o, they took some remarkable steps in the
right direction. Their women were in a much higher position than among the
other Chinese; they abolished the custom of cramping their feet; a married
woman had rights, and could not be divorced at will, or sold, as under the
Manchoos. Large institutions were established for unmarried women. Slavery
was totally abolished, and to sell a human being was made a capital
offence. They utterly prohibited the use of opium; and this was probably
their chief offence in the eyes of the English. Prostitution was punished
by death, and was unknown in their cities. Idolatry was also utterly
abolished. Their treatment of the people under them was merciful; they
protected their prisoners, whom the Imperialists always massacred. The
British troops, instead of preserving neutrality, aided the Imperialists
in putting down the insurrection in such ways as this. The British
cruisers _assumed_ that the Ti-Ping junks were pirates, because they
captured Chinese vessels. The British ship Bittern and another steamer
sank every vessel but two in a rebel fleet, and gave up the crew of one
which they captured to be put to death. This is the description of another
transaction of the same kind, in the harbor of Shi-poo: "The junks were
destroyed, and their crews shot, drowned, and hunted down, until about a
thousand were killed; the Bittern's men aiding the Chinese on shore to
complete the wholesale massacre."[26]

It is the deliberate opinion of this well-informed English writer that the
Ti-Ping insurrection would have succeeded but for British intervention;
that the Tartar dynasty would have been expelled, the Chinese regained
their autonomy, and Christianity have been established throughout the
Empire. At the end of his book he gives a table of _forty-three_ battles
and massacres in which the British soldiers and navy took part, in which
about four hundred thousand of the Ti-Pings were killed, and he estimates
that more than two millions more died of starvation in 1863 and 1864, in
the famine occasioned by the operations of the allied English, French, and
Chinese troop's, when the Ti-Pings were driven from their territories. In
view of such facts, well may an English writer say: "It is not once or
twice that the policy of the British government has been ruinous to the
best interests of the world. Disregard of international law and of treaty
law in Europe, deeds of piracy and spoliation in Asia, one vast syst