I. FOREIGN.
Their relations to their official representatives—And to the trading interests of their own countries—Their unity—High character—Liberality—Breadth of view.
In the preceding portions of this narrative it has been shown how much the character of the principal officials on both sides influenced the progress of events. There was, however, yet another factor which contributed in a lesser degree and in a different manner to the general result which ought not to be entirely omitted from consideration, and that was the personal qualities and traditional characteristics of the two trading communities, foreign and Chinese. It was they who created the subject-matter of all foreign relations, and stood in the breach in all the struggles between foreign and native officials. It was their persons and their fortunes which were ever at stake; it was they who first felt the shock of disturbance, and were the first to reap the fruits of peace.
The relation of the foreign mercantile community to their official representatives was not always free from friction, because the same high authority which enjoined on the officials the protection of the persons and the promotion of the interests of the lay community empowered them also to rule over these their protégés, and to apply to them an arbitrary discipline in accordance with what they conceived to be the exigencies of the time. Duty in such circumstances must often have assumed a divided aspect, and rules of action must frequently have been put to a severe strain; nor is it surprising that, owing to these peculiar relationships, the resident communities should not have been able on all occasions to see eye to eye with the agents of their Governments.
In their national and representative character the China merchants were wont at different crises to have moral burdens laid on them which did not properly fit their shoulders. They were little affected by the shallow moralism of the pulpit, which, taken literally, would have counselled general liquidation and the distribution of the proceeds among the poor, leaving the common creditor out of account; but official sermons also were on certain occasions preached to, or at, the merchants, implying some obligation on their part to sacrifice individual advantage to the greater good of the greater number. Were there no other answer to such altruistic monitions, it would be sufficient to plead that under such theories of duty commerce could not exist, and its political accessories would become superfluous. No road to commercial prosperity has been discovered which could dispense with the prime motive for the exertion which makes for progress—to wit, individual ambition, cupidity, or by whatever term we choose to designate the driving power of the complex machine of civilised life. Mammon is, after all, a divinity whose worship is as universal as that of Eros, and is scarcely less essential to the preservation of the race. Nor is it by collective, but by strictly individual, offerings that these deities are propitiated, and the high purposes of humanity subserved. It is no reproach, therefore, to the China merchants that they should have seized every opportunity for gain, totally irrespective of the general policy of their country. It was not for them to construe portents, but to improve the shining hour. And if it should at any time happen that the action of private persons, impelled by the passion for gain, embarrassed a diplomatist in his efforts to bring about some grand international combination, the fault was clearly his who omitted to take account of the ruling factor in all economic problems. The trade was not made for Government policy, but the policy for the trade, whose life-blood was absolute liberty of action and a free course for individual initiative. The success of British trade as a whole could only be the aggregate of the separate successes not otherwise attainable than by each member of the mercantile fraternity performing his own part with singleness of purpose. Nothing certainly could ever justify any trader in foregoing a chance of gain for the sake of an ideal benefit to the community, even if it were likely to be realised. A distinction must be drawn between the tradesman and the statesman. Though their functions may sometimes overlap, their respective duties to the State are of a different though complementary character.
To the charge which from time to time has been levelled at the China merchants, that they were too narrow and too selfish, it may be plausibly replied that, on the contrary, they were if anything too broad; for their individual interests were not so bound up with general progress as are the interests of colonists in a new country, where co-operation is essential. Progress meant, to the China merchants, the admitting of the flood of competition, which they were in no condition to meet. The general interests of the country required the opening of new markets; in a lesser degree the interests of the manufacturing section required the same thing; but the interests of the merchants, albeit they appeared to represent their country and its industries, were in fact opposed to expansion. Yet so strong in them was the race instinct for progress that their private advantage has oftentimes actually given way to it, so that we have seen throughout the developments of foreign intercourse with China the resident merchants placing themselves in the van in helping to let loose the avalanche which overwhelmed them and brought fresh adventurers to occupy the ground.
