We do not care to pass any opinion upon the iniquity or otherwise of the opium trade. It may have been a political and commercial necessity; but we should be false to history if we failed to trace much of the evil under which China is now suffering to that melancholy source. Owing to the enormous profits made upon the drug as a contraband article, the native traders formed themselves into powerful guilds, with ramifications at Hong-Kong, Macao, and Canton, which actually guaranteed the success of smuggling ventures—a smuggling assurance company, so to speak, against the lawful tax-gatherers of China; and the writer has heard the officers and crew of more than one English opium-clipper boast of having protected these ruffians, and beaten off the Government boats. This defiance of the native authorities extended itself to the interior. Bands of armed men were led by opium-brokers through the provinces, fighting their way with smuggled goods. To this fact we have the testimony of the Roman Catholic missionaries; and indeed Monsieur Chauveau, the head of the Catholic mission in Yunnan, insists—and we believe him—that the Taeping rebellion was inaugurated by a large band of six hundred opium-smugglers forcing their way from Yunnan to Canton, and compelling some influential personages in Kwang-si to assist them. After the smugglers had retired, the authorities naturally called the gentry to account. The mob took part with their neighbours; a secret society gave its aid; sedition spread, and, like a ball of snow, gathered weight as it rolled through a turbulent province. Hither hastened, as official reports state, the soldiery and braves that had been disbanded after the first war with us; hither went the disaffected of all classes, the ruined opium-smokers and _roués_ of Canton; in short, the rowdies of a population equal to that of the French empire in extent soon collected at the base of the Kwang-si mountain-ranges, and devastated the best part of that province. In the year 1850, these troubles assumed the distinct phase of rebellion. After shirking the difficulty for as long a time as possible, the ‘Pekin Gazette’ began to publish reports of the state of Kwang-si. It told how vast districts had been swept over by banditti, how the entire eastern circuit of the province “had been atrociously dealt with by bands, who carried banners inscribed with the information, ‘We are dealing justice on behalf of Heaven.’” These justice-dispensing robbers “fired the villages wherever they came, violated the women, murdered the well-disposed, and took care to carry off all guns, horses, and arms.”