The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-28 00:00:00

THE SUN; LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 28, 1869.

great work, and in the interim the French, passing
our rear, pushed on through the close country afore-
said till they came upon the Palace of Yuen-ming-
Yuen, before which they sat down for the night.
The mass of our cavalry had also found their way
there.

The release of the prisoners in Pekin was
now promised on the Bth, but on the 7th the Staffs,
civil and military, paid a visit to the country
Palace. It was really a Royal residence. Immense
park-like grounds, with the artificial lakes,
rookeries, &c., for which the Chinese are so famous,
surrounded numerous buildings of stately propor-
tions and in uncommonly good repair. Under a
grove in front of the principal courtyard lay the
French camp, the earth covered with silks, satins,
furs, jade, clocks, pictures, and what not, in untold
quantities. The French soldier had made good use
of his time. Within the great salons the work of
appropriation was proceeding with greater system.
General de Montauban announced that orders had
been given to set apart whatever was best for the
Queen of England and the Empress of the French.
I do not know to what extent this measure was
carried out. However, if their Majesties' interests
were well attended to, there still remained enough
to keep many an individual in pocket money, and
I do not think that either our allies or ourselves can
complain. There being no one of the British force
present but officers, our General ordered everthing
taken to be surrendered to the prize agents, and I
believe that the sale of these spoils has produced
&clothing under £50,000. Our Generals decline
their are of this.
And, now eNt we are here, what are we to do
with this great city ? " Raze it to the ground,"
shouts an enthusiastic Briton. " Moi," says an
ally impressively, "je l'aurais bombardce trois nuits
et trois fours. Je concois que ca les await Militant
ereinte's, ces Chinois ; hero ?" " Well, and after
that ?" one asks, not unnaturally, for it is to be
assumed that an expedition like this came here to
do something else than kill the golden goose. The
answers to one's question as above are of course in
general indicative of an indifference to trade and a
contempt for red-tape, that staff of diplomatic ex-
istences, worthy of those who rejoice only in the
glory of war or its collateral advantages. The allied
generals answer it otherwise. They are satisfied
to assure themselves that the city which resists not
at all is theirs to the full extent of their necessities;
so they demand the unconditional surrender of one
of the north gates and the immediate return of the
detenus unlawfully in custody now 16 days. Of
course, the red-tape men have to be satisfied, or
there will be more trouble for Pekin anon. Well,
on the Bth, as a first instalment of a new order of
things, Parkes and Loch return with one sower,
J'Escayrae,-a French civilian, and four of his
humblor countrymen. M. d'Escayrac's wrists were
in an awft..l condition from the cords with which
he had been mercilessly tied, and we begin to feel
more than anxious for many of our comrades, who,
to judge from report, had been carried far into the
country in similar bondage. It was not until the
evening of the 12th that more news reached us.
Eight more sowers were then sent in, and from
them we learnt that their officer, Anderson, had
died on the 9th, and De Norman on the 17th day
of their captivity. Later came their coffins; and,
later still, that of your unfortunate correspondent.
He had endured only till the 22d of September.
four days after he was seized. The depo-
sitions of some of these eight men, as well as of
two others who were imprisoned in a different place,
are, I know, being sent to you, and I shall not
therefore repeat the terrible history. Of 26 per-
sons taken we have bat 13 alive. There are besides
12 coffins ; Brabazon is still unaccounted for.
Parkes and Loch had suffered much, but, seeing
them safe and sound among us, we had half for-
gotten the perfidy and cruelty of the barbarians
who had seized them. The reality of both now
thrust itself upon us. In my own breast I confess
sorrow prevailed much over anger ; sorrow not
only for the worthy men who were gone, but a sort
of despair as to the future of our intercourse with
a people so uncivilized. And on this came the diffi-
culty of dealing with the case before us. We are,
let it be hoped, ourselves a people too civilized to
repay such barbarism with acts of corresponding
atrocity, but there are deeds which it is perilous to
leave unpunished, and this was undoubtedly such a
deed. No doubt we could have burnt the city, that
grand panacea ; but, independently of the suicide
before adverted to as involved in that wholesale
operation, we had, before occupying the gate, gitren
an assurance that if it wore surrendered, and the
inhabitants conducted themselves as those of Tien-
tsin and Tungchow had done, they should be treated
with like consideration. The crime committed was
in no respect chargeable against the inhabitants of
Pekin or any other portion of the population.
It was purely and simply the act of their go-
vernors, and it was desirable, if possible, to visit
it on the latter alone. A huge fine was a repulsive
measure, even could it have been paid, which there
is every reason to doubt. The punishment of the
guilty might have been demanded, but, if this were
to fall on the subordinate agents, we have some
experience of the futility of such demands in China;
while, if we were to have flown at higher game, we
should have been put off with some such satis-
faction as that obtained for the Nerbudda massacre
in 1842. The Governor of Fermosa having beheaded
her crew, his prisoners, in cold blood he was degraded
when Sir H. Pottinger complained, but immediately
reinstated, to die full of honours. The desideratum
was a punishment which should be at the time
severe and
-in the time to come not forgotten ; and
this it appeared to our chiefs would be only attained
by the complete destruction of the favourite resi-
dence of the Emperor, whither our countrymen had
been carried ; there was every reason to suppose
that the Emperor might behold with his own eyes
the first fruits of the liberality with which he had
promised but two days before to reward, though it
were with the last of his treasure, any who would
bring him a barbarian prisoner, dead or alive. A
certain sum it was decided should be claimed to
compensate in some degree the families of the dead
and the survivors for their sufferings. This sum
somewhere about £lOO,OOO was to be paid in 48
hours. In the meantime the beautiful Palaces and
temples of the Imperial garden were given to
flames. One or two had been partially injured by

