He
Was Also Averse To All Unnecessary Display, And His Expenditure On The
Court And Himself Was Less Than That Of Any Of His Predecessors Or
Successors.
He never wasted the public money on his own person, and that
was a great matter.
His habits were simple and manly.
Although Taoukwang's reign had been marked by unqualified misfortune, he
seems to have derived consolation from the belief that the worst was over,
and that as his authority had recovered from such rude shocks it was not
likely to experience anything worse. He had managed to extricate himself
from a foreign war, which was attended with an actual invasion of a most
alarming character, without any diminution of his authority. The symptoms
of internal rebellion which had revealed themselves in more than one
quarter of the empire had not attained any formidable dimensions, and
seemed likely to pass away without endangering the Chinese constitution.
Taoukwang may have hoped that while he had suffered much he had saved his
family and dynasty from more serious calamities, and that on him alone had
fallen the resentment of an offended Heaven. The experience of the next
fifteen years was to show how inaccurately he had measured the situation,
and how far the troubles of the fifteen years following his death were to
exceed those of his reign; for just as he had inherited from his father,
Kiaking, a legacy of trouble, so did he pass on to his son an inheritance
of misfortune and difficulty, rendered all the more onerous by the
pretension of supreme power without the means to support it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 407 of 704
Words from 110442 to 110709
of 191255