"Ten years ago, almost immediately after they rose in arms, they threw off the characteristics of local insurgents, and proclaimed themselves the irreconcilable enemies of the Ta-tsing dynasty. From that time to this they have never left us in doubt of their object. It has always been the great one of making themselves the heads of the first state in Asia, and the governors of the largest people in the world. So much has been established, not only by their own published manifestoes, but by the official documents of their enemies.
"As to their manner of pursuing that object, whether it is such as befits a power assuming to be political, it would too much prolong even this letter to meet in detail all the objections of those foreigners who declaim against them.
"Speaking generally, these objections may be classed under two heads. First, those which are based on the application to this region and its peoples, of arguments drawn from the state of society and modes of political action of Western Europe, in defiance of the fact that these arguments are wholly inapplicable to a state of civilization and a polity so different; and secondly, those which are applied in entire disregard of the parallel transactions in Western Europe itself, a disregard of obvious analogies, which can only be the result of great ignorance or of wilful prejudice.
"Among the former, are nearly all the objections to their military discipline, tactics, and strategy, and to their administrative forms, whether of a civil or a military nature.
"Among the latter, are objections such as that they do not fix themselves in the places they take; that they take them and then leave them again, &c.
"The obvious rejoinder, drawn from the history of Western Europe is, how often, during the great rebellion in England, were important cities and strong places taken and evacuated or retaken? Did that prove that the English noblemen and gentlemen who first headed that rebellion were unfit to establish a government? Did it prove that Cromwell was neither a general nor an administrator? And when, ten years ago, the Italians left Milan to be reoccupied by its former oppressors, after these had been once expelled, and also allowed the foreign dynasties to reinstate themselves in their principalities, did that prove that the Italian party which aimed at expelling all these foreigners was not a political power?
"A stock argument against the Taepings was drawn from their destruction of the suburbs of the cities they occupied. This, however, was finally silenced when, on the approach of the Taepings to Shanghae a few months ago, the British and French garrison in that city fired all its suburbs, not excepting the densely peopled and commercially important suburb between the city and the river.
"Then, again, ruthless and wanton slaughter, not only of the foreign Manchoos, but of their Chinese countrymen, has been urged against the Taepings as a proof that they were a mere gang of robbers and murderers. But was there during the revolutionary struggle in France no mutual killing of the opposing parties of Frenchmen? I mention only the Reign of Terror, and the 'Noyades,' and, leaving it to your Lordship's memory to add further illustrative transactions, I ask, do such well-established historical facts prove that the revolutionary party were merely a large gang of robbers and murderers, and not a political power?
"While, however, considering it an established fact in the history of the Taepings that they, on taking Nanking, put the whole of the Manchoos to death, not sparing even the women and children; and while thinking it highly probable that they will treat in the same way any other of the military colonies of the Tartar conquerors of their country that may fall into their power, I have long ago arrived at the full conviction that the tales of the slaughter committed by them on their own countrymen are not only exaggerated, but very grossly exaggerated.
"My own experience has furnished me with an instructive example of gross exaggeration of the kind. In the beginning of September, 1853, when, not the Taepings, but the Triad Society rebels, suddenly rose and seized the city of Shanghae, I was travelling alone from Ningpo to Shanghae, viâ Chapoo. It was on reaching this latter place, about sixty miles from Shanghae, that I first got the news from the crew of my own river-craft, which had come there to meet me. The insurrection having broken out just as they had left, they themselves could give no particulars about it. But from other vessels, and from the local merchants and officials, I learnt that there had been a fearful slaughter in the city of Shanghae; that the streets were covered with dead bodies and blood; that the foreigners and the rebels had been fighting; and that the whole of the foreign community had retired in the shipping outside of Woo-sung. So uniform and consistent were these reports, and so certain did it appear that I should be unable to pass Shanghae out to Woo-sung, that I set about studying the Chinese maps, with a view of finding a succession of river-passages by which I might, keeping some twenty or thirty miles distant, make my way through the country inside of it, and so out into the Great River, and down that to the reported position of the foreign shipping. But before undertaking so serious a circuit I, of course, determined to approach nearer to Shanghae city. As I did so, I found the prevalent reports less and less alarming; and at length, when about twelve miles distant, ascertained the fact—one well known here at the time—that there had been no fighting whatever with the foreigners, and that, in the whole city the slaughter and bloodshed was limited to the killing of one man. Yet the current and fully-believed reports only sixty miles off were exactly like those we have so often heard of the slaughter committed by the Taepings. We know, from the experience of British troops during the last twenty years, that much loss of life usually ensues on the forcible occupation of Chinese cities from men destroying their families, and then themselves; from women, young and old, committing suicide; and from an unreasoning terror, that drives people into deep canals or rivers, in vain attempts to cross them. In these very ways several lives were nearly lost, a few months back, in the Chinese portion of this settlement before an alarm subsided which was caused by a sudden outcry that the Taepings were entering it, none being at the time within twenty miles' distance.