The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-09-06 00:00:00

ThE .R.EVOLUTION IN CHINA.

(FROM TIIE TIMES.)
TILE Chinese revolution is in all respects the greatest
revolution the world has yet seen. In mere magnitude it
comprises a population equal to that of all Europe and all
America put together. It unites the chief features of all
the great changes that stand out in the history of the
world. As a destruction of temples, and idols, and a total
change of religion, it recalls to us the early ages of the
Christian church, and those later times when the northern
nations embraced Christianity in masses. As the exter-
mination of a people, it compares with the great conflicts
of races, the irruptions, fusions, expulsions, and returns
that occupy the earliest pages of authentic history, and
resumed their prominence on the decline and fall of Rome.
As a total change of system, and an opening of China to
foreigners, it so far does in a day the usually slow work of
modern civilization. This mighty change has come so
fast on us that we have not yet realised its consequences.
So great is the distance of China, and so small the sym-
pathy between it and the rest of the world, that the Em-
peror of China ranks in figure of speech with his alleged
brother the moon, as a being who knows nothing, and of
whom nothing is known in this our own sphere, and with
whom we have no imaginable concern. - In a moment that
wall is thrown down, that gulf is filled up, and that veil
is rent asunder. China has hitherto been the very type
of all that is unchangeable, formal, and slavish ; all of a
sudden it not only yields, but absolutely falls to pieces at
a foreign impulse. But the most marvellous feature of
this revolution remains. The means are utterly insig-
nificant. The chief agent appears to be a person who has
received some instruction from a missionary, and whose
conduct or apparent motives were such that the mission-
arYractised to baptise him.. In fact, he seemed to be a
mere ha rlatan. On comparing his success with the
failure of another pretender nearer home, it certainly
occurs to us that Mr.' Provis has mistaken his sphere, and
that if he had made a dash for the throne of China he
might have succeeded. The huge balloon has collapsed at
the prick of a needle. There is an old saying that every-
thing has a handle, if we only knew where to find it. For
ages it has been the complaint of the civilised world that
China had no handle. We could not get at it, or into it,
or do anything with it. The result shows that there was a
way, nevertheless, for somebody has found it. He has
pronounced " Open, Sesame," and the everlasting hinges
begin to creak, the huge gates begin to turn, the deep
recesses of ancient empire are opened to light, we enter,
and China becomes part of the world.
why, in a couple of years we shall all be going to
China. The last mail left Hongkong on the 10th of July,
and arrived here on the 27th .of August, doing it in 48
days ; and there is every prospect of the time being much
shortened. People are tired of Europe, now that it is
railroaded, handbooked, and. " opened up," as the phrase
is, to its very backbone. Moscow has been burnt ; Peters-
burg is a city of arsenals and palaces ; Constantinople, we
have been lately told, is a city of wooden boxes ; Athens
is a bad Herne Bay ; Germany has been so often scoured
out by its thirty years' wars and its seven years' wars that
its cities have nothing to show ; Berlin is a poor imita-
tion of Paris ; Munich is in pieces, fresh painted, and not
yet put together ; Paris everybody has seen over and over
again ; and these are the best—the rest are nowhere. But
there is something new in China—something genuine and
undiscovered. It is undoubtedly great, ancient, curious,
and original. So in a couple of years we shall all be
running to the Chinese Consulate, in Leadenhall-street or
Bucklersbury to get our Foreign-office passport vised by
a gentleman with small eyes, high-cheeked bones, and
yellow skin, but without a tail, and dressed like every-
body else in the city. Those who don't wish to be the
pioneers of the grand stream of British tourists may wait
another twelvemonth, and Mr. Murray will have by that
time a Handbook of China, or- perhaps Northern China
with Japan, and-Southern China with the Indian Archi-
pelago. A column of indomitable John Bulls, with their
carpet bags, and in that unmistakeable costume which de-
notes the nation all over the world, will force its way up
all the rivers, over all the mountains, and along all the
canals, till the great wall of China is surmounted by Eng-
lish ladies-maids and English parasols:- What splendid
hotels we shall have at Pekin, and what incessant jokes at
the exploded peculiarities of Celestial cookery ! In a few
years every lad of Welty will have "done" Chiiia; and
will have his budget of -stories of Chinese couriers, com-
missionaires; cabs, and —citstom-houses: What letters
shall we have complaining of hotel charges and imposi-
tions on travellers, for John Chinaman is a bit of a rogue,
and so *like the majority of Christians that it is wonderful
why heis not otie of them In ten years' time we shall
know much more of China than we now know of Russia
or shall know within fifty years.
Then what a country for railways, canals, gas compa-
nies, water companies, and all sorts of investments ! The
Chinese pay most admirably. The effort of discharging
the opium ransom has contributed to the present revolu-
tion by the exhaustion of the treasury. The people have
always been ready to adopt whatever improvements the
jealousy of their Tartar rulers permitted them to import ;
and it appears, on the authority of Jesuit and other
writers two hundred years ago, that aversion to change is
not an original element of the Chinese character. We
shall have steamers without end on the great rivers before
long, with Chinese engineers and with Chinese engines.
The amount of internal travelling in China is such, that
we are assured by those who have managed to penetrate
into the interior that there are continuous streams of
travellers on horse, on foot, and on litters, from Canton to
the great wall, some fifteen hundred miles ;—in many
parts so crowded as to impede one another, and even in
the mountain passes so numerous as to leave no traveller
out of sight of others before and behind. Among these
are long lines of merchandise. What a case of railway

traffic Our children may see China as much a network
of railways as England itself. This is not mere specula-
tion on the possible consequences of change, for it is evi-
dent that the successful insurgents are as disposed to in-
voke the aid of progress and civilization as defensive
auxiliaries against.the tyrannical bigotry of the Mantchoos
as the latter were always disposed to rely on the, fixedness
of their institutions. It is felt that the most effectual
way to seal the exclusion of the Tartars, and prevent them
ever getting head again in China, is to revolutionize the
country as much as possible, and as far as is consistent

with a strict moral code. That our new relations with
China will be without trouble we do not imagine, for the
religion of
,the conquerors is one which we cannot claim

_
jurious and unnatural state of things is removed ; the
Chinese population is no longer imprisoned within its
walls and shons, pild .w,,, gi-nli ,I,lv. iln ley, be v+nprr.-1
at the threshold of the empire.