Two Sabbatarians hearing that the rebels observed Saturday for their day of rest, posted off to confirm them in that ancient usage. Learning at an outpost that the seeming agreement with their own practice grew out of a mistake in reckoning, they did not continue their journey.
A missionary who actually penetrated to the rebel headquarters was the Rev. Issachar Roberts, the first instructor of the rebel chief. The latter had sent him a message inviting him to court. His stay was not long. He found that his quondam disciple had substituted a new mode of baptism, neither sprinkling nor immersion, but washing the pit of the stomach with a towel dipped in warm water! Who says the Chinese are not original? It is probable that Roberts's dispute lay deeper than a mere ceremony. Professing a New Testament creed, the rebel chief shaped his practice on Old Testament examples—killing men as ruthlessly as David, and, like Solomon, filling his harem with women. A remonstrance on either head was certain to bring danger; it was said indeed that Roberts's life was threatened.
Some queer titles were adopted by the Tai-pings. As stated above, the premier was styled "Father of 9,000 years"; other princes had to content themselves with 7,000, 6,000, etc.—or seven-tenths and six-tenths of a "Live forever!" Christ was the "Heavenly Elder Brother"; and the chief called himself "Younger Brother of Jesus Christ." These designations might excite a smile; but when he called Yang, his adviser, the "Holy Ghost," one felt like stopping one's ears, as did the Hebrews of old. The loose morals of the Tai-pings and their travesty of sacred things horrified the Christian world; and Gordon no doubt felt that he was doing God a service in breaking up a horde of blasphemers and blackguards.
Gordon's victory won an earldom for Li Hung Chang; but the Chinese conferred no posthumous honours on Gordon as they did on Ward, who has a temple and is reckoned among the gods of the empire.
The Tai-pings were commonly called Changmao, "long-haired" rebels, because they rejected the tonsure and "pigtail" as marks of subjection. They printed at Nanking, by what they called "Imperial authority," an edition of the Holy Scriptures. At one time Lord Elgin, disgusted by the conduct of the Peking Government, proposed to make terms with the court at Nanking. The French minister refused to coöperate, partly because the rebels had not been careful to distinguish between the images in Roman Catholic chapels and those in pagan temples, but chiefly from an objection to the ascendency of Protestant influence, coupled with a fear of losing the power that comes from a protectorate of Roman Catholic missions. How different would have been the future of China had the allied powers backed up the Tai-pings against the Manchus!
ACT 2. THE "ARROW" WAR, 1857-1860
Of the second act in this grand drama on the world's wide stage, a vessel, named the Arrow, was, like opium in the former conflict, the occasion, not the cause. The cause was, as before, pride and ignorance on the part of the Chinese, though the British are not to be altogether exonerated. Their flag was compromised; and they sought to protect it. Fifteen years of profitable commerce had passed, during which China had been a double gainer, receiving light and experience in addition to less valuable commodities, when Viceroy Yeh seized the lorcha Arrow, on a charge of piracy. Though owned by Chinese, she was registered in Hong Kong, and sailed under the British flag. Had the viceroy handed her over to a British court for trial, justice would no doubt have been done to the delinquents, and the two nations would not have been embroiled; but, haughty as well as hasty, the viceroy declined to admit that the British Government had any right to interfere with his proceedings. Unfortunately (or fortunately) British interests at Canton were in the hands of Consul Parkes, afterward Sir Harry Parkes, the renowned plenipotentiary at Peking and Tokio.
Sir John Bowring was governor of Hong Kong, with the oversight of British interests in the Empire. A gifted poet, and an enthusiastic advocate of universal peace, he was a man who might be counted on, if in the power of man, to hold the dogs of war in leash. But he, too, had been consul at Canton and he knew by experience the quagmire in which the best intentions were liable to be swamped.
Parkes, whom I came to know as Her Britannic Majesty's minister in Peking, was the soul of honour, as upright as any man who walked the earth. But with all his rectitude, he, like the Viceroy Yeh, was irascible and unyielding. When the viceroy refused his demand for the rendition of the Arrow and her crew, he menaced him with the weight of the lion's paw. Alarmed, but not cowed, the viceroy sent the prisoners in fetters to the consulate, instead of replacing them on board their ship; nor did he vouchsafe a word of courtesy or apology. Parkes, too fiery to overlook such contemptuous informality, sent them back, much as a football is kicked from one to another; and the viceroy, incensed beyond measure, ordered their heads to be chopped off without a trial.
Here was a Gordian knot, which nothing but the sword could loose. War was provoked as before by the rashness of a viceroy. The peace-loving governor did not choose to swallow the affront to his country, nor did the occupant of the Dragon Throne deign to interfere; looking on the situation with the same sublime indifference with which the King of Persia regarded the warlike preparations of the younger Cyrus, when he supposed, as Xenophon tells us, that he was only going to fight out a feud with a neighbouring satrap. How could China be opened; how was a stable equilibrium possible so long as foreign powers were kept at a distance from the capital of the Empire?