The Sun.
London, England, 1853-07-26 00:00:00

the part o the evil hich the amendment of last
night atte r in for a prolonged term.
Not only was one descp ion of property totally
exonerated, but a loCiPhole was afforded through
which parties desirous of defrauding the
Exchequer might creep and evade the operation
of the law at a comparatively trifling expense.
Settled personalty was also exempted, and the in-
genuity of lawyers was taxed to the uttermost to
drive "coaches and six" through the provisions
of the statute. The success that attended these
efforts may be judged from the simple fact that,
notwithstanding the enormous increase of personal
property, the Legacy Duties have not only not in-
creased in a similar ratio, but they have remained
stationary during the enhanced prosperity of the
nation. This proves beyond the possibility of
doubt the serious extent of the evil, when
so many persons could contrive to cheat
the revenue and to avoid their fair con-
tributions to the national exigencies. Lord
DERBY'S complaint is that those attempts will no
longer be successful—that the evasion will no
longer be practicable. Smugglers might as well
remonstrate because their plans have been de-
tected, and the wines or brandies which they had
so long provided duty free to their customers
should at length be compelled to satisfy the claims
of the Custom-house. Yes, there is a grievance
connected with the bill, but it, is not that alluded
to by the ex-Premier—it is that it only renders
half justice, that it permits the Probate Duties
still to be evaded, and does not, as it professes,
equalise the burden on settled and unsettled
property.

It was with something like incredulity that we
perused, some months back, the intelligence of
China being involved in the toils of Revolution.
It seemed preposterous. Generally speaking, we
believe that the majority of persons in Europe
would have experienced scarcely more amazement
had they received information that San Marino
had suddenly resolved itself into a despotism, or
that Dann PACIJA had been summarily elected
Vladika of Montenegro. Yet, inconceivable
though the first rumour of the Chinese rebellion
appeared, every fresh dispatch relating to it
brought us only additional, and at last wholly in-
controvertible; facts of a confirmatory or corrobo-
rative character. There was no mistake at all
about it : JOHN CrnNAarAN had indisputably, un-
conscionably, incontinently, gone mad—that is to
say, of course, in a political acceptation. It must
be remembered that the disturbance we are here
speaking of is no mere eimeute of a fleeting or
superficial kind,- a momentary outbreak es• la
Chinoise. It proves on inquiry to be a gigantic
rising of that ancient race against the Tartar
dynasty, whose annals reveal an existence of
scarcely two hundred years' duration. A rising,
however, not in vindication of the old Ming
dynasty, but—yvonderful to relate—in the glori-
ous name and under the shadow of the benignant
principles of Christianity.
Everybody can realise the idea of " everlasting
smash," conveyed by the proverbial, phrase of
A Bull in a China-shop ! But fancy the China-
man himself and all his dependents suddenly
demented in the very heart of the region of
crockery—"gane daft" in their own warehouse—
crazed by the bite of a political tarantula ! Ima-
gine the consequent destruction—the din of the
breakage—the "confusion worse confounded !"
Why, compared with this, A Bull in a China-shop
would be mere child's play, a butterfly in a bed
of roses and hearts'-ease. Aud it has been pre-
cisely thus with our good friends the worshippers
of the Trimarti and the disciples of Confucius.
In 1841 we English gave the world a pretty good
notion of a Bull in a China-shop. Since then,
but particularly during this year of grace
1853, our some time foes of the Celestial
Empire have afforded us a tolerably fair
illustration of Chinamen gone distracted in their
own warehouse. The result has been proportion-
ately disastrous. The whole of the southern half
of the Empire has been already conquered by the
insurgents. The standard of rebellion has flut-
tered in triumph before the walls both of
Nankin and Chin-kiang-foo. Everywhere, as
yet, the troops and generals of the EMPEROR
have been defeated, and defeated, too, igno-
miniously. Nay, it may oven be said, with-
out exaggeration, that the advance line of the
revolutionary army has drawn a no less distinct
barrier between the upper and the lower moieties
of China, than had been defined by nature through
the channel of the Yang-tsze-lciang. Such, in-
deed, had been the progress made by the so-called
rebels two or three months ago, that the Brother
of the Sun, the Cousin of the Moon, and the
.Nephew of the Stars and Comets, in other words,
the reigning Sovereign of China, the Emperor
TIEN-TIH, had humbled his celestial dignity, so far
as to call loudly for the aid of the British bar.
barians.

At such an emergency it is surely both allow-
able and reasonable to reflect, for an instant, how
far these passing occurrences might be turned to
advantage by our Government. We are all suffi-
ciently acquainted with the exclusiveness of the
Chinese as a nation—living within the limits of
their own dominions, allowing no intercourse
between their own and any foreign population,
continuing for centuries secluded from the rest of
the human fassily, and impervious to the beauti-
ful and beneficent influences of civilisation. It
is notorious, in fact, that this insulation of them-
selves from the rest of mankind continued,
until little more than a dozen years ago, to be
secured by penalties of death against over-curious
foreigners as with the Japanese, those congenial
islanders of the Eastern Archipelago. Scarcely
any appreciable improvement in this respect,
moreover, has been effected by the long-vaunted
treaty of Nankin—China having been virtually
closed up from the scrutiny of other countries as
effectually, to all intents and purposes, since the
peace of 1842 as it had been prior to that result
of war and diplomacy. It is true that no less
than five different ports on its extended seaboard
were rendered accessible to our commerce by that
memorable arrangement ; but beyond that our
guns and our statesmanship have alike proved in-
effiacious ; they have alike failed to obtain
for us any facility towards penetrating the
crust of prejudice in which the genius of the
Chinese people is still imbedded. They continue
still an enigma, a riddle, a mystery. It seems
almost as hopeless even now to dream of making
ourselves square with them among the nation-
alities within our own hemisphere, as to count
upon the quadrature of the circle as within the
limits of possibility. They remain at this moment
influenced, in our regard with a barely definable
repugnance. They are jealous of our interference
almost beyond the reach of accurate delineation.
They recoil before the horrible notion of a closer
intimacy with Western barbarism—in a sublime
ignorance (an ignorance that would be irresistibly
ludicrous, were it not in some sort pathetic in
like manner) of the marvellous fruits of this
same savage Western cultivation of inductive
philosophy—the steam-engine and the spinning-
jenny, the railroad and the electric telegraph.
effeeti,l
Precisely when, from the remembrance of our
past ten or eleven years' experience, we might
not unreasonably feel disposed to despair of ever
m able4l Y breaking this life in death, this sleep
waking of the Chinese—a novel and inesti-
°PPertunity for so doing is all at once pre-
sented to Our
assistance
rulers in the entreaties made for
behalf of the Emperor TIEN-TIII, dis-
mayed as the yours
paralysed before the-z
monarch is, and almost
Steady and apparently irre-
sistible advance of the gigantic army of the
Chinese Revolutionists.
If it be only borne in recoil • that
of the whole
recollection the
Of course
in-
habitants of that vast and populous .
num-
ber in the aggregate about one-third empire
human family, it will be manifest,
on the instant, that the right conduct oi
affairs at the present crisis is of the first,
or, as the phrase goes, of the last import-
A heavy responsibility, therefore, We
ls of her Britannic
circumstances upon the Counci
cannot but think devolves under these peculiar
Majesty's Government. Direct interference in
the civil war now raging in china we should be
the foremost to reprobate as in the uttermost
,-atisfied
de-
gree reprehensible. Nevertlteless•-s
We feel

ance.