THE DESTRUCTION OF KAGOSIMA. R ARELY has such a blow been
inflicted on British pride as that contained in the despatches from Kagosima. The nation, sometimes cruel, but never consciously inclined to cruelty, has, for the past twelve months, been singing paeans over its own justice and moderation. It was not as other nations, not as the Turks, or the Russians, or the Ame- ricans, or even the French, and entitled in its superior calm- ness and reverence for humanity to sit in judgment upon them all. The Turks, to avenge an assassination, bombarded Bel- grade, and Earl Russell, while protecting them from the con- sequences of their crime, still officially pronounced the act `wholly unjustifiable." The French, in the teeth of a deter- mined and nearly successful resistance, stormed Puebla, house by house, after a regular siege, and English Liberals asked what "idea" could justify that slaughter of men who only asked to be let alone. General Berg sacked a Polish palace because a bomb had been thrown at his head, and England was almost ready to "send ships to Warsaw" rather than that " atrocity " should pass unpunished. General Gilmore threatened to bombard Charleston, but gave the women and children twenty-four hours to retire, and the Tory press endorsed his opponent's denunciation of the short time allowed. Finally the American threw five- shells into the city filled with molten metal, and half England declared - that in using such arms, and firing on such a town, he had placed his Government beyond the pale of civilization, and reduced himself to the rank of a buccaneer. And now we are told, not by special correspond- ents fond of sensation, or ill-informed " eye-witnesses," but by the officials concerned, that Earl Russell, who denounces Mouravieff, himself ordered a palace to be destroyed at the risk of everybody in it—for that is what " shelling " amounts to—because its owner, then fifty miles away, had committed an assassination, that a British Charge d'Affaires had commanded the destruction of an immense Oriental city, against which no charge was so much as alleged, and which had not received a moment's warning, and that a British Admiral considers the deed one to be described in a tone of triumphant exultation.
Last week we had still a hope that the destruction of Kagosima had been accidental, that neither Admiral nor Charge d'Affaires were responsible for that tone of exultation which pervaded the letters of all eye-witnesses. The perusal of the despatches leaves, however, no doubt that the destruc- tion of the town was either intentional, and carried out as. the easiest and most complete method of punishing Japanese- insolence in firing upon a British squadron, or was one of those " untoward accidents " which those who produce them do not even affect to regret. As yet the balance of evidence inclines to the former view. It is certain that the destruction. of the city was contemplated before it occurred, for in the interview of the 13th, after the native envoys had assured the Charge d'Affaires that the Prince of Satsuma was fifty miles off in the interior—a statement which might have been false, but was most probably true, as the Council acted for him—Admiral Kuper broke in with a Napoleonic menace, " Kagosima is at my mercy ; hostilities once commenced your town would be destroyed, and I shall stop your trade both here and at the Loochoo Islands." The menace, we do. the Admiral the justice to believe, may have been only a threat intended to alarm men whom in the same interview he styled to their faces " barbarians ; " but his acts show that it never quitted his mind. It may not have been a design, for it is inconceivable that an Englishman, once resolved on so fright- ful an act, would have left the women, and children, and non- combatants without some formal warning, but it was an alter- native embraced without the faintest regret.
The first step commanded by Colonel Neale, though unusual, was not oppressive, and was in obedience to his instructions from home. The Prince had been required to pay a pecuniary indemnity and deliver up his own father, the actual murderer of Mr. Richardson, and it was thought that the seizure of his steamers might induce him to comply, at all events, with the first part of the demand. Captain Borlase, of the Pearl, was aecordingly ordered to cut out the steamers without unne- cessary bloodshed, and performed his difficult duty with gallantry and success. The seizure, however, so far from bringing the Japanese to terms, terminated their hesitation, and three hours afterwards they opened from their ninety guns a heavy fire on the squadron. Admiral Kuper ought to have expected that result, a precisely similar incident—the seizure of the " yellow ship," having precipitated the Burmese war ; but in his contempt for " barbarians" he had not anticipated they would act like Europeans, and the firing seemed to his mind an act of the foulest treachery. Indeed, the notion that the attack was unfair, that uncivilized people had no business to fire •on a civilized squadron when quietly taking away Japanese ships, peeps out in the oddest way through the despatches, and accounts for much of the terrible scene which followed. The Admiral burnt the captured steamers, stood in towards the batteries, and smartly returned their fire—a proceeding which, though an act of war, was in accordance with the customs of the civilized world. The fire of a French battery would be returned as promptly and with as much justification. The fire, however, did not at once silence the batteries of the " barbarians," which, on the contrary, told heavily on the squadron, so heavily that the Admiral ordered a retreat to the other side of the bay. Previously to this movement, however, the town " had been observed to be on fire," whether from accident or deliberate shelling is not explained. As we understand the confused de- scriptions of the harbour, the batteries are away from the town, running on each side into the bay down narrow spits of