committing acts of piracy, and as this was one of the causes of
disturbance on that southern coast for centuries past, the viceroy
decided to rid the country of this pest. Nine days after the time for
which the boat had been registered, but while it continued unlawfully
to float the British colours, the viceroy seized the boat, imprisoned
all her crew, and dragged down the British flag. This was an insult
which Great Britain could not or would not brook and so the viceroy was
ordered to release the prisoners, all of whom were Chinese subjects, on
penalty of being blown up in his own yamen if he refused.

Frightened at the threat, and remembering the result of the former war,
the viceroy sent the prisoners to the consulate in chains without
proper apologies for his insult to the flag. This angered the consul
and he returned them to the viceroy, who promptly cut off their heads
without so much as the semblance of a trial, and Britain, anxious, as
she was, to have every door of the Chinese empire opened to foreign
trade, found in this another pretext for war. We do not pretend to
argue that this was not the best thing for China and for the world, but
it can only be considered so from the bitter medicine, and corporal
punishment point of view, neither of which are agreeable to either the
patient or the pupil.

Britain went to war. The viceroy was taken a prisoner to India, whence
he never returned. As though ashamed to enter upon a second unprovoked
and unjust war alone, she invited France, Russia, and America to join
her. France was quite ready to do so in the hope of strengthening her
position in Indo-China, and with nothing more than the murder of a
missionary in Kuangsi as a pretext she put a body of troops in the
field large enough to enable her to checkmate England, or humiliate
China as the exigencies of the occasion, and her own interests, might
demand. America and Russia having no cause for war, no wrongs to
redress, and no desire for territory, refused to join her in sending
troops, but gave her such sympathy and support as would enable her to
bring about a more satisfactory arrangement of China's foreign
relations--that is more satisfactory to themselves regardless of the
wishes, though not perhaps the interests, of China.

We know how the British and French marched upon Peking in 1860; how the
summer palace was left a heap of ruins as a punishment for the murder
of a company of men under a flag of truce; and