Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/271

248 and returned with the same point of view, feeling that this movement was not yet far enough along to be regarded as worthy of recognition.

The American commissioner, Robert McLane, reached Nanking in May, 1854. By that time the religious eccentricities had become more pronounced, Yang being honored as the Holy Ghost, and the political assumptions of the Taipings had become more exalted and exclusive. If their communications with Sir George Bonham a year before had seemed arrogant, the letter that awaited Mr. McLane was impossible. After reciting their objections to McLane's letter, because it claimed equality and because it was not accompanied by "precious gifts" — considerations which led them to keep it from the Eastern king — they continue:

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.

This pronouncement, coupled with their religious vagaries, led Mr. McLane to withhold from them the recognition he was authorised to accord if he found them capable of becoming a true government. After considering their religious extravagances he thus writes of their proposals: