I. THE MURDER OF MR MARGARY, 1875.
Efforts to reach China from Burma—Expedition under Colonel Browne—Mr Margary appointed interpreter—Meets party at Bhamo—Precedes them into China, and is assassinated at Manwyne—Discussion thereon with the Chinese Government—Tsên Yü-ying, Governor of Yunnan—British Minister charges him with the murder—Demands his arraignment—Sends commission from Peking to Yunnan to take evidence—Unsuccessful.
Ever since the conquest of British Burma, and more especially since the treaty concluded with the King of Burma in 1862, political and commercial speculation had been busied with the mountainous country which divides it from the empire of China. The fact that next to nothing was known of that wild region, combined with the prospect of reopening the old caravan route which had been some time closed by disturbances among the frontier tribes and by Chinese insurgents, constituted a great stimulus to exploration. To this end projects were from time to time considered by the Indian Government—sometimes at the instance of enthusiastic officials, sometimes urged by the superior authority of the British Government under pressure from mercantile bodies in England. South-western China, however, was as jealously guarded from intrusion as the sea-coast had been, and no progress was made in penetrating its mystery.
After the failure of an exploring expedition under Colonel Edward B. Sladen in 1868, the Indian Government, in furtherance of the wishes of the Government at home, sanctioned yet another attempt six years later, though with decided misgivings as to any successful issue. Arrangements were made during 1874, and the expedition, under Colonel Horace Browne, was despatched from Burma viâ Bhamo in the beginning of 1875. The British Minister in China had been asked for his co-operation, and in particular he was requested to furnish Colonel Browne with a competent interpreter. It was arranged that this official, armed with a Chinese passport issued by the Government at Peking, should make his own way through China from the coast and join Colonel Browne at Bhamo.
The choice of her Majesty's Minister fell upon one of the most promising officers in the consular service, Mr Augustus Raymond Margary, who proceeded from Shanghai by way of the Yangtze to the province of Yunnan, and in five months accomplished his perilous pioneering journey with perfect success, arriving on the 17th of January at the rendezvous, where he was received with the warmest feelings by Colonel Browne and his party, and with surprise and admiration by the Burmese.
On being joined by Mr Margary, the mission prepared to start from Bhamo towards China. Everything seemed auspicious for the expedition. On arriving at the Burmese frontier, however, the party were met by sinister rumours of armed opposition to their passage through the Kakhyen hills. Margary, having just come safely through these districts, volunteered to proceed alone to ascertain the truth of the reports which they had heard. How he was treacherously assassinated at Manwyne, the first city within the Chinese border, and how Colonel Browne's mission was assailed and driven back by armed bands, has been told by Dr John Anderson in 'A Narrative of the two Expeditions to Western China' of 1868 and 1875, and by Sir Rutherford Alcock, the sympathetic editor of Mr Margary's 'Letters and Journals,' as well as in numerous Government publications.
It became then a question of the gravest import to fix the guilt of this treachery, and to consider what means could be adopted for avenging the death of a young Englishman within Chinese territory, and bearing a passport from the Government of Peking. "Whether it be Burmese, Kakhyens, Shan tribes, or Chinese that are in question, it is impossible we can accept a defeat of this nature, brought on, too, by our own spontaneous acts," was the conclusion of Sir Rutherford Alcock. Governments which resorted to the assassination of individuals under their own safe conduct must be deterred, by persuasion or by force, from the use of such tactics. The demand for redress which was made direct to the Tsungli-Yamên was followed by a wrangling and evasive discussion as to the conditions on which the passport had been granted. These, it must be admitted, had not been so definitely stated as they might have been. Passports, as Mr Wade, then Minister in Peking, explained, were granted in two forms—for "business," meaning trade, or for "pleasure," rendered in Chinese "tour or travel." It was in the latter form that the passport for Colonel Browne was applied for, and the Chinese made a plausible defence of their position on this narrow ground, asserting that the subsequent declaration that the mission was intended to open a trade route through Chinese provinces, where they alleged no trading rights for foreigners existed, could not be covered by a passport granted for pleasure.
