f China had the allied powers backed up the Tai-pings
against the Manchus!

* * * * *

ACT 2. THE "ARROW" WAR, 1857-1860

Of the second act in this grand drama on the world's wide stage,
a vessel, named the _Arrow_, was, like opium in the former
conflict, the occasion, not the cause. The cause was, as before,
pride and ignorance on the part of the Chinese, though the British
are not to be altogether exonerated. Their flag was compromised;
and they sought to protect it. Fifteen years of profitable commerce
had passed, during which China had been a double gainer, receiving
light and experience in addition to less valuable commodities,
when Viceroy Yeh seized the lorcha _Arrow_, on a charge of
piracy. Though owned by Chinese, she was registered in Hong Kong,
and sailed under the British flag. Had the viceroy handed her over
to a British court for trial, justice would no doubt have been
done to the delinquents, and the two nations would not have been
embroiled; but, haughty as well as hasty, the viceroy declined to
admit that the British Government had any right to interfere with
his proceedings. Unfortunately (or fortunately) British interests
at Canton were in the hands of Consul Parkes, afterward Sir Harry
Parkes, the renowned plenipotentiary at Peking and Tokio.

Sir John Bowring was governor of Hong Kong, with the oversight of
British interests in the Empire. A gifted poet, and an enthusiastic
advocate of universal peace, he was a man who might be counted on, if in
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the power of man, to hold the dogs of war in leash. But he, too,
had been consul at Canton and he knew by experience the quagmire
in which the best intentions were liable to be swamped.

Parkes, whom I came to know as Her Britannic Majesty's minister in
Peking, was the soul of honour, as upright as any man who walked
the earth. But with all his rectitude, he, like the Viceroy Yeh,
was irascible and unyielding. When the viceroy refused his demand
for the rendition of the _Arrow_ and her crew, he menaced him
with the weight of the lion's paw. Alarmed, but not cowed, the
viceroy sent the prisoners in fetters to the consulate, instead of
replacing them on board their ship; nor did he vouchsafe a word of
courtesy or apology. Parkes, too fiery to overlook such contemptuous
informality, sent them back, much as a football is kicked from
one to another; and the viceroy, incensed beyond measure, ordered
their heads t