Author: Anonymous

Publisher: Rarebooksclub.com

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9781230052885

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... or built vessels that were capable of making long voyages into distant seas, nor did her most daring captains ever venture to launch out upon the great, wide ocean and attempt to weather the Cape of Good Hope. By Lieut.-Col. G. J. Wolseley, 1861. In a dull narrative of our last war with China, I read as follows: "With the material at her disposal, China, if under a strong and enlightened government, is capable of being made the greatest naval power in the world. What if, in some future time, a Peter the Great should arise in China? Such an event might change the whole face of the inhabited globe, and the coasts of Europe experience the miseries of barbarian inroads, to which those of the Goths and Vandals by land were but as child's play." Since that was written a whole generation has come and gone, yet China has shown but little signs of renewed life or of capacity for good government. The great rebellion, to which allusion has already been made, then threatened to overturn her ruling dynasty, had already destroyed some of her most fertile provinces, and had left manj-of her greatest cities in ruins. Chiefly by the help of a brilliant English soldier--the late memorable Gen. Charles Gordon--that abominable uprising of the worst and most ignorant classes, was at last finally suppressed. This was followed by a spluttering attempt made towards reform, but it soon fizzled out under the mulish conservatism of the educated, or, as they would be called elsewhere, the ruling classes. Many thousand stands of arms were purchased for the land forces, and great breech-loading guns were brought from Europe, to be mounted at several important points along China's immense sea-board. But no important reforms were effected in their absurd...