THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TAEPINGS.
TALLEYRAND'S warning to diplomatists, "paint de zele," if not the best advice to public servants, is certainly the most necessary counsel to writers for an English public. Enthusiasm of any kind is sure to react, and if very marked to create, first disbelief; and then hostility. When the evidences of a new religious movement first ap- peared in China, they were bailed by a section of the public with a rapturous credulity which for the moment confounded criticism. The rebels employed Christian titles, detested image worship, professed to believe the Bible, and were re- ported to observe the Sunday with more than Glasgow severity. Accordingly, without examination, upon evidence which now seems incredibly slight, they were accepted as advanced Christians, the movement pronounced a mighty re- vival, and everybody who questioned the sanctity of the "Celestial King" set down as almost akin to an infidel. The reaction begun speedily, and was of course in proportion to the preceding outburst. The Taepings, it was discovered, were making war, and war in a revolutionary fashion, were apt to destroy human beings as well as graven images, to erase great cities as well as heathen temples, to in- terrupt commerce on six days of the week as readily as on the seventh. They were accordingly denounced, first as marauders, then as blood-thirsty savages, and then as fanatic brigands, whose pretence of Christianity only made their crimes more atrocious and detestable. The reaction was greatly assisted by our new alliances with the Man- darins, and in a very few weeks the officials and the " sino- logues" had stripped the unlucky rebels of every vestige of their rapidly acquired character. The British public, annoyed to find it had believed too much, was in no humour to defend them, and the Christian sectaries of 1859 disap- peared from discussion in 1860, as criminals unworthy of any- thing but the rope.
This reaction, also, has apparently spent its force, and the few who care to attend to the question at all seem to doubt whether they have not, for the second time, been betrayed into unwarrantable violence. That stratum of society— a very- large one—which derives its information from religious periodicals, begins to be again permeated with accounts of the great Chinese development. A doubt whether some- thing be not taking place in China which it concerns the public to know, actuates even public men, and questions are asked about despatches from Shanghai which meet with no satisfactory replies. On the 13th March, Colonel Sykes ex- pressed the sense of a large class by a speech detailing the history of the Taepings, and asking accounts of British con flexion with their leaders. Colonel Sykes, though never accused of fanaticism, always believes in his own case a little too well. He bored the House to a degree, and Lord John Russell was cheered for a reply, almost insolent in its bitter brevity. In spite of the Foreign Secretary, however, it is still more than doubtful whether sufficient attention has been paid to these Taepings; whether that quaint name does not conceal a real movement, affecting, perhaps, the whole future of our relations with China, and, at all events, as well worthy the attention of wise men as any other wide- spread human delusion.
It must be conceded at once that the rebellion, or up- rising, or whatever it may be styled, is not as yet proved to be a movement towards Christianity. That it involves the establishment of a new creed is certain, but that creed is too obscure, too much bidden under a grotesque drapery of semi- blasphemous titles, exaggerated symbols, and evil practices, to be recognised as any form of Christianity civilized man- kind can accept. Nor can we venture to argue that the forms, utterances, and names employed by the new devotees are any- thing but excessively wearisome. Stories of the Elder Brother, and the Faithful King, and the Shield King, and the Monkey King, and Prince I, are tiresome, simply, to philosophers as much as to the multitude. "His Excellency, Mr. Pung," is not the sort of witness London or Paris are wont to accept, and we read of the Literary King with a sensation which is nearer ridicule than contempt. All this, however, is the mere drapery of the question. A great intellectual move- ment of some kind is taking place among the largest section of human beings, and it is worth while, at least, to try and understand what that movement professes to be, and whether it tends to improve or destroy the hopes of Englishmen for China. The first essential to that comprehension is to sweep away the mass of nonsense of all kinds with which the his.. tory of the rebellion has been encrusted.
The first absurdity was in accepting the Taepings ak Chris- tians in the European sense. The second lay in condemning them unheard, and without evidence, of all manner of crimes ; and the third consisted in denying that the movement, what- ever it be, tends to the establishment of a new creed nearer to Christianity than the one which it supplants. That they are not Christians—believing as they do in a revelation of their own, and in the power of their leader to alter tenets, in the right of polygamy, and in the materialistic idea of God —is sufficiently clear. But neither are they a gang of mere marauders of unintelligible tenets and villanous cruelty. According to the all but unanimous opinion of the latest travellers, some of whom have lived weeks with their leaders, Tae Ping is a Chinese Mahomet. Educated by missionaries, this man resolved to propagate a faith based upon the Bible, and mixing just such dogmas of Christianity as an exaggerated literalness would suggest, with a system of corrupted Jewish ethics. To make his task the easier, he gave out that he himself was divinely inspired, and, of course, like all really capable re- ligious impostors, he soon attracted followers to his standard. His faith spread, as new faiths do spread in the East, and in a short time he found himself able to commence operations against the Mandarins. Of course, as a messenger from Heaven, he could claim no power less than supreme, and from the first his object to enfranchise and then govern China was very clearly announced. Supported by the po- pular hatred of the Mandarins, and by the rigid discipline his divine mission enabled him to enforce, he rapidly con- quered the provinces lying along the Yangtse Kiang, and three years ago entered Nankin as conqueror and king. There he has remained ever since, his authority spreading west and south into the interior, east towards the sea, and only ceasing as it approaches the thicker Tartar population towards Pekin itself. Whether he is by this time self- deceived, or merely an able politician, no European will ever know, but this much is certain, he considers the propaga- tion of his faith as important as the extension of his domi- nion, and permits no dissent within the sphere of his authority. Ile does not, however, commit the ravages at- tributed to him, which are usually the work of the Impe- rialists, whose policy, when retreating, is to lay waste the land. Everywhere, therefore, within his rule the Chinese are forsaking Buddhism for the Taeping creed—that is, for a faith which, wild in dogma and wretchedly corrupt in practice, still appeals to the Scripture as the supreme test. All images are at once broken up, Sunday kept as a day of worship, spirits, tobacco, and opium prohibited, and a new system of ethics, rather political than moral, strenuously encouraged. Thus idleness is prohibited as a crime, the rich being compelled to work six hours a day. All kinds of institutions for the poor are commanded, and bribery is de- nounced as one of the gravest of offences. These principles are strictly carried out, and the practices denounced, in- cluding smoking, have, as tolerated practices, really ceased. Above all, the Taepings are enjoined to respect foreigner as persons whose creed has the same origin as their own, and a distinct decree has been issued giving all missionaries leave to preach wherever the new Emperor's authority extends. These facts, which we collect from the evidence of persons in Nankin, differ widely from the enthusiastic accounts at first published to the world. But they show, nevertheless, that the ancient system of China, a system which seemed welded into the very souls of the people, is breaking up ; that ideas, at least as opposed to the philosophy of Confucius as to Christianity, are permeating that apparently immovable mass ; that, in short, change has begun in the only region where change ten years ago seemed impossible. The merits of that change, at present, are of minor consequence. The pool must be stirred before the sick can be healed, and Tae Ping, in breaking down the crust of Chinese formalityos doing as great a service as the Terrorists did when in the midst of the crimes which still sicken us, they flung old France into the crucible, to turn out at all events metal with less dross. It may serve as a guide to some of our readers, it we mention that the absurd titles, Faithful King, Literary King, Shield King, &c., are the titles of Ministers and Privy Councillors. The "Celestial King," Taeping, is the only Sovereign, and as absolute as the early Caliphs he so closely resembles.
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