THE WAR WITH CHINA.

THE current of popular opinion upon the subject of the war with China has appeared to run with so much impetuosity towards the false and prejudiced side of the question, that we have abandoned in despair all attempts to stem it. Party-feelings have co-operated with ignorance, and with a malicious desire to see the pride and arrogance of the Chinese humbled, in blinding the nation to the real merits of the case, and even the religious part of it, having persuaded themselves that the Indian Government has been a party to the opium traffic, has apparently suffered that consideration (which, if founded in truth, should rather increase our sympathy for the Chinese), and the belief that war will open an entrance for Christianity into the empire of China, to relax those efforts in the cause of justice and humanity, which we at one time hoped to see successful.

Never was a question so obscured by ignorance and prejudice as this has been. In estimating the character of the Chinese nation, their history, their institutions, presumption has supplied the place of sober and docile inquiry. Books have been written about China and the Chinese which, if they were not undertaken with the deliberate design of depreciating the character of both, have accidentally realized that object. A question which, if unconnected with the pecuniary interests of an influential party, and with that spirit of political rancour which infects every subject it mingles with, would have been settled upon those principles of justice and good faith, which constitute the "universal law of society," is, on the contrary, made a pretext for perpetrating a wrong that will leave, whatever be its political advantages, an indelible stain upon the moral character and national honour of Britain.

In the midst of that defection from the cause of truth and honesty, which has characterized the press of England upon the subject of the quarrel with China, it is most gratifying to us to find the view of this question, which we have advocated from the first, taken up by so powerful a champion as the Times paper, which, occasionally, treats of the subject with that precision of argument, and power of language, which it brings to the discussion of every political question, and which, had time permitted, might, by its influence upon public opinion, have interposed an obstacle to this shameful attack upon an almost unoffending state.

An article in the Times of November 6th contains some observations on this subject in which we fully concur :

We wish to direct our readers' attention to one of the many astounding modes of talk which are to be encountered about the world, with nothing but their own audacity, and the apparent interest of some two or three hundred of her Majesty's subjects, to back them, much to the astonishment of simplehearted men. No small number of people seem really to have persuaded themselves that for the interests of civilization, or of the East-India Company, or of the British empire, or for some other equally sufficient reason, we, a Christian nation, need consider ourselves under no obligations of justice or mercy towards any countries who are unhappy enough to be a long

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way off, to have no allies, no ambassadors, no art of war, no international law. Really, as to those Chinese," they say, "their impertinence ought to be put down;" and then, as to reasons, They ought to be thankful for having been let alone so long." "Why, one regiment of infantry might march from one end of the country to the other," and so on. This way of settling the matter inakes such slight pretence to honesty, or excuse for dishonesty, that it may be left to its own intrinsic merits, being simply a way of saying, "We want tea and territory, and will have them." But some people are philosophical and candid on the subject. They would not meddle with China-not they; but that the Chinese have infringed the recognized law of all civilized nations. And if you ask them how the Chinese were to know any thing about, or how they are bound to obey, this recognized law,— "As to that," they say, "if a nation will hold itself aloof from the rest of the world-the great society of humanity-the family of nations "—that very united family" if they will not march with civilization, and learn to obey its rules, they must be content to be considered as outlaws; and if in their intercourse with others they are ignorant enough to break our laws, they must not complain if we break theirs, and explain the existing state of political science to them by cannon-balls and musketry; in fact, that an enlightened people like the English will be wanting to themselves if they let slip such an occasion of teaching 150,000,000 of savages their duty, and settling the tea-trade on a satisfactory basis."

This is precisely the jargon, for we cannot term it reasoning, which we hear from nine-tenths of the persons who fancy themselves fully competent to deliver an opinion upon this question.

Now, it is clear enough that nothing is easier than to lead on any government or people to break laws of which they are utterly ignorant; and, therefore, if this reasoning is true, that it is in our power to pick a quarrel with the Chinese just when we please, and to persevere in it just as long as we think expedient; and that then, after having revolutionized some provinces, ravaged others, killed some few thousands of the Chinese, and appropriated two or three fortresses to facilitate future interference, we may proceed to congratulate ourselves on our magnanimity, because all along we could have made out a capital case before the Judge of an Admiralty Court; and all this on the plea that, "if they were not so abominably unsociable, they would have known better."

