The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-05-04 00:00:00

OUR PROSPECTS IN CHINA.

How is such a war to be waged ? How are we
to contend with a population which;• massacre it as
we may, will instantly close over the void like parted
water? How are we to infuse respect for our
arms into the dwellers along the Great Wall, or
into the inhabitants of the provinces on the Siamese
frontier ? All the proposals which our advisers
offer us are clearly founded on the assumption
that there is something like a government in
China. There is, of course, not the slightest use
in an expedition directed even against Pekin,
unless the Emperor at Pekin has power to make
his ordep obeyed by the population along his
seabord ; and It will he trouble wasted to seize
dozen more ports on the coast, unless there is mil`i
administration to regularise the tea trade, and ''to
protect English merchants from the hostility of the
neighbours on whom they have intruded their co►n•
pany. Yet so far as we can be said to have any in-
formation about China, we have reason to believe
that government is altogether in abeyance. The
Emperor neither formally adopts Yeh's proceedings

nor formally disavows them. The war seems, there-
fore, to be with the Chinese themselves, and if so, it
is a war of a kind and character unknown in history.
If the English troops, with their allies, are obliged to
enter upon this contest, it is sickening to think
what butchery and shambles-work await them
before they can make an impression even on the
portions of the population within their reach. The
Chinese will offer no effectual resistance ; but it is
clear that they will take a vast amount of killing
before their passions are quenched. Sir James
Brooke allows that he and his Dyaks killed, at
Sarawak, 2,000 out of 4,000 Chinese denizens,
almost all of the slain being grown men; awl yet
he does not pretend to consider himself safe from
the vengeance of the remainder. Yeh is said to
have put to death 70,000 persons in a single
province, in order to suppress a rebellion which
breaks out again as soon as the disputes with
the English give it a chance of revival. The
efforts of our men to read the Chinese their
lesson will probably be limited by the
natural reluctance of Englishmen to pour
out such rivers of blood without visible
result; but, otherwise, there is no reason why the
slaughter should not continue till the Chinese.
learn at last, by our example, the way to fight us.
M. Hue tells us it is a great mistake to suppose
the Chinese destitute of military capacity. He
argues that they are quite right to run away from
us at present, considering that they have no disci-
pline which can enable them to meet a charge of
bayonets, and no gunpowder which will carry
a ball over the third of the range of an English
musket. But he asserts that, if their eternally
ridiculous traditions of warfare ceased to influence
them, and if they would once learn to imitate the
warlike manufactures of Earope, and to practise
European drill, their numbers, skill, sobriety, pa_
tience. and contempt of pain and death would con-
vert them into material for troops infinitely more
formidable than Russian serfs. Sir John Bowring
has already converted the Siamese to free-•rade by
a series of public lectures at Bangkop—it will be
one more flower in his crown if it turns out that,
with no other appliance than a series of demon-
stratiye experiments, he has undertaken and
carried through the military education of the
C hinese.—Saturday Review.