Should They Ever Break Out Again,
The Government Would Possess The Means, From Their Command Of Money And
Modern Arms, Of Repressing Their Lawlessness With Unprecedented
Thoroughness, And Of Absolutely Subjecting Their Hitherto Inaccessible
Districts.
If the first ten or twelve years of the reign of the Emperor Taoukwang
were marked by these troubles on a minor scale, an undue importance should
not be attached to them, for they did not seriously affect the stability
of the government or the authority of the emperor.
It is true that they
caused a decline in the revenue and an increase in the expenditure, which
resulted in the year 1834 in an admitted deficit of fifty million dollars,
and no state could be considered in a flourishing condition with the
public exchequer in such a condition. But this large deficit must be
regarded rather as a floating debt than an annual occurrence.
The Chinese authorities continued to hinder and protest against the
foreign trade and intercourse between their subjects and the merchants of
Europe as much as ever; but their opposition was mainly confined to edicts
and proclamations. When Commissioner Lin resorted to force and violence
some years later the auspicious moment for expelling all foreigners had
passed away, and the weakness of the government contributed in no small
degree to this result. Taoukwang, although his claims as occupant of the
Dragon Throne were unabated, could not pretend to the power of a great
ruler like Keen Lung, who would have known how to enforce his will. For
was it possible after 1834 to continue the policy of uncompromising
hostility to all foreign nations whose governments had become directly
interested in, and to a certain extent responsible to, their respective
peoples, for the opening of the Chinese empire to civilized intercourse
and commerce. Up to this point Taoukwang's only experience of the
pretensions of the foreign powers had been the Amherst mission, in the
time of his father, which had ended so ignominiously, and the Russian
mission which arrived at Pekin every ten years to recruit the Russian
college there, and to pay the descendants of the garrison of Albazin the
sum allotted by the czar for their support. But from these trifling
matters Taoukwang's attention was suddenly and completely distracted to
the important situation at Canton and on the coast, the settlement of the
questions arising out of which filled the remainder of his reign.
CHAPTER XVII
THE FIRST FOREIGN WAR
AT the very time that the Emperor Taoukwang, by the dismissal of the
Portuguese astronomers at Pekin and by his general indifference to the
foreign question, was showing that no concessions were to be expected from
him, an unknown legislature at a remote distance from his capital was
decreeing, in complete indifference to the susceptibilities of the
occupant of the Dragon Throne, that trade with China might be pursued by
any English subject. Up to the year 1834 trade with China had, by the
royal charter, remained the monopoly of the East India Company; but when
the charter was renewed in that year for a further period of twenty years,
it was shorn of the last of its commercial privileges, and an immediate
change became perceptible in the situation at Canton, which was the
principal seat of the foreign trade.
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