Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1860-04-04
THE WAR AGAINST CHINA.

The late foreign advices state that France
and England are making very extensive prep
arations for vigorous campaign against Chi
ma, to avenge the indignity suffered by their
repulse in the attack upon the Peiho forts,
and if their wrath is not appeased, they will
doubtless cause sad havoc among the Celes-
tials. But it is by no means certain that the
outside barbarians are clearly in the right in
the present embroglio. When, after the for
nation of the treaties with the French, Brit
ish, and American ministers, the period for
their final ratification at Pekin approached,
the Chinese certainly had the right, under the
usages of civilized nations, to fix the route by
which their capital should be approached by
the foreign ambassadors. The French and
British ministers acted on the presumption
that the proposal to take them to Pekin by a
new route was not made in good faith, and
their knowledge of Chinese duplicity afforded
good grounds for such suspicion; but the
success of the American minister, Mr.. Ward,
in making his way to Pekin over the route
designated, and in securing the ratification of
the American treaty, proved that the French
and English ministers would also have been
safely conveyed there, and have peacefully
accomplished the objects of their mission, if
they had not attempted to force passage up
the river and thus again become involved in
hostilitics.
All civilized nations reserve to themselves
the right of excluding from great rivers lead
ing into their interior districts armed vessels
of foreign nations, and it is certainly not as
tonishing that the Chinese, Immediately after
a sanguinary war with the French and Eng
lish, should have maintained that right. If
we were at all suspicious of the English, and
fearful OF attack from them, we would con-
slider ourselves perfectly justified in firing up
on any British war-vessel that attempted to
sail up the Delaware in spite of the remon-
strances of the officers of our Government,
even though it had on board minister, whose
avowed object was the ratification of a newly
formed treaty, and no two Governments in
the world would be more ready to resist the
approach of hostile fleets, under similar cir
cumstances, than the Governments of France
and England. However the Chinese may be
given to duplicity, and however antiquated
and exclusive the policy they seek to enforce,
all nations claim, and most of them exercise,
the same right of regulating their own inter-
nal affairs, and of determining the extent and
character of their foreign commerce, which
the celestials have attempted to exercise and
if their sion of their difficulties with the
outside barbarians could be fairly placed be-
fore the world, it would doubtless be generally
acknowledged that they were more sinned a.
gainst than SHINING particularly when it is
considered that one great cause of the whole
war, nominally waged in behalf of civilization
and Christianity, is to gain additional facili-
ties for furnishing the Chinese people with
the destructive drug which exerts such
baneful influence upon them, and that China
has never in her history gone beyond her bor-
ders to make any attacks or aggressions upon
foreign countries.