The voluminous discussion on international rights which followed, although academical in form and irrelevant to the question at issue, betrayed the animus of the Chinese Government in regard to commercial concessions in the interior; but it is possible that the true motive for the repulse of Colonel Browne's expedition, of which Mr Margary's murder was but an incident, lay deeper. Europeans are accustomed to make light of oriental suspicions, and the idea that Colonel Browne's party was the vanguard of a hostile force to be treacherously introduced into Chinese territory under passport may seem too fantastic to have been entertained in good faith. Yet if we consider on what trivial grounds even the civilised Powers of Europe will at times suspect each other of the most grandiose designs, and how often the suspicion is justified, we need not dismiss as incredible the fact that, in a frontier province which had recently been the scene of a formidable rebellion, an armed escort accompanying a foreign tourist party should have caused sincere misgivings in the minds of the authorities. Nor do the facts of the case exclude the possibility of such suspicions being suggested from without, even if they did not arise spontaneously within. Apart from these special considerations, the chances of success would probably have been greater if the mission had started from the Chinese side, where the right of travel and exploration had already been established.
The verbal polemic over the conditions of the passport did not, however, touch the matter in hand, which was the murder of a British official for whom the Chinese Government, both imperial and provincial, were expressly responsible. It is not necessary at this day to pronounce judgment on the identity of the actual criminal. The murder was the result of a conspiracy in which Chinese and Burmese were both implicated. They were alike interested in preventing the passage of the mission, and the strong opposition of the Burma Government was not unknown to Mr Margary, for he had noted it in his Journal.
The King of Burma, the father of the well-known Theebaw, was a learned pandit and a devout Buddhist, as severe in regard to heretics as the crowned heads of Europe were in the days of the Inquisition. The Court of Ava, in its claims to obeisance from foreigners, was almost as exacting as the Son of Heaven himself, and the priests lorded it over the community with the arrogance of a pampered caste. Thus foreign intercourse was heavily hampered, and a good understanding rendered almost impossible. Fears for their prerogatives must have inspired the royal and priestly coterie with aversion to that restless element which was always trying to "open up" other people's country and to explore trade routes. Hence the motive for obstructing the passage of a foreign expedition between Burma and China was as strong on the Burmese as on the Chinese side.
Tsên Yü-ying, the Chinese governor, held an exceptionally strong position in his province, and the officials stood very much in awe of him. Though not a pure Chinese, having been born in the mountains of Kwangsi, of aboriginal parentage on one side, his personal prestige was very great. A fighting man from his youth, he had acquired an immense reputation in suppressing the Mohammedan rebellion in Yunnan. This he did in oriental style, extirpating the rebels so far as he could, root and branch. To save the trouble of burying many thousands of old people and children, he had them drowned in the Tali Lake. The military commander who was told off for this pleasing duty palliated the massacre, when in after years narrating these occurrences, by saying there were not really 10,000 but only 3000 thrown into the lake. This official had remonstrated with the governor against the sentence, saying that such severity was not in accordance with Tao li (principle); but Tsên replied, "You have nothing to do with Tao li; you must conform to the Leu li" (Penal Code).
Tsên Yü-ying was therefore something greater than an ordinary provincial governor, and wielded something more than the authority belonging to his office. Not only was he responsible, as all governors are, for what was done within his government, but it is difficult to conceive of any important incident occurring there without his personal sanction. But which was the leader in the plot, whether the acting-governor Tsên Yü-ying or the King of Burma, is comparatively unimportant; suffice it that her Majesty's Minister fixed, on grounds which satisfied himself, though of course on inferential evidence only, the instigation of the crime on the governor-general Tsên Yü-ying; and whether the direct guilt were brought home to him or not, there could be no question about his responsibility under the Chinese principle of administration. "From the governor-general downwards they are each and all individually and collectively held responsible for all that may happen in the limits of their jurisdiction." Accordingly, after much preliminary discussion, Mr Wade demanded that that high official should be censured for neglect of duty, and, on later information, that he should be brought for trial to Peking. To this demand the Peking Government refused to listen, and after feigning for many months to have no knowledge of what had taken place, they produced a report from the governor-general himself inculpating certain subordinates, of whom he seemed willing to make a nominal sacrifice. This report was so openly mendacious that Sir Thomas Wade threatened to haul down his flag if it were published.
