TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CONQUEST OF SOUTHERN ASIA.
HAS this country really determined to govern Southern Asia ? Because if it has not, it is time that despatches such as those received this week should be studied with the attention which the half-decided public is still so unwilling to bestow. Of that remarkable form of sway which diplomatists call " influence," and which really means only power without responsibility, England can in maritime Asia obtain no more. From Suez to the Yellow Sea she has it already in its most palpable form and to its extreme extent. With a word at Conste tinople she can regulate all questions within the Red Sea ; the Imam of Muscat is almost her tributary; and all through the Persian Gulf no flag flies save her own. Round the vast Indian coasts, down both shores of the great Sea which we term in derision the "Bay" of Bengal, along the old coast line of Burmah, down the Malayan Peninsula to the Straits of Singapore, all ancient forms of power have withered under her shadow. There is not even a pirate west of the Straits, not a boat whose owner does not look to the Viceroy as the one potentate who must not be disregarded. At Saigon there is one hiatus, but otherwise from Suez to Saghalien there is net a port whose Governor does not feel that an English Consul is his ultimate referee. Throughout that vast section of the world there is not a point save Saigon where a written request from Lord Elgin would not outweigh the requests of all the rest of Europe combined. Within three-fourths of it there is not a point where British authority, in one shape or another, whether diplomatic as in the Red Sea, or direct as in India, or secured by treaty as in Malaya, or built on armed assistance as in China, or supported by 68- pounders as in Japan, is not acknowledged to be irresistible. "Influence" can be pushed no farther, and it only remains to decide whether that influence shall become concrete in direct and formal government, whether Japan shall be a British posses- sion, and China a British protectorate on its way to become an acknowledged British dependency.
Every mail develops more clearly the immediate urgency of a decision ; every fragment of a letter received proves how rapidly " influence" is crystallizing into dominion. The little note we published last week showed how completely the local authorities of China begin to depend on their British allies, and this week's despatches explain the process in still minuter detail. The indigenous authority in China is col- lapsing at every point. The rebels have learned the value of European assistance, and the Mandarins are compelled to rely more and more humbly upon their English allies. Last mail the Imperialists were powerless against Burgevine. This mail Captain Macartney, with only 700 drilled Chinese, has wrested from the Tacpings a most important town. The very cha- racter of the people is changed by the presence of English discipline ; and while seven thousand mere Chinese would have run like so many sheep from the rebels, seven hundred charged upon batteries, " swimming the creeks in their eager- ness " to succeed. Similarly the Mandarin gunboats, " worth nothing " by themselves, are declared to be all-powerful when aided by Osborne's fleet, and by sea and land the Mandarin has sunk from a ruler into a tolerated assistant. He is not always even this. The irresistible tendency of Englishmen towards efficiency tempts them every moment to set aside the half-efficient native authority, and when the Governor of Ningpo objected nominally to receive some arms, but really to an Anglo-Chinese contingent, its commandant, Major Cooke, threatened to land his munitions by force, and the native petulantly gave way. Even this, however, is not the strongest sign of the vast change now progressing. The American Burgevine, it will be remembered, abandoned the Imperialist side, to the extreme annoyance of his own country- men, as well as of all European Consuls. They declared him worthy of death, and the native Governor, to whom he stands legally in the relation of an ordinary bucaneer—legal authority springing only from Pekin—placed a price upon his head, as we have done with pirates a hundred times. Instantly the whole body of Europeans, with the Consuls at their head, sunk all private differences in fierce apd combined remonstrance. They themselves had pronounced Burgevine wrong. They themselves admit ofReially that the Taepings with whom he acts are ordinary rebels. They themselves formally threaten to put him to death if ever lie is caught. No matter. He is a " European," and every Consul in Shanghai signed a strong remonstrance against his, being subjected to any Chinese authority whatever, and. the Tunes correspondent pronounces the' Taoutai's proclamation an " iniquity" as against him, and an -" impertinence" as against Europe. The Taoutai has for the moment refused ato yield, but he will be beaten, for the question involves the supremacy, not of this or that party, but of every European over every Chinaman. Suppose the Imperial caste choose to quarrel among them- selves, does that give a Chinaman rights in his own country ? So Burgevine is not to be arrested, and the only resource of the Imperialist is to fall back on his dreaded allies and beat his scarcely more dreaded opponents in the field. That will be a difficult task, for the crop of European adventurers is endless —ten officers are mentioned in these very letters as having obtained 60,000 dollars by a single blow—and unless- civil war is to continue for ever, England must as a Govern- ment assume her responsibility and bind all opponents, as in India, not to entertain European allies. Burgevine is becom- ing in the valley of the Yang-tse as dangerous as Ventura in the valley of the Sutlej. The steps of the route are exactly the same as those we trod in India, and the ultimate introduction of the only direct power which can bid anarchy cease is even more inevitable.
In Japan the process is absolutely identical, though the incidents make a different impression on the imagination.. Instead of allowing adventurers to enter the native service, the British Government has entered it itself. The feudal Prince of Satsuma committed an atrocious murder, for which we asked compensation and atonement. The Tycoon conceded the justice of the demand, and granted compensation, but professed inabi- lity to secure atonement, and asked the British Government to secure it on his behalf. The British Government agreed, the whole tremendous machinery of civilization was virtually lent to the Tycoon, and England knows now how it has been employed. All that we ventured last week to suppose of horror and atrocity these accounts prove to have been outdone. The British fleet for two days bombarded a mighty city whose inhabitants had done nothing whatever of any kind to offend or injure us. The bombardment, intended, we trust, at first only for the batteries, was in the irritation of combat soon transferred to the town, it was continued for hours after the fire broke out, and ended only with the total destruction of a city said to contain 180,000 people, and proved to be rich, populous, and vast. The fire, report eye-witnesses, " was over a mile in extent," and of unknown depth. All gaturday night (August 15th) the "factories," "foundries," "junks," all that creates the wealth and the prosperity of Kagosima, were seen to be burning fiercely ; but still the shelling went on. On Sunday the town was on fire, and on Monday at two p.m. the ships at the distance of fourteen miles could still see the huge volumes of smoke rolling up from the conflagration. Imagine the scene within that town, the vast Oriental popu- lation unable to imagine even the cause of attack, coerced by their Prince into abstaining from submission, with their city sending up smoke visible for fourteen miles, with all their houses of wood, and half their walls of paper, striving helplessly to save women and children by scores of thousands at once under the fire of a British fleet. Think for an instant of all the City of London in flames at once, the dockyards going first, and the whole population at once striving in panic-fear and rage to escape flames amidst which engines of irresistible force were perpetually flinging death! And we have done all this because an evil noble in a fit of pride earned hanging by cutting down an unoffending Englishman ; have fired, as it were, among a school of children, to repress the insolence of their pedagogue. And we who do it sit and shriek with horror because an American general pours fire into a town defended• by men who have injured his country, and who, in all the arts which make military resistance successful, are at least his equals ; and because a Russian governor, after an assassination, confiscates one house instead of burning ten thousand.
But one addition was wanting to make the incident com- plete, and that also has been supplied. The bombardment, morally inexcusable, has been politically a failure. The Prince refused to yield, and the squadron steamed away with none of its demands conceded, and a loss of some 70 men, and end- less damage to the fleet. Kagosima will be rebuilt again, and already there is a demand for a Sepoy army to march to Afiako and extort from the Spiritual Emperor his signature to the treaty which the Temporal Emperor has already signed, and which has produced no result whatever, except the murder of Mr. Richardson and the bombardment of a great city. In other words, we are to shatter down the fabric of Japanese society, as we have already that of Chinese, and then —that is precisely the point at which the English mind stands still. It is conceivable even in a case like that of Kagosima, that if the British people replaces the organi- zation it has crumbled to powder, the world, as a whole, and, in the long run, may be largely gainers. China would undoubtedly benefit by a century of British rule, and even Japan—whose civilization is much more thorough—might be rid of her nobles with great advantage to her people. But is the country prepared to have three Indies instead of one, to undertake, amid. jealous allies and watchful foes, the direct administration of more than half the human race, to find Governors for six hundred millions, while it can scarcely dis- cover them for two ? If it is not, then its present action in Asia is simply and purely destructive, and involves ex necessi- tate rei a series of incidents hard. to distinguish from a series of political crimes. Is it without an object that we are to bom- bard flourishing cities, without a policy that we suffer our eubjects to assume the dominion over three hundred millions of Chinese ?
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