Within two months after our return to Nankin, I became utterly prostrated by one of the forms of low fever prevalent in China. My illness was long in duration and slow in disappearing, even when recovery commenced. During many months I was confined to a sickbed, from whence, but for the tender and unremitting attentions of my wife, I should never have risen again. In the meanwhile my comrades had all left the city, having proceeded with another expedition against the Manchoo.
Shih-ta-kae, the I-wang and brother of the Ti-ping king, had been recalled to the capital, and in the month of September, 1862, marched forth in command of an army destined to operate along the south bank of the Yang-tze. The Chung-wang, with a still larger army, crossed the river, and commenced a campaign having for its principal objects the recapture of Ngan-king and the capture of Pekin.
While these armies are marching along their several routes, we will digress for a little and notice two subjects particularly favourable to the moral aspect of the Ti-ping revolution, though one of them has excited no little hostility to the great movement.
The justice courts of Ti-pingdom form the theme of our first eulogy. These are invariably conducted with the strictest and most simple equity. The disgusting scenes, the inseparable concomitants of the Manchoo magisterial dwelling, or yamun,—such as the torture of litigants, criminals, and prisoners,—are entirely abolished. Defendant, plaintiff, and witness, are fairly confronted; but under the sway of the Tartar despotism either the one or the other is tortured if any party chooses to bribe the presiding mandarin; or, if none have the sense and means to sooth the majesty of justice with lumps of virgin sycee, the whole are tortured by that impartial functionary. The infamous system of bribery is entirely unknown in a Ti-ping court of justice; not one form of torture is permitted by law,[24] and prisoners or litigants are afforded every facility to defend themselves consistent with justice. In no way can a rich and superior adversary obtain any unfair advantage over a poor man, none being convicted or punished but upon the clearest and most decisive proof of guilt.
Ti-pingdom is one of the last places in the world likely to please a lawyer; plaintiff, defendant, and prisoner having to plead their own cases, which are then decided upon according to their respective merits by the presiding chief and his assistant officers. All trials are conducted more by the dictates of right and justice than the trammels of law, so that the glaring injustice frequently caused by European legal technicalities and quibbles is seldom committed.
The Ti-pings have one very singular custom in connection with their "Judgment Halls." Two large drums are always kept hanging just inside the porch of the outer gate, and are at the use of any person who may consider himself aggrieved, or may wish to present a complaint, when he is at liberty to strike upon the drums and demand justice from the chief. A Ti-ping court of justice is generally a very imposing affair. The gorgeous dress of the chiefs, their numerous attendants and body guard, the many beautiful silken banners around the walls, and especially the brilliancy of colour, strongly impress the observer's imagination with an idea of what Europe must have been during its earlier career, when it delighted in the same barbaric splendour and feudal display.
The second subject of our digression is the abolition of opium-smoking by the Ti-pings, which is almost the principal cause of the hostility the British Government and nearly all merchants who trade in the drug have hitherto entertained against the revolutionists. Although the arguments to prove the utterly health-destroying and mind-pervading effect of opium are many and incontrovertible, we may dispense with them and give a few facts to establish the value of the prohibition by the Ti-pings. In India, as well as in China, the unfortunate natives are thereby utterly destroyed. In a communication forwarded by General Alexander to Earl Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley), from Mr. A. Sym, dated the 13th of March, 1840, the following passages occur:—
"The health and morals of the people suffer from the production of opium. We are demoralizing our own subjects in India; one half of the crime in the opium districts—murders, rapes, and affrays—have their origin in opium-eating.... One opium cultivator demoralizes a whole village. Thus thousands of our fellow-subjects in India are oppressed, and their health and morals destroyed, for the sake of this infernal opium trade. So completely is the production of opium in the hands of the East India Company[25] that not a single poppy can be grown in the extent of their vast territories without either the permission of the Government or an infraction of its laws. The grower of the poppy derives only a bare subsistence for its cultivation, and the difference between 250 rupees and 1,200 to 1,600 rupees a chest goes to the Government, which exchanges the drug for silver at the auction mart."
This sort of thing has been continually on the increase since the above statements were written, and the opium trade has now reached an enormous extent, being fully equal to if not greater in value than either the silk or tea trade. While the price of opium has been steadily maintained or increased, that of western manufactures has gradually fallen off to one-third the former rates, although the latter trade has not largely increased, and that in opium has been more than doubled. The vast amount of specie drawn from China in payment of this deleterious drug is diverted from a more beneficial and righteous trade in British manufactures, or in the cultivation of cotton, which the East Indian districts now devoted to the poppy are so well adapted to produce. If Lancashire would only look abroad it might see a mode of easily increasing the British exports to China, till the eight or nine millions annually paid in cash for the produce of China were replaced by them, and the abolition of the opium trade had enabled the Chinese to barter for English manufactures to a greater extent. The amount of clear profit realized by the Indian Government upon the sale of opium is considerably upwards of £5,000,000 per annum,[26] being the difference between £25 a chest they give for it, and £115 they sell it at. The opium, upon reaching China, extracts from that country the vast amount of specie above mentioned, which would otherwise be expended on British produce.