The Chinese affair is the most serious, and one can see no solution of it that is not full of objections and embarrassments.[1] In the first place it looks at present very much as if our case was a bad one. We had no business to go with an armament and force our way up the river, and even if we were upon any ground justified in such an extreme measure, it was to the last degree impolitic and unwise to exercise such a right. The object for which Bruce was sent to China was to conclude a peace, and to establish amicable relations with the Chinese Government, and it might have occurred to him that the employment of force, even if it was ever so successful, must infallibly defeat his object. It required no great sagacity to perceive that the arrival at Pekin of a victorious Ambassador, who had forced his way to the capital at the head of an imposing force, would not serve to make his reception a friendly one, or to establish permanent harmonious relations between the English and the Chinese Governments. As long as there was a possibility of procuring access to Pekin by peaceful means and by negotiation, it would have been better to be patient and to wait any time than to employ force; and besides the political objections that seem conclusive against the adoption of such a course, it seems highly probable that no such force as that which we employed on this occasion could have been pushed on into the heart of the country without imminent danger of its being cut off and eventually destroyed. The mere fact of destroying again the Peiho forts would be deemed by the Chinese as the renewal of the war, and the perpetrator of the outrage would not have been received in the sacred character of an Ambassador, but would have been looked on as an invader, and treated accordingly. This is the first view of the question which presents itself. Then comes that of vindicating our honour, and retrieving the disaster we have suffered, which involves the necessity of rushing into war again and scattering havoc and desolation through the country, massacring thousands of people who can make no effectual resistance to our power, and making territorial conquests, which will only embarrass us, and which we shall have more difficulty in getting rid of than we shall have in making their acquisition. In short, we are going to be engaged in a contest in which failure will be disgraceful, and success will be inconvenient, and to place additional obstacles in the way of that good understanding which it is so much our interest to establish with China. Nor are our difficulties diminished by the fact of being connected with, and therefore more or less dependent on the French, and in a less degree with the Russians and the Americans in this unfortunate contest. This local and accidental alliance impairs our freedom of action, and of necessity introduces delays and complications of all sorts into the affair.