Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

‘I’m not being squeamish; I’m being prudent.’ Victoire folded her arms. ‘It’s too fast, Robin. It’s too much all at once. You need to let the debates settle. You need to let public opinion turn against the war—’

‘It’s not enough,’ he insisted. ‘They won’t reason themselves into justice now when they never have before. Fear’s the only thing that works. This is just tactics—’

‘This is not coming from tactics.’ Her voice sharpened. ‘It’s coming from grief.’

He couldn’t turn around. He didn’t want her to see his expression. ‘You said yourself you wanted this place to burn.’

‘But even more,’ said Victoire, placing a hand on his shoulder, ‘I want us to survive.’

It was impossible to say, in the end, how much of a difference the pace of their destruction really made. The choice remained with Parliament. The debates continued in London.

No one knew what was going on inside the House of Lords, except that neither the Whigs nor the Radicals felt good enough about their numbers yet to call a vote. The papers revealed more about public sentiment. The mainstream rags expressed the opinion Robin had expected, which was that the war on China was a matter of defending national pride, that invasion was nothing more than a just punishment for the indignities imposed by the Chinese on the British flag, that the occupation of Babel by foreign-born students was an act of treason, that the barricades in Oxford and the strikes in London were the work of brutish malcontents, and that the government ought to hold firm against their demands. Prowar editorials stressed the ease with which China would be defeated. It would only be a little war, and not even a proper war at that; all it took was the ignition of several cannons and the Chinese would admit defeat within a day.

The papers could not seem to make up their minds about the translators. The prowar publications offered a dozen theories. They were in cahoots with the corrupt Chinese government. They were co-conspirators of mutineers in India. They were malicious ingrates with no agenda at all except a desire to hurt England, to bite the hand that had fed them – and this required no further explanation, for it was a motive that the British public were all too ready to believe. We will not negotiate with Babel, promised members of Parliament on both sides. Britain does not bow to foreigners.^*

Yet not all the papers were against Babel or for the war. Indeed, for every headline that urged swift action in Canton, there was another by a publication (albeit smaller, more niche, more radical) that called the war a moral and religious outrage. The Spectator accused the prowar party of greed and profiteering; the Examiner called the war criminal and indefensible. JARDINE’S OPIUM WAR A DISGRACE, read one headline by the Champion. Others were not so tactful: DRUGGY MCDRUGGY WANTS HIS THUMBS IN CHINA read the Political Register.

Every social faction in England had an opinion. The abolitionists put out statements of support for the strikers. So too did the suffragists, though not quite so loudly. Christian organizations printed pamphlets criticizing the spread of an illegal vice to an innocent people, though the prowar evangelists responded with the supposedly Christian argument that it would in fact be God’s work to expose the Chinese people to free trade.

Meanwhile, Radical publications made the argument that the opening up of China was antithetical to the interests of workers in northern England. The Chartists, a movement of disillusioned industrial and artisanal workers, came out most strongly in support of the strikers; the Chartist circular The Red Republican, in fact, put out a headline calling the translators heroes of the working class.

This gave Robin hope. The Radicals were, after all, the party that the Whigs needed to appease, and if such headlines could convince the Radicals that war was not in their long-term interests, then perhaps all this could be resolved.