The inspectorate system has placed a set of cosmopolitan mercenaries in a position not only to govern but to prey upon the whole foreign trade with China. They are ever upon the qui vive to seize and confiscate the merchandise of their own countrymen, and have caused the effectual closing of every port on the coast of China, except those opened by treaty. Property that may be unprotected by every legal right, or may be placed (through the owner's ignorance of inspectorate forms) in such a position as to incur some of the vexatious penalties attaching to every infraction of rules almost daily issued by the European Commissioners of Customs, or their Mandarin colleagues, ad libitum, is eagerly pounced upon and appropriated. In fact, it may safely be said that, instead of benefiting foreigners and their trade, the scheme acts directly against their interests; that it places a number of European and American adventurers in a position to assist the Mandarins in taking every advantage of each flaw in the treaty, while at the same time constituting a capital shield behind which the still repulsive Manchoos can execute their anti-foreign plotting in safety.
3. The hostilities against the Ti-pings were caused through the unrighteous policy established by the treaty of Tien-tsin, the foreign inspectorate of Customs, the extortion of indemnity for the war, and the protection of the vile opium trade. This policy has been a great success, in so far as arresting and beating backward the only portion of the multitudinous Chinese whose progress afforded a prospect of change for the better. It has, with still greater iniquity, warred against and prevented the spread of Christianity; destroyed many thousands and tens of thousands of those who professed that faith, and has stopped the circulation and printing of the Bible in its full integrity by the Ti-ping Government, besides having caused the re-establishment of idolatry on the ashes of the destroyed Book, and the wholesale slaughter of those who only begged for our friendship and instruction. Through the wicked intervention of England, the former territory of the Ti-pings has been wrested from them, and the bleached bones of the victims mark the country thick and close for hundreds of miles. The starvation, the horrors, have been fully described; and now it is reported from China that many of the solitudes created where once happy villages of Ti-pings were found, have become infested with beasts of prey—wolves, panthers, and tigers.
As for having effected the slightest improvement in British relations with China, made the Manchoo authorities less unfriendly and illiberal, or rendered the least service to the general welfare of humanity, the past policy of the British Government has proved a lamentable failure.
By unjustifiable meddling, England has thrown China into a state of general anarchy. The cruelty and excessive corruption of the Manchoo officials throughout the country have always been sufficiently great to cause local insurrections and different regular systems of rebellion; but it was only to the great Ti-ping revolution (which proved its power so superior to that of the Imperial Government as to threaten the rapid extermination of the latter, and compel the assistance of England to save it) that people could look for success, and eventual pacification of the empire. Well, these urgently required results have been prevented by the policy in question.
Unable to depend upon the success of the Ti-ping movement, the disaffected Chinese have joined other rebellions, and at this day there are many desolating the country. In the north, a great amalgamation of the Yellow River rebels (an old organization, sometimes under allegiance to the Ti-ping king) or Nien-fie, with a force of Ti-pings, and a large body of Mohammedan rebels, has taken place. The army of this league is estimated at over 300,000 men; in the summer of 1865 they defeated the Tartar Generalissimo (of Pekin campaign memory) San-ko-lin-sin, who was afterwards killed by some country people with whom he sought a refuge—thus showing the state of feeling amongst the population. The northern rebels then seriously menaced Pekin itself, and at one time it was reported that they had captured the city; lately they seem to have moved more to the westward—probably to effect a junction with other revolutionists; but it is quite certain that the Imperialists are unable to subdue them.
Besides the league, there are two other formidable rebellions raging in the north of China—the Mohammedan rebels, who defy the power of the Government in Shen-si, Shan-se, Kan-su, and other parts of the empire. To the south of these come the "Honan filchers," a horde of more than 100,000 banditti, who maintain, as they have done for years, an independent existence in the Honan Province. Away to the west, the large Tartar province of E-li, four times as large as Great Britain, has been wrested from the Imperialists by a rising of Mahommedans.
Along the western boundary general anarchy prevails: it would almost seem that as Russia advances into central Asia, the Mohammedans were moving towards China.
In the great province of Sze-chuan, the Ti-pings under Shih-ta-kae, the I-wang, or his successor, are still in power. At Hankow (treaty port) in Hu-peh, and at Kew-kiang in Kiang-si, the Imperialist troops lately revolted and set up the standard of rebellion. In Ngan-whui serious disturbances have arisen. Farther south, in Kwei-chow, Yun-nan, and Kwang-si, the Miau-tze, or independent mountaineers, are steadily increasing in strength; in fact, every province of China is more or less the scene of formidable revolution or local revolt.
The Ti-pings, in strong force, under the Shi-wang and other leaders, are making rapid progress on the borders of the provinces of Kwang-tung, Kiang-si, and Fu-keen, and the Imperialist troops seem totally unable to interfere with them.
Referring to the distracted state of China, the Overland China Mail, June 29, 1865, truly states that "there must be something in the conduct of the Imperial Government, and of the local Mandarins, which provokes a strong feeling of resentment against their authority in all parts of the empire." Singularly enough, the same journal has always opposed the revolutionists who tried to alter a Government the people hate.