land ; but this cannot be certain until the sketch forwarded by the Admiral to the Government has been submitted to Parliament. It is nearly incredible that had the conflagration been acci- dental, neither he nor Colonel Neale should have expressed the faintest regret for an occurrence which, as they must have known, brings down on their country the censure of half the world, but still there remains the doubt. There is none about the next acts. The Admiral himself states, that while retiring at nightfall on the 15th, he ordered the Havoc to fire the junks in the harbour, and they, with an arsenal and a foundry, with all the store-houses adjoining, were destroyed "in the most satisfactory manner." All that night the wind blew a gale, and next morning the Admiral, finding new bat- teries building to the north, retired from the scene. The town was blazing fiercely, as it had been doing for hours, and the batteries, though quiet, were still in existence and effective, but the Admiral, instead of renewing the contest with them, fired into those on the southern shore, and "took advantage of the occasion to shell the palace of the Prince in Kagosima." In other words, he fired while retreating on the day after his combat into a vast burning city, with the simple intention of effecting all the destruction he could, of avenging, as every man in the fleet probably thought, the loss of his gallant subordinates, Captain Josling and Commander Wilmot. Eye- witnesses, indeed, one of whom publishes a carefully-written account in the Scotsman, affirm that the fire was directed against the town as well as the palace, and the Admiral ex- plicitly states that both were burned to the ground. " There is every reason to suppose," he says, " that the palace has been destroyed, and the fire, which is still raging (forty-eight hours after it broke out), affords reasonable ground for be- lieving that the entire town of Kagosima is now a mass of rains." Colonel Neale repeats and exults in the same fact, and throughout the despatches there is not a word of regret over the " hard necessity " which had involved the vast peaceful city in the fate of its batteries and the Prince's palace. The "town e., the homes of a population nowhere estimated at less than 150,000—is coolly reckoned up among the pie- perty destroyed, and Admiral and Chargé d'Affaires alike de- mand the approval of Her Majesty's Government. We know how difficult it is even to suspend compliance with that request. Every official tradition, every punctilio of the services, requires a Government whose servants have risked their reputations by over-zealous fulfilment of orders, to support them against the world. We know how terribly the smallest appearance of coldness or disapproval at home will chill the enthusiasm of the Navy when next employed to display the force which cannot always be kept in reserve. We perceive bow easily Admiral and Charge d'Affaires may have misinterpreted their permission "to shell the Prince's house," and we recognize the etiquette which forbids a naval com- mander to leave an enemy's fire unanswered. Nevertheless, in spite of all these rules, rules in themselves usually just and wise, we call upon. the Government to suspend approval until fitting inquiry can be made. No injury we can sustain from discontent in the Navy or annoyance in the departments can equal that we shall suffer from the scorn and loathing of Europe. As Mr. Charles Buxton says in his letter to the Times, humanity is always the interest of Great Britain. If there is a principle in which Great Britain is in- terested, it is that of restraining war within the rules by which civilization has tempered its inevitable miseries, and that principle has in this case been thrust aside. If there is a source of power which Great Britain possesses apart from shells and bayonets, it is her steady advocacy of the claim of human beings to be exempt from causeless slaughter. That influence will by this catastrophe be utterly de- stroyed. Whether Admiral Kuper be innocent or guilty, innocent of all but the heartlessness of his despatches, or guilty of firing upon an unarmed town, the broad fact will still remain. Great Britain in order to punish an individual assassin,—for the Tycoon had apoligized and paid for the official wrong.—has fired a vast and peaceful city, destroyed the commercial sources of wealth of a whole province, slaughtered human beings by the thousand—for thousands must have perished in that conflagration which, says the Ad- miral who produced it, " burnt with unabated ardour for forty-eight hours,"—and reduced a population equal to that of a first-class European city to the certainty of beggary and the imminent risk of starvation. There may be excuses to be made for all those upon the spot. Colonel Neale may have had private instructions which he has misinterpreted. Seamen with shell whistling through their rigging and their comrades falling fast are not expected to reason with philosophic coolness, or even much humanity. But if Englishmen sitting in comfort at home, chuckling over the vast expenditure they have incurred in order to avoid the very suffering they have inflicted, on the Japanese, sanction the burning of Kagosima, their remonstrances against cruelty, hitherto so operative, must cease for very shame. Opinion will cease to be executive on the one subject on which it is unquestionably righteous and beneficial. Who listens to Gospels preached by men whose hands are stained with blood ? Even Berg did not bombard Warsaw because his spy was assassinated, even Mouravieff does not erase cities to punish a single murderer. There is one test beyond these which every Englishman can apply, and by which he can try the character of this " victory " in Japan. If Abraham Lincoln has the humour to remonstrate with Earl Russell on behalf of humanity and civilization, is there one of us who could venture to say that scathing repartee was not substantially just ?
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