Foreign Relations Tae opening of the year found the Chinese Envoy in Europe at the zenith of his prestige, and home papers at their extreme point of error, in regard to Foreign Merchants, and the political situation, in China. Mr. Burlingame had made the British Government a convert to his views; and despatches were soon addressed from the Foreign and from the Admiralty, to ti Civil and Naval Officers of Great Britain in China, forbidding the display of force in any case short of immediate danger to life and property, but ordering the reference of all difficulties to Peking,—and if necessary thence to England—" leaving H. M. Government free to determine, if occasion should arise for doing 80, what is best to be done to enforce upon the central Government the obligation, not only themselves to observe treaties, bat to compel provincial authorities also to respect them." This was done on the faith of Mr. Burlingame's assurance, that the Central Government is both willing and able to control its provincial subordinates, and, bad the axiom beea true, the rale would have been right also. But a series of events were tuking place, almost simultaneously, in China, which proved the theory to be thoroughly hollow. The affair at Yangchow was alread cly over, after contributing its quota of proof to the error of Mr. Barlingame's assertion, as to the anxiety of the Chiese to welcome "shining crosses," and their "hospitality to fair argament." The course of affairs at Taiwan had shown the utter ineffic appeals to Peking, and had elicited from Sir Rutherford Alcock the able despatch, in which he sketched as the result of such a policy "as an interminable series of references backwards and forwards; a see-saw of correspondence between the ports and the capital, and no final solution ever arrived at"; the Provincial officers, in fact, lying to the Imperial Authorities, and the latter evading the arguments of the Foreign Representatives. These occarrences, however, belong really to 1863, and were touched on in our retrospect of that year. We refer to them again, only to show the position of affairs at the outset of 1869, and to connect them with the events which followed.
Close on the heels, then, of the embroglios at Taiw: "Yangchow, came an attack by a party of villagers on a boat's crew of H. Bf. gun-boat Cockchafer, near Swatow. Lieut. Kerr was taking a pull up the river with some of his men, when the villagers pelted him. Ho landed and requested a respectable Chinaman to conduct bim to the Headman. The latter refused Lieut. Kerr then insisted that be should, himself, come as a witness before the mandarins. He still resisted, and the village braves turned out and fired the boat's crew, who respouded, but re-embarked and pulled off. On the. way back they were attacked by about 1,000 villagers, who had cut across a neck of land to intercept them, and 11 of the crow were wounded before they could ro-turn the fire poured into them from the high banks. The Snider, however, did good work eventually; and the boat got past, leaving 11 of her assail ants dead, and 30 or 40 wounded. An apology for the attack, and a guarantee against similar outbreaks by the villagers, was demanded; bat the authorities have little control over the turbulent clans of Fohkien; and the latter, so far from making submission, demanded head-money for' the men killed in the attack which they had themselves commenced. It became nocessary, accordingly, to tuke their punishment into our own hands, A sqandron consisting of the Hinaldo, Perseus, Cockchufer, Leven, and Bouncer was gathered; and on the 29th January a party of 450 men under the command of Commodore Jones, accompanied by Mr. Alabaster H. M. Acting Consal, were landed for the purpose. The braves made an attempt at resistance, but the fire of the Suiders soon dispersed them, and two fortified villages were taken and burned with little loss on their side and none on our own, A Chinese gunboat was present, tneitly countenancing the proceeding. Indeed, there is every reason to believe the axthorities were obliged to us for inflicting on their unruly sabjects'a chastisement which they were not, themselves, strong enough to administer. Since that time, there has been no disturbance, and com-manication with the newly opened port of Chuo-chow, which had previonsly been hnzatdous, is now perfectly secure. The effect in Swatow was excellent; as these villagers had enjoyed, among the natives, a reparation for quasi-invincibility and our prestige was raised, in proportion to our easy victory oyer them, Of course such collisions ure regrettable, but it was impossible to allow the matter to pass. Had the attack on an armed boat's crow gone unpunished, the tribes would at have assumed that we feared them no foreigner would have been safe in their neighbourhood, and the river would have been virtually closed.
Nearly simultaneously with these troubles at Swatow, a hostile spirit began to be shown towards foreigners, at Poochow; several attacks on mission aries and native converts occurred in the neighbourhood; the literati began to post proclamations on the city walls, urging the people to rise and exterminate foreigners. An affair connect ed with a sanitarium, which the mis-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.