Nor has the relation of the merchants, even to the operations in which they were engaged, been always clearly understood. Although they personified their national trade in the eyes of the world, the merchants were never anything more than the vehicles for its distribution, having no interest in its general extension, though a powerful interest in the increase of their individual share. The productions which provided the livelihood of many thousands of people in China, and perhaps of a still larger number in Great Britain and other manufacturing countries, did not concern them. A percentage by way of toll on merchandise passing through their warehouses was the limit of their ambition. A clear distinction should therefore be drawn between the merchant and the producer or manufacturer; on which point some observations of Wingrove Cooke[31] are worth quoting:—
"The calculations of the merchants do not extend beyond their own business. Why should they? Fortunately for himself, the merchant's optics are those of the lynx rather than those of the eagle. An extremely far-sighted commercial man must always run risks of bankruptcy, for the most absolutely certain sequences are often the most uncertain in point of time." The same writer, however, comments on the ignorance and narrowness of both British traders and manufacturers, and their failure to avail themselves of the opportunities offered to them of exploiting the trading resources of the Chinese. "There is no spirit of inquiry abroad," he says, "no energy at work, no notion of distracting the eye for a moment from watching those eternal shirtings, no thought whether you cannot make better shift with some other class of goods. Manchester made a great blind effort when the ports were opened, and that effort failed. Since then she has fallen into an apathy, and trusts to the chapter of accidents." As for the merchants on whom manufacturers relied to push the sale of their wares, "they come out here," he says, "to make fortunes in from five to seven years, not to force English calicoes up into remote places. Their work is to buy Chinese produce, but," he goes on, "if the English manufacturer wants extraordinary exertion, carefully collected information, and persevering up-country enterprise—and this is what he does want—he must do it himself. The British export trade will not maintain mercantile houses, but it would pay for travelling agents acting in immediate connection with the home manufacturers, who should keep their principals at home well informed, and who should work their operations through the established houses here. The evil is that British goods are not brought under the eyes of the Chinaman of the interior cities."
The inaccuracies of some of these comments need not obscure the shrewd and prophetic character of the general advice tendered to the British manufacturers. After an interval of forty years they have begun to act upon it, and though their progress has as yet been slow, they are taking to heart another portion of Mr Cooke's advice, that "all dealing with the interior of China is impossible unless your agents speak the language of the people."
A certain divergence between the official and non-official view of affairs had begun to show itself in the period before the war. Before the close of the East India Company's monopoly the independent merchants perceived that their interests, as well as those of the Company itself, were prejudiced by the truckling tactics of its agents, and though few in number, the mercantile community began to give utterance to their grievances and to show they had a mind of their own on public commercial policy. As the whole position of foreigners in China rested on premisses which were essentially false, disappointment, irritation, and alarm were chronic. Every one concerned, official and unofficial, was aggrieved thereby, while no one was disposed to accept blame for the grievance. A tendency to recrimination was the natural consequence. When their representatives failed to protect them against the aggressions of the Chinese the merchants complained, while the officials in their turn were not indisposed to retort by alleging provocative or injudicious conduct on the part of the merchants themselves as contributory to the ever-recurrent difficulties. Through the retrospective vista of two generations it is easy now to see where both parties were at fault—the merchants in making too little account of the difficulties under which their representatives were labouring, and the officials in failing to perceive that the causes of their disagreements with the Chinese lay altogether deeper than the casual imprudence of any private individual, even if that could be established. The despatches of the earlier "superintendents," notably those of Sir George Robinson, betray a certain jealousy of the political influence supposed to be wielded by the mercantile community of Canton working through their associations in England, and the superintendents seemed therefore concerned to cast discredit on mercantile opinion. It would have been strange enough, had it been true, that an isolated community of a hundred individuals should be torn by faction, yet it is a fact that on their assumed disagreements an argument was based for invalidating the representations which they occasionally made to the Home Government. Their views were disparaged, their motives impugned, and their short-sighted selfishness deplored. The note struck in 1835 has been maintained with variations down almost to our own day,—a circumstance which has to be borne in mind by those who aim at a fair appreciation of British relations with China during the last sixty years.
Far, however, from being a disunited flock, the mercantile body in China generally have on the whole been singularly unanimous in their views of the political transactions with which their interests were bound up; while as to the old community of Canton, no epithet could be less appropriate than one which would imply discord. Concord was the enforced effect of their circumstances. Imprisoned within a narrow space, surrounded by a hostile people, exposed to a constant common peril, the foreign residents in Canton were bound to each other by the mere instinct of self-preservation. They became, in fact, what Nelson called his captains, a "band of brothers." The exclusion of females up till 1842, and the deterrent conditions of married life there even under the treaty, made it essentially a bachelor community, living almost like one family, or as comrades in a campaign. Of the disinterested hospitality and good-fellowship which continue to this day, even in the maturity of their domestic development, to characterise the foreign communities in China, the germ is doubtless to be discovered in that primitive society which oscillated between Canton and Macao during the thirty years which ended in 1856, in which year their factories were for the last time destroyed, and the old life finally broken up.