Now, let us just look at the case to which this mode of reasoning is applied. English traders cross to India, set up factories, encroach, put the native princes in a passion, quarrel with them (perhaps with reason), settle the quarrel with a strong hand, and then, after every success, "take such measures as are necessary for putting their own interests into a state of security for the future,”-in plain English, subjugate the country, then find out by degrees that the English possessions in India are an empire, and must in the nature of things, and from mere self-preservation, be progressive, and accordingly progress as far as Ghuznee and Arracan. This may be all very right; self-preservation is a very urgent motive; native princes are very capricious, faithless, and cruel; the East-India Company is, and always was, the Honourable East-India Company. But then they cross to China; here, again, they profess a desire for factories, a few privileges, and a recognized existence; but the Emperor of China does not want either to quarrel or to barter, or to enter into any relations with them; he does not like such strong people on

his premises, particularly when progression is the law of their existence; he does not wish to put himself or his successor in a position where they will lose their empire the first time they do, or the East-India Company says they do, put themselves in the wrong.

Now, considering the particular capacity in which all the next-door neighbours of the Chinese, who have allowed European civilization and traffic "to march" among them, the nabobs of Oude, the Great Moguls, the sultans of the Mysore country, have been admitted into the great "family of nations," it does seem to require a very unusual kind of front to maintain that the Chinese are to forfeit the ordinary rights of nations because they are a little shy of this family-because they hesitate to relax, in favour of this very imperious and encroaching" civilization," usages under which for centuries they have enjoyed as much peace and temporal prosperity as they care about having, and a good deal more than they are likely to have for some generations after civilization and the East-India Company have fairly begun to extend their empire among them. Their common sense, and our common sense, and plain experience, tell them that their only chance of preserving their being as a nation is to keep clear of us. And this precaution of theirs, forced on them by our own grasping thirst of empire, or at least the ignorance of our law, which is its consequence, we dare to treat as a crime, and punish accordingly. With our law China has nothing to do. The European law of nations is binding on us, because founded on certain known relations and usages between certain given nations. Those who sin against it know, or might know, that they do so. The countries to which they belong, and from which they are content to receive protection, and sustenance, and all the blessings of civilized life, have tacitly, at the least, sanctioned it; and they themselves, probably, owe to it no small portion of what security and prosperity they enjoy. China owes it nothing, has never acknowledged it, does not know, and, so long as it keeps to itself, within its own undisputed territory, cannot be called upon to know, what it is. If she had invited our commerce, perhaps we might set up a shadow of a claim that our intercourses should be carried on on something like our own terms. If she had intruded herself even on the sea, we might with some reason claim of her that she should accept the laws by which those merchants of Europe who have half-appropriated it are governed. But neither of these is pretended. If the Chinese governor guaranteed any privilege to our merchants, we might enforce the execution of his pledges. Or, again, if Englishmen had been cast by inevitable necessity on her shores, shipwrecked or marooned there, we might claim for our countrymen such security and liberty as man owes to man, and as governments are bound to secure to him, if necessary, by arms. Or, if we came into contact with the Chinese at the court of a foreign potentate, we should at any rate meet on equal terms, and should be at liberty to insist on the rights of equality. Under each of these circumstances, we should be able and bound to enforce the broad rules of justice and right. Not even this is the case. China does not seek us, does not meet us beyond its own shores. We are not cast upon China. She keeps within her own borders; we pursue her there; she closes her doors; we sue for admission; she grants it partially and cautiously, subjecting us to vexatious obstacles, and reminding us again and again that we come as merchants, and that if we come at all, we must come subject to China law. With these conditions in our ears, and before our eyes, we do come. Can we pretend, in the face of all this, to the remotest right to bring with us our notions about the sacredness of ambassadors, the dignity of the national flag, and the rights of

freeborn Englishmen? We have given these up, have sold them (at least the Chinese traders have) for money (or at least for tea), when we set foot on Chinese ground. And then for our merchants to turn round and claim all these rights, which, unless some dishonest quibble is to be hunted out, they have renounced for a consideration, or for their Government to come forward and interfere as an unshackled party, and for the merchants to accept such interference, when its exclusion was explicity stipulated by one party, and tacitly, at least, accepted by the other, is mere double-dealing or thimble-rig. Our merchants have subjected themselves to Chinese law, and if consequences are to be taken by anybody, it must be by them, not by the Chinese. The fact is, that these overbearing pretences, by which we would summarily justify our interference, really mean one of two things-either that civilized nations are so far higher in the scale of being than their uninstructed fellow-creatures, that they are privileged to make these latter mere instruments for the production of tea and crockery, and to cannonade them if they begin to slacken in their work; or else that we enterprising Englishmen, residing in latitude 50 deg., longitude 0 deg., under a free government some centuries old, are so entirely capable of consulting for the good of an inert people, quietly making the best of a despotism of immemorial standing in latitude 20 deg. and east longitude 110 deg., that we are justified in enforcing our views upon these poor helpless wax-dolls, by mowing them down with grapeshot. Which is it that men mean? Is it our own profit, or that of the poor Chinese, that justifies us in bringing down upon them our tremendous powers of killing? Is it the absurdity in supposing that these unfortunate creatures can possibly have the right to deprive free and independent Englishmen of the power of importing their own bohea, or in fancying that there is any subject on the face of the earth, even in the extreme east of Asia, which English politicians are not privileged to meddle in?

