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rison from Canton. Three or four thousand soldiers and half-a-dozen vessels will have to hold it, and keep the communications open with Hongkong for this service a portion of the native troops we are sending from India will be probably employed, replacing the melancholy remnant of the two battalions of marines, and one wing of H.M. Royal Regiment, which disease may have spared by the coming summer. Hong-Kong with its 80,000 Chinese inhabitants and 170 English ones, with its naval dockyard, factory, commissariat stores, and millions of British property, will require at least another thousand men, and a large man-of-war with a couple of gun-boats. Swatow and Amoy will each call for a man-of-war to protect our merchants, and Foochow, as well as Ningpo, will need similar support, simply to prevent the mandarins at the instigation of their Government issuing edicts which may alarm the traders, native or foreign. Shanghai, which in commercial importance ranks equal to Canton, will require the constant presence of a large vessel capable of landing a respectable force, should the safety of the foreign property in the warehouses be threatened. In short, in simple precautionary measures, purely defensive, five thousand bayonets and twelve vessels of war will be required at the five ports and Hong-Kong. This force would doubtless maintain the peace, but with a Chinaman, as with all Asiatics, the worse strategy is to be on the defensive: he immediately fancies you are afraid of him, and every petty mandarin seeks to secure imperial favour and honours by harassing and insulting the foreigner, alarming the merchants, and carrying on a series of petty hostilities. Of course he could not do this without funds, but unfortunately we are actually supplying them with the means of thus annoying us, in the payment of the fiscal dues upon our exports and imports, a portion of which every Prefect at the open ports can apply to an exhibition of local patriotism, whilst he remits the major portion to the capital, for the

extirpation of the barbarian, who has thus been good enough to supply powder and shot for his own slaughter! Now, in order to check these official patriots, we would simply suggest, that at each seaport the Li, or reasoning faculty of the head authority, be appealed to, and that they be informed that, although we will rigidly pay all lawful customdues into the custom-houses, the sum accruing must be placed in the hands of joint trustees, to await the decision of the Imperial and Allied authorities at the conclusion of peace. When Shanghai was in the hands of the rebels some few years since, and it seemed doubtful whether we should shortly have to pay custom-dues to the present dynasty or to the new one represented by the Taeping worthy, who sacriligeously claimed relationship with the Christian Trinity, the custom-dues were temporarily sequestrated, though trade went on; and the Chinese allowed that such a course was conformable to the "divine principles of reason." We have little doubt that a notice, firm but civil, to the like effect, would not create much dissatisfaction at the five ports, although the Emperor Hien-fung and general Sung-o-losin might curl their mustaches with ire, and urge a speedy slaughter of the red-haired ones under Admiral Hope and Sir H. Grant. This measure, apart from crippling those sinews of war, which in China, as in Europe, are essential for a war-policy, would give us within a twelvemonth no very despicable sum of dollars, which might be claimed for indemnity. For instance, the returns to the Chinese treasury from the customdues of Shanghai alone, where the new system of collecting is thoroughly established, equal nearly a million pounds sterling; that of Canton ought to be about as much more, and the rest of the other ports should yield another million in fact, there is little doubt that about two millions sterling could thus be available within the coming year. No very alarming sum either in the shape of a tax,

if we remember that the foreign trade alone of Shanghai is represented by the enormous figure of 26 millions sterling, and that the aggregate foreign trade to the coasts of the three accessible provinces cannot be represented by à less sum than 75 millions sterling. Furthermore, we would suggest that proclamations be made along the coast from Hainan Island to the Yang-tse-kiang; that in the event of any town or district moving on behalf of the capital by extraordinary contributions of money or munitions of war, it should be visited with hostilities, visiting it with warlike consequences, a heavy tax or ransom would be levied, and that its native trade in junks should have immediately inflicted upon it a war-tax of 10 per cent ad valorem. This measure was adopted in 1841-42, when the native monopolists of Che-kiang province contributed towards expelling us from Ningpo and Chusan, and the result was most beneficial to the English militarychests, and salutary in its effect upon the gentry, who perhaps did not regret a measure which justified them in the eyes of their own authorities for lukewarmness in patriotism. Any one who has visited the coasts, or read of the vast coasting-trade of China, can fancy what a tax levied upon it would produce; and although it is to be hoped the acts of the seaboard population in Quang-tung, Fokien, and Che-kiang may not render such a measure necessary, still we know of no better preventive for any hostility upon their part, than a knowledge that it would result in a pecuniary mulct. Having thus secured the interruption of one of the most valuable feeders of the Imperial treasury, provided a means of indemnification which will not press upon those inhabitants of China who are innocent of this war, and suspended a rod over the heads of the authorities in China, we will suppose the allied fleet, with the army, said to be nearly 20,000 strong (after providing for the garrison of Canton and HongKong), assembled by the coming month of May off the Rugged Islands -a congery of rocky islets which form the northern portion of that group called the Chusan Islands.

