The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-11 00:00:00

'IIE TAEPINGS I.N CHINA.

The correspondence which has been laid before
Parliament respecting the opening of the Yang-tse-
kiang river to foreign trade gives a deplorable ac-
count of the Taeping movement or rebellion, and
seems fully to justify Vice-Admiral Sir
.1. Hope in
writing, as he does, that he can regard it in no other
light than that of an organised band of robbers. Their
policy is, after plundering such towns as they can cap-
ture, to convert those they hold into mere garrisons,
excluding the general population not essential
ao
rpc e
to their wants, and to destroy those which they
do not retain possession in order to render them
useless to the Imperial Governmoednntt.bhve 22ed people,
Mr. Parkese
says in an account of his visit to Hwang-chow,
twhhaitchthies
csiotymwileass fernotmireHlyandkeosWer,te
and the houses gutted by the rebels When he was
there less than a fortnight
hadbefore. it contained a
aa i
appearanceo n of 40, 000
of;
tthheeyrebels
general
mob.. The
now
thatall.i oe fd
He was introduced to the Taeping Prince, Yi.ng-
Wang, who described himself
as charged to relieve
Nganking, whidh was besieged by the Imperial
forces. Mr. Parkes suggested that he should not
move upon Hankovr, which he had some idea of
doing, as it was one of the ports at which we were "
established, and would seriously interfere with our
commerce, and in this he readily acquiesced. On the
24th March Mr. Parkes was at Nganking, ,a here he
found the rebels had destroyed all but the few streets
necessary to give shelter to their garrison. He
reached Woo-hoo a few days afterwards, and reports
that the site of its extensive suburbs can now only be
traced by brick heaps, and the same may almost be
said of the city itself : it has been known as one of
the principal emporia on the Yang-tse. Taeping, a
place of some note, 20 miles from this, presents a like
seen c—" the city is obliterated." The lately flourish-
ing port of Soo-chow is quite destroyed, and miles of
country round it will soon be covered with jungle.
The party who visited it flushed teal in the city moat
where a year ago it was barely possible to find a
passage, from the immense number of boats. The
banks of the Grand Canal, along which is a broad
road, are literally whitb with human bones ; human
remains lie about in all directions, but the water is
supposed to cover a still larger number of victims-
The fugitives, however, are now returning to the
villages around Nankin, and they will soon be
peopled, unless again disturbed. Sir J. Hope, In his
despatch of the 6th April, says he considers theon. only
course to be to endeavour to obtain the recognition
by both parties of the neutrality of our consular
ports, which would then become places of security
in which the Chinese merchants and capitalists
could take refuge, as at Shanghai ; and their
ingenuity could devise modes by which the pro-
duce of the country could be brought there in defi-
ance of every obstacle. This seems the more feasible
from the circumstance that trade has been conducted
in a singular way between Shanghai and Soo-chow,
with the latter in possession of the rebels; it ap-
pears that there is a society having friends among
both the contending parties, and for a heavy con-
sideration their boats are allowed to trade unmo-
lested, to the large number of nearly 6,000. The
men have a regular system of signals and passwords,
and it is not improbable that fear of giving provo-
the
cationlmperial officers. to such a large body has some weight with

THE HON. MRS. YELVERTON.—The demand for
Martyrs to Circumstance," Mrs. Yelverton's narrative of
various ,
her life in the Crimea, was so great that every copy at the
railways was soldthem off within a few hours, and as
fresh supplies reached
were as speedily disposed of.
Four thousand were sold at once,
and the demand goes on
increasing. This remarkable book contains Mrs. Yelver-
ton's life in the Crimea as a Sister of Charity. The reader
will easily recognise in Sister Thierna Mrs. Yelverton her-
self. The pictures of the East and of couvent life are very
vivid.

MURDER DURING A DRUNKEN QUARREL.—Yes-
terday
a dissipated fellow named Lyons was charged before
the Liverpool magistrates with the murder of Catherine
Flaherty, dissolute woman, with whom he had quarrelled
in a public-house at the corner of Clement-street. The
deceased was severely kicked about the head, face, and
stomach, and died two hours after the violence Ind been
inflicted. Lyons was afterwards captured in a pigstye in
one of the lowest pasts of the town, The case was remanded
Wednesday,