He  hated  the  foreigners  even  worse  than  they  did,
and  this  hatred  of  his  induced  him  to  incur  fresh
risks  of  the  very  sort  which  had  ruined  his  father's
reign,  and  now  were  to  bring  on  his  own  the  most


364    PROGRESS  OF  INDIA,  JAPAN  AND  CHINA.
disgraceful  disasters  which  had,  as  yet,  ever  befallen
the  Chinese  Empire.  After  a  short  and  inglorious
reign  he  died,  weakened  by  debauchery  in  the
flower  of  his  age,  away  from  the  Imperial  Capital,
whence  he  had  fled  on  the  approach  of  the  foreign
enemy.
His  position  was  indeed  very  hard  from  the  out-
set. His  father  had  left  him  a  distracted  inheri-
tance. Disturbances,  not  quite  amounting  to  rebel-
lions, were  rising  in  his  southern  provinces.  Physi-
cal distress  from  famine  had  afflicted  some  of  his
fairest  provinces ;  abuses  and  corruptions  had  grown,
like  rank  vegetation,  so  fast  under  the  prevailing
troubles  that  even  he  or  his  council  were  obliged  to
issue  a  mandate  against  them.  Moreover  the  rela-
tions of  his  Government  with  the  foreigners  were
again  becoming  dangerously  strained.
The  very  first  trouble,  early  in  1850,  which  the
new  Government  had  to  meet  was  a  marked  accession
to  the  movements  in  the  southern  Provinces  which
have  been  already  mentioned  in  a  prefatory  manner
at  the  end  of  the  last  preceding  Chapter.
