Chapter 25
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 025
Chapter Title: Buster Call
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To all who invested in Leigh & Gladstone Company.
Our Far East trade expedition has ended in resounding success. The profits reaped from this voyage are as follows.
...
Next, allow me to brief you on the current general situation in the Far East.
The Joseon Kingdom is an agricultural nation of twenty million souls, fully self-sufficient in meeting all its domestic needs. It trades with only two countries: China and Japan.
Joseon sells its ginseng to China for enormous profits. Chinese botanists and physicians hold that Joseon ginseng is uniquely effective against all manner of diseases, as a tonic, and especially for opium addiction—they consider American ginseng vastly inferior. The Joseon Kingdom sells ginseng to China and uses the proceeds to purchase Chinese luxury goods. As for Japan...
...
At present, a profound tension hangs over China and its neighboring states, all thanks to us European powers.
China's ruling Tatar caste numbers fewer than a million, yet they dominate two hundred million Han Chinese and adjacent nations through sheer force of arms. Joseon once held the Tatars as a tributary state but fell in war and became a vassal in turn (much as if Ireland had sacked London, Paris, and Rome to proclaim its own empire). Ever since that defeat centuries ago, hawks calling for revenge have abounded.
Yet in the recent war with our British Empire, the Qing court disgraced itself utterly and failed to prove its might. Rebellions by Han Chinese militias now erupt across the mainland, some even led by Christian bands. In Joseon, a rising faction of young radicals clamors for war with China to reclaim independence, but the conservative nobles who control the government want none of it...
"Everyone, have you seen this?!"
A Whig MP roared like a lion, flapping a copy of Leigh & Gladstone Company's voyage report.
It had long since been printed up and scattered everywhere, its contents summarized in every newspaper worth the name. To be ignorant of it was tantamount to being a French spy. No—in fact, it had already been translated and spread abroad, so even French spies knew.
"The downfall of China's tyrannical, absolutist Tatar regime is at hand! No doubt the Christian militias desperately await aid from us European nations!"
"It's hardly confirmed intelligence."
"Joseon! Japan! Mongolia! Every nation in the Far East yearns for that regime's destruction! If not the British Empire—who above all love freedom and pursue justice—who will step forward to help them?!"
It absolutely wasn't because the China trade, even after forcing open ports through war, was running deficits.
It absolutely wasn't because Joseon trade was a golden goose.
There was something in Arthur Leigh's mysterious tales of the Far East that stirred the instincts of these Anglo-Saxons to their core.
[Threatened by French war]
[No army after 200 years of peace]
[Core logistics rely on river transport, high demand for ships]
A country without an army? Was the world tempting him right now?
"Grrr... I can't stand it!"
"A people who love peace so dearly— we must help them at once!"
"Does anyone not know the horrors France has wrought in Indochina? Now that poor little nation faces being torn asunder by France and the Tatars!"
The moment "France might invade" came up, some were already howling for intervention just to spite the French.
Gladstone watched the circus with an inner scream building.
These British MPs would wage war to sell opium, and now they'd erased "pretext" from their dictionaries entirely?
But he had a separate letter from Arthur.
The Koreans are diligent yet lazy. Studious yet pessimistic. They dream of the future but save not a penny.
The reason is simple: the aristocratic coalition regime here strips all political rights and taxes everyone equally outside the cabinet. They see no path to a better life through effort, so they've given up.
What these poor Koreans need is one thing alone: an external shock to loosen the noose of their absolutist tyranny.
Gladstone wasn't some pure evangelist preaching human rights and peace. Such folk couldn't survive politics.
He truly believed it was the duty of advanced Anglo-Saxons to save pitiful lesser nations—that this would let the homeland prosper further, and opium peddlers weren't noble enough to invoke such a pretext.
He couldn't believe these war-whooping money fiends were fulfilling that duty.
But...
If those distant folk, ignorant even of the Lord's will, truly needed it.
If he could help those eager to join history's progress yet blocked by reactionaries and conservatives.
The company's profits and prospects swayed his judgment not one whit.
The hesitation—that this venture, however foul its intent, might plant a mustard seed to lead Koreans to paradise—sealed his lips.
Unable to conclude, Gladstone stayed silent.
Instead, he slowly turned to bore into one man with his gaze.
Foreign Secretary Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston.
That instant.
Their eyes met—Palmerston had been staring already.
'A frightening man.'
He brazenly proclaimed international society knew no gods or justice, only national interest.
He'd wage war to dump opium.
For "national interest," he'd drag state and crown through the mud.
His "national interest" obsession had wrecked diplomacy across Europe.
Were Harrow graduates doomed to love destruction and revel in war?
Yet Gladstone held his tongue to the end.
