1829.] Affairs in General. 645. 
«A great sensation has been excited at Macao by the discovery of a 
conspiracy, which is said to have for its object no less than overturning 
the present dynasty of China. If the accounts which have been received 
may be relied upon, this plot is most extensively organised, and spreads 
by a sort of freemasonry over the whole empire. The spot pitched. upon 
by the conspirators for their deliberations, was the English burying- 
ground.” 
About rebellions we care but little. They are military matters, to . 
which we can never reconcile our understanding. We hate bulletins, 
gazettes extraordinary, despatches from the commander-in-chief, and 
the whole tissue of official lying. Conflicts of horse and foot, pike-men, 
and pistol-men, are to us common-place. Besides, they are utterly 
unproductive to every body, except to the general who grasps the plunder 
of the dead, or to the dentist, who has a contract for teeth to be supplied 
without fail for the next court day. The true subverter is conspiracy. 
There have been a hundred Chinese rebellions, and the only result -was, 
that Changhi being charged by the invincible guards of the cousin-ger- 
man of the Sun and Moon, loses, in the bulletin language, half a million 
of men, is taken prisoner, and with his whole family is cut into a hun- 
dred thousand pieces by the mercy of his lord the Emperor, who might 
ave ordered him to be boiled alive. 
_ But conspiracy is of another calibre; it digs and undermines, and 
ntroduces its combustibles, unseen by the “ all-seeing eyes” of Chinese 
sovereignty. The train is fired just in the moment when the Emperor of 
Emperors is drinking his rice milk, and ordering a new execution. 
He is blown up in the midst of porcelain and Mandarins; the crash 
resounds to the extremities of the empire ; and the Tartars ride down from 
Bokhara, and dismember the provinces north of the wall. The India 
company send in fifty thousand men from Nepaul, simply to prevent 
the overflow of the disturbers into their own territory ; and finally find 
themselves under the painful necessity of seizing on a few provinces. 
The Japanese strengthen their frontier by a similar act of necessity. 
The “ merchants trading to Canton” discover that some little settlement 
is absolutely essential to their security, in a time of general trouble to the 
monarch and his allies, land a few hundred seamen and marines, seize 
upon Canton and the district for fifty miles round, build a fortress, and 
having fairly imbedded themselves in the soil, turn the guns against all 
change. The Chinese captains carve little kingdoms and republics out 
of the great monster’s territorial carcase, and the affair is finished in the 
handsomest style of European partition. To all this we have no objec- 
tion. We can have no reluctance in seeing the bastile of a hundred and 
fifty millions of human beings broken down, even if it were by bullet 
and brand. The Chinese are to this hour prisoners, and the sooner they 
are let out of their dungeon the better for them and for mankind. 
The lofty anticipations of national prosperity that were to cheer us for 
the downfall of the constitution, have not yet been realized. The Irish 
peasantry cut each other’s throats and burn each other’s cabins with the 
_ same average zeal as when the O’Connells and O’Gormans were “ bonds- 
men, groaning in chains, and lifting up their almost stifled voices for the 
freedom of their beloved and undone Emerald Isle ;” the priesthood are 
not much better patriots, if they are much more insolent subjects ;. and. 
the forty-shilling freeholders will probably have to thank their emanci- 