fire in the first visit, but many fine edifices still re-

mained untouched; indeed, some had not been en-

tered. Their destruction occupied two days, the

smoke from the conflagration, particularly on the
second day, spreading itself like a thick cloud above
Pekin, the inhabitants of which were at the same
time informed by proclamation of the treachery and

_
murder, of which this was the punishment. The
loss to the Imperial Government in property do-

molished and abstracted is estimated by a good

native authority at over £2,000,000 sterling.
Pretty close upon this followed the signature of
the Convention negotiated at Tien-twin last August,

and the exchange of the ratifications of the Treaty

of 1858. These formalities were accomplished in

he tribunal of the Board of Ceremonies on the 24th

of October.

The Convention signed on the 24th of October is
in nine articles. The first expresses the Emperor's
regret for the hindrance offered to Mr. Bruce in

1859—the Taku affair. The second reasserts the
Queen's claim, conditionally waived before, to keep

her Minister permanently at Pekin. The third

doubles the former 4,000,000 taels indemnity, and
provides for the payment of 1,000,000 within a

month, at Tien-tsin ; one-third of 1,000,000 within

a month at Canton ; the rest out of the Customs.
Art. 4 opens Tien-tsin to trade. Art. 5 legalises and

regulates Coolie emigration, So far as British subjects
are concerned. Art. ti cedes the little slip of the

Chinese shore which forms the east side of the har-

bour of Hong Kong to that colony. Art. 7 stipu-
lates the immediate operaticn of the Treaty and

Convention. Art. 8, the immediate promulgation

of both.