As the man who'd penned that distant missive predicted, when Britain's conscience fell silent, only those convinced Asians needed the rod—and greedy devils craving coin—remained.
Palmerston, still stinging from Gladstone's spicy punch in the First Opium War ("immoral man" branded), watched his foe and finally spoke.
"Above all, our paramount concern is the national interest of the British Empire. Isn't that right?"
"Hear, hear!"
"That absolutist regime in China scorned us as barbarians, rejected every embassy, forced protectionism over free trade, and let corrupt scum demand bribes in every deal."
"We taught the Chinese what justice means, but sadly, one beating wasn't enough to set them straight."
Pirate-infested seas and rivers.
Greedy officials eyeing only their pockets.
Bandits and rebels everywhere.
A central government too barbaric to know its place even after a thrashing.
The House erupted with each point.
Palmerston.
The Whig titan.
Master of Parliament and the public alike.
"Judging by their customs and conduct, the day will come when they insult the Union Jack and trample our sacred rights. When it does, the British Empire must not hesitate for an instant to bestow true enlightenment on those savages!"
"Forgive me, Secretary, but I cannot agree."
A voice from the opposition just as he seized the mood.
Benjamin Disraeli—one of the ragged Conservatives' few firebrands.
"The Foreign Secretary urges us to smash China. Yet the very champion of free trade says nothing of whether, once that tyrannical regime collapses, we'll manage 'trade' at all, let alone free trade."
"..."
"Answer me! With bandits and pirates already swarming China's vast lands, if we topple the Qing entirely and strip their control, who will we buy tea from? If the mainland burns to ash, which Chinese farmer will grow the leaves for our morning brew?"
"We seek no Qing downfall. Our aim is merely to guide China toward freer trade and liberate the Far East's other nations suffering under their yoke."
No other hooks to grab, so Disraeli and the Tories pulled the "war cuts tea imports—who pays?" card. Their sole solid counter.
Debate dragged on, but Parliament's tilt was clear.
"So we let those Far East poor souls hand their homes to France?"
"Do your homework. Joseon is remarkable! No missionaries, no proper Bibles, yet they sought God's word first. Letting the Antichrist Pope's whispers fill such a land? No true Christian could stand it!"
All the bait wove together irresistibly.
Beat China again to fix trade balance.
Joseon and Japan will open without war—just threats.
Joseon wants the Gospel, but filthy Catholics got there first—send real Protestants quick.
And the crown jewel: "France eyes Joseon hungrily."
The masterstroke from a man who pierced 19th- and 21st-century West and East alike hit Britain's parliamentary needs without a millimeter's error.
The Prime Minister pledged envoys to demand opening from Joseon and Japan, improvements from the Qing. Palmerston began staffing.
Before that.
"This Arthur Leigh fellow."
"Yes, my lord."
"Hard to see why he'd tangle with a stiff prig like Gladstone. Why are those two linked?"
"Patron since boyhood, Eton classmates besides."
"If alumni ties made everyone buddies, we'd elect via old boys' club, not party. That's no reason."
Palmerston was certain he knew the soft brains of callow youths not yet twenty.
Craving wealth and success.
Clumsy efforts to cloak it in honor.
"Print the lad a fancy letterhead. He's the Far East's top expert anyway, no?"
"Others exist. And he's too young."
The Secretary scowled at his aides.
"If you were a twenty-year-old rookie, how'd you feel finding nothing but fossils at a feast you'd slaved over, then told to shove off?"
"I'd flip the table."
"So, seat him or exclude him?"
"We'll prepare a title for Arthur Leigh in the envoy delegation."
"Exactly."
Palmerston had skin thick enough to counter Gladstone's "opium war?" with "opium's less harmful than booze."
Thus, he eyed not rank or tenure, but Arthur's powder-keg spot.
Besides, some nations moved when Britain did.
"The British again!"
"Those filthy Brits reaching out once more!"
"The opium war starters?!"
Every Briton itched to thwart French schemes.
Conversely.
Every Frenchman lost it at the slightest British twitch: "Them again?!"
"Mister President, we must move our fleet now!"
"No, shouldn't we tie up Vietnam first?"
"Joseon massacred our missionaries mercilessly. If they slip under Britain's wing, we can't avenge our people's sacrifice!"
The French Assembly breezily ignored President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, passing a resolution vowing force as a last resort.
Parliament and Palmerston had foreseen this.
One thing escaped even them.
"Soon the world will fly nothing but British and French flags."
"For America's future, we must secure low-carbon Far East footholds. We can't let those Europeans cage us."
The U.S. President and Congress, spurred by Anglo-French moves, resolved.
"Open their ports, even if we must blast the Japanese with cannon."
The great powers' symbol of might.
The fleets of the powers turned prows toward the Far East.