THE POLICY OF AGGRANDIZEMENT. 



553 



pire is unfortified, and their unheeded cries for 

 further expenditure in defenses. 1 It avows that 

 its main objects of interest are not external but 

 internal, and that it is less solicitous about remote 

 acquisitions, and those posts in Asia the names 

 of which are dear and familiar to the pundits of 

 Russophobia, than about the many millions of 

 Englishmen who at present share only to a very 

 miserable extent the advantages, moral, intellect- 

 ual, or material, of English civilization. It does 

 not admit that this is "parochialism," unless 

 England is a parish. It desires, at all events, to 

 see the proof that aggrandizement is good for the 

 whole English people. As to the question of 

 courage or cowardice, which is sometimes raised 

 in the fervor of debate, statesmen and journalists, 

 however bellicose, do not go to the front ; and 

 the only way in which they can show courage of 

 any kind is by manfully expressing what seem to 

 them true opinions, though they may happen to 

 be unpopular at the time. 



To make a perfectly clean breast, we will con- 

 fess that there are some people who believe that 

 the consecration of filibustering nationality is 

 rather out of date; that the day of humanity has 

 dawned, and that to resent its arrival is about as 

 rational as to resent the arrival of autumn or 

 anything else that the course of Nature brings. 



It is the more desirable that at this crisis, on 

 which the policy of the future may depend, there 

 should be a full discussion of the subject in the 

 press (which is now, more truly than Parliament, 

 the great council of the nation), and that the mind 

 of England should be deliberately made up, be- 

 cause otherwise her hand may be forced by agen- 

 cies which the respectable advocates of aggran- 

 dizement would disown, though they can hardly 

 help warming them into life by encouraging the 

 general tendency and decrying the principles 

 which restrain it. For a description of these 

 agencies we will once more have recourse to Lord 

 Elgin, who encountered them in China, where 

 they have more than once been successful in 

 drawing England into a use of her power which, 

 it is to be hoped, no party among us would have 

 deliberately approved : 



" I never felt so ashamed of myself in my life, 

 and Elliot remarked that the trip seemed to have 

 made me sad. There we were, accumulating the 

 means of destruction under the very eyes, and 

 within the reach, of a population of about 1,000,000 



1 The Canadian Government was asked the other day, 

 by an eminent organ of aggrandizement, to quadruple its 

 military expenditure, and this in the face of a falling rev- 

 enue. You might literally as well ask the Canadian Gov- 

 ernment for their heads. 



people, against whom these means of destruction 

 were to be employed ! ' Yes,' I said to Elliot, ' I 

 am sad, because when I look at that town, I feel 

 that I am earning for myself a place in the Litany 

 immediately after " plague, pestilence, and fam- 

 ine." I believe, however, that, as far as I am 

 concerned, it was impossible for me to do other- 

 wise than as I have done. I could not have aban- 

 doned the demand to enter the city after what 

 happened last winter, without compromising our 

 position in China altogether, and opening the way 

 to calamities even greater than those now before 

 us. I made my demands on Yeh as moderate as 1 

 could, so as to give him a chance of accepting ; al- 

 though, if he had accepted, I knew that I should 

 have brought on. my head the imprecations both 

 of the navy and army and of the civilians, the time 

 being given by the missionaries and the women. 

 And now Yeh having refused, I shall do whatever 

 I can .possibly do to secure the adoption of plana 

 of attack, etc., which will had to the least de- 

 struction of life and property.' . . . The weath- 

 er is charming ; the thermometer about 60° in 

 the shade in the morning ; the sun powerful, 

 and the atmosphere beautifully clear. "When we 

 steamed up to Canton, and saw the rich alluvial 

 banks covered with the luxuriant evidences of un- 

 rivaled industry and natural fertility combined ; 

 beyond them, barren uplands, sprinkled with a 

 soil of reddish tint, which gave them the appear- 

 ance of heather slopes in the Highlands ; and be- 

 yond these again, the white-cloud mountain -range, 

 standing out bold and blue in the clear sunshine, 

 I thought bitterly of those who, for the most selfish 

 objects, are trampling under foot this ancient civil- 

 ization." — ("Letters and Journals," page 212.) 



" I am now off from Canton, never, I hope, to 

 see it again. Two months I have been there, en- 

 gaged in this painful service, checking, as I have 

 been best able to do, the disposition to maltreat 

 this unfortunate people. . . . On the whole I think 

 I have been successful. There never was a Chinese 

 town which suffered so little by the occupation of 

 a hostile force ; and, considering the difficulties 

 which our alliance with the French (though I have 

 had all support from Gros, in so far as he can give 

 it) has occasioned, it is a very signal success. The 

 good people at Hong-Kong, etc., do not know 

 whether to be incredulous or disgusted at this pol- 

 icy " (page 224). 



" The settlement here is against treaty. It 

 consists mainly of agents of the two great opium 

 houses, Dent and Jardine, with their hangers-on. 

 This, with a considerable business in the coolie 

 trade — which consists in kidnapping wretched 

 coolies, putting them on board ships where all the 

 hoiTors of the slave-trade are reproduced, and 

 sending them on specious promises to such places 

 as Cuba — is the chief business of the 'foreign' 

 merchants at Swatow " (pace 226). 



"Besides, I own that I have a conscientious 