Art. 9 declares the points at which troops

may be detained till the indemnity is all paid.
Prince Kung, uterine brother of the reigning
Emperor, is a man of about 28 years of age, not
unintelligent to look at, but of no amiability of
countenance. He endeavours, I believe, to draw a

great distinction between his own conduct towards

the prisoners and that of their captors, and he does
appear to have given orders to have them well

treated and their wants attended to shortly after his
assumption of office. Still there is nothing in his
face to induce one to suppose him more humane than
those whose cruelty he indirectly condemns—rather
the reverse. It is the face of a capricious, dissolute,
used-up young Oriental, not improved, as indeed it
could hardly be, by the way the Barbarians had
been going on for the last two months: He was
withal in a very great fright. He had got somewhat
the better of this on the following day, when he met
Baron Gros, and is stated to have shown himself
comparatively gracious.
The Emperor meanwhile is far away north,
having fled from his capital in defiance of the
most urgent remonstrances of numerous Ministers,
whose prophecies that his journey at such a crisis
would alarm and dishearten the people are proving
generally true. He is attended by the princes and
grandees known to us as the war party, men evi-
dently of ability, but set rather upon the preserva-
tion of their own position as virtual rulers of China
than upon the redemption of the country from its
present bankrupt condition. Nothing can be more
deplorable. Pekin itself is quite a city of the past;
the Inge frame and limbs of the giant remain ; but
second childhood is upon him. The great halls of
the Six Boards, the great Departments of the State,
are in ruins, and apparently unfrequented. Every
handsome road or bridge—and there are some that
have been fair to see—is in disrepair. The Palace
of Prince Tsai, in which Lord Elgin has taken up
his quarters, looks as if no comfortable being had
occupied it these 20 years, So with everything
Prince Kung came with a retinue like Sir John'
Falstaff's disreputable levy.
What is this country of contradictions to come
to ? Papers seized at Yuen-Ming-Yuen show that
the Emperor really does a good deal of his own
business, and with a little more light from without,
would do it remarkably well. On the other hand,
he seems to be so circumstanced, in the most ety-
mological sense, that it is impossible for the outer
light to got at him. He certainly does see the State
papers, but these are so untrustworthy that he can
hardly guide the country by their study. And so
the country, as one might expect, runs wild. This
very province abounds with banditti, whose harvest
has of course much improved since our columns
began to move. In Shan-si, the province next west,
a revolt entirely distinct from the dead-and-alive
Tai-ping movement, has broken out, provoked, it is
said, by a gross act of extortion. South of this, in
Ho-nan, a very widely organised banditti, also dis-
tinct from the Tai-ping, but quickened by the
march of the latter through Ho-nan in 1853, leave
the Government just as much of the country as
it suits their predatory necessities to allow it. The
centre of China, the tea and silk country, is partly
occupied, and now almost universally infested
by the Tai-ping aforesaid, while the two Kwang
provinces, the cradle of the anti-Mantcho confede-
racies from which the Tai•pings came, swarm with
these Jacobites, Triads by name. In the south-
west there have been for the last two years troubles
with the Mahomedan population, and the great
province of Sz'-chuen, far west, for the last nine
years has been being overrun by a chief believed to
have dissolved alliance with the Tai-ping, and now
starting a kingdom, if not an Imperial dynasty, of
his own.