Fresh water and fish they will there find in abundance, as our fleet did under Sir William Parker in 1841; and from Shanghai the active Chinese victuallers will furnish the bold Chasseurs de Vincennes and Messieurs of the Infanterie-de-la-Marinewith salads redolent of anything but incense, and our coarser countrymen with fiery shamshu, which shall tittilate their brains and destroy their stomachs. The weather will be getting unpleasantly hot, and all will naturally be anxious to push on northward for Shang-tung, where, though the days be hot, and the July winds loaded with the sand and soil of the plains of Pechelee and of the desert beyond, the nights, nevertheless, are cool and refreshing. To the ports of Shan-tung the commissaries will have doubtless preceded the fleets, and thence will be directed all the supplies which, we hear, the foresight of the naval Commander-inChief has already sought from the Eastern Archipelago, from Australia, Java, and the East Indies. Everybody will long to be in and doing in the north; and we can sympathise for those whose fate it will be to remain chained up at the five ports as watchdogs for English interests; and we can feel for those who will have to look to the important but inglorious details of furnishing all the supplies, and forwarding them safely in the wake of the impatient host who are going to open Northern China. We can fancy the frantic efforts that Chinese diplomacy will then make to detain the force in the south; nothing that chicanery and Eastern duplicity are capable of will fail to be exercised; and it is then that we trust the firmness of our Ambassador will shine forth, and that he will say, We want the Treaty of Tientsin ratified and carried out in its original integrity-indemnity for our expenses: it must be your punishment for treachery and insult-and guarantees against a re-occurrence. This, nothing but this, when I appear at the mouth of the Peiho-or the allied armies will act at the discretion of their chiefs, until, without comment or discussion, you say you are ready to accede to those terms.

If in terms equally simple the alter

native be placed before the Chinaman, and, in terms equally untrammelled, our naval and military commanders-in-chief be told what they have to do,* much of the difficulty attendant upon the harmonious working of an allied force will be surmounted; and, what is still more essential, they will work energetically to a known point, the plenipotentiary reserving to himself the right, as well as responsibility of crying halt when the Emperor by duly accredited agents declares he will comply with the terms-and to say retire! when every stipulation that comes immediately into force has been faithfully carried out. But, in the name of all past experience, do not let us have a serio-comic expedition-flags of truce-fights and diplomatic conferences alternating; they lead but to dilatory proceedings -waste of life (for more, far more, die by the climate than by the sword in Chinese wars)-disgust of the executive, discontent and recrimination amongst soldiers and sailors; and if a treaty is made under such circumstances, it is simply an infernal machine which explodes when least expected. The history of our Chinese war from 1839 to 1841 ought to be studied by those who advocate such a repetition of a solemn farce-destructive only to those gallant battalions of the Cameronians, Royal Irish, and 55th Regiments, who lie in the pestilential riceswamps of Chusan, or the sailors who found their resting-place in the muddy waters of Southern China. We will not consider such proceedings possible, but take it for granted that a course of energetic action has been decided on before so many gallant men were sent to China, and so much treasure has been spent ; and let us hope that the splendid fleets and armies of England and France, assembling off the entrance of the Yang-tse River, are but the crusaders of European and Christian civilisa

