Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/385

362 employment from Chinese laborers or profits from Chinese merchants. In the development of a fleet of merchant ships he would have Chinese employed at first in inferior positions, until they could learn how to manage these things for themselves, and then take them over. He desired few of the novelties which were beginning to flood the country, preferring to go on in the good old ways with occupations and products continuing ever the same. Of foreign trade he wrote (but I cannot ascertain whether it was early or late in his career).

Generally speaking, the foreigners of the west have been devouring each other for the last few hundred years. The chief method of doing this is to take away the gain of merchants of other countries, after which their country can attain its purpose. The motive of their coming to China, establishing factories everywhere and dealing in all kinds of goods, is their desire to carry out the deceitful purpose which lies in their minds and jeopardise the means of livelihood of our people. Since the beginning of the war the Chinese people have endured extreme suffering as though in water or fire. The foreigners have opened to general trade the three and the five ports, the Yangtse commerce, and their business grows day by day; while our humbler people are in difficulty without any place for redress, just as though they were hanging upside down. If now you yield to the demands of the foreigners to deal in salt, the licensed merchants will find their means of livelihood reduced. If you accede to their demands to build warehouses, the means of livelihood of the stores and shops that collect goods will be reduced. If you permit steam launches to ply on the smaller streams you will eat into the livelihood of the crews and rowers of large and small boats. If you permit them to establish telegraphs and railways you will take away the living of the cartmen, the inns and the carriers. Of all the various things they are seeking for we should try only the one idea of using foreign instruments for mining coal to secure the permanent advantage of China.