It is not wonderful therefore that the capital
should be without coins and without grain. The
collections in both must be utterly suspended
throughout a large portion of the empire. It is
stated that the receipts of the Board of Revenue
amounted last year but to eight millions, its proper
quota being in quiet times from 40 to 45 millions.
Nor is it wonderful that, such being the beggarly
condition of the dynasty, and so many its foes
within, sad Chinese, gravely sighing for peace and
trade, should predict its downfall in the year 1863,
if not sooner; and this all foreign complications, of
which they reek little, apart. The difficulty of the
Chinese so prophesying is at the same time identi-
cal with that of the Ministers charged with the
conduct of foreign complications—to wit, " the
Coming Man." Who is to put this land to rights
" Not these hybrid Taiping Christians," say the
Ckinese ; " no foreigner at this time of day at least,
if indeed it had at any time been possible." And
yet, if it be not put to rights, the two nations most
commercially interested,England and America,must
be prepared to suffer. France has but a missionary
interest here, but unless order be restored this inte-
rest must suffer ; for it will not pay the great but
unshopkeeping nation to fight for or against this
dynasty in a HolySepulchre's quarrel. Where France
fights there will assuredly be no trade, and this is not
a country which yields wealth unless industry be
allowed fair elbowroom. One word about Russia and
I bid you good bye. As good Chinese and true these
people trust no barbarians.but of all barbarians they
mistrust Russians the most. Our theories about
co-operation between Russians and Chinese are
utterly baseless, and, as far as the evidence of my
own senses serves me in this country, it is by no
means in the Russians that we shall find the
policy most antagonistic to our own.
PEKIN, Nov. 1.
There is another opportunity for England just
announced, and I seize it to supplement a long,
rambling letter I addressed you on the 27th ult.,
though, in truth, there is little to add.
Has any one described Pekin for you? The
capital is two cities, known as the Tartar (north),
and the Chinese (south) ; the latter an oblong
stretching between 4 and 5 miles from east to
west, while from south to: north it is much over a
mile wide; the former nearly 31 miles square, and
resting on the centre of the southern city, so as to
produce with it a T-shaped figure, with a dispro-
portionately stout perpendicular. North of all is
a large earthwork, the north outline of which is
exactly parallel to the north wall of the city, and
distant from it perhapa a mile. From its extremities
fall the east and west faces of the enclosure, align-
ing themselves with the east and west walls of the
city. Thus you have a figure some what of the form
of three parallelograms, rising above each ether,
A being the earthwork ; B, the north city ; and C,
the south city. In the centre of B, again, stands
an inner city, walled and gated, and in the

centre of this the innermost precinct of the
Emperor, also walled and gated, and guarded
by numerous functionaries and men-at-arms.
It is remarkable, by the :way, in what apparent
security this careful despot dwelt at his country
palace. There were barracks for a strong force,
and the books of China show a corps of some tnagni•

tude as proper to Yuen-ming Yuen, but the palace

or palaces were as accessible to the outsiders as any
gentleman's park in England. To return to Pekin ;

as you approach it from the north, the walls, some
GO feet high and in good order, with very high
buildings overtopping the gates, are decidedly im-

posin g.

You draw nearer, and are moved to laugh

ter at John Chinaman's consistent adhorenee to his

baby-like fashions in matters of war. _ These great

gates seem to you, far off, to be provided with five
tiers of guns, which you cannot imagine would

ever be fired without bringing► down the whole
tower, Nearer inspection satisfies you that the

tower is in no danger from this cause, at least

The embrasures, which are as crowded as in an

old lino-of-battle ship, are simply apertures closed
with a shutter, on which is painted a circle

with a bull's eye.

On occupying tho gate the

force did find, right and left of it, some very nice

guns, laid as if up to the last moment thoughts
had been entertained of resisting this introduction

of bayonet..bearing barbarians within the holy of
Chinese holies. If we may trust native gossips,
the counsels of the authorities were greatly divided.

A Chinaman is slow to believe what ho has not

seen, and, although two large armies were threshed
within afew miles of Pekin but a fortnight before,
it is thought likely enough that there were and are

some grand conservative sons of Han by no means
satisfied that the walls never known to be taken

were not impregnable. Happily the opposite eon-

vietion prevailed, and this vast population was

spared the horrors of assault and pillage, and the

allied force the demoralization consequent on the

latter inseparable accident of its metier.

