade; and, really, if the Russians wanted to be protected, they must not apply on such trifles to great men. A most seasonable opening occurred for a retort to the Russian minister; and, perilous as it was to play with such sneers, the temptation to do so was too strong for human patience. It happened that, at the very moment when the poor Russian dealers began to bring forward for sale a vast mass of Siberian furs, the emperor suddenly forestalled and ruined their trade by coming down upon the market with a matter of twenty thousand similar furs from the region of the river Amour. Upon this the envoy observed, with bitter irony, that it made him truly happy - O, it was delightful to find that his Chinese Majesty had seen the error of his opinions, and was at length going to consecrate commerce by entering "into business himself" in the wholesale line as a furrier. The great mandarins were all taken aback: they colored, looked very angry, and then very foolish. " It was n't to be imagined," they said, " that his Celestial Majesty cared about making gain; 0, no! Ile only wanted to - " "Make a little profit," said the Russian, filling up the blank.

    Thirdly, it is probable, therefore, that our government, if they were to read and muse a little on the journal of the Russian envoy 41, the one solitary memorial of diplomatic residence amongst this odious. people, will think twice before they propose to any British nobleman a service at once so degrading and so perilous. There is no exaggeration in saying perilous. Our own experience furnishes sufficient vouchers. Lord Amherst, in 1816, although disposed individually to make far too serious concessions to the ridiculous claims of this savage court, although he submitted (which surely was almost a criminal act) to be advertised, on the outside of the boats conveying himself and suite, as "the English tribute-bearer," and was even inclined to perform the ko-tou, had he not been recalled to nobler sentiments by Sir George Staunton (one of his two associates in the legatine functions), yet could not, by all his obsequious overtures, so long as he retained any reserve of manly self-respect, secure the decencies of civility from a court which he had visited at the cost of a twenty-five-thousand-mile voyage42. He was driven back with contumely and violence on the very morning of reaching the emperor's palace; no resting time allowed after an exhausting journey, pursued most unnecessarily the whole night long; mobs of ruffians were allowed to rush into the room where he was seeking a moment's repose, and to treat him, the representative of the British Majesty, together with his suite, as a show of wild beasts. With such headlong fury was Lord Amherst ordered off, that he himself and his experienced assessors, knowing the capricious violence of this besotted despotism, did seriously regard it as no impossible catastrophe that the whole embassy might be summarily put to death. Lord Amherst's courage in persisting, unterrified redeems his error as to the ko-tou. It is probable enough that, but for one refrigerating suggestion (namely, the close proximity of our vast Indian empire), Lord Amherst and his train would really have been sacrificed to the brute arrogance of China. England was far off, but Hindostan was near; and it appears, by the ridiculous collections of Lin, in fifty volumes 4to, that circuitously through Thibet some nursery tales had reached Peking of our Indian conquests, and in particular of our conflict with Nepaul. But so preposterously were the relations and proportions of all objects distorted, that Lin (who may pass for a fair representative of the Chinese literati) conceived our main Indian empire to be called London, and lying somewhere near to the Himalayas.

    Such was the wrath of Taoukwang and his council; and so was it probably averted. Fear of the phantom London on the Ganges was too probably what saved Lord Amherst's head. Now, when men came to read of this danger threatened, and of these indignities suffered, murmurs arose amongst the intelligent that the government at home should have exposed a band of faithful servants and the honor of the national name to such useless humiliations. Nothing at all was gained by the mission. At no time was there a prospect of gaining anything; but there was a very serious risk, through many weeks, of a tragedy that would have cost us an extra war. Let us keep that in mind - that a war stands as the issue and arbitrement of future negotiations with China not wisely managed; and wisely means above all things so managed as to allow no effect whatever to these pretensions of China, which all men of sense or feeling no longer mention without disgust. One or two of these hateful pretensions shall be noticed immediately; but, meantime, let us pause for a moment to remark upon the new form which our negotiations are going to assume. Lord Granville has announced that France and the United States will now join us in our new diplomacy, and give weight to our demands. Even this arrangement marks on the part of our government a non-acquaintance with the Chinese nature and condition of culture. These two advantages we have a chance of drawing from the association of the two nations in our overtures, that, by lightening the cost, they will improve the quality of our interventions, and that each of them is more irritably jealous of even shadows that may sully the bright disk of their national honor than we are; and it is to their credit, in Shakspeare's words,

