of the House at all hazards, the advantage would be a very questionable one in a national point of view.
What does become of those enormous sums which are annually contributed to charitable institutions? It is not too much to say that a very uneasy feeling is growing up on this subject;—with the exception, perhaps, of the cases of our great hospitals. Where the wisdom of parliament and the charity of individuals has made such ample provision for the poor and destitute of this metropolis, it is too bad that our feelings should be so constantly harrowed up by tales of distress; and still more by the consciousness that all we hear represents but a portion of the misery actually existing during seasons such as the present. He would do the country good service who would look carefully into the matter, and tell us how the expenditure of these charities is directed, controlled, and checked. Meanwhile, as above all things it is desirable to avoid vain declamation, and the idle cant of philanthropy, the best recommendation we can give to our readers is to be upon the watch for the misery which may fairly come under their notice, and to relieve it as best they may. He would not have spent his Christmas ill who had enabled two or three poor families to tide it over the starving time until employment is again forthcoming. It is much to be feared that the sufferings of the London poor have formed a gloomy back-ground to the Christmas merriment of Last Week.
The subject has been canvassed again and again by every British fire-side, but still we cannot pass over in absolute silence the Chinese intelligence which reached England in the last days of last year. Politically it is well enough. We may fairly hope to be rid for ever of those Chinese wars which seemed to be as completely a part of our institutions as November fogs, or a fight with the Kaffirs once every five years. The prestige of that old semi barbarian Court at Pekin is at an end. Henceforward the Emperor of China and his Privy Council are to us much the same as the former King of Oude, or the actual Sovereign of Nepaul. We are of a higher race, and of a higher civilisation, and the proof of the assertion is to be found in the results of the collision between China and Europe. The sacrifice of thousands of lives has been the consequence of our deference to the susceptibilities of our sentiment-mongers. Let us ask from the Chinese, and take from the Chinese, only what is just, and let us weigh this by an European, not by a Chinese measure of justice. We do not want their territory—we do not want to be their masters, as a planter of South Carolina is the master of his slaves—but we say that a section of the globe so important that it affords means of support to one-third of the human race, shall not be sealed up against the remaining two-thirds. The late Dr. Arnold was the first public writer of any note, who had the courage to blow to the four winds the old fallacy that a parcel of savages had the right to block out the civilised races of mankind from a fair and fertile island or continent, about which they were running naked and useless. Providence never intended that the fable of the Dog in the Manger should be the great parable for the instruction of the human race. It may be presumed that China—according to the cant phrase—is now opened, and it will be our own fault if it is ever closed again. The Chinese difficulty has turned out in practice to be even as one of those palaces inhabited by a wicked necromancer of which we read in Ariosto. It is apparently surrounded by moats and drawbridges—guarded by monstrous shapes which brandish the most terrific weapons, and by dragons which belch forth poisonous exhalations from their uncouth jaws. Who is to get in there? Nobody save the peerless knight who will not look behind him. Hundreds come and try the adventure, but they are not peerless knights, and they do look behind them, and are lost. At last a young straightforward gentleman in chain armour, who has only one idea in his head, and that one connected with a young lady who is a prisoner in the castle, puts his lance in rest, and charges full at dragons, giants, moats, portcullises, and all the necromantic arrangements, and hey, presto! they fade into empty air. Nothing remains but a beautiful damsel coyly eager to “crown the flame” of the enraptured young man. This has been just the history of our Chinese wars. We have been ever looking behind, when we should have ridden a course with single mind at the very stronghold of the Delusion. Let honour be given where honour is due. Where our statesmen and diplomatists failed, one private Englishman hit upon the true solution of the question, and in season and out of season hammered away at it, till he had fairly battered it into the minds of his countrymen.
The capture of Pekin is the practical illustration of Mr. Wingrove Cooke’s Chinese letters to the “Times.” Sic vos non vobis is an old motto where public affairs are in question. The goal is reached, but nobody now thinks of the man who was the first to point out the way. Would that the satisfaction had come to us without alloy! The thought of our murdered countrymen who are now sleeping their last sleep in the Russian cemetery at Pekin is so bitter that it even poisons our feeling of relief at being at last delivered from the old Chinese incubus. There must be something terribly true about such an emotion as this when it thrills throughout a nation. The murder at Hango Sound did more to embitter our feelings towards the Russians than the deaths of all our countrymen who fell in the open field and in honourable fight. It is so with this wretched Chinese story. Years must pass away before we think with common patience of these cruel, half-barbarous men who took the lives of our poor countrymen in so wanton and so stupid a way, after the infliction of torture which one shudders but to think of. The names of Anderson and De Norman, of Bowlby and Brabazon, will remain for years to come watchwords of hostility and irritation between ourselves and the Chinese. Meanwhile, some reparation has been exacted. The poor victims have been buried with military honours. The Chinese or Tartars have been compelled to attend at the ceremony as mourners—and amongst them ceremonies are more considered than in Europe. An indemnity of 100,000l. has been exacted for the families of the murdered gentlemen. The Emperor’s palace has been sacked