not, our blockade becomes a farce. If we do, then we deny the right of capture at one moment and practise it at another. Let us suppose that a neutral break the blockade; we pursue and capture him. But surely his sin, for which we capture him, is no greater than the original sin of the enemy, for which we decline to capture him. In short, it is practically impossible to sever these interwoven questions. To the minds of men of business this is abundantly clear. Liverpool Chamber of Commerce had discussed the question of capture. Its council, on taking up that of blockade, saw so clearly that the one inevitably followed the other, that they deemed it superfluous to consult the Chamber on a point so very obvious, and prepared a petition for the abolition of blockade, without a thought that any person in favour of the one change could object to the other.

The

Fourthly, Capture is still to be permitted if the vessel carry contraband of war. What then is or is not contraband? So vague and elastic is the present state of international law on this point, that at least half of all the leading articles of commerce may, or may not, be contraband, according to circumstances. In a war with America coal would rightfully be contraband if going to Charleston, where it might be, as it is now, sorely needed for the purposes of the enemy. At Philadelphia its nature would no more be contraband than that of salt water, being a common product of the district. What, indeed, may not be contraband, if we are to follow General Butler and appropriate people's silver spoons? Have not quiet passengers, civilians, on board of a mail steamer, been converted into articles contraband of war by the ingenious device of beholding in them" embodied despatches?" Has it not become a common practice with the Federals to designate a human being "a contraband?" If we consider the interminable difficulties that would

arise upon this single point, we shall see how impracticable the measures proposed to us really are. It is true they now exist as a consequence of blockade; but their number and complexity would be increased tenfold by permitting the enemy's ships to traverse the ocean, every one of them to be subject to search and disputation on such a point as this. How long would it continue without one of the belligerents declaring that the new compact was infringed by the other, and therefore at an end?

Fifthly, A new class of difficulties would result under the new system. A French merchantman is to be at liberty, in time of war, to sail unmolested along our coast, to come up the Channel, and appear off one of our ports; and suppose, after arriving off one of our ports, laden with grain, of which we are in need, she come into it, what is to be done? Of course, having given up the right to capture the cargo, you buy and pay for it. If you invite commerce to travel the globe, you cannot shut your door right in her face. If "free trade in war" mean anything, it means that your traffic with the enemy shall go on undisturbed, although you are doing your utmost to destroy him in another direction. Views like these may direct a game of chess, in which the pieces are of wood, but not the game of war, in which the pieces are men of human infirmity and passion. Free trade in war is free trade in nonsense. The two things are inherently antagonistic, and can no more be brought to live together side by side than heat and cold. We could not, and would not, have one part of our people full of national spirit, and ready to make any sacrifice for the safety and honour of the country, and another part trading with the enemy in the accustomed forms of friendship. We should be apt to say to such men, I would that thou wert cold or hot; but because thou art neither cold nor hot, therefore will I spew thee out of my mouth." Hitherto, as a people,

though often divided in time of peace, we have ever been one in time of war. Evil will be the day when this shall be reversed-when we shall be of one mind during peace, and in war two people,-the one fighting the enemy, the other trading with the enemy. To bring a nation into this condition would be to reduce the body politic to the state of a man smitten with paralysis-half the trunk quick with life, the other half cold and torpid. We see this day, in another country, what are the fruits of disunion, of divided interests within a people. Does not that sad spectacle warn us to forbid any principle that might work out a similar result?

And after all is not the whole foundation of this movement unsound? The object is to remove or lessen the evils of war. Is it to the real interests of humanity that they should be removed? At present war is the exception, but if it could be rendered beneficial to some and injurious to none, it would come to be the rule, to be the constant condition of nations. How, indeed, would a war be brought to an end? From the day it begins there is a large class interested in its continuance-naval and military officers thirsting for promotion; contractors making fortunes by it; even the public finding in it the charm of excitement. On the other hand, there is a class which suffers, whose trade is interrupted, whose losses are depressing; this class grows under the effects of war taxation, until at length the public mind is swayed in the direction of peace. But if commerce proceed as usual, with the stimulus, too, of Government expenditure-if none are to suffer and many to gain, there would really be nothing to prevent wars being interminable. And a great preventive power would also be removed. Thrice, at least, within the last fifty years, we should have gone to war with the United States, but for the enormous interests to be jeopardised. This compelled statesmen to pause and hold back, and

so the calamity was escaped. Under the new system we should always be ready to enter into strife, and should never know how to end it. Wars but rarely end by physical exhaustion; that which ends them is moral exhaustion, weariness and depression of the public mind; and the losses and suffering that tend to produce this condition are the real peacemakers. It is a question if it might not be better to render its losses so overwhelming, its sufferings so intolerable, and its instruments so fatal, that men would be forced to abandon it by sheer dismay, and adopt some other mode of adjusting the disputes of nations.

