Note 32 — Chapter XX

Mr. Roberts, an American Baptist missionary already referred to in this work, joined the Ti-pings at Nankin about the end of October, 1860. Of all missionaries in China he was the least qualified for such a position. Intolerant and bigoted to the Baptist dogmas, irritable, peevish, inconsistent, and vacillating—a man singularly illiterate, without stability of character or pleasantness of manner—his presence at Nankin did far more harm than good. His objections to every other Church, and to every other denomination of dissent except his own, went far to give the Ti-pings a dread of that diversity of doctrine among the British and Americans which they had always looked upon with surprise, thinking, as they did, that God could not be well served by those who were always quarrelling about it. The circumstances attending the advent and career of Mr. Roberts among the Ti-pings I have avoided as a worthless episode, but, as the facts of his indecorous flight from Nankin have been misrepresented, I think it necessary to notice the subject. Mr. Roberts accepted temporal rank under the Ti-pings, and by his unwise dogmatical obstinacy frequently provoked unpleasant discussion. During a dispute with the Kan-wang, who had entertained him since his arrival, that chief had particular occasion to chastise a boy of the household. Mr. Roberts was so blinded by passion, the idea that Europeans would never know the reverse of his statement, or some other reason, that, in a paroxysm of rage, he fled from the city, and sought refuge on board H.M. gunboat Renard, which happened to be lying in the port. By some obliquity of vision best known to himself, Mr. Roberts mistook the stick used by the Kan-wang for a sword, and declared that his boy had been brutally murdered. Not satisfied with this, although on the previous night he had retired to rest fully believing the surrounding people saints, the very next day, after his quarrel with the Kan-wang, he awoke to find them howling sinners. The many years that he had praised the Ti-pings as holy men were, by a moment of passion, forgotten, and within one day Mr. Roberts not only declared himself to have been deceived so long, but, for the act of one man, gave up the hundreds of thousands in the Ti-ping cause to fire and sword. We will just contrast the different statements of Mr. Roberts, one with the other, and then dismiss the subject.

This is an extract from the first, made on board the Renard:—

"Kan-wang, moved by his coolie elder brother—literally a coolie at Hong-kong—and the devil, without fear of God before his eyes, did on Monday, the 13th instant (January, 1862), come into the house in which I was living, and with malice aforethought murder one of my servants with a large sword in his own hand, in my presence, without a moment's warning or any just cause. And after having slain my poor, harmless, helpless boy, he jumped on his head most fiend-like, and stamped it with his foot."

Now, at Canton, on the 3rd of April, 1862, when it was generally known that the above charge of murder was incorrect, Mr. Roberts retracted these words [Blue Book, 1862, p. 5], having reference to the Kan-wang's form of baptism:—

"A miserable apostate, (?) polygamist, and murderer, too, to wish to administer an ordinance held sacred by those who practise it. What a sacrilege! But as to that boy, I have since been told that he evinced indications of life after he was dragged out, by one who saw him. But I think it would have been less cruel in Kan-wang to have smoothly cut off his head than to send him out even half killed, destitute, and naked, to freeze and starve to death. Whether the boy was killed directly or not, I cannot esteem Kan-wang, and his elder brother, who prompted him to the wicked deed, less than murderers; and hence, in my judgment, they ought both to be treated as such."

In the pamphlet, "A Letter to the Bishop of Victoria, regarding the Religion of the Ti-ping Rebels," the author states, "Of course you now know that the story of that person's boy being murdered by the Kan-wang is a fabrication. 'The Kan-wang called on me,' said Mr. Roberts, when I asked him about the matter, 'and desired me to punish the boy. I told him I would first remonstrate with him; and then he, the Kan-wang's brother, dissatisfied with my answer, beat him, as I thought, to death.'"