Whichever it is, it ought to be exposed and hooted down at once. The one plea is undisguised selfishness; the other is neither more nor less than a new shape of the old doctrine of the worst sort of Roman Catholics-Nulla fides cum hæreticis; the extinct system of wholesale persecution hunted up again, not in the name of religion, but of civilization.

These sentiments, of unquestionable soundness, ought to make us, as a Christian people, reflect with compunction upon the sacrifice of life which our rulers have authorized, to gratify either the sordid appetite of illegal traders, or the hardly less culpable jealousy towards a people who, from policy or inclination, shun our dangerous connexion.

Nothing now remains but to hope that the duties of war, prescribed by the law of nations, will be better regarded by us towards the Chinese than those of peace. "The general law of nations," says the President Montesquieu," is founded upon this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war, as little harm as possible, without prejudice to their own real interests."

* Esprit des Loix, b. 1, c. 7.

Asiat.Journ.N.S.VOL.33.No.132.

2 H

LEGENDARY HISTORY OF PRITHWIRAJA,

THE LAST HINDU EMPEROR OF DELHI.

BY THE LATE LIEUTENANT-COLONEL TOD.

THE hero of the martial epic* of Chund, the Rajpoot Ossian, is called Prithi Raj, 'king of the earth.' He was of the tribe Chohán‡, descended from one of the four conspicuous martial Rajpoots of the Agnicúla§ race, being supposed to have emanated from the element fire.

The allegorical description given by the bard, "from ancient books," of the creation of the Agnicúlas, and of the causes which rendered this necessary, is full of historical matter relative to the religion and races of ancient India. Couched in mysterious and symbolic language, we have what appears to be a representation of the struggles between the grand sects of Hinduism, the followers of Iswara and Buddha, the polytheists and theists of Indo-Scythia, together with the tenets of Crishna, which, though originally closely allied to the theistical, finally merged in polytheism.

It would be out of place to attempt any interpretation of this ancient allegory in this sketch of the history of the Chohán monarch, further than to justify the assertion, that these races brought from India extra Imaus, the religious opinions and martial mythology which pervade these poems, admitting a comparison on these important points, as well as in the general spirit of its poesy, with that of the early tribes of uncivilized Europe, the bards of Gaul, of Cimbria, and Scandinavia.

A period is just perceptible, through a long vista of ages, when the religions of Iswara and Buddha differed little from each other; when both adored a single divinity; and as the Buddhists still adhere to this ancient doctrine, on this score alone we may claim for them equal antiquity: in proof of this title, let us compare the names and symbols of the great object of worship of each. The Buddhists call their chief divinity Ad- náť'h and Ad-Iswara; the followers of Mahadéva, Ad-Iswara, or Ad-ham: both have the same signification, 'the First Lord.' The symbol of each is the Bull; hence Mahadéva is called Vrish-pati and Nand-Iswara, as Buddha is termed Vrishub-déva and Vrishubnat'h; all having the same import, Lord of the Bull.'

It was about one thousand years before Christ that the Great War desolated India, a conflict which was evidently religious as well as political, for supremacy between the houses of Hastinapoor and Indraprest'ha. Although the rival families were of one stock, it is evident that, whatever were the tenets of the first, the latter had held those of Buddha till they accepted the modified system of Heri, "who was Buddha." Both houses were of the lunar race, and traced their origin to the first Buddha, who espoused Ella (Earth personified), daughter of the “ son of the sun," or the sun-born, Swám-bhúva ("lord of the earth'), a Manu, supposed to be the great post-diluvian patriarch; so that Buddha has equal claims to antiquity with Manu, son of Surya, or the sun.

Now Buddha (Mercury) being the son of the moon,|| his descendants are styled Som-vansa, Chandra-vansa, and Indu-vansa ;¶ and from the latter term we have the appellation of the Indu or Hindu race, and the country India; while the descendants of the solar line were styled Surya-vansa, 'children

*The Prat'hiráj-Chóhán-rása, written mostly in the Bhatti dialect. + Prithwirája, in the Sanscrit.

§ Agni, 'fire' and cûla, 'race.' Som-Chandra, or Ind.

Cháhamana, in the Sanscrit.

Vansa, a race.'