I could enlarge on this last subject considerably,
had I space and time. The regulation of pillage has
ever been the opprobrium disciplince. If I may
hazard an opinion, the French soldier recovers him-
self after an acces of pillage far more speedily than

our men. He pillages, too, in much better taste,
and without the ruthless and unnecessary destruc-
tion of his ally, whose mission it appears to be not
so much to fill his pockets as to prod pier-glasses,
to annihilate lamps, and to cripple tables and chairs
past hope of recovery.
The coup d'mil from the north walls is indisput-
ably gratifying, Past experience of Chinese cities
will have prepared you for an absence of what we
call public buildings in the view below you. Still
there is the Imperial palace, protesting in this case
against your rule, and, besides the gate-towers, a
fair sprinkling of lofty temples, the whole inter-
spersed with much wood. The palace seems to have
almost a park of good middle•sized trees about its
artificial lakeB, and bridges that have been comely,
and are still, at a distance, picturesque. On the
whole you feel favourably towards Pekin. But de-
scend into the streets—and since the signature of
the convention on the 24th everybody has descended
—and you become painfully sensible that there is
not a more squalid collection of houses in an Arab
village or in the old city of Limerick. The streets
are wide, and have been in some instances paved,
but they seem to have been long forgotten by the
Macadam of these parts. On a dry day their soft
loam sends up a cloud of dust that puts your face
and whiskers past the recognition of your most in-
timate friends. If it rains you are knee-deep in
mud, and a journey along the disjointed stone
chaussee is a service of real danger to your horse's
fetlocks. The bulk of trade belongs to the southern
city, which is traversed from north to south by a
few broad streets at right angles to one or•two
crossing it from the east gate to the west. The
lesser feeders of these, I say, take me back to the
banks of the Shannon 20 years ago, and even in the
larger arteries there is not, as a general rule, the
regularity or substance which you will find in the
west suburb of Canton or the show streets of
Ningpo. We see the place, it is true, at a disad-
vantage. Many of the wealthy and respectable
have fled, and are but now beginning to return ;
but the poorer classes and even the middle ranks
are more poverty-stricken-looking than any Chinese
I have seen, except at Tien-tsin. Supplies of all
kinds are, of course, just now high priced, but
Pekin must always be an expensive abode, as it has
positively nothing within hail, and from its official
position the demand is immense. Its meat is driven
in from a considerable distance ; its fuel—coal at
least—travels slowly in from the south and west ;
the coal itself on camels, a noble breed ; the coal-
dust, which is compounded with earth for the use
of stoves, on mules not less noble in their way.
Rice, as we all know, should arrive by way of the
canal, but the canal's machinery has been in abey-
ance this many a year, and rebels flank it here and
there. Grain does come, to be sure, by sea, so
long as no one cares to block the Peiho ; but the
position of the Yang-tsc-Kiang Valley prevents the
transmission of copper from the far south-west, and
the dearth of this metal has entailed on the Go-
vernment a resort to iron money, than which
nothing can be more terrible, except, perhaps, the
Government paper.

The native merchant has consequently no need
to study his own voluminous chronicle of past
dynasties to arrive at the conclusion, long formed
by many of his more reading countrymen, that the
Mantchoo dynasty is on its last legs ; and yet so
strong i 9 still its tradition of Government that I

have heard of no Chinese, except at Canton, who
does not, when questioned regarding the destiny
of China, declare that a change of Emperors might
very possibly restore the country without a change
of the dynasty family, and that among all the
chiefs, Taiping included, who have availed them-
selves of the torpor of the actual Government to
overrun parts more or less extensive of its terri-

tory, there is none that has as yet given any pro-
mise of ability to take charge of the State.'
Our mail is closing. Our force remains here
till the Bth, by which time it is hoped the Emperor's
decree will be down, and the treaty, &c., promul-
gated. The French force marches this morning.

