Page:Europe in China.djvu/320

302 desirous of foreign intervention. Sir John, following the example of his predecessor, and having sent Consular Officers to Chinkiang and Nanking (September, 1854) to report to him upon the stability, resources and prospects of the Rebel Dynasty, came to the conclusion that the Rebel Government was a gigantic imposture. Hence he concluded that the interests of British commerce in the East demanded an abandonment of the neutrality insisted upon by the Foreign Office and he vainly hoped to secure the opening up of China to foreign trade by the offer of foreign intervention. In taking this view, Sir John ran counter to a party powerfully represented in China and in England by Bishop Smith and the Missionary Societies whose views were at the time efficiently advocated by a Consular Officer (T. T. Meadows). 'If the Taipings,' wrote Mr. Meadows, were to succeed, then 480 millions of human beings out of 900 millions that inhabit the earth would profess Christianity and take the Bible as the standard of their belief.' That Sir John, with his conviction of being accredited, as the Queen's representative, to so great a portion of the human race, resisted the temptation of posing as the apostle of the much belauded Taiping cause does credit to his sagacity. But that the ex-President of the Peace Society should think of putting the sword of Great Britain into the scale against the so-called Christian Taipings and eventually draw the sword against the ruling Manchus, was an anomaly which, while it caused his fanatical opponents in China to slander him as being an atheist, alienated from him the attachment of his calm political friends in England.

Meanwhile the Taiping rebels continued their depredations in the central and southern provinces of China. In July, 1854, the city of Fatshan (the Birmingham of South-China) fell into their hands and a panic broke out in Canton (July 20, 1854) resulting in a general exodus of the wealthier classes. Crowds of fugitives took refuge in Hongkong. Kowloon city, opposite Hongkong, was at the end of September, 1854, repeatedly taken and retaken by the Rebels and the Imperialists. The