Directly the ‘Pekin Gazette’ officially recognised the rebellion, the European residents, instead of sympathising with the Government and the well-disposed Chinese, at once testified their interest in the movement, and openly avowed a hope that by the swords of these rebels China would be reformed and converted. Each one had his reason for adopting what at first sight seemed so unfair a course. The European official was sick of mandarin arrogance; the missionary was wearied with the slowness of his progress in dealing with the stolid self-sufficiency of the Chinese character, and in trying to establish breaches in the obstinacy of his belief in Confucius and Mencius; the trader longed for extended commerce or larger profits; and our smugglers were at war, as well as the Kwang-si rebels or Canton pirates, with all law and order. The Taepings were speciously represented as men battling for religious and political freedom; and a Swedish missionary, Mr Hamberg, claimed for our reputed converts the credit of having organised and guided the rebellion. Himself deceived by the cunning of the Asiatic, he put forth a strange fable, called the ‘Revelations of Hung-siu-tsien,’ and was thus mainly instrumental in enlisting on behalf of an organised system of land-piracy the religious sympathy of this country. Hordes of armed robbers, ravaging the interior of a distant country, because they said they believed in Heaven, were forthwith pronounced Christians, engaged in war upon heathenism. And, forgetting the first principle of our faith, that it is not to be propagated by the sword, we shut our ears and hearts against the wail of perishing multitudes, and dreamed that the light of the Gospel had dawned on Cathay. Years have elapsed since our credulity was thus imposed on, and from the experience gathered we are now able, we think, to tear the veil from the monstrous imposition. The rebellion in Kwang-si first obtained political importance when it secured the adhesion of a few literary expectants for office, who had been rejected at the competitive examinations in Canton. By those examinations, every man in China may hope to reach the highest posts in the empire. The necessities of the Court of Pekin during the reign of the last three inefficient monarchs had compelled it to dispose of certain appointments by purchase. Every disappointed candidate at the provincial examinations traced his failure to this abuse, and a formidable body of ambitious, half-educated enemies to the State was thus formed. This was exactly the class needed by the hard-fighting brigands of Kwang-si and pirates of Kwang-tung to bind them together under a common banner, and they were not long in finding their way to a theatre where they might play at being kings, ministers, and generals to their hearts’ content.