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decay! How could Heaven and Earth long endure an article so destructive to human life. So, in the consumption of tobacco the Kwang tung leaf being strong tasted, the Sing tsze weak, those who have accustomed themselves to the strong do not of course like the weak. Do you think that in future the English barbarians in Hong Kong will go on quietly or not?

Answer. The English barbarians have gone to great expenses in building houses with the view of permanently residing there, and living in quiet. Besides the people of Hong Kong and its neighbourhood, took at an early period an aversion to these barbarians; and local bandits have long been waiting, their mouths watering for the place. The barbarians are therefore constantly in dread, fearing they may lose it.

Emperor. So they have added to their troubles by giving themselves another internal care. However, notwithstanding this, they have always got their own country for a haunt [literally nest and den, expressions frequently applied to the capitals of foreign sovereigns].

Answer. Yes, Sire.

Emperor. Have the Governor General and the Governor any difference of opinion or not?

Answer. Your slave intreats Your Majesty to set Your Sacred mind at rest-the Governor General and the Governor not only transact their business in strict good faith, but in all cases without disagreement.

Emperor. That is well. What is wanted is agreement; frequently the Governor General and the Governor in the same province are at variance.

Answer. Your slave, during the many years he has been in Kwang tung, has never witnessed so much concord between the Governor General and the Governor.

Emperor. They are both in their best years, just the time for exertion; they ought to do their utmost physically and mentally. It is right too that you and the criminal judge,

their immediate subordinates; when you learn anything of which you fear they may not be thoroughly informed, should tell them all you know. Are you acquainted with the newly appointed judge Ke shuh tsaou?

Answer. No, Sire.

Emperor. He is a very honest, sincere, and unaffected man, as you will know after you have passed half a year in the same place with him. You can make ready for your departure. How long will you be on the journey?

Answer. Upwards of two months.

Emperor. I reckon that you will arrive about the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th month. Or allowing a few days more you will reach Canton about the middle of the 12th month.

True translation.

(Signed)

22nd March, 1851.

THOS. TAYLOR MEADOWS,
Interpreter.

CHAPTER XII.

MEASURES OF THE IMPERIAL AUTHORITIES AGAINST THE KWANGSE CHRISTIANS; AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THESE INTO RELIGIOUS POLITICAL REBELS.

THE old Emperor whose honest wish to govern well, I—let me state in passing-never heard the Chinese question, had not simply the fortunes of the English on his mind when he twice emphatically employed the stereotyped phrase of Chinese history, "Shing, tsih peik yew shwae-Prosperity is necessarily followed by decay." The fate of his own house occupied his thoughts. But it was a true instinct that led him to make repeated and anxious inquiries as to the position of the English and the likelihood of their "giving trouble" again. We have indeed been the fated instruments of ruin to the Manchoo family. Even our attempts to help it have proved baneful. On the very day before the above conversations commenced in Peking, a British squadron at the other extremity of the Empire had finally driven some two thousand pirates, a body of the most hardy and daring coastlanders of South Eastern China, from their predatory life on the sea to a similar life on shore; where they, combined with the bandits already in existence, at once formed a force strong enough to keep the field as rebels avowedly aiming at dynastic changes. On the 23rd October, 1849, fifty-eight vessels of a pirate fleet were destroyed in a bay on the confines of China and Cochin China by a British naval force. But the crews escaped mostly on shore, carrying their arms with them, though the vessels were destroyed, and a few of

the junks even got off. That men accustomed to the life they had hitherto led would take to any regular civil occupation was in the last degree improbable; and accordingly we find from the Peking Gazette that a formidable body of rebels was waging open war with the forces of the local government in the southern borders of Kwang se, about a few days' march from the spot where the pirate fleet was destroyed, and in less than a month after that event. From that time to the present a period now of five years-avowed rebellion has continued and spread in China.

Piracy is both a sign and a cause of weakness in the Chinese Government. But it is not a cause of primary importance; for it is on the mainland of China only that rebellions leading to dynastic changes can be organized. But what piracy was not, and could of itself hardly have become, an immediate cause of the outbreak of a dangerous rebellion, that it became when the British interfered with it; a circumstance peculiarly instructive as to our ability to perceive the consequences of taking a side in the disputes of the Chinese among themselves. It is somewhat consolatory to think that in our interference with the rovers on the Chinese coasts, we were less moved by a spirit of busy body intermeddling, than by legitimate anxieties for the safety of our merchant vessels, whose valuable cargoes offered tempting prizes.

The bandit rebels with whom the ex-pirates associated themselves were nearly all kih keas, "strangers," or members of the secondary immigrations of the Chinese people into Kwang se noticed at page 49. Now it was among these same kih keas that Hung sew tseuen and Fung yun san had made the most of their converts; a fact sufficiently accounted for by the circumstance of similarity of dialect, the kih kea immigration into Kwang se having proceeded from Kwang tung. It will be remembered that when Hung sew tseuen first went to Kwang se, he sought out "a relative" there, probably some descendant of a member of the

Hung family that had emigrated to Kwang se in a former generation. Apart from the fact that the robber bands throughout the province were composed mainly of kih keas, a feeling of enmity has always existed between the kih keas generally and the Puntes or old Kwang se Chinese. A dispute about the possession of a girl in marriage led to a species of civil war between these two parties in the very district, that of Kwei, in which the society of the Godworshippers had originated.

"At that time a very rich kih kea had taken as his concubine a girl who had been promised in marriage to a Punte man; and having agreed to settle the matter with her parents by paying a large sum of money, he peremptorily refused to give her up to the Punte claimant. At the office of the district magistrate numerous petitions and accusations were daily lodged against the kih kea population so that the mandarins were unable to settle all their disputes. It seems even probable that the mandarins wished to escape the trouble; and if the report be true, they advised the Punte population themselves to enforce their rights against the kih keas. The result was, that soon after, between the Puntes and kih keas of the Kwei district, a civil war commenced, in which a number of villages gradually became involved. The fighting began on the 28th of the eighth month (3rd October, 1850), and during the first few days the kih keas had the advantage, no doubt because they were more accustomed to warfares, and probably counted robbers by profession among their number. Gradually, however, the Puntes grew bolder and more experienced, and as their number was considerably larger than that of their opponents, they defeated the kih keas, and burnt their houses, so that the latter had no resting place to which they could resort. In their distress they sought refuge among the worshippers of God, who at that time lived dispersed in several districts, in congregations counting from 100 to 300 individuals. They willingly submitted to any form of worship in order to escape from

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