Unluckily for the successful prosecution of the demand for the arraignment of the viceroy, the British Minister became entangled in a cat's-cradle of negotiations for the revision of the treaty of Tientsin, with which the Yunnan outrage got so mixed up that the different questions never could be, or at any rate never were, separated again. Throwing the net is the tactical device in which the Chinese excel. The demand for reparation for the murder was alternately put forward, modified, and withdrawn according as the general propositions were shuffled about, and thus the effect of a concentrated attack on the essential point was lost. The minister on his own showing found himself in a succession of dilemmas, while the Chinese defensive position was clear throughout: it was to refuse everything, evade when direct refusal was dangerous, and in short to baffle all attempts of the British Minister to get to close quarters with the question. Sir Thomas Wade was several times brought by these elusive tactics to the point of threatening withdrawal of the Legation, which in itself the Chinese would have welcomed as a householder might the "positively last visit" of a tax-collector, but for the ulterior consequences to be apprehended.
After many months of fruitless labour Sir Thomas Wade resolved to send a commission of his own to Yunnan to collect evidence as to Margary's murder. His right to do so was at first contested by the Chinese; but after considering the matter, and getting the best advice at their command, they assented, and named High Commissioners to meet the British officials. The Hon. T. G. Grosvenor, secretary of Legation, was detached for this duty, assisted by two of the most competent men in the consular service—Mr Colborn Baber and Mr Arthur Davenport. On the Chinese side were appointed the viceroy of the Hu Kwang, Li Han-chang, elder brother of Li Hung-chang, another official to whom Sir Thomas Wade objected strongly, but in vain, and Tsên Yü-ying himself, the inculpated party. The promises made to the British Minister before he would allow the mission to set out were broken as soon as it was fairly on its way, and Sir Thomas Wade had serious thoughts of recalling it, foreseeing that it was destined merely to waste time. What possible hope, indeed, could there be of isolated foreigners collecting evidence in a distant city against the high provincial officials? No evidence was taken. The British Commissioner was simply presented with the original report, to which was added the so-called "confession" of thirteen savages "kidnapped to do duty as prisoners at the bar." These savages could not speak Chinese, nor was their language understood by any one in the viceregal court; it was evident that they had never been near the scene of the crime, nor did they look in the least like men who were pleading guilty to a capital charge.
The motive of the Chinese in yielding to the appointment of the British commission, after refusing their assent to it, only occurred to Sir Thomas Wade when they recommended that Mr Grosvenor should remain in Yunnan until the case was closed. No coercive measures, they calculated, would be taken against them while these hostages remained in their hands. From first to last the only question that occupied the mind of the Chinese Government was whether force would be applied or not. And if they read—as of course they did—the English newspapers of the day they would see that the contingency of war was dwelt upon throughout the year 1875 as the sole alternative to the condign punishment of the Governor-General of Yunnan-Kweichow. This was, indeed, from time to time directly threatened by Sir Thomas Wade, and he had applied for the Flying Squadron to come on from India to support his demands. When at last, after eighteen months' struggle, he abandoned the negotiations, and "abruptly left Peking" for Shanghai in order to be in direct telegraphic communication with the Home Government, he wrote, "I had, in the last fortnight, again and again threatened either to remove the Legation or to recommend to her Majesty's Government the extremest measure of coercion unless I had secured a very moderate form of reparation."
When Prince Kung realised the fact that the British Minister had actually left the capital he became suddenly serious, and sent after him to say there had been a misunderstanding, which would have been cleared away if he had only waited. At the same time the prince had recourse to his foreign adviser, the Inspector-General of Customs, who stood to the Government somewhat in the relation of a "medicine-man." The inspector-general had taken an active part, both direct and indirect, in the comedy of the preceding eighteen months—whether as an ally or an opponent of the British Minister seems not to have been quite clear to the comprehension of the latter.
An imperial decree was immediately despatched to the Grand Secretary, Li Hung-chang, instructing him to detain the British Minister on his way through Tientsin, in order to confer with him on the Margary case. This proposal Sir Thomas Wade declined on several grounds: among others, that at a previous stage of the negotiations the promises made by Li Hung-chang had been repudiated by the Peking Government. This effort to stop him at Tientsin having failed, Mr Hart was despatched in hot haste after Sir Thomas Wade to Shanghai, ostensibly to discuss the "commercial question," but really to induce the British Minister to re-enter the arena of negotiation,[22] in which the Chinese felt themselves safe. Sir Thomas, therefore, consented to meet a special commissioner, but without committing himself as to the scope of the intended conference. The High Commissioner was Li Hung-chang, and the place of meeting Chefoo, the locality being selected by Sir Thomas Wade himself. There was concluded the famous Chefoo Convention.