Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/50

32 eventually. The Taipings themselves emerged from this 'volunteer movement' in Kwangsi.

Along the coasts, moreover, pirates abounded, whose depredations not only affected Chinese vessels, but those under foreign flags as well. They became so troublesome that at last British warships were sent against them in 1849, which succeeded in destroying fifty-eight of their junks near the Kwangtung coast; within a month of that time a large body of rebels was fighting with government troops in Kwangsi, only a few days' march from the place where this took place. Inasmuch as many of the pirates were still armed when forced ashore, it is a natural supposition that they either joined the Taipings or fomented disorder on their own account. Such characters as these might be expected to ally themselves with the Hakka population who lived in that part of Kwangsi, and it was apparently among the Hakkas that the societies of God-worshippers from whom the Taipings came were first organised.

A more general cause for such a movement was the character of the reign of. This monarch was indeed asleep if he did not see the signs of general stagnation and decay in the once powerful empire of and. The sale of offices and titles increased, armies became less and less capable; a debased currency proclaimed approaching bankruptcy, pirates and bandits increased in boldness as they increased in numbers, and provincial independence became more pronounced. The general paralysis of local and national government, made evident to all through the ridiculous