proved to me, that the public in the West has not yet the data necessary to the formation of independent judgments on Chinese and (therefore) Anglo-Chinese affairs. And many men of practical sagacity at home must, I think, have felt the necessity of being guided here, more than in most cases, by the weight of authority rather than by the force of detailed arguments, the value of which they have not the means of estimating. Now the man who distinctly foretells what things will be, gives the best evidence that he knows what things are; in other words: Prescience is the strongest proof of true Science. The reader can now perceive my object. As an international agent by profession, I cannot help taking that interest in my business, which is a characteristic of professional men generally. I am influenced by a strong desire to prevent our following an unsound international policy in China, and to forward our national interests by preserving right relations between the British and Chinese peoples. And hence in pointing in this volume to instances of political foresight, I am but the political meteorologist who, when anxious to gain attention to his opinions on the present state of the political atmosphere and the measures which it demands, points to the fact, that he has in former cases succeeded in foretelling coming convulsions of the political elements.

CHAPTER XV.

STATE OF THE SEA-BOARD POPULATIONS AT THE MOUTH OF THE GREAT RIVER, ON THE APPROACH OF THE TAE PINGS.

I HAVE, in the last chapter, shown that I had perceived the approach of dynastic civil war in China, four years before it broke out; and that about a year before it did actually break out as such, I had marked the positive precursory movements in the provinces to the south of the often-named great watershed. Neither I, however, nor any other foreigner -missionaries as little as laymen-could have anticipated, or did anticipate, that it would be a body of Chinese Christians who would first raise the standard of a dangerous rebellion, and fight as well for the propagation of their faith as for the expulsion of the Manchoos. But what none could have inferred, one missionary learnt from direct positive intelligence. In April, 1852, Hung jin, a relative of Hung sew tseuen, fled from the search of the mandarins to our British colony of Hong Kong; was there introduced to Mr. Hamberg; and gave him some papers respecting Hung sew tseuen, and the origin of the rebellion in Kwang se, which two years later formed the basis of Mr. Hamberg's little book. These papers Mr. Hamberg showed in October, 1852, to Mr. Roberts, who sent a summary of their contents to a London periodical, "The Chinese and General Missionary Gleaner," which published it in February, 1853. It was with Mr. Roberts that Hung sew tseuen himself had studied for two months in the summer of 1847, as stated at page 87; and

Mr. Roberts in his summary gave by way of corroboration what he remembered of that circumstance:

"Some time in 1846, or the year following, two Chinese gentlemen came to my house in Canton professing a desire to be taught the Christian religion. One of them soon returned home, but the other continued with us two months or more, during which time he studied the Scriptures and received instruction, and maintained a blameless deportment. That one seems to be this Hung sew tseuen, the chief; and the narrator was, perhaps, the gentleman who came with him, but soon returned home. When the chief first came to us he presented a paper written by himself, giving a minute account of having received the book of which his friend speaks in his narrative; of his being taken sick, during which he professed to see a vision, and gave the details of what he saw, which he said confirmed him in the belief of what he read in the book. And he told some things in the account of his vision which I confess I was then at a loss, and still am, to know whence he got them without a more extensive knowledge of the Scriptures. He requested to be baptized, but left for Kwang se before we were fully satisfied of his fitness; but what had become of him I knew not until now. Description of the man :-He is a man of ordinary appearance, about five feet four or five inches high; well built, round faced, regular featured, rather handsome, about middle age, and gentlemanly in his manners."-The Chinese and General Missionary Gleaner. London, February, 1853.

With the exception of this passage, Mr. Roberts' summary has, as an account of Hung sew tseuen and his proceedings, been completely superseded by the fuller information given in Mr. Hamberg's book; but its publication in the abovenamed number of the "Gleaner" is invaluable, as proving beyond all question that the narrative of Hung jin was in no respect a fabrication concocted by him from reports of what we learnt in April, 1853, by the visit of the Hermes to Nanking. In December, 1851, some months before the above direct

positive information respecting the origin and the religious features of the rebellion were communicated to Mr. Hamberg at Hong Kong, I had left the south of China for Shanghae.

Before doing so, I had been in the habit of sending in to Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary monthly reports of the military progress of the rebellion in Kwang se. This work I however gave up on removing to Shanghae, at the mouth of the Great River, where it was no longer my province to keep watch over the political movement in Southern China. But when the rebels crossed, in June, 1852, the southern watershed into the valley of the Great River, it again became my duty to note their progress, and I accordingly commenced my periodical reports. But my knowledge of the Chinese mind, joined to the dejected admissions that Protestant missionaries of many years' standing occasionally made of the fruitlessness of their labours, had convinced me that Christianity, as hardened into our sectarian creeds, could not possibly find converts among the Chinese, except here and there perhaps an isolated individual. Consequently when it was once or twice rumoured that the large body of men who were setting Imperial armies at defiance" were Christians," I refused to give the rumour credence. It did not occur to me that the Chinese convert, through some tracts of a Chinese convert, might either fail to see, or (if he saw them) might spontaneously eliminate the dogmas and congealed forms of merely sectarian Christianity, and then by preaching simply the great religious truth of a One God, and the pure morality of Christ's Sermon on the Mount, obtain numbers of followers among people disgusted with the idolatry and the immorality that they and those around them were engulfed in. As we have seen above, this was actually the case with Hung sew tseuen. The same incredulity that I entertained characterised the foreign communities generally. Viewing the small success-the almost no-success—of adult proselytism, in spite of the ten years' efforts of the missionaries under their eyes, at and near the Five Ports, they could not credit the few vague and confused

reports that did reach us to the effect, that the army of rebels were Christian converts. These few reports appeared at intervals in the columns of a Hong Kong journal, "The Friend of China." They were, as the sequel proved, substantially correct; and to the editor of that journal belongs the credit of having first obtained and promulgated them. But unfortunately he had at his command no one sufficiently acquainted with the Chinese language, institutions, &c. to be able rightly to appreciate, and to put into an authoritative shape the undoubtedly valuable intelligence he succeeded in obtaining through native agents. Hence the vagueness and confusion alluded to.

In stating the above particulars, my object has been to lead the reader to understand and to picture to himself the fact, that until after the rebels had taken Nanking, the circumstance of the movement having been originated and guided by a sect of native Christians was practically unknown to the foreigners at the Five Ports. We marked the progress of the rebels as exhibited in the admissions of the Peking Gazette, for more than two years; and we saw large bodies of troops despatched to act against them; but of that peculiar feature which has given the movement its deepest interest for the Occident, we remained ignorant. The mandarins told us nothing; they were, of course, only anxious to keep from our knowledge what they might naturally conclude would have excited our sympathies.

The Intendant of the Soo sung tae Circuit, whose station is Shanghae, and who is the Authority with whom the Foreign Consuls there deal in all international affairs, was at the time when the Tae pings first descended on Nanking, a native of Canton, named Woo. He was an example of that abnormal class of mandarins whom the Imperial Government, constrained by financial difficulties, had recently admitted in large numbers: he had purchased all the official steps up to the Intendancy. He had not passed even the lowest of the Public Service Examinations; had little or