But there is something more to be credited to these early residents than the mutual loyalty prescribed for them by the peculiar conditions of their life. They exemplified in a special degree the true temper and feelings of gentlemen,—a moral product with which local conditions had also, no doubt, something to do. They lived in glass houses, with open doors; they could by no means get away from one another, or evade a mutual observation which was constant and searching. Whatever standards, therefore, were recognised by the community, the individual members were constrained to live up to them in a society where words and deeds lay open to the collective criticism. And the standard was really a high one. Truth, honour, courage, generosity, nobility, were qualities common to the whole body; and those who were not so endowed by birthright could not help assuming the virtue they did not possess, and, through practice, making it eventually their own. Black sheep there were, no doubt, but being never whitewashed, they did not infect the flock, as happens in more advanced communities.
These intimate conditions favouring the formation of character were powerfully reinforced by the one feature of European life in China which was external to the residents, their contact with the surrounding mass of Chinese. The effect of intercourse with so-called inferior races is a question of much complexity, and large generalisations on such subjects are unsafe, each case being best considered on its proper merits. In their intercourse with the Chinese, certain points stood out like pillars of adamant to fix the principles by which the foreign residents were obliged to regulate their bearing towards the natives. In the first place, the strangers formed units hemmed in and pressed upon by thousands; therefore they must magnify themselves by maintaining an invincible prestige, they must in the eyes of that alien world always be heroes, and they must present a united front. Extending the same principles from the material to the moral sphere, the foreigners must maintain the reputation of their caste for probity, liberality, and trustworthiness. Their word must be as good as their bond; they must on no account demean themselves before the heathen, nor tolerate any temptation from a Chinese source to take unfair advantage of their own kind, the Caucasian or Christian, or by whatever term we may indicate the white man. Whatever their private differences, no white man must permit himself to acquiesce in the disparagement of his own people in the view of the people of the country. They must be, one and all, above suspicion. Such were some of the considerations which were effective in maintaining the character of Europeans in China. Although association with a race so alien as the Chinese, with such different moral standards, must have had the usual deteriorating effects of such contact, yet the positive gain in the formation of character from the practice of such maxims of conduct as those above indicated probably left a balance of advantage with the China merchants.
The case would be imperfectly stated were mention not made of the process of natural selection which constituted the merchants a body of picked men. China was a remote country. It offered neither the facility of access nor the scope for adventure which in more recent times have attracted such streams of emigration to distant parts of the world. The mercantile body was a close corporation, automatically protected by barriers very difficult to surmount. The voyage itself occupied six months. Letters were rarely answered within a year. Hence all the machinery of business had to be arranged with a large prescience. Even after the opening of the overland route to Suez communication with China was maintained by sailing-ships up till 1845, when the Lady Mary Wood, the first steamer of the P. and O. Company, reached Hongkong, with no accommodation for more than a few passengers, and carrying no more cargo than a good-sized lighter. And later still, when steamers carried the mails fortnightly to China, the expense of the trip was so great that only a chosen few could afford it. It took £150 to £170 to land a single man in Hongkong, and in those days when extensive outfits were thought necessary, probably as much more had to be laid out in that way. The merchants who established themselves in China after the opening of the trade were either themselves men of large means, or they were the confidential representatives of English and American houses of great position. There were no local banks, operations extended over one or two years, an immense outlay of capital was required, and credit had to be maintained at an exceedingly high level, not only as between the merchants in China and their correspondents in London, Liverpool, New York, and Boston, but between both and the financial centre of the world. Through such a winnowing-machine only good grain could pass. It was a natural result that the English and American merchants both in China and India should have been superior as a class to the average of other commercial communities. And what was true of partners and heads of houses was no less so of their "assistants." There were no "clerks," as the term is commonly used in England, except Portuguese hailing from the neighbouring settlement of Macao. The young men sent from England were selected with as much care as it was possible to bestow, for they were precious. Not only were they costly, but it might take a year to make good casualties. Besides, in countries situated as China was then, where contingencies of health were never out of mind, it was not worth while to send out one who was a clerk and nothing more. There must be potential capacity as well, since it could never be foreseen how soon emergencies might arise which would require him to assume the most responsible duties. Hence every new hand engaged must enjoy the fullest confidence both of his immediate employers and of the home firm to which they were affiliated.
