then there will be any great English mercantile houses on the coast of Cathay. It is to be feared that the native Chinese merchants will very quickly take their maritime commerce into their own hands, and try to dictate prices in London as they are already doing at Hankow and Shanghai. Already the Anglo-Saxons of Australia have had recourse, and not very effectively, to a heavy capitation-tax in order to keep down the competition of Chinese emigration, which is nothing compared with what it is capable of becoming. Without doubt we shall open up the Flowery Land effectively enough; but the results of that opening promise to be somewhat different from our fond anticipations. At all events, any change for the better in our position with reference to that country must come from England outwards. In order that Great Britain may extend, or even continue to hold, its once grand position in the East, it must be more worthy of doing so than it is at present, and there must be a return to some tolerable connection between its higher intelligence and the wielding of its power otherwise, Britannia will soon share the fate of Carthage and Venice, of Spain and Holland; while delenda est, or the capta of the Arch of Titus, enscrolled after its name, will afford another instance of the Confucian benevolence of Heaven towards trees which are prepared to fall. In China proper, or the "Middle Kingdom," which contains eighteen provinces, there are eighteen Ti-tus only employed in times of peace, but in time of war this rule is departed from, and other Ti-tus, sometimes in all to the number of 200, are employed under the Governors, or Futais of each province, in command of distinct levies raised for a specific purpose. Legitimately there could no more be two Ti-tus in a province than two Futais. Colonel Gordon's force was one of those raised for a specific purpose the suppression of rebellion, and so was General Ching's. The Ti-tu of a province is Commander-in-Chief of its naval as well as of its military forces. |