LAST WEEK.
THE POUND OF TEA.
Most English readers must have been painfully affected on reading the account, just forwarded home by the “Times” correspondent, of what took place at the little Chinese town of Peh-Tang, when the combined forces of England and France were compelled, by the necessities of warfare and of self-preservation, to take possession of it. There really seems to have been no alternative, for the mouth of the Peiho was staked, and the coast at other points was inaccessible. Our only consolation must be that the English leaders seem to have done all that was in their power to check the outrages upon the inhabitants whose expulsion from their homes may have been a necessity, but who were not therefore to be plundered and tortured, in addition, and without reason. The wretched creatures had not either, at the end of last July, when the disembarkation occurred, or during the operations on the Peiho, in 1859, in any way incurred the vengeance of the European forces. Their misfortune was that they lay in the way of the expedition. They had houses. The English and French troops required houses, and so they drove these poor Peh-Tangites from their homes. Had the matter stopped here there would have been the less to say about it, for if war is to be it can scarcely be carried on without the infliction of much misery even upon non-combatants. It would, however, have been more creditable to the apostles of our boasted European civilisation, now actually under arms in northern China, if the French leaders had sternly forbidden plunder and pillage, and if the allied commanders had directed their provost-marshals to give the camp-followers and coolies a few practical hints that they were not to deal with Peh-Tang, as with a town taken by storm. It is not pleasant to read of homes which were visited three or four times by French soldiers, and still more frequently by coolies, for the sake of plunder; of torture inflicted upon the owners that they might discover where their money was to be found; of women poisoned by their relations and friends, lest they might fall into the hands of the barbarians. We are told that Sir Hope Grant, who was a reluctant witness of such scenes as these, has come to the resolution that he will not permit the troops again to occupy any Chinese town, which may lie upon his path, without giving such ample notice to the inhabitants as may enable them to remove their families and portable goods to a place of safety. Happily the distance from Peh-Tang to Pekin is very short, and unless all anticipations are baffled, there is no probability that scenes similar to those which occurred on the first landing of the allied forces will be renewed. It was stated in the Paris papers, at the end of last week, that Mr. Bruce had received a despatch, announcing that the Emperor of China would be ready to conclude peace on the capture of the Peiho forts, and so spare the allied forces the necessity of a promenade militaire to Pekin. This, however, would seem to be a matter of dubious policy on one side, for we have already had experience of how the Pekin mandarins are accustomed to handle a difficulty as soon as the immediate pressure is withdrawn. We can scarcely afford to be sending, year after year, to the other side of the globe, armed commentators upon the value of treaties and the expediency of good faith.
The Chinese question is one which must receive a satisfactory solution, even at the expense of a certain amount of present misery. It is not to be endured either on one side or the other that a semi-barbarous clique of politicians at Pekin should keep asunder any longer the European and the Chinese continent. The continent of Europe contains about 300,000,000 inhabitants. The population of China is estimated at 400,000,000. With the products of our own European countries—with what the various nations can accomplish in manufacture and the arts of civilised life—we are reasonably familiar. We know, too, enough of Asiatics in general, and of the Chinese in particular, to feel secure that much of what we know, and much of what we possess, would be to them of inestimable benefit. True, for many centuries they have lived without assistance from the Western world, and there must have been considerable value in the laws and customs by which such an enormous mass of human beings could have been held together for so long a period. The “system,” however, is confessedly breaking up. More than our Manchester piece-goods—more than our latest discoveries in the mechanical sciences—the Chinese require at the present moment to come into contact—not into collision—with a stronger form of civilisation than their own. On the other hand, China teems with products which have become to us absolutely necessary. Chinese tea, and Chinese silk, we must have, and there is every reason to suppose that if the country be thoroughly opened, other articles will be added to those great staples. As yet, we have but traded with four out of the eighteen provinces of which China is composed, and even with these four only since the year 1842. For three centuries before that date our commerce was restricted to a single port, in a remote province of the empire, and carried on under conditions which were calculated in every way to check its extension. The result of our dealing with four provinces instead of with a single province has been that our trade under the head of tea alone has tripled in amount.
Now, this Chinese matter should be considered thus:—Are 400,000,000 and 300,000,000 of human beings, who wish to come together, to be kept asunder because the old mandarins at Pekin choose to adhere to their traditional maxim of government with the tenacity of so many Sibthorps or Newdegates? and because it suits the interests of the native firms which direct or control the internal transport of the country, that the stranger should be excluded? Nor must it be forgotten that, according to certain articles in the treaty of Tien-tsin, we are now contending for rights which have been formally acknowledged. We have by the treaty full right “to travel for pleasure, or for purposes of trade, to all parts of the interior of China.” Again: “No opposition shall be offered to the traveller or merchant in the hiring of persons or vessels for the carriage of their baggage or merchandise.” British merchants