As might be expected under such circumstances, family connections played a large part in the selection, and the tendency of the whole system was to minimise the gulf which in advanced societies separates the master from the man. In education and culture they were equals, as a consequence of which the reins of discipline might be held lightly, all service being willingly and intelligently rendered. The system of devolution was so fully developed that the assistant was practically master in his own department, for the success of which he was as zealous as the head. The "mess" régime under which in most houses the whole staff, employers and employees, sat at one table, tended strongly in the direction of a common social level.
What still further contributed much to raise the position of assistants was the tradition which the merchants both in India and China inherited from the East India Company of what may be called pampering their employees. They were permitted to carry on trade on their own account, in the same commodities and with the same buyers and sellers, in which they possessed advantages over their employers in having all the firm's information at command with the privilege of using its machinery free of cost. The abuses to which such a system was liable are too obvious to be dwelt upon; but to be himself a merchant, sometimes more successful than his principal, though without his responsibilities, certainly did not detract from the social status of the assistant.
Sixty years ago the China community was composed of men in the prime of life. The average age was probably not over thirty—a man of forty was a grey-beard. In this respect an evolutionary change has come over the scene, and the average age of the adult residents must have risen by at least ten years. But the China community in all its stages of development has maintained the colonial characteristic of buoyancy and hopefulness. Reverses of fortune never appalled its members. Having been early accustomed to the alternations of fat years and lean, a disastrous season was to them but the presage of a bountiful one to follow; while a succession of bad years made the reaction only the more certain. This wellspring of hope has often helped the China merchants to carry the freshness of spring even into the snows of winter. The nature of their pursuits, moreover, fostered a comprehensive spirit. Trained in the school of wholesale dealing, and habituated to work on large curves, the China merchants have all through felt the blood of the merchant princes in their veins, and it has even been alleged to their disadvantage that, like the scions of decayed families the world over, the pomp and circumstance were maintained after the material basis had in the natural course of affairs vanished. Nay, more, that the grandiose ideas appropriate to the heirs of a protected system have disqualified them for the contest in small things which the latter days have brought upon them.
Of that restricted, protected, quasi-aristocratic, half-socialistic society some of the traditions and spirit remain; but the structure itself could not possibly withstand the aggression of modern progress, and it has been swept away. New elements have entered into the composition of the mercantile and general society of the Far East, its basis has been widened and its relations with the great world multiplied. In innumerable ways there has been improvement, not the least being the development of family life and the more enduring attachment to the soil which is the result of prolonged residence. Living, if less luxurious, is vastly more comfortable, more refined, and more civilised, and men and women without serious sacrifices make their home in a country which in the earlier days was but a scene of temporary exile. Charities abound which were not before needed; the channels of humanity have broadened, though it cannot be said at the cost of depth, for whatever else may have changed, the generosity of the foreign communities remains as princely as in the good old days.
Yet is it permissible to regret some of the robuster virtues of the generation that is past. The European solidarity vis-à-vis the Chinese world, which continued practically unbroken into the eighth decade of the century, a tower of moral strength to foreigners and an object of respect to the Chinese, has now been thrown down. Not only in private adventures have foreigners in their heat of competition let themselves down to the level of Chinese tactics, but great financial syndicates have immersed themselves in intrigues which either did not tempt the men of the previous generation or tempted them in vain; and even the Great Powers themselves have descended into the inglorious arena, where decency is discarded like the superfluous garments of the gladiator, and where falsity, ultra-Chinese in quality, masquerades in Christian garb. The moral ascendancy of Christendom has been in a hundred ways shamelessly prostituted, leaving little visible distinction between the West and the East but superior energy and military force.
Take them for all in all, the China merchants have been in their day and generation no unworthy representatives of their country's interests and policy, its manhood and character. Their patriotism has not been toned down but expanded and rationalised by cosmopolitan associations, and by contact with a type of national life differing diametrically from their own. Breadth and moderation have resulted from these conditions, and a habit of tempering the exigencies of the day by the larger consideration of international problems has been characteristic of the mercantile bodies in China from first to last. And though statesmanship lies outside the range of busy men of commerce, it must be said in justice to the merchants of China that they have been consistently loyal to an ideal policy, higher in its aims and more practical in its operation than that which any line of Western statesmen, save those of Russia, has been able to follow. It had been better if the continuous prognostications of such a compact body of opinion had been more heeded.