II. CHEFOO CONVENTION, 1876.
Negotiations with Li Hung-chang at Chefoo—Mr Hart assisting—Sir Thomas Wade hurried into making an unsatisfactory settlement—Chefoo convention analysed—Net result an increase in the customs dues—Criticised by the merchants.
It was in the month of September, the summer not yet over, during which season the sea air and fine beach of Chefoo made it at that time the best health resort for the China coast. Visitors from Peking occasionally varied their summer residence at the Western Hills by spending a few weeks at Chefoo, and in 1876 there were several members of the diplomatic body taking their holiday at the watering-place, the meeting of the British and Chinese plenipotentiaries constituting for them an added attraction.
Sir Thomas Wade had originally no intention of concluding a formal convention, nor had he authority for closing the Yunnan question without further reference to his Government; but circumstances proved too strong for him to keep to his resolution. He, in fact, found himself in such a position of difficulty as is perhaps best described by the word "cornered"—the advantage of the game having passed entirely to the other side. The Chinese commissioner was powerfully reinforced by the inspector-general, supported by the local commissioner of customs for Chefoo; and the neutrality of those of the diplomatic body who were on the spot was believed to be benevolent to the Chinese. The "co-operative policy" of Mr Burlingame's day had for the time being at least lapsed, and particularist views among the Powers or their representatives began to prevail. The British Minister, deeming the matter in dispute with the Chinese a purely British concern, did not hold it incumbent on him to hamper his negotiations by daily consultations with his colleagues, who on their part resented his reticence, claiming it as a right that, considering how their national interests might be affected by the result, they should be kept informed of the progress of the negotiations. Sir Thomas Wade admits that, among other considerations, it was the impatience of these colleagues of his to see the discussion definitely terminated which induced him to close the case without waiting for further instructions from his Government.
It must be borne in mind that the problem before the Chinese High Commissioner had never varied: it was the extremely simple one, how to screen the ex-governor Tsên Yü-ying, whether guilty or innocent, without encountering a British armed force. The fate of the negotiations depended entirely on the probable movement of the Flying Squadron, which was lying at Talien-wan, a hundred miles off. No greater service could have been rendered to the Chinese Government than to assure the High Commissioner that he had nothing to fear from the British ships. The foreign Ministers who were present had their Intelligence Departments in full activity, and they had a shrewd notion of the limitations of the Flying Squadron, which they were free to communicate to the Chinese plenipotentiary. They were aware that the time—September 1876—was not opportune for the British Government to embark on distant enterprises of indefinite possibilities. From one source or another the assurance was given to the Chinese negotiator, and once convinced, on whatever evidence, that the British guns would fire nothing but salutes, Li Hung-chang felt himself master of the situation. It then became his turn to force a settlement, and he at once assumed a peremptory tone with the British Minister, notifying him that he would leave Chefoo on a certain day, convention or no convention. Sir Thomas Wade had, or thought he had, no choice but to capitulate to superior force. Pressed by his diplomatic colleagues, as has been said, as well as by the expressed desire of his own Government to get the tedious matter settled, he had to accept the best agreement he could get, and the Chefoo convention was the result.
The fear of coercion being eliminated, the negotiation became reduced to a custom-house affair like the treaty revision of 1869, the Chinese seizing the occasion to renew their former efforts to obtain an increase of revenue from foreign trade. Instead of adding to the import duty on foreign merchandise as in 1869, they now proposed to extend the area of internal taxation, and in particular they prepared the way for an indefinite increase in the opium revenue. This was the substantial part of the convention. New ports were opened in harmony with the scheme.
A clause referring to residence at Chungking in Szechuan provided that British merchants would not be allowed to reside there so long as no steamers had access to the port. When, under this contingent clause, it was attempted to make the conditional permission effective by sending steamers to the port, the Chinese Government offered opposition, and the right was abandoned by Great Britain.
