This Taeping movement has never had at any time a national character. It has not been joined by any influential class. The Taepings have never organised any sort of government, and they have never held any ground but that on which their camps stood. Had they shown any disposition to gain the suffrages of the Chinese people, already dissatisfied with their mandarins, their chances of subverting the dynasty would have been great. They have not done so, and the consequence is, that the popular feeling is strongly against them. Hear, for instance, what thirty-two of the representative elders of the districts between Soochow and the Yang-tsze river say in a petition to our Minister, and then decide on which side our humanity should be enlisted:— “Living to the east of the river, we have the misfortune to be visited by the murderously ferocious rebels, who have burnt our dwellings, carried off our people, dishonoured our wives and daughters, robbed us, and murdered innumerable of us, till the land is covered with corpses, and the roads run with tears and blood. We ourselves have suffered so in our persons, and our families overwhelmed with bitterness, refugees from our homes, that there is no name for our misery; our lives can scarcely be called our own. It seems that not one of us will escape. In desperation, therefore, we piteously implore the Minister, that in his great goodness, surpassing all things, he will pity us, and speedily rescue us, and will despatch his energetic soldiers to sweep the abomination out of the land, that our death may be turned to life, our gratitude be unimaginable; and unless his goodness does rescue us, there will be no escape for us, and the people and property on the east of the river will be destroyed, and the land left a desert, without hope of recovery. We implore him, therefore, the more earnestly, that millions of the poor people are lying, leaning on each other, in this deep snow, in misery unspeakable, waiting for his will.”