I. THE DIPLOMATIC OVERTURE.
Spontaneous fulfilment of treaties not to be expected—Retreating attitude of foreign Ministers—Repression of British tourists—Hostility of Pekingese—Conciliation fails—Chinese refuse to conclude treaty with Prussia—Glimpse of the real truth—Rooted determination to keep out foreigners—Absence of the sovereign—Female regents—Diplomatic forms in abeyance—Foreign Ministers' task complicated by assumed guardianship of China—Pleasant intercourse with Manchu statesmen.
When Mr Bruce and M. Bourboulon took up their residence in Peking on March 22, 1861, diplomacy was as yet a white sheet on which it was their part to trace the first characters. The treaty—for all the treaties were substantially one—was their charter; its integral fulfilment their only safety. For as it had not been a bargain of give-and-take between equals, but an imposition pure and simple by the strong upon the weak, there would be no spontaneous fulfilment of its obligations, rather a steady counter-pressure, as of water forcibly confined seeking out weak spots in the dam. Moreover, the two parties to the treaty, foreigners and Chinese, were not acquainted with each other: aims, incentives, temper and character, and the nature of the considerations by which they respectively would be influenced, were all obscure. It was an uncertain situation, calling for vigilance and caution. There can be no doubt the pregnant importance of the first steps was realised by the representatives on both sides. The thoughts of the Chinese on that critical occasion can only be inferred from their acts. Of what was uppermost in the minds of the foreigners, or at least of the English Minister, we have some slight indications from the pen of a member of his staff, who, though not himself in the diplomatic circle, claims to be the authorised chronicler of the early days of the mission. This pretension is implicitly indorsed by the fact that the preface to Dr Rennie's book[45] was written in Government House, Calcutta, whither he followed Lord Elgin in the capacity of physician. When the Ministers had only been five days in Peking Dr Rennie wrote as follows: "Now is commencing perhaps the most difficult part of a permanent English residency at Peking—namely, the satisfying the Chinese that we are a tolerably harmless and well-intentioned people, inclined to live with them on terms of amity rather than the contrary, and that the desire of our Government is that its subjects should respect, as much as is consistent with reason, their national prejudices."
Such an immaculate sentiment placed in the very forefront of an ambassadorial programme, ushered in at the cost of two wars which shook the foundations of the Chinese empire, leaves something to be desired as a justification for being in Peking at all. But Dr Rennie indicates no other purpose for which foreign legations were established there. He does not get beyond the mere "residency." A viceroy of India proclaiming at each stage of a "progress" that he was a man of peace, a bride hoping to lead a passably virtuous life, would scarcely be more naïve than a foreign Minister's pious aspiration to behave tolerably well to the Chinese. For where was the "difficulty," one is tempted to ask? It is explained by Dr Rennie.
Two English officers, it appears, had made an excursion to the Great Wall without the necessary consular and local authorisation, and had further shown "the bad taste, at a date so recent to its destruction," to visit the Summer Palace. A formal complaint of these indiscretions met Mr Bruce on his arrival, and credit must be given to the Chinese for their appreciation of the tactical value of what Scotswomen call "the first word of flytin'." They moved the first pawn, and put the British Minister at once on the defensive. He responded by an arbitrary exercise of authority whereby Englishmen were prohibited from visiting Peking. The restriction possessed little direct importance, since few persons were then affected by it; but as the opening act of the new diplomacy, its significance could hardly be overrated. Though "only a little one," it was a recession from the right conferred on the subjects of all treaty Powers to travel for business or pleasure not only to Peking, but throughout the Chinese empire. It was as the tuning-fork to the orchestra.
It is not permissible to suppose that the British Minister had not good reasons for swerving from the principle of exercising rights, great and small, for which, as he well knew, experience in China had been one long, unbroken, cogent argument. Dr Rennie furnishes his readers with the reason. "The Chinese," he observes, "would seem to be very sensitive"; and "taking all the circumstances into consideration, ... the fear that casual visits on the part of strangers ... may prove antagonistic to the establishment of a harmonious feeling at the opening of a new era in our intercourse with the Chinese," the Minister resolved to keep Englishmen (and only them) out of the capital.
This explanation, like that of the purpose of the Legation itself, leaves on us a sense of inadequacy. These hyper-sensitive people had been engaged, only six months before, in torturing and massacring foreign envoys and prisoners, for which atrocities the destruction and sack of Yuen-ming-yuen was thought to be not too severe a reprisal. That the high officials who had committed these cruelties and endured the penalty should suddenly become so delicate that they could not bear the thought of a harmless tourist looking upon the ruins of the palace seems a somewhat fantastical idea. As for the sensitiveness of the townspeople, Dr Rennie himself had some experience of it three days after penning the above remarks. "A good deal of shouting and hooting," he says, was followed by "stones whizzing past me." Then "my horse was struck by a stone" and bolted. A similar experience befell another member of the Legation on the same day in another part of the city. Dr Rennie believed the stones to have been thrown by boys, which is probable enough. The favourite Chinese official palliation of outrages on foreigners is to attribute them to youths and poor ignorant people, which, however, in nowise softens the impact of the missile. Let us give the Chinese full credit for the virtues they possess—and they are many—but no one familiar with the streets of Peking would consider delicacy their predominant characteristic. View the diplomatic incident how we please, it cannot be denied that the Chinese drew first blood in the new contest, and at the same time practically tested the disposition of the invading force.
