Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/121

Rh from the presence of God, and the Holy Ghost incarnate dwells in the court at Nanking.

Such blasphemous claims alienated the foreign representatives who came to Nanking in 1853 and 1854. We shall consider more in detail later the reports they made to their home governments both on the political and the religious sides. Had they been met by a different type of leaders at Nanking, had they not been more or less offended by the religious extravagances and claims, it is not improbable that they would have accorded recognition. The American expedition in 1854 appeared just at the moment when Yang was at the height of his power. Those to whom the American commissioner addressed himself sent in reply, among other things, this bombastic mandate, carrying us back in spirit to the days when the question of embassies to Peking and their status was a burning issue:

If you do indeed respect Heaven and recognise the Sovereign, then our celestial court, viewing all under Heaven as one family and uniting all nations as one body, will most assuredly regard your faithful purpose and permit you year by year to bring tribute and annually come to pay court, so that you may become the ministers and people of the celestial Kingdom, forever bathing yourselves in the gracious streams of the Celestial Dynasty, peacefully residing in your own lands, and living quietly, enjoy great glory. This is the sincere desire of us the great ministers. Quickly ought you to conform to and not oppose this mandatory dispatch.

Is it surprising that he did not accord the recognition which he was authorised to grant the Taiping government in case he found there any hope of an enlightened policy? "Whatever may have been the hopes of the