preservation: its very feebleness cries to us for pity and mercy. It may yet totter on for generations, if not harshly shaken; but if it—fall—fall amidst its wrecked institutions—China, inviting as it is to foreign ambition and the lust of conquest, may become the battle-field of contending interests. Russia, moving steadily and stealthily forward in its march of territorial aggression; France, charged with what she fancies herself specially called upon to represent—the missionary propagand, with the Catholic world behind her; England, with those vast concerns which involve about one-ninth of the imperial and Indian revenues, and an invested capital exceeding forty millions sterling; and the United States, whose commerce may be deemed about one-third of that of Great Britain, to say nothing of Holland and Spain, who are not a little concerned, through their eastern colonies, in the well-being of China;—will then be engaged in a struggle for power, if not territory, the result of which cannot be anticipated; indeed we scarcely venture to contemplate such portentous complications.
No thoughtful man will deny the necessity of teaching the Chinese that treaties must be respected, and perfidy punished. Duty and interest alike require this at our hands; but this is but one of many duties—one of many interests; and we would most emphatically say, Respice finem—look beyond—look to the end. The destruction of hundreds of thousands of Chinese, the ravaging of their great cities, may fail to accomplish the object we have in view. They have been but too much accustomed to such calamities, and their influences soon pass away from a nation so reckless of life. But it may be possible to exact penalties in a shape which will be more sensible to them, and more beneficial to us: for example, the administration of their custom-house revenues in Shanghae and Canton, and the payment out of these of all the expenses of the war.
But is there nothing to hope from the Taiping movement? Nothing. It has become little better than dacoity: its progress has been everywhere marked by wreck and ruin; it destroys cities, but builds none; consumes wealth, and produces none; supersedes one despotism by another more crushing and grievous; subverts a rude religion by the introduction of another full of the vilest frauds and the boldest blasphemies. It has cast off none of the proud, insolent, and ignorant formulas of imperial rule; but, claiming to be a divine revelation, exacts the same homage and demands the same tribute from Western nations, to which the government of Peking pretended in the days of its highest and most widely recognized authority.
We cannot afford to overthrow the government of China. Bad as it is, anarchy will track its downfall, and the few elements of order which yet remain will be whelmed in a convulsive desolation.
