The Express.
London, England, 1863-10-01 00:00:00

TO Till ZDITOZ OF TRZ DAILY 21TWE.

So.,—lt was easy to foreeee that Englishmen
serving the Emperor of China in a war against
"rebels" would soon be involuntarily implicated in
the practices of Chinese warfare ; and it was not
long before the news arrived that this anticipation
had been fulfilled by the torture of Taeping pri-
soners.

The government has written to its officers for an
answer to this charge. The answer has been sup-
plied, and published in the Gazette. I believe it
will be thought that, under the circumstances, not
the least important parts of this document are its
admissions.

It admits that prisoners of war taken by the
combined army of Chinese Imperialists and Eng-
lish were sentenced to the ' Ling che " or
" slow and ignominious death," what the English
in China call " cutting into a thousand pieces."
The victims, we are told, "had been spared as
much as possible, and little more than the form of
the horrible punishment had been carried out'
The English officer who reports this saw the victims,
eight or ten in number, tied naked to poste and
awaiting their execution : he did not stay to see
the execution, nor can be say of his own knowledge
I that further torture was not inflicted. One of the
prisoners was crying out very loud that he was a
Shanghai coolie, and that he ought not to be put
to death as a rebel. "He had, however," observes
the officer, " very long hair ;" which, it seems, is
sufficient evidence in those courts. The primness
had been exposed, slowly tasting the bitterness of
death, from mid-day to half-past four or five o'clock,
when the officer saw them.

The excuse given by the Chinese commander
was, that it was impossible to prevent the Im-
perialist soldiers from ftking vengeance for their
comrades, 300 of whom had bwn tortured to death
by the Taepings. Such is this war, in which Eng-
lishmen, without any call of national duty, and
against all the laws of international justice, are
instigated by our government to take part.
The British commanders have remonstrated against
the torturing of captured Taepings, but it does not
appear that they have remonstrated, or been in-
structed to remonstrate, against putting them to
death. In fact it appears that English officers
sanctioned the execution of these prisoners by their
presence. Yet the captured Taepings are just as
much prisoners of war, and as much entitled to
their lives after surrender, as any captured Con-
federates in the bands of the Federal'.

We have no more right to interfere for the pur-
pose of helping the Imperial government to put
down the Taepings in China, than we have to
interfere for the purpose of helping the Federal
government to put down the Confederates in
America ; and every Taepiog prisoner taken and
put to death by the Imperial government with our
assistance is, in fact, murdered by the government
ot this country.
And now, suppose the Taepings capture some of
the Emperor of China's English mercenaries, and
condemn them to the "slow and ignominious
death," what is our government to do 1 This is a
pregnant question. The House of Commons,
roused for a moment to a sense of the gravity of
this subject, extorted from the Minister •
pledge that the British army should take no
general part in the war between the Imperialists
and the Taepings, but should confine its action to
the protection of our factories. To escape from this
pledge he raised, by the use of his Sovereign's name,
a filibustering force under the authority of the
English crown, for the service of the Emperor of
China. I call it a filibustering force, because,
though the officers and men composing it may be
honourable and brave, it is raised without the
knowledje of Parliament, to serve against a power
with which the nation is not at war. Such a pro- I
ceeding is a gross breach alike of the constitutional
duty of government and of international justice ;
and it may place the nation in the most painful
' and embarrassing position. English soldiers serving
with the sanction, though not under the flag, of
their Sovereign, may fall into the hands of bar-
barian enemies, and be subjected, as the necessary
consequence oetheir own conduct and the practices
of their allies, to the atrocities of barbarian warfare.
The nation will then have to choose between en-
during that which is scarcely to be endured, and
being plunged by an intriguing government, against
its will, into an unjust war. 'fhe evils and perils of
such a proceeding are so obvious, that it is to be
hoped Parliament will be roused to interpose, and
by a clear expression of its opinion render a repe-
tition of the offence impossible for the future.
Things are running, you will see, pretty much
the same course in China which they ran in India.
We begin by allowing the piratical cupidity of our
mercantile adventurers to break the trade regula-
tions of the native government ; and in this case,
for the purpose of forcing into the country, as the
harbinger, I presume, of Christianity, a physical
and moral poison which the native government had
very properly excluded. Then cornea war, brought on
by agents interested in the nefarious trade, and into
which the government is drawn, or rather, at the

Amount applied out of the Income for Use
ended Sept. 90, 1863, In redemption of Ex=ri.
Deficiency Bills, for the Year ended June 00, 1869 £1,076,006
Amount applied out of the Income to Supply Ser-
vices, In the Quarter ended Sept. 30, 1863 9,466,121
Charge of the Commildated Iluid for the Quarter
ended Sept. El, 1883, via :
Interest of the Permanent Debt... 9%490,166
Terminable Debt
Interest of Exchequer BBL
Interest of Deficiency Bills —
The Civil List 101,307
1 Other Mammon Ocenolidated Tend 670.842
Advances for Maio Works, dm
1110, 01,370
Sinking Fund
ISarplus Balance In Ireland beyond the Claw of
the Consolidated Fund in Ireland, for the Quarter
ended Sept. 90, 1863 667,100

