CHAPTER III.

ACCESSION, ABNORMAL POLICY, AND WEAKNESS OF THE PRESENT MANCHOO DYNASTY.

ALL that I have said above refers to Chinese institutions in their normal national state, such as they, for instance, substantially were (with a little difference in names rather than in things) during a large portion of the dynastic period of the Chinese family which was superseded by the present Manchoo house. This latter, first merely at the head of an obscure Tartar clan, then over a Manchoo Tartar monarchy, though it adapted itself in the main to the institutions it found in China, and was naturally itself conquered by the Confucian civilization, the only one it had any opportunity of knowing, did nevertheless introduce some essential modifications, which it is the more necessary to notice as they were the incipient causes of the trying struggle for existence in which the dynasty is now engaged.

Going back a little, we find that the Mongols, under the immediate descendants of Genghis Khan, conquered China in 1271 and ruled over it till 1368, when after a prolonged struggle between them and Chinese rebels, the latter succeeded in establishing a native dynasty, that of the Mings; which ruled for 276 years. During the last quarter century of that period its misgovernment had so alienated the affections of the people that it was constantly engaged with insurgents and rebels in the interior; in addition to its fights with the barbarous tribes in the west and north (Manchoos) which the internal weakness rendered it unable to meet

effectually. At length, a native rebel, Le tsze ching, who had, after eight years' fighting, established his power over one third of the country, entered Peking in 1644; when the last Ming Emperor, deserted and unsupported, committed suicide. One of his generals, Woo san kwei, then on the borders keeping off the Manchoos, immediately made peace with the latter and begged their assistance against "the usurper." They readily gave it, were successful, and then availed themselves of the opening, thus afforded by a Chinese, and the aid of his army, to establish themselves in Peking, and gradually in the sovereignty of the Empire. This result was not attained, however, until after a seven years' bloody struggle, to which another struggle of like duration, the Prussian seven years' war, was but a trifle; and the result would not have been attained at all but for the disunion among the Chinese together with the great degree in which the Manchoo monarchs adopted, and the vigour with which they enforced, the normal Chinese principles and practice of government. Still the Manchoos felt that their military power was the original cause of their advent to dominion; and hence they naturally endeavoured to maintain it intact. Besides a very large Tartar garrison, now about 150,000 strong, at Peking, they established smaller garrisons in nine of the provincial capitals and ten other important points in the provinces. These, nineteen in all, are on the average, as enumerated in the Imperial books, each about three thousand strong; but as they always had with them their wives and families-are in fact military colonies-the natural increase of their numbers in the course of several generations has been such, that they are now supposed to average about seven to eight thousand able-bodied men. The mere sight of these garrisons has been a constant reminder to the Chinese of their being under the dominion of an alien, barbarian race; and as the latter have always borne themselves with much of the insolence of conquerors, their acts have been a constant excitement to disaffection.

These garrisons form one deviation from the fundamental principles of Chinese government, as a partial attempt to substitute a physically supported despotism for a morally supported autocracy.

From the first the Manchoo family associated a number of its compatriots with, or substituted them for, the Chinese officials, in all the higher government posts, whether in the central or the provincial administrations. With the increase of the race in numbers, the necessity of "providing for " its members has been a steadily increasing cause for the extension of this association and substitution. This forms another breach of the Chinese principles of government. These require that the nation should be governed by the most worthy and able. But the Manchoo officials owe their positions to birth. They are in point of moral qualities certainly not superior, and in intellectual acquirements markedly inferior to their Chinese colleagues and subordinates; while their first appointment, and subsequent more rapid promotion, constantly excludes and disappoints a number of Chinese of ability and of honourable ambitions. These flagrant breaches of fundamental principles well-known to the Chinese people induced and justified general laxity. Hence the spread of corruption, which, combined with the inefficiency of so large a proportion of the officials in the higher and middle ranks, brought on financial difficulties. Inability to meet these latter in any other way, led to another species of breach of principle. Government posts were sold; and to incompetent Manchoos were added incompetent Chinese, whose constant and chief aim was to extort from the people the money they had spent in purchasing the power to do so. Hence spread of tyranny, which led at length to risings, which again had to be extinguished by an expenditure, that an increasing amount of inefficiency and corruption in the administration made ever greater and greater. Such was the downward course which continued to become more and more apparent during the reigns of Kea king and his son Taou kwang, up to the English war.

This latter inflicted a dreadful blow on the Manchoos; for their two provincial garrisons of Cha poo and Chin keang were defeated and almost destroyed, with an ease that shook their own confidence in the prowess and destiny of their race, and completely dispelled its prestige of military power in the eyes of the subject Chinese. And then the great costs of the struggle, of which the twenty-seven millions of dollars paid to the British at its close was but a small moiety, plunged the government into irremediable financial difficulties. The sale of government posts was carried on more extensively, and corruption, tyranny, disaffection, robbery, piracy, local insurrectionary risings, misgovernment in short, and no-government prevailed more than ever up to 1850, when the "Kwangse rebellion" broke out.

D

CHAPTER IV.

RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE, CAUSES OF ITS UNITY AND GENERAL HOMOGENEITY, AND OF CERTAIN PECULIARITIES IN THE SOUTH-EASTERN CHINESE.

In order to understand aright the circumstances under which the politico-religious rebellion has come into existence and the people who originated it, we must devote a little time to a cursory view of the rise and progress of the Chinese nation as a whole; and then note some differences that, in the midst of the general and wonderful homogeneity, do nevertheless distinguish the South-Eastern Chinese from the rest of the nation.

The original seat of the Chinese people was the northern portion of Chih le, the province in which the present capital Peking happens to be situated.

How the first Chinese, the founders of the nation, came to be in that locality, is one of those questions connected with the origin and spread of the human race generally which can only receive a conjectural solution. All we do or can know positively is that the first portion of authentic Chinese history tells us that the Emperor Yaou, who reigned 4,200 years ago, had his capital at the now district city of Tsin chow, situated about 100 miles only to the south of the present capital Peking. From this most ancient location the people spread gradually westward and southward, thus steadily increasing its territory. The usual course of the process was, first colonization of the newer regions, and displacement from them of whatever aboriginal inhabitants were found; and