Some queer titles were adopted by the Tai-pings. [Page 161] As stated above, the premier was styled “Father of 9,000 years”; other princes had to content themselves with 7,000, 6,000, etc.—­or seven-tenths and six-tenths of a “Live forever!” Christ was the “Heavenly Elder Brother”; and the chief called himself “Younger Brother of Jesus Christ.”  These designations might excite a smile; but when he called Yang, his adviser, the “Holy Ghost,” one felt like stopping one’s ears, as did the Hebrews of old.  The loose morals of the Tai-pings and their travesty of sacred things horrified the Christian world; and Gordon no doubt felt that he was doing God a service in breaking up a horde of blasphemers and blackguards.

Gordon’s victory won an earldom for Li Hung Chang; but the Chinese conferred no posthumous honours on Gordon as they did on Ward, who has a temple and is reckoned among the gods of the empire.

The Tai-pings were commonly called Changmao, “long-haired” rebels, because they rejected the tonsure and “pigtail” as marks of subjection.  They printed at Nanking, by what they called “Imperial authority,” an edition of the Holy Scriptures.  At one time Lord Elgin, disgusted by the conduct of the Peking Government, proposed to make terms with the court at Nanking.  The French minister refused to cooeperate, partly because the rebels had not been careful to distinguish between the images in Roman Catholic chapels and those in pagan temples, but chiefly from an objection to the ascendency of Protestant influence, coupled with a fear of losing the power that comes from a protectorate of Roman Catholic missions.  How different would have been [Page 162] the future of China had the allied powers backed up the Tai-pings against the Manchus!

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ACT 2.  THE “ARROW” WAR, 1857-1860

Of the second act in this grand drama on the world’s wide stage, a vessel, named the Arrow, was, like opium in the former conflict, the occasion, not the cause.  The cause was, as before, pride and ignorance on the part of the Chinese, though the British are not to be altogether exonerated.  Their flag was compromised; and they sought to protect it.  Fifteen years of profitable commerce had passed, during which China had been a double gainer, receiving light and experience in addition to less valuable commodities, when Viceroy Yeh seized the lorcha Arrow, on a charge of piracy.  Though owned by Chinese, she was registered in Hong Kong, and sailed under the British flag.  Had the viceroy handed her over to a British court for trial, justice would no doubt have been done to the delinquents, and the two nations would not have been embroiled; but, haughty as well as hasty, the viceroy declined to admit that the British Government had any right to interfere with his proceedings.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) British interests at Canton were in the hands of Consul Parkes, afterward Sir Harry Parkes, the renowned plenipotentiary at Peking and Tokio.