    "Greatly to find quarrel in a straw,"

    wherever a hostile purpose is on the watch to found future assumptions and insolent advantages upon what seemed to be accident, and was therefore neglected as such. In this direction we shall find useful allies in these great nations, that will not so lightly make rash concessions as we have done. But this is the least part of what our government is expecting. They fancy that the great authority, the authentic prestige of two leading peoples in Christendom will have its natural weight even with a silly oriental nation. There are, perhaps, one or two oriental nations - for instance, the Burmese - who seem to have a natural aptitude for conforming their apprehensions to the new social phenomena introduced to them by European civilization; but in the Chinese this power is stifled in its earliest stages by the enormity of their self-conceit. In any case they would allow no weight to foreign nations, even if made acquainted with their high pretensions. But they are not acquainted with the elements of those pretensions. Having no knowledge of geography, orone of history, and, above all, none of civilization and its marvels, how or when should they learn, for instance, to respect the splendor of France? All that they know of France is, that two centuries ago some unintelligible missionaries introduced an obscure doctrine into China, at one time protected by the caprice of this or that prince, at another persecuted by the cruelty of his successor. At the time of our war with China, some of the provincial governors, from pure childishness, were in hopes that by a mere request they could induce some of the barbarian nations to attack the British43 .One of these governors undertook to coax the French by flattery into this belligerent humor. But how? The point on which he opened his flattery was, that his sovereigns, the kings of France, were truly meritorious; for that in all generations they had been "submissive " and "obedient" to the great Emperor of China, and had never swerved from their "duty." This was the highest form of merit which his Chinese imagination could admit, and the sole bait with which the poor fool angled for a French alliance.

    Recurring, then, to those hateful pretensions of superiority, surely the nation may expect that, if the new negotiators are sent to Peking, they will not (as heretofore) be consigned in travelling to the insolent authority of the Chinese, ordered to stop at this point or that, furnished with insulting supplies on one day, with none at all on the next, and forbidden to purchase provisions for themselves out of delicacy to a prince who finds no indelicacy in suffering his guests to starve. But this is a trifle by comparison with other arrogances of the Chinese; and these ought surely to be met by a preliminary letter from the associated nations, and not left as subjects for a mere remonstrance from the ambassadors. In substance something like this should surely be sent forward beforehand:

    That, whilst the Three Powers allied for the purposes of this negotiation approach his Chinese Majesty with respect for the station which he occupies, at the same time they feel bound to protest against the offensive terms in which his Chinese Majesty has always claimed some imaginary superiority. More especially they must notice with displeasure the secret pretension which his Chinese Majesty seems to assume of levying some paramount allegiance from their subjects. This pretension will no longer be endured. It will not be tolerated in future that his majesty should describe the British, French, or Americans, as "rebels," or as "repenting," and "returning to their duty," when making peace with him. Even as regards his more general claim of superiority, the allied powers are unable to understand on what his majesty builds. If on population, as regards the amount numerically, China has not established her pretensions; whilst, as regards its quality, it is sufficient to refer his Chinese Majesty to the result of his past military experience. It,is possible that his Chinese Majesty founds upon extent of dominions; and in that case he is likely to remain under his delusion so long as he is guided by the maps and geographical works of his own subjects. It is enough to say that the American United States possess a territory larger than the Chinese, even counting China beyond the Wall. This total area of China may amount to three millions of square English miles. But the Queen of Great Britain possesses a territory of seven millions, if her American and Australian states are included, and without counting the vast British territory in Hindostan; whilst, as regards China within the Wall, it is pretty nearly on a level with the British possessions in India, - close neighbors to his Chinese Majesty,- each counting nearly one million, three hundred thousand square English miles. The Three Powers, announce, finally, that they will no longer tolerate the practice of setting prices upon the heads of their subjects by Chinese governors, but will, after this notice, hang all such savage traffickers in blood whenever they may happen to be captured.

    * * * * * *

    A dreadful echo lingers on the air from our past dealings with the Chinese- an echo from the cry of innocent blood shed many years ago by us British adulterating wickedly with Chinese wickedness. Not Chinese blood it is that cries from the earth for vengeance, but blood of our own dependent, a poor humble serving man, whom we British were bound to have protected, but whom, in a spirit of timid and sordid servility to Cantonese insolence, we, trembling for our Factory menaced by that same wicked mob that even now is too likely to win a triumph over us, and coerced by the agents of the East India Company (always upright and noble in its Indian - always timid and cringing in its Chinese policy), surrendered to the Moloch that demanded him. The case was this: Always, as against aliens, the Chinese have held the infamous doctrine that the intention, the motive, signifies nothing44. If you, being a foreigner, should, by the bursting of your rifle, most unwillingly cause the death of a Chinese, you must die. Luckily we have since 1841 cudgelled them out of this hellish doctrine; but such was the doctrine up to 1840. Whilst this law prevailed - namely, in 1784 — an elderly Portuguese gunner, on board a Chinaman of ours lying close to Whampoa, was ordered to fire a salute in honor of the day, which happened to be June 4, the birthday of George III. The case was an extreme one; for the gunner was not firing a musket or a pistol for his own amusement, but a ship's gun under positive orders. It happened, however, that some wretched Chinese was killed. Immediately followed the usual insolent demand for the unfortunate gunner. Some resistance was made; some disputing and wrangling followed; the Mephistopheles governor looking on with a smile of deadly. derision. A life was what he wanted — blood was what he howled for: whose life, whose blood, was nothing to him. Settle it amongst yourselves, said he to the gentlemen of the Factory. They did settle it: the poor, passive gunner, who had been obliged to obey, was foully surrendered —was murdered by the Chinese, under British connivance; and things appeared to fall back into their old track.