(From the China Mail.)
With the allied army threatening Pekin, the
ratifications of the treaty of Tien-tsin have been
exchanged, and a convention has been entered into
containing highly important new stipulations ; so
the affair in China is once more proclaimed
" settled," and that under circumstances of peculiar
importance and interest, which must certainly open
up a new era in our relationship with China,
whether that be for the better or for the worse.
Our latest intelligence from Pekin, which is four
days later than that elsewhere published, throws
some doubt upon the " settlement." It appears that
up to the last day of October the Emperor's con-
sent to the convention had not been received, and
it is on the cards that Prince Kung and the peace
party may be again thrown overboard. In these
circumstances we refrain from advancing any
doubts in so far as the position of England is con-
cerned. It has been suggested that the Imperial
Government is influenced by what we write on that
subject; and we have no desire, on the one hand,
to provide a policy for the Chinese, by pointing
out a probable future, or, on the other, to say any-
thing calculated to support them in further resist-
ance.
Looking at the present distracted state of China,
the anarchy which is every day increasing, the
new rebellion in Shensi (which was the main rea-
son for the Chinese signing the convention of Pe.
kin), and the immense power of the foreign invaders,
it:is much to be desired that the present settlement
should, if it possibly can, be faithfully accepted
by the Chinese Government. But in order to that
end it is necessary that the present position of
affairs should be analysed and rightly understood,
so far as the Chinese are concerned, in order that it
may be clearly seen what is the course to be pur-
sued by Britain that will give the best chance of
this ratification and convention being the commence-
ment of a lasting peace—it being understood that
in discussing that question we ignore the other
question as to what chance they afford of a satis-
factory settlement.
It is important to notice that the Convention of
Pekin has been wrung from the Chinese Government
when our foot was on its neck and our spear was at
its breast. It was wrung from them under a pretty
plain threat of sacking Pkin, as may be seen from
the close of Sir Hope Grant's proclamation of 15th
October. It had become a matter of life and death,
and it is vain to suppose that there was, or is, any-
thing like " assent" on the part of our prostrate foe.
So well was this understood in Pekin, that there
were rumours among the Catholics there to the
effect that the ceremony of signing was intended
as a mere trap in which to take: Lord Elgin and
his principal coadjutors. Allowing that to be im-
probable, it is certain that his Excelleney guarded
against the danger, and that he was protected in the
Hall of Ceremonies by a force of about 3,000 men,
so posted as to render treachery impossible. It is
hardly possible to call this a " treaty" or " agree-
ment," where a large force was required to
secure the safety of the principal party. The
demeanour of Prince Kung was quite in
accordance with the position of matters, for through-
out the ceremony his " expression was one of un-
disturbed sulkiness, and he appeared to reply with
churlishness to all that was said to him." No won

der that such was his demeanour, and Lord Elgin
appears to have met him in a very similar spirit.
It is possible that neither were well pleased with
the situations in which they found themselves, and
both had apprehensions as to the future. The
Chinese have so much—let us call it obstinacy,
pride, or a sense of injustice, suffered at our hands,
that they are apt to regard all armistices concluded
with us as only, to use one of their own words, "a
temporary arrangement, just for the present, in
order to recover from our losses," and this policy
has had some striking success in the past. Thus
in the first China war Canton lay at our feet; it was
humiliated and greatly injured, yet for more than
ten of the succeeding years it prospered it was
closed against us more than ever, and our position
there was more unsafe and humiliating than it had
been before. The taking of the Taku forts was
succeeded by the repulse, and almost destruction,
of an English force. The dismissal of Lord Am-
herst from Pekin was followed by a long respite
from obnoxious visits.

Let us also bear in mind that the military force
of China remained unharmed. The Mongol army
—which is the great difficulty in the way of peace
—may have lost a thousand men, but it is still
almost in its pristine force, and the fierce Sang-ko-
lin-son, that" impracticable man,"is still hovering in
the neighbourhood ofPekin watching an opportunity
for action, The Paki, or Manchu Bannermen, the
flower of the Chinese army, have not yet fought. A
correspondent in the north mentioned that they
had been coon, but that was all. The Imperial
army, or the military force ponsepreted to the pre-
servation of the empire, has held aloof, and is not
likely to commit itself in a hurry.

In this circumstances the ratified treaty has
been exchanged; and the V4inespe have been ail
,along willing to accept the treaty, had they been