Another "straw" from Dr Rennie's journal may be noticed as indicating the set of the current. Apropos of the first commercial case that had been sent up from the ports to the Minister, he records the conclusion that "in almost every dispute which arises between ourselves and the Chinese we are in the first instance in the wrong; but, unfortunately [for whom?], the Chinese equally invariably adopt the wrong method of putting matters right," so that "the original wrong committed by us is entirely lost sight of." The observation refers exclusively to mercantile affairs, and it was a rather large generalisation to make after a month's experimental diplomacy in Peking.
The Minister soon found that his efforts to placate the Chinese Government were not producing the intended effect. It was not the "casual visitor" that in any special way annoyed them, but the foreigner in all his moods and tenses, most of all Mr Bruce himself, his colleagues and their staff, medical and other, and all that they stood for. General Ignatieff had not, after all, conjured away the foreign plague, nor were the Chinese statesmen entirely reassured even as to their immunity from the military danger. In the month of April Admiral Hope, Brigadier-General Staveley, and Mr Parkes visited Peking, and were courteously received; but Prince Kung was visibly relieved, Dr Rennie tells us, when assured that the admiral was not to remain there. As for the general, his presence in the vicinity was inevitable so long as a considerable British and French force remained in garrison in Tientsin and Taku. Like the Ministers themselves, he was an unpleasant necessity to be endured as well as may be. But being thus obliged to tolerate the greater evil, it would appear to Western reasoning that an admiral more or less in an inland town need not have so greatly upset Chinese equanimity. Prince Kung, however, was not yet able to look on such matters with Western eyes. Every foreigner kept at arm's-length, no matter what his rank or condition, was a gain, as every locust destroyed is a gain to the peasant.
So when the Prussian envoy, Count Eulenberg, presented himself, the British Minister vouching for his respectability, for the purpose of making a treaty on the lines of those already made and ratified, his efforts were frustrated by every plausible device. The envoy was relegated to the most distant point at which it was deemed feasible to stay his progress—namely, Tientsin, where negotiations were vexatiously protracted during four months. The first and final sticking-point was the claim to residence in the capital, which the Chinese absolutely refused to concede. Eventually they agreed to compound for a deferred entry ten years after signature. This by haggling was finally reduced to five years, and the treaty was thereupon concluded in August 1861. The old Canton tactics were thus revived, as if nothing had happened since 1857.
As the echo of Mr Bruce, Dr Rennie's comment on the proceeding is worth noting. "Looks very like merely gaining time, in hopes that, before that period expires, all foreign residence in the capital will be at an end." Here we catch a glimpse of the fundamental truth underlying all Chinese diplomacy from first to last—the purpose, never relaxed for an instant, of some day expelling foreigners from the country. No foreigner could hope to unravel the tangle of Chinese reasoning so as to comprehend in what manner the exclusion of one State was to assist in the eviction of the representatives of four Great Powers already established in the capital; but it may be inferred from the above remark that Mr Bruce was beginning to perceive that good behaviour towards the Chinese was not the be-all and end-all of the functions of a British representative in China. There was another side. We know, in fact, though Dr Rennie does not record it, that Mr Bruce began to see the necessity of making a stand against the reactionary pressure of the Chinese; that he was resolved on bending the Ministers of the Yamên to his will—being satisfied he could do it—instead of yielding to theirs in the vain hope of gaining their confidence.
The grand desideratum had been at last obtained, access to the capital; but how different the realisation from the anticipation! There was no sovereign and no Court, only the shell of the nut without the kernel. And as diplomacy began so it continued, in successive illusions, partially dispelled, yet clung to with slow-dying hope.
At first sight, no doubt, the task of the foreign representatives seemed an easy one: they had but to lay down the law to a defeated Power, to hammer the softened metal. This course would have been as simple in fact as it was in principle had they been united, and had it been possible for them to take a simple view of their mission; but from the first their duty to their respective countries was complicated, and in varying degrees, by what they conceived to be their duty towards China. It was inevitable that the attempt to follow two lines of policy divided by such cleavage should result in a fall into the crevasse. China, in fact, was too large a subject for either the treaty Powers or their agents to grasp. She made huge demands on the humanity, the indulgence, and the protection of the Powers who had broken down her wall of seclusion, and she had nothing in kind to offer them in return—neither gratitude nor co-operation, nor even good faith. For this China could be blamed only in so far as her own welfare was hindered by her irresponsiveness, for her statesmen were not far wrong in attributing to any motive rather than pure philanthropy the obtrusive solicitude of the Western Powers. International relations even between kindred peoples are in the nature of things selfish, or worse; and the more they assume an altruistic mask the more they lie open to suspicion. In this cynical view of the attitude of her neighbours China has never wavered.
Yet it was not all illusion and Dead Sea apples. Something had been gained by diplomatic access to the capital. The elaborate insolence of the Chinese mandarin had been exchanged for the urbanity of the well-bred Manchu. It became possible to converse. Foreigners were listened to with attention, and answered with an open countenance. The change was incalculable. It recalled the days of Lord Macartney and the Emperor Kienlung, of Sir John Davis's pleasant intercourse with Kiying, and of the agreeable impression left by the Manchu statesmen who were concerned from 1841 onwards in the conduct of war or the conclusion of peace. If to the kindly personal relations which characterised the earlier years of Peking diplomacy no permanent tangible result could be definitely ascribed, who can tell what evils were staved off or calamity averted by these friendly amenities?
In order, however, to appreciate the state of affairs in Peking in 1865, it is necessary to fill the gap in our narrative by an outline of events following the ratification of the treaty of Tientsin and Convention of Peking in October 1860.