"A sanguinary raid, and an extended brigandage over the country, burning, destroying, and killing EVERYTHING that has life in it."
In a surprising manner, after a few sentences, he brings the dead to life:—
"They come, and the helpless inhabitants crouch down and submit. They (the Taepings) go, and the people breathe again and rejoice."
"Tel maître, tel valet," it is said, and Mr. Harvey seems to have likened into Mr. Bruce amazingly. Mr. Bruce has stated, "every locality is totally destroyed by the Ti-pings." Mr. Harvey chimes in with the above, "killing everything," and "not a vestige" diatribes. Mr. Bruce, in a despatch dated "Pekin, April 10, 1862," inclosing Mr. Harvey's precious production to Earl Russell, states with regard to the Ti-pings:—
"No commerce can co-exist with their presence, and NO specific relations are possible with a horde of pirates and brigands, who are allowed to commit every excess, while professing a nominal allegiance to an ignorant and ferocious fanatic."
Again, in a despatch dated "Pekin, April 18, 1862," Mr. Bruce states that their presence in any district is "accompanied by the utter destruction of the materials of trade."
Singularly enough, General Staveley, although chief leader of the massacres of Ti-pings, in a despatch to the Secretary of State for War, dated "Shanghae, July 3, 1862," entirely and absolutely contradicts the imaginary devastations of Mr. Bruce and his Consul by the following statement:—
"Europeans continue to visit the rebel country for purposes of trade, and are treated with civility; large quantities of silk have been brought into Shanghae during the last fortnight, and trade seems in a thriving state."[10]
Mr. Harvey concludes his judgment passed in "sober sense and dispassionately" by the following words:—
"Your Excellency may rest assured that we shall only arrive at a correct appreciation of this movement, and do it thorough justice, when it is treated by us as land piracy on an extensive scale—piracy odious in the eyes of all men—and, as such, to be swept off the face of the earth by every means within the power of the Christian and civilized nations trading with this vast empire."