s nationalities
then moving in that neighbourhood, but no less certainly he had, during
the October of 1856, a smart exchange of cannon-shots with Yeh, which
lasted for some days (three, at least, according to my remembrance), and
ended in the capture of numerous Chinese forts. The American apologist
says in effect, that the United States will not fight, because they have
no quarrel. But that is not the sole question. Does the United States
mean to take none of the benefits that may be won by our arms? He speaks
of the French as more belligerently inclined than the United States.
Would that this were really so. No good will come of schisms between the
nations of Christendom. There is a posthumous work of Commissioner Lin,
in twelve quartos, printed at Peking, urgently pressing the necessity
for China of building upon such schisms the one sole policy that can
save her from ruin.

Next, then, having endeavoured to place these preliminary points in
their true light, I will anticipate the course by which the campaign
would naturally be likely to travel, supposing no alien and mischievous
disturbance at work for deranging it. Simply to want fighting allies
would be no very menacing evil. We managed to do without them in our
pretty extensive plan of warfare fifteen years ago; and there is no
reason why we should find our difficulties now more intractable than
then. I should imagine that the American Congress and the French
Executive would look on uneasily, and with a sense of shame, at the
prospect of sharing largely in commercial benefits which they had not
earned, whilst the burdens of the day were falling exclusively upon the
troops of our nation; but _that_ is a consideration for their own
feelings, and may happen to corrode their hearts and their sense of
honour most profoundly at some future time, when it may have ceased to
be remediable. If that were all, for us there would be no arrears of
mortified sensibilities to apprehend. But what is ominous even in
relation to ourselves from these professedly inert associates, these
sleeping partners in our Chinese dealings, is, that their presence with
no active functions argues a faith lurking somewhere in the possibility
of _talking_ the Chinese into reason. Such a chimera, still surviving
the multiform experience we have had, augurs ruin to the total
enterprise. It is not absolutely impossible that even Yeh, or any
imbecile governor armed with the same obstinacy and brutal a