    Since then our commerce has leaped forward by memorable expansions. I that write these words am not superstitious; but this one superstition has ever haunted me - that foundations laid in the blood of innocent men are not likely to prosper.

    POSTSCRIPT.

    [Written subsequently to the British Government's latest publication of despatches from Hong-Kong, and subsequently to the Chinese intelligence received by way of France.]

    FIRST in order of interest is the French despatch published in the "Moniteur de la Flotte." This French news reached England on the 15th of April, between the evening of which day and the morning of the 16th, it was dispersed all over the island. The amount of the news is this - that the river Peiho (North River), which communicates directly between Peking and the Yellow Sea, had been sacrificed for the present to the fears prevailing in the capital. A river as broad as the Clyde, and having the same commercial value, had been ruined by twenty-two stone dams, leaving a passage to the water, but destroying the navigation. Now, first, as to the truth of this intelligence; secondly , as to its value. As to its truth, the main reasons for doubting it, if reported of any wise nation, are wanting in the case of the Chinese. It is a suicidal act: but all modes of suicide are regarded with honor in China and in Japan. Self-homicide, self-murder, and the sacrifice of all remote interests to a momentary pique, or to the spiteful counteraction of a rival, all these are admired, have been practised by the government, and are practised at this moment. When the vast line of maritime territory was ravaged in former generations by piratical invaders, the emperor, instead of making prudent treaties with the aggressors, simply compelled the population, at the cost of infinite distress, to move inland, so as to leave a zone ten miles broad swept clean of all population. And, at this moment, Admiral Seymour reports a similar attempt to operate upon the waters of Canton, by the submersion of stone-laden junks. Here, indeed, lies the admiral's most cruel anxiety: he is working night and day to keep open the main current with his present narrow means, until reenforcements arrive. Will he succeed? It is too plain that he himself has deep anxieties lest he should not.

    Returning for one moment to the Peiho, the first question (as to the truth of the news) there can, as we see, be no reason for doubting. But, secondly, as to its value: what harm will it do? None at all. The French journal, the nautical "Moniteur," speaks of Peking as thus placed out of all danger. By no means. Our own advances upon Peking in 1842 were not made by that approach. The great river, the Yang-tse-Keang, laughs at dams. It is on THAT quarter, — that is, from the south, and not chiefly from the northern river Peiho - that we can famish Peking into submission. But, secondly, there are other and richer cities than Peking; richer in tributes (generally paid in kind). Thirdly, the entire imports into the northern half of China from the southern can be swept at one haul into the nets of our cruisers on the Yellow Sea; the Peiho signifying little, except as to a shorter passage to the capital for him that -commands the sea. But for us, who know the road to Peking by two routes, this Peiho news is a bagatelle; it ruins a Chinese interest, without much affecting any that is British.

    But now, having dismissed the French news, lastly for our own: — I confess that it is gloomy. It is always the-best policy, as it is peculiarly our British policy, not to deceive ourselves, but to tell the worst. The worst in the present case is this: the Governor of Singapore, it was well known, had, in last November, offered a re6nforcement of five hundred good troops. This, because the case was not considered urgent, had been then declined. But now - namely, in January of this year - that same aid has been pressingly applied for by the admiral and the plenipotentiary.

    Secondly, they have written to Calcutta for an immediate reenforcement of five thousand troops.

    Thirdly, they are most anxiously waiting for gun boats, with which they can do nothing in pursuing the Chinese junks into shallow creeks. It is the old misery of the Crusaders: their heavy cavalry could not pursue the light Arabian horsemen, by whom they were teased all day long, and had no effectual means of retort.

    Fourthly, but the worst feature of the case is this: seventy per cent. of the Hong-Kong population are domestic servants; and chiefly from one sole district. The "elders" in this district (namely, the heads of families) have been coerced by Yeh into ordering home all these servants, who have at the same time been warned, that, to win a welcome from the government, there is but one acceptable offering which they can bring —namely, the heads of their masters. In a colony already distressed and agitated, we may guess the effect of such a notification.