Part 19 (1/2)
Painted in 1859.]
[Sidenote: The Lorcha ”Arrow.”]
[Sidenote: War with China.]
A dispute had arisen out of circ.u.mstances even more trivial than the question of custody of the Holy Places, which led to the Crimean war.
A vessel termed a ”lorcha,” lying in the Canton river in October 1856, was boarded by Chinese officials, who took away twelve men accused of piracy, although the lorcha _Arrow_ was flying the British flag. The British Consul at Canton demanded the release of these men, according to the treaty of 1843; but the Chinese Governor Yeh declared that the _Arrow_ was not a British vessel but a Chinese pirate, and refused to comply with the Consul's demand. It was proved, however, that the _Arrow_ had been duly registered as a British vessel, though her registration had actually expired ten days before the arrest of the men.
Mr. Parkes, the British Consul, appealed to Sir John Bowring, British Minister at Hongkong. Bowring was determined to stand no nonsense from the Chinaman: nor was he going to trouble himself whether the _Arrow_ was ent.i.tled to fly the British ensign or not! As a matter of fact, he wrote to Parkes that the expiry of the registration had deprived her owners of the right, but that as the Chinese did not know that, they must be held responsible for insulting the flag. Anyhow, it was enough for Bowring that Chinese officials had dared to take men by force from under that flag, whether it had been hoisted rightfully or wrongfully.
He sent an ultimatum to Yeh, demanding the release of the men and an ample apology within forty-eight hours, or he would begin hostilities.
Yeh released the men, and promised that greater caution should be observed in future, but he refused to apologise, maintaining that the _Arrow_ was in fact a Chinese vessel. Incredible as it may seem that such powers should be vested in a British Minister, and still more so, that he should employ them in such a miserable quarrel, nevertheless Bowring ordered up the fleet and Canton was severely bombarded for several days. Yeh made the tactical blunder of offering a reward for the heads of Englishmen. He got no heads, but he forfeited the respect which England always pays to an honourable foe.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Thiele, Chancery Lane._
INTERIOR OF THE GUN-COTTON FACTORY AT WALTHAM ABBEY.
The picture represents the Pulping and Moulding Room. Gun-cotton consists of cotton-waste subjected to the action of nitric acid, washed, boiled, chopped into pulp, and pressed into blocks.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Eyre & Spottiswoode._
BARREL-ROOM AT THE SMALL ARMS FACTORY, ENFIELD.]
[Sidenote: Defeat of the Government, and Dissolution.]
[Sidenote: Palmerston returns to Office.]
There was considerable sensation when the news came to England. Lord Derby moved a vote of censure in the Lords, and the only answer the Lord Chancellor could make to the enquiry whether, supposing a Chinese owner of a Chinese vessel bought a British ensign, that made her a British vessel, was that the Chinese had no right to a.s.sume that the flag was hoisted illegally. The House of Lords supported the Government, but it went worse with them in the Commons. On the motion of Mr. Cobden, Ministers were defeated by a majority of sixteen. Mr. Disraeli had dared the Government to go to the country on the question. ”I should like,” he had said, in the measured, biting accents of his later manner, ”to see the proud leaders of the Liberal party--no reform, new taxes, Canton blazing, Pekin invaded!” Palmerston took up the gauntlet; he appealed to the country, and he put his policy--thorough ”Jingo,” as it would be termed nowadays--before the const.i.tuencies in such sort that he was returned to power stronger than before. Never was a Minister more thoroughly justified in settling his plans for a long spell of office.
But Palmerston himself is said to have observed once that ”the life of a Ministry was never worth three months' purchase,” of which the fate of his own second Administration was a striking ill.u.s.tration. It lasted just long enough to enable him to announce to the House of Commons in February 1858 that Canton had fallen before a combined English and French force; for the French in the interval had managed to pick a quarrel with the Chinese. A treaty was concluded securing access to the interior of China for Englishmen and Frenchmen, establis.h.i.+ng diplomatic relations between England and France and the Court of China, and securing the toleration of Christianity.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Thiele, Chancery Lane._
WINDING CORDITE IN THE GOVERNMENT FACTORY.
Cordite is composed of gun-cotton and nitro-glycerine. In the form of greasy cord it is wound on reels, and afterwards cut into lengths.]
On June 25, 1857, the Queen issued Letters Patent conferring on Prince Albert the t.i.tle of Prince Consort, a name which had been popularly applied to him for many years in England, and by which he was known henceforward to the world. The change may seem an unimportant one, but it created some unreasonable dissatisfaction at the time, and the Press of the country betrayed no enthusiasm in its favour.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Photograph_} {_by Eyre & Spottiswoode._
MACHINE-GUN SHOP AT THE SMALL ARMS FACTORY, ENFIELD.]
[Sidenote: Startling News from India.]
The transit of news had been greatly accelerated over large tracts of the globe by the use of electricity, but it still took many weeks to convey intelligence between Great Britain and her Empire in India.
Little did the people who a.s.sembled in London on June 23, 1857, to celebrate the centenary of the Battle of Pla.s.sey, by which Bengal was added to the British Dominions, imagine that at that very moment Bengal was the scene of a conflict as mighty in scope as it was horrifying in detail. The story burst upon England with the suddenness of a tornado.
The Sepoy army had risen in revolt, murdered their officers, proclaimed the King of Delhi Emperor of India, and the whole peninsula was in rebellion. There had been awful ma.s.sacres too; English men, women, and children had been slaughtered in hundreds; most hideous of all there were circ.u.mstantial stories of outrage, followed by torture, committed upon our women. A terrible moan for vengeance rose throughout the land.
There were few families who had not relations, or at least friends and acquaintances, among the British communities in India; the suddenness of the news was not the most appalling part of it; it was the ghastly details of the story that so deeply moved the nation. Black and b.l.o.o.d.y as the reality afterwards proved to be, the mutineers were not shown to have been guilty of the worst horrors imputed to them in the early days of the rising. Englishwomen perished as women perished in the worst of mediaeval ma.s.sacres, but they were not subjected to outrage or torture, as was circ.u.mstantially affirmed and universally believed at first.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photographed from examples_} {_in the Tower Armouries._
THE FIRE-ARMS OF THE EARLY YEARS OF HER MAJESTY'S REIGN.
1. ”Brown Bess” (smooth-bore flint-lock).