£18.444.4411

stage which we have now reached, plunges, foe the
sake of popularity. A war waged by armed men
against unarmed can have but one issue—the
glorious victory of the armed. The native govern-
ment, which had subsisted by the veneration of its
subject a, is broken up by the humiliation of defeat,
and we stalk, through the anarchy and confusion
which we have ourselves produced, to the
posses-
sion of an empire. The despatch to which have
referred shows that the English officers in China are
taking into their service a body of native Chinese,
analogous to the Sepoys. By what authority is
this done I The Chinese are subject& of the Emperor
of China, not of the British Crown, unless the
career of conquest is held to have already begun.
A similar drama is being acted in Japan, where
we have done violence to prejudices more grotesque,
but not more essentially absurd than many to which
deference is paid in Europe and, having thus
brought on confusion and bloodshed, seem now
about, by way of diplomatic satisfaction to add
that country also to our dordlnions. We force
ourselves upon these people, against their will, on
the plea that they are barbarians. We then exact
from them the strictest observance of the rules
and even of the etiquette of civilized diplo-
macy ; and if they fail in that observance we pro-
ceed, in the name of civilization and Christianity,
to cut their throats and take possession of their
country.
Parliament, careless, cajoled, or browbeaten,
seems to have almost ceased to exercise au
effective control over the administration. When
the House of Commons suffered the Ministers
to enter into a war of their own with a
force raised, without the knowledge of Parliament,
under the authority of the Crown in council, and
when it further suffered them to assert the power
of using the Indian army at their discretion for
other than Indian wars, it virtually gave up to a
great extent the control of peace and war in that part
of the globe. Perhaps, air, some of us may live to
see the effect of this Eastern empire on those consti-
tutional principles which we deem so sure. There
is no example, I believe, in history, from imperial
Rome down to imperial France, of a nation which
has trampled on the rights of others without ulti-
mately forfeiting its own. For, alter all, the
Justice which rules the world, let popular ministers
scoff at it as they please, is sure and strong.
But even the government itself, as experience
hes proved, when once launched on a policy of
aggrandisement, retains practically no effectual
control over its agents in these distant spheres.
They are masters of the situation, able to give
things any turn they please ; and it suits them,
whether they are military or mercantile adven-
turers, to give things such a turn as may lead to
conquest. As to the nation, it remains in total
ignorance of what is going on till it is engaged in
war, when reckless appeals are made to its passions
by demagogues, whose high rank and station does
not render them less mendacious and profligate than
the lowest seducers of the people.
The truth, sir, which it is most desirable that
you and all honest public instructors should in-
culcate, is that the mass of the people have no !p-
-i tereat whatever in this filibustering policy. The
mass of the people have no interest—the world
would be strangely ordered if they had an interest
, —in any but peaceful and honourable trade. It was
t enough for them that the Chinese government,
though rude and barbarous compared with ours,
preserved order and security sufficient to foster a
marvellous and most productive industry among
the countless millions beneath its sway, and that
China supplied us with all we could afford
to buy, and would have supplied us with
as much snore as we bad desired. And
•if our . .ple, in their connexion with China,
looked a.. ye mere trade, and desired to propagate
their ideas and their religion, the gentle force of
commerce, the destined pioneer of a higher inter-
course, would have opened up in time the avenues
through which civilization and Christianity would
have found their way. Civilization is not to be
spread by violence and fraud. Christianity is not
likely to win the hearts of a new people when it
comes to them walking hand in hand with Rapine
over the wreck of all they venerated and the deso-
lation of their homes. The missionaries who con-
verted our Saxon ancestors, and made them for ever
a Christian nation, came in the track of peaceful
intercourse, and they came with no sinister com-
pauious. We know the fate that has attended the
military missions of Cortes and Pizarro. Unless
the nature of things is changed the same fate
probably awaits ours.
The only men who have an interest in the present
policy are a few rapacious and unscrupulous adven-
turers, of that class who have been the firebrands
of commercial wars throughout our history—
who dragged us into the reckless and disastrous
war with Spain, really to promote their own pirati-
cal enterprises, but as they professed to vindicate
the national honour and avenge " Jenkyna's ears."
These are the men who, for their opium smuggling
and their filibustering, require of our arms the pro-
tection which honest trade gives itself without the
aid of arms, wherever buyers and sellers are to be
found. They make vast fortunes at the expense
of the national treasury and of the naticuialhonour ;
and they bring their fortunes home to do nothing
but social and political mischief—to fill the country