There are those who, in arguing these questions, assert that we have no right to judge of the future by the past, or to take it for granted that we shall again be able to exert the power of blockade as we have done. If there be reason for doubt on this point, it would seem the proper course rather to seek the strengthening of our navy than the means of crippling its efficiency. But, in truth, there exists no ground for the distrust. The change that has come over naval affairs in the introduction of steam is a change wholly to our advantage. Our maritime supremacy was attained under many drawbacks, in the days of wooden ships. Much of our timber had to be imported; for the hemp that made our ropes, the flax of our canvass, the very tar we used, we were dependent upon other countries. This is not so now, when war is to be a question of money, iron, and coal. If we had expressly devised a change to tell in favour of this country, we should have selected these elements. Where is the country or combination that can compete with us in financial resources, in building ships of iron, in constructing steam-engines, in supplying coal, in the number of private establishments that in case of need could produce a navy per annum? And a point generally unobserved is the singular value now given to our foreign possessions as

coaling stations for the fleets. In future wars that Power will possess an enormous advantage whose fleets can replenish their coal in every

sea.

There are other elements of strength of no mean importance. If we look back to the political condition to the laws prevailing -to the discontent brooding in this country at the commencement of the century - it is really marvellous how, with half our present population, and a tithe of our present resources, we should have been able to effect what was accomplished. The spirit of sedition, the benighted laws, the unjust monopolies, the religious distinctions, remnants of darker ages, have passed away, and in their place unbroken contentment and loyalty pervade the land. Surely there is strength in this against the day of need. Not that too great a confidence becomes any people. In the midst of so many disturbing elements, both in Europe and America, it is plainly our duty to hold ourselves prepared for any event. Such a period is ill chosen for emasculating our naval power. It is, indeed, our policy to avoid embroiling ourselves in anybody's quarrel, but the other extreme of inaction would be still more injurious. The day has not arrived for this country to abdicate the duties of a great Power, and meekly resign itself to the position of a permanent neutral. Forty years of peace had thrown a spell over the mind of Europe, but that spell is broken.

There is a

spirit abroad which is not that of peace. On all sides we hear of armour-plates forging, of cannon being rifled, of frontiers to be rounded, of treaties that need amendment. At such a time it behoves us to keep intact, in all its vigour, that naval power which is the sheet-anchor of our safety. None need be told that such it is-every Englishman knows it by his in

stinct. It must be kept prepared to strike as well as to resist. If we have consented to abandon one of its former rights, is not this rather a reason to hold on the more firmly by the rest than to strip it of a second and a third? The eagle that cleaves the air with piercing eye and sweeping wing, none behold without admiration or feel a disposition to affront; strip it of its pinions, and you have a poor, tame, pitiful bird. Such a change is that now proposed. Having given up one right, we are to obliterate another, and cast away a third. The next thing should be, having clipt its wings and tamed down its ancient spirit, to sell the navy for old timber, and compound with other Powers to treat us with decency and let our trade go on untroubled. Those who desire this position for our contry, let them support these changes.

We conclude that no ground really exists for the apprehensions that have excited this movement; that the Paris Declaration is of no binding force, and, if carried out, that its results can have no serious importance; that the right of capture cannot be abolished without extinguishing that of blockade ; that the deprivation of these rights would at once incapacitate us in dealing with the majority of commercial States, and would jeopardise our means of bringing maritime war to a successful issue; that these changes are utterly opposed to our interest as the chief naval Power, and that compacts of this nature cannot endure amidst the passions of warfare; finally, that the principle of the movement is erroneous at its root, as, instead of promoting peace, it would remove the chief barrier to war; and that this agitation can have no other result than to waste time far better employed in some pursuit useful to those who move in it, or of some practical service to the country.

Ir 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 twentyfive centuries.

The two Kwang provinces, Kwangtung 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 twentysix to twenty-eight millions of

VOL. XCIII.NO. DLXVIII.

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

K

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 opiumclippers. 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 GovernorGeneral 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. Το 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