China, and questions of Chinese policy—which only two years ago were the battle-field of fierce political contention, the subject of debates which menaced a Ministry with downfall, dissolved a Parliament, violently agitated the whole community at home, and engaged the controversies of the whole civilized world—seemed again to have been delivered over to that neglect and oblivion with which remote countries and their concerns are ordinarily regarded; but after the lull and the slumber, come again the rousing and the excitement, and China occupies anew the columns of the periodical press, and awakens fresh interest in the public mind.
The startling events which have taken place on the Tien-tsin river in China—popularly, but erroneously, known by the name of the Pei-Ho[1]—have re-kindled such an amount of attention and inquiry, that we feel warranted in devoting some of our earliest pages to the consideration of a topic involving our relations with a people constituting more than one-third of the whole human family, and commercial interests even now of vast extent, and likely to become in their future development more important than those which connect us with any other nation or region of the world. A brief recapitulation of the events preceding this last manifestation of Chinese duplicity will enable the reader to understand the character and objects of the Chinese government in their dealings with other nations.
A series of successful military and naval operations led to the treaties with China of 1842. The arts and appliances of modern warfare—the civilization of a powerful western nation—were directed against armies and defenses which represented the unimproved strategy of the middle ages,[2] and against regions pacific in their social organization, yet disordered, and even dislocated by internecine dissensions, which the enfeebled imperial authority was wholly incompetent to subdue or to control. The reigning dynasty was little able to resist a shock so overwhelming to its stolid pride, and so unexpected to its ignorant shortsightedness. Its hold upon the people being rather that of traditional prestige than of physical domination, the humiliation felt was all the more intolerable because inflicted by those "barbarians," who, according to Chinese estimate,
- ↑ Peiho, in Chinese, means a north or northern river, but no river in particular. No Chinaman applies the word to the locality which now bears the name on our charts. In Bristol, the Mersey would be deemed entitled to the name of the Peiho; in London, the Humber, the Tyne, or the Tweed.
- ↑ The matchlock is still used in China, where even the flint has not been introduced. The late emperor, Taou-Kwang, had heard of "improvements in musketry," and specimens of "percussion locks" were sent to Peking, but they were rejected; and the military examinations to this hour consist of feats of individual strength, the exercise of the bow and arrow, the spear and the shield. In the use of artillery there have been some improvements. The Chinese have purchased cannon for their fortifications and war-junks, both in Hong Kong and Macao, and of late from the Russians, for their forts of Takoo.
