Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/293

270 rich trading settlements, seemed to have imagined that this betokened a general triumph of the Tai-ping cause in China, but nothing could have been further from the real state of the case. There is no doubt that, had the Tai-pings been allowed to take Shanghai and Ningpo, and so obtain Foreign steamers, arms, and recruits to almost an indefinite extent, they would have given an immense deal more trouble than they did to the Chinese Government; but to have allowed them to do so, would have been to ignore our own treaty obligations to that Government. Hence the Imperialists had a two-fold reason for making no great efforts to prevent the advance of the Rebels towards these two consular ports. They calculated that both our interests and our duty would lead us to hold these ports against the Tai-pings, and they calculated rightly. What they might have done in other circumstances is a matter of speculation; but it is quite clear, judged both by the situation and by the results, that their allowing the Tai-pings to advance as these did was no proof whatever of their inability to deal with the Rebellion in their own slow and systematic way.

Yet in another way the attitude of the Western powers was a decisive factor, for their determination to withhold recognition from the Taiping Government in 1853 and 1854 was of service to the imperial cause. Had one of the stamp of T'ienteh or Fêng Yun-shan been in Nanking it is conceivable that recognition would have been accorded. In a negative way, then, we may grant that by leaving China alone to subdue her rebels, instead of aiding the Taipings, the cause of the Manchus had its chance to triumph, and the active aid rendered towards the end of the war made assurance doubly sure.