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tion, about to execute the behests of that Providence who, by a series of events unsought by us, has already often called the armed Englishman to pave the way for a better condition of things amongst the benighted millions of the wonderful East. The south-west, or summer monsoon, will by the end of May be blowing fresh along all the shores of China; the difficulty will be, not to get to the Gulf of Pechelee, but, on the contrary, when there, to get back to the south until the northeast monsoon sets in. The admirals will therefore have, in advancing, to see there is nothing left undone behind them; and we cannot help thinking that a force of small active vessels, with an expeditionary corps, will have to be formed for the purpose of ascending the Yang-tse-kiang, and operating upon that great artery. Its duties, rather than constituent parts, we will point to. Such a flying force may have to fight at Silver Island, if it is true that that, the only defensible point in the whole river between the Poyang Lake and Shanghai, is now being fortified; but having mastered that difficulty, the southern entrance of the Grand Canal will be in our hands, and the communications and supplies from the rich province of Che-kiang, as well as Fokien, be intercepted. From Nankin to Ngan-kin they will pass through a rich valley devastated by the Taeping hordes, who are not likely to interfere with our forces, seeing that Capt. Chas. Barker, of H.M.S. Retribution, punished them effectually very recently for firing upon our flag, and a solitary gunboat has subsequently cruised amongst them scathless. Between Ngan-kin and the Poyang Lake there are no points likely to be fortified, and at that lake our vessels would intercept the great north and south, or meridian road from Pekin to Canton. They would be able to explore that great lake, collect information of the

cities and places of trade situated upon its shores. They would let our bumptious Cantonese friends know that there was a way by which our corvettes and gunboats could cut off all that great inland traffic of which they have hitherto had such a monopoly; and lastly, this force would explore for the merchant and missionary the three great provinces, otherwise quite inaccessible, of Kiangsi, Ngan whuy, and Hupeh. We would not have this squadron to act otherwise than as an armed reconnoissance, except in the interruption of all trade up the Grand Canal. At the same time, the officers commanding should be instructed not to mislead the people with an idea that we were not at war with their Emperor, and to show them that by fine, ransom, or direct hostilities, they were prepared to put down anything like support of his war-policy. With the Taepings we should be simply neutral. The most advanced point to which this force would reach would only be four hundred and fifty miles up the river. H.M.S. Furious and Cruiser descended that distance, with the river very low, in a week, and if peace be suddenly obtained, and our commanders-in-chief desire to recall a force so detached, the overland runners from Shanghai would reach them in considerably less time. Supplies could be sent them up the stream from Shanghai, and of fresh meat, fresh vegetables, and fresh water they would find no lack in the country they would traverse. This force would act likewise very beneficially, if the resistance in the north was greater than is generally anticipated, and enable active operations to be pushed in one. direction, whilst the severity of a Pekin winter will, in all probability, confine soldiers and sailors to their quarters. Fever and ague will, how ever, be the greatest enemy and difficulty of a force so detached-sickness rather than mortality being sadly rife in the autumn on the Yang-tse. Directly the bracing north-east winds set in, this malady disappears if the men have good clothing; and we do not think but that the malady itself may be almost warded off by giving the men a generous dietary, varied as much as pos

sible, and not keep them cooped up on board a ship for month after month. With a little fun, variety, and occasional excitement, it is wonderful how healthy our men may be kept in a very deleterious climate; and of course, if the Imperial troops should take it into their heads to pit gingals and bows and arrows against Enfield rifles and Armstrong guns, both Jack the sailor and Joe the marine will infallibly keep in very excellent health. When they suffer, get sick, and perish, is when they are idle, ill-fed, or fretting for change and excitement. The Yangtse-Kiang and the southern entrance of the canal being provided for, and the force so detached being available for any crisis that may occur in Southern China, the fleet weighs in June, and bears away before a fair wind for the north. They sail for four hundred miles over a veritably Yellow Sea, in soundings constantly, although no land be seen; they are passing over a great continent which the rivers Yang-tse and Hoang are hourly adding to, and which will in time arise, by constant accumulation, to the surface, and form a great projection-another Kiang-soo-towards the Corea and Japan. The lead sinks deep into it-a fine, rich, fat alluvium, intended by Providence to grow fine tea and silk for generations and nations yet to come. The fleet crosses the 35th parallel of north latitude; they sight the swelling hills of Eastern Shan-tung-a block of detached mountainous country, situated in the same parallel of latitude as Caboul and Armenia, and not unlike those regions in the extremes of heat and cold to which it is subject-those extremes modified, however, by Eastern Shan-tung projecting into a sea which washes three-fourths of its seacoast. This country is the natural base for operations in Northern China; without advancing a mile beyond it, the sea-communication between the capital and the south will be interrupted; and it has ports and we know not of a single one elsewhere throughout all the shores of Pechelee and Kiang-soo. Very little of the coast of Shan-tung is as yet known; but where it has been visited, anchorages have been found to abound and the resources and