PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. DLXVIII. FEBRUARY 1863. Vol. XCIII.
PROGRESS IN CHINA.
PART II.
THE TAEPINGS AND THEIR REMEDY.
It would have required many cycles of Cathay to bring to the councils of the Court of Pekin the enlightenment we have alluded to in our last Number, if the populations over which it ruled had not threatened to outstrip the Government in the adoption of European ideas. Petty sedition, which had always been acknowledged in China as the expression of the will of the people, suddenly assumed an alarming form, and threatened to subvert not only the present dynasty, but, what was of far greater importance, a much venerated constitution, the result of the collective wisdom and experience of twenty-five centuries.
The two Kwang provinces, Kwang-tung and Kwang-si, were the first affected by the leaven of European example, and were so the more readily because our violent acts, irrespective of any question of justification, were congenial to the predatory tastes of the inhabitants of that portion of China. That region, which contains from twenty-six to twenty-eight millions of Chinese, has always been the last to submit to the rule of a new dynasty, and the first to revolt. Six centuries ago, the Mongol conquerors of China had no easy task in mastering these southerners; and Arab historians, never very nice in their estimate of the value of human life, write in strong terms of the terrible means by which the subjection of Kwang-tung was accomplished. “The blood of the people flowing in sounding torrents,” was a strong metaphor applied to the Mongol conquest; yet, four centuries afterwards, the Manchous had to repeat the same frightful lesson before they could say that they ruled over the cities and plains of Kwang-si. Even then, large bodies of the disaffected fled to the mountains on the north, and to the sea on the south, and, as banditti or pirates, have never been entirely reconciled to any form of government. In the lawless seafaring population of Kwang-tung, our armed smugglers found willing allies against a weak executive, and the leaven of our example at length brought about a rebellion, which, under the name of Taepingism, has been the most appalling scourge that ever fell upon a nation. We will endeavour to trace its origin, analyse the character of its reputed leaders, and, from the testimony of impartial witnesses, show what Taepingdom has done during the fourteen years it has had existence.
The elements of revolution were, as we have said, always ready to hand in Southern China; and even before the establishment of our sovereignty at Hong-Kong, there were thousands of lawless Cantonese ready to work any wickedness, whether as land or sea pirates, it mattered little, and they were merely kept in anything like subjection by excessive severity on the part of the mandarins and the executive of China. We stepped in, destroyed the prestige of Imperial fleets and armies; and our smugglers, in armed merchantmen called opium-clippers, brought into utter contempt the police of the Empire, and showed the natives of all classes how to evade the payment of all dues or taxes. Smuggling and piracy were divided by too narrow a distinction for the appreciation of the Cantonese, and their defiance of the Government was actively supported by the opium-clippers. The visitors to our settlement of Hong-Kong might have seen fleets of heavily-armed native vessels, loading with salt, opium, and other goods, all of which were to be run in the teeth of mandarins, war-junks, or forts. Fast boats, each manned with a hundred men, flaunted their flags, and beat their gongs. They became quite as ready to fight the European as their own rulers. When these ruffians had no other work in hand, they cut off their own lawful traders, or the little coasters under European flags. Gradually increasing in numbers and audacity, they attacked outlying Chinese towns; and when their own Government offered a sufficiently high pecuniary reward, they were equally ready to assist Governor-General Yeh to exterminate us.
We do not care to pass any opinion upon the iniquity or otherwise of the opium trade. It may have been a political and commercial necessity; but we should be false to history if we failed to trace much of the evil under which China is now suffering to that melancholy source. Owing to the enormous profits made upon the drug as a contraband article, the native traders formed themselves into powerful guilds, with ramifications at Hong-Kong, Macao, and Canton, which actually guaranteed the success of smuggling ventures—a smuggling assurance company, so to speak, against the lawful tax-gatherers of China; and the writer has heard the officers and crew of more than one English opium-clipper boast of having protected these ruffians, and beaten off the Government boats. This defiance of the native authorities extended itself to the interior. Bands of armed men were led by opium-brokers through the provinces, fighting their way with smuggled goods. To this fact we have the testimony of the Roman Catholic missionaries; and indeed Monsieur Chauveau, the head of the Catholic mission in Yunnan, insists—and we believe him—that the Taeping rebellion was inaugurated by a large band of six hundred opium-smugglers forcing their way from Yunnan to Canton, and compelling some influential personages in Kwang-si to assist them. After the smugglers had retired, the authorities naturally called the gentry to account. The mob took part with their neighbours; a secret society gave its aid; sedition spread, and, like a ball of snow, gathered weight as it rolled through a turbulent province. Hither hastened, as official reports state, the soldiery and braves that had been disbanded after the first war with us; hither went the disaffected of all classes, the ruined opium-smokers and roués of Canton; in short, the rowdies of a population equal to that of the French empire in extent soon collected at the base of the Kwang-si mountain-ranges, and devastated the best part of that province. In the year 1850, these troubles assumed the distinct phase of rebellion. After shirking the difficulty for as long a time as possible, the ‘Pekin Gazette’ began to publish reports of the state of Kwang-si. It told how vast districts had been swept over by banditti, how the entire eastern circuit of the province “had been atrociously dealt with by bands, who carried banners inscribed with the information, ‘We are dealing justice on behalf of Heaven.’” These justice-dispensing robbers “fired the villages wherever they came, violated the women, murdered the well-disposed, and took care to carry off all guns, horses, and arms.”