opium, because that would countenance the sale of it, though it might derive a large income from such a tax.  The sacred literature of the Chinese is perfectly free from everything impure or offensive.  There is not a line but might be read aloud in any family circle in England.  All immoral ceremonies in idol worship are forbidden.  M. Hue says that the birth of a daughter is counted a disaster in China; but well-informed travellers tell us that fathers go about with little daughters on their arms, as proud and pleased as a European father could be.  Slavery and concubinage exist in China, and the husband has absolute power over his wife, even of life and death.  These customs tend to demoralize the Chinese, and are a source of great evil.  Woman is the slave of man.  The exception to this is in the case of a mother.  She is absolute in her household, and mothers, in China, command universal reverence.  If an officer asks leave of absence to visit his mother it must be granted him.  A mother may order an official to take her son to prison, and she must be obeyed.  As a wife without children woman is a slave, but as a mother with grownup sons she is a monarch.

Sec. 8.  The Tae-ping Insurrection.

Two extraordinary events have occurred in our day in China, the results of which may be of the utmost importance to the nation and to mankind.  The one is the Tae-ping insurrection, the other the diplomatic mission of Mr. Burlingame to the Western world.  Whatever may be the immediate issue of the great insurrection of our day against the Tartar dynasty, it will remain a phenomenon of the utmost significance.  There is no doubt, notwithstanding the general opinion to the contrary, that it has been a religious movement, proceeding from a single mind deeply moved by the reading of the Bible.  The hostility of the Chinese to the present Mantchoo Tartar monarchs no doubt aided it; but there has been in it an element of power from the beginning, derived, like that of the Puritans, from its religious enthusiasm.  Its leader, the Heavenly Prince, Hung-sew-tseuen, son of a poor peasant living thirty miles northeast of Canton, received a tract, containing extracts from the Chinese Bible of Dr. Morison, from a Chinese tract distributor in the streets of Canton.  This was in 1833, when he was about twenty years of age.  He took the book home, looked over it carelessly, and threw it aside.  Disappointed of his degree at two competitive examinations, he fell sick, and saw a vision of an old man, saying:  “I am the Creator of all things.  Go and do my work.”  After this vision six years passed by, when the English war broke out, and the English fleet took the Chinese forts in the river of Canton.  Such a great national calamity indicated, according to Chinese ideas, something rotten in the government; and such success on the part of the English showed that, in some way, they were fulfilling the will of Heaven.  This led Hung-sew-tseuen to peruse