"From these habits of the Chinese, we may infer that there has been, in the many populous cities occupied by the Taepings in this province, much loss of life among women and children, as well as grown men—non-combatants; and the inference is supported by the fact of foreigners who having visited such cities seeing in the canals many unwounded bodies. But that the Taeping troops have directly put to death a greater proportion of their non-combatant countrymen, or have even refused quarter to the armed, to a greater extent than have done revolutionary parties in the civil wars of England and France, is, I am fully satisfied, a prejudiced repetition on the part of inimical foreigners of the interested calumnies of the Ta-tsing party.
"Some time back it had become a good conclusion that in the tracts of country occupied by the Taepings there must be greater security for life and property than in those occupied by the Ta-tsings. We knew that the Taepings had long given up that system of universal conscription on which they acted in 1853, and which then made their approach a source of peculiar terror. We knew that they depended on voluntary enrolment for the support of their fighting force, and that they were earnestly endeavouring to get the inhabitants generally of hamlets and open towns to remain at their usual occupations. This being the case, it was plain that the Taepings could preserve the public peace better than the Ta-tsings. For the bulk of the leading officials among the former were themselves not only fighting men, but about the best fighting men that they had; men who owed their position to their military qualities. To them there could, among their own party, be no open defiance. There might be nothing of that military drill and tactics which characterize European armies, but that discipline, which consists in strict obedience to orders could not fail to be there. On the other hand, the bulk of the leading Ta-tsing officials, the mandarins, were about the most inactive and timid, the most unwarlike of their party, and were, we knew, compelled to employ, as their chief fighting men, the ex-pirates of the south-eastern coast-land, who, with their followers, would not content themselves with their official pay, but would also, in defiance of the wishes of their weak employers, exact money from, or plunder outright, the peaceable populations whom they were hired to protect.
"These inferences have been amply confirmed by recent unquestionable experiences. Mr. John, an English missionary of education and intelligence, went two or three months ago from Shanghae to Soo-chow, and thence to Nanking, where he stayed for seven days. Mr. John put the question to the Taeping officials why it was that the walled cities held by them were so entirely deserted by their former populations of tradesmen, artificers, &c. He received answers to the effect that those cities had been transformed into fortresses, necessary to be held for the reconquest of the country from the Manchoos; that having been once deserted, no population was readmitted, as, under the guise of tradesmen, &c., they might gradually be filled with hostile forces; but that, as soon as their own progress advanced their frontier to other points, they themselves would be anxious to see these places repeopled by a peaceful population. In the mean time they were doing their best to protect, in the hamlets, villages, and open towns, all who choose to remain in them, in quiet submission to the Taeping rule.
"Now these explanations and statements were fully supported by the nature of the circumstances and by what Mr. John saw himself. He was altogether about a month in the country held by the Taepings. He traversed a tract of that country of about 120 miles in extent (Tsing-poo to Nanking), and travelled by night as well as by day, quite unarmed, and never molested. He found the country people quietly pursuing their usual occupations; and—a proof of the understanding between them and their Taeping rulers—saw the soldiers of the latter moving from place to place in large bodies without inspiring terror, and in parties of three or two without being assailed. At Soo-chow, both Mr. John and a well-educated and observant Chinese who accompanied him, and whom I questioned closely, saw the veritable landed gentry coming in parties to give in to the civil governor their adhesion to the Taeping dynasty.
"What, on the other hand, is the state of the country on this side of the Ta-tsing lines? Not only do the exactions of the mandarins for military objects equal any similar demands that can be made by the Taepings, but piracy and robbery are well known to be everywhere rife. During an excursion, in the end of October, of some ninety miles up the Yang-tze, I had myself full opportunity of observing the prevalence of piracy and the alarm of the country people; and reports came constantly in, on all sides, showing that the reign of lawless violence is rather increasing than diminishing.
"It is impossible to say how much of China proper the Taepings hold altogether, clear of Ta-tsing authorities or troops. But in proof of their right to be considered a political power, we have the fact that their armies are operating successfully up into Shang-tung in the North, down into Kwang-tung and Kwang-se in the South, and in Sze-chuen in the West, while nothing prevents their penetrating to the sea in the East but the presence of the foreign forces at Shanghae.
"On the religion of the Taepings little need here be said. Viewed as a piece of contemporary history, the fact of the rise and progress, in this old seat of Confucianism and Buddhism, of the Bible-spreading Taeping Christianity—be its exact character what it may—is one of the most interesting spectacles that the annals of the human race present; and if the Taepings succeed in becoming the rulers of the Chinese people, it will prove one of the most momentous. A foreign official agent, whose nature or the limited extent of whose information permits of his viewing that spectacle with indifference, must surely be adjudged mentally unfitted for the career he has chosen. But except as a deeply interesting piece of contemporary history, we have nothing to do with it. If we aid the Taepings on account of their professed creed, we propagate religion by the sword; if we attack them on account of it, we engage in a religious persecution.
"One circumstance, which does not directly interest us, remains to be considered; the disposition of the Taepings towards us. On this point, the testimony is continuous, always consistent, and remarkably satisfactory. On three or four occasions, on which foreign war-vessels have, without any previous communication, steamed right up to the river batteries of the Taeping fortified places, they have exercised the right—a right inherent in every belligerent power—of endeavouring to keep off a suspicious and, for their means of defence, formidable force. But so soon as they have been told that it was not the hired foreign steamers of their Ta-tsing enemies, but the Government vessels of neutral foreigners that were before them, they have in every instance at once ceased firing. Their superior officers have fully explained that if foreign neutral vessels would send small unarmed boats in advance, they would not be fired at; and whenever this has been done, they have kept faith. As for the white flag of truce, it is simply absurd to suppose that that purely conventional signal of the Western world can be known to the commander of every Taeping battery. But the Taepings have a complete justification for disregarding it, even if they knew it; they are fighting with an enemy who would not hesitate an instant about sending in his own foreign steamers to open fire or effect a hostile landing, with a white flag or a British ensign flying at each mast-head. In no one of the numerous cases of one or more unarmed foreigners advancing to the Taeping outposts, since I first landed at Nanking in April, 1853, up till the most recent visits of Shanghae traders to Soo-chow, have they been received otherwise than peacefully; while in several cases those who have visited them as prejudiced unfriends have been converted into well-wishers by the friendliness of their reception.
"They appeared in force before Shanghae six months ago, but I have good reasons for feeling satisfied that they were deluded into so doing by certain foreigners who wished to bring on an irremediable hostility between them and us, and who had held out to them the hope that we should give up the place to them. They fired a few ineffectual shots at the Chinese troops who were mingled with the British on the walls, and who kept discharging their matchlocks. But they did not fire at all where there were only British in front of them, and not one of the foreign soldiers received a wound, though a number of the Taepings were killed by our fire. Lastly, during the half-year that has elapsed since they retired, foreigners have been received at their places, if not with the same hopeful cordiality, as peacefully and as civilly as before.
"We have a long succession of irrefragable proofs that the Taepings do earnestly desire friendly commercial relations with us. The fact is so well known that inimical foreigners have been constrained to endeavour, with a curiously blind ingenuity, to turn it against them. 'All that is mere pretence,' it has been argued; 'if they felt sure they were strong enough to attack us with advantage, they would do it.' In reply, I ask if it be so, in how far do the Taepings differ in that respect from the Russians, French, and Americans? Is the peaceful and civil reception the English get from these nations the result of pure friendliness or of policy? Would they attack us if they felt sure they could do so with advantage? What are our Channel fleets, our fortifications, and our 150,000 volunteers for?