We Are Ignorant Of The Details
Of His Work, But It May Certainly Be Said That The Hoangho Has Done Less
Damage Since Akoui Carried Out His Scheme Than It Had Effected Before.
The
question is still unsolved, and probably there is no undertaking in which
China would benefit more from the
Engineering science of Europe than this,
if the Chinese government were to seriously devote its attention to a
matter that affects many millions of people and some of the most important
provinces of the empire.
A great famine about the same period is chiefly remarkable for the
persecution it entailed on the Christian missionaries and those among the
Chinese themselves professing the foreign religion. The cause of this
scarcity was mainly due to the extraordinary growth of the population,
which had certainly doubled in fifty years, and which, according to the
official censuses, had risen from sixty millions in 1735 to three hundred
millions in 1792. Of course the larger part of this increase was due to
the expansion of the empire and the consolidation of the Manchu authority.
So great was the national suffering that the gratuitous distribution of
grain and other supplies at the cost of the state provided but a very
partial remedy for the evil, which was aggravated by the peculation of the
mandarins, and the evidence of the few European witnesses shows that the
horrors of this famine have seldom been surpassed. The famine was laid to
the charge of the Christians, and a commission of mandarins drew up a
formal indictment of Christianity, which has stood its ground ever since
as the text of the argument of the anti-foreign school. It read as
follows: "We have examined into the European religion (or the doctrine) of
the Lord of Heaven, and although it ought not to be compared with other
different sects, which are absolutely wicked, yet, and that is what we lay
to its blame, it has had the audacity to introduce itself, to promulgate
itself, and to establish itself in secret. No permission has ever been
given to the people of this country to embrace it. Nay, the laws have
absolutely long forbidden its adoption. And now all these criminals have
had the boldness to come, all of a sudden, into our kingdom, to establish
their bishops and priests in order to seduce the people! This is why it is
necessary to extinguish this religion by degrees and to prevent its
multiplying its votaries." The fury of the Chinese, fortunately, soon
exhausted itself; and although many Europeans were injured none lost their
lives, but several thousand native converts were branded on the face and
sent to colonize the Ili valley.
While Lord Macartney was at Pekin it was known that the emperor
contemplated abdicating when he had completed the sixtieth year of his
reign - the cycle of Chinese chronology - because he did not desire his
reign to be of greater length than that of his illustrious grandfather,
Kanghi. This date was reached in 1796, when on New Year's day (6th of
February) of the Chinese calendar, he publicly abdicated, and assigned the
imperial functions to his son, Kiaking.
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