Mr. Consul Harvey having been requested by Mr. Bruce to report upon the character of the Ti-pings, and having been prompted even in the public despatches, forthwith indulged his feelings of hostility against those people. It is desirable to notice some of the more salient and characteristic features of the despatch of Mr. Harvey as briefly as possible.
The despatch containing Mr. Harvey's exposition bears date March 20th, 1862, some three months after the occupation of Ningpo by the Ti-pings, and after hostilities had been established against them by Admiral Hope and his friends.
Mr. Harvey states:—
"Not one single step[9] in the direction of a 'good government' has been taken by the Taepings; not any attempt made to organize a political body or commercial institutions; not a vestige, not a trace of anything approaching to order, or regularity of action, or consistency of purpose, can be found in any one of their public acts."
In a despatch dated "Ningpo, December 31, 1861," he had stated as follows:—
"They have even established a native custom-house, wherein duties will be levied on the Chinese after ten days' grace.... It has been reported to me that the insurgents propose establishing a foreign custom-house at this port, such being, it is said, one of their favourite ideas, and forming part of their programme in the capture of Ningpo."
And again—
"The Taepings possess a regular embodied force, a draft from which forms the nucleus of the body of men sent upon any special service."
Mr. Harvey, with an extraordinary self-complacent assumption of impartiality, proceeds to declare that he "judged of Taepingdom in sober sense and dispassionately," yet he concludes the same paragraph by stating that at Ningpo "the last three months had produced ruin, desolation, and the annihilation of every vital principle in all that surrounds the presence, or lies under the bane, of the Taepings." Again, only a few lines further on, he says:—
"It is palpable that a party which, after ten years' full trial, is found to produce nothing, and to destroy everything, cannot pretend to last, or be admitted, even indirectly, into the comity of nations."