As for the Yunnan affair, the settlement of it gravitated to the form which had been universally condemned. "Do not let the nation lay itself open to the contempt of an Asiatic people by accepting money for life treacherously taken by official order," wrote Sir R. Alcock in July 1875. But "the series of bad precedents" was once more followed, and "blood-money was accepted for the life of a British subject."
It was thought important to publish far and wide the terms of settlement, and a proclamation with Sir T. Wade's imprimatur was posted throughout the country. It was remarked, however, that this proclamation embodied the very falsities against the publication of which the British Minister had previously protested under threat of breaking off diplomatic relations. The guilt of notoriously innocent parties was assumed in it, but their pardon granted on the fictitious ground that the evidence against them would not suffice to convict by the processes of British law.
A separate article provided for a mission of exploration by way of Szechuan and Tibet in the following year.
A subject on which Sir Thomas Wade had long set his heart was an improvement in the terms of intercourse between foreign and Chinese officials, with a view of putting an end to the habitual assumption of superiority of the Chinese. This was treated in a few empty words providing that the Tsungli-Yamên should invite foreign representatives to consider with them a code of etiquette, a clause imposing no obligation whatever on either party.
Another question which had greatly occupied the minds of both the British Government and its successive representatives ever since 1833 was the establishment of a code of laws to regulate the civil and criminal relations between foreigners and Chinese at the treaty ports and elsewhere. This had formed a feature in the supplementary convention of 1869, the undertaking in which did not, however, extend beyond the general terms that "it is further agreed that England and China shall in consultation draw up a commercial code."
Strongly approving, however, of the abstract idea that China should adopt a written code of commercial law as a first step towards a general legal reform, Sir T. Wade nevertheless uttered a useful caution to those ardent reformers who see in a good code of laws a panacea for either national or international grievances. "No nation," he says, "worked harder at its legislation than China; but in the way of justice there are at least two serious impediments—an ignorance which renders due appreciation of the value of evidence, especially in criminal cases, impossible; and a dishonesty that would be fatal to the administration of any laws, no matter how enlightened." He illustrates this by relating an instance of the obstinate nature of the chose jugée in China.
In a case [he says] the termination of which is just announced at Peking, we have a woman wrongly convicted, on a confession extorted from her by torture, of the murder of a husband who died a natural death, the injustice being so patent that the fellow-provincials of the accused appealed to Peking. Orders being issued for a rehearing of the case, the former decision was affirmed in the province, and this a second and again a third time. The proceedings were then removed to Peking; and it is in the end established that magistrates of districts, prefects of departments, the governor of the province, and the high officer charged with the public instruction of the province, who had been specially commissioned to rehear the case, have all more or less combined to conceal the delinquency of the first authority who heard it; with whose guilt the rest, his seniors, had associated themselves either through carelessness or from a corrupt motive. These proceedings lasted over two years.
One point, however, was definitively gained in connection with jurisprudence, the recognition of the British Supreme Court as a means of discharging treaty obligations.
The convention as a whole was subjected to the same kind of criticism as that of 1869 had been. The Chambers of Commerce pointed out that it sanctioned Chinese exactions which had been up to that time consistently resisted as violations of the treaty of Tientsin. Imposts, condemned by the Chinese themselves,[23] which were to be abolished altogether by the terms of the Alcock convention, were by the Chefoo agreement not only recognised as lawful, but the area of their levy, within which the taxes were to be freed from all restrictions whether as to their amount or incidence, greatly extended. It would appear, therefore, said the merchants, "better to revert to the clear and simple provisions of the treaty of Tientsin, and insist on their being carried out without evasion." So far, they say, from simplifying the question of the taxation of foreign goods, the obliquely worded clauses in the Chefoo convention tend to quite the opposite result. "New elements of obscurity have been introduced, and if twenty years have been spent wrangling over the comparatively simple wording of the Tientsin treaty, it is to be feared that no person now living will see the end of the controversies which will rage over the indefinite arrangement set forth in the Chefoo convention."
Opium was also for the first time introduced into a treaty, for the purpose of increasing the Chinese revenue from it and of making the maritime customs, supported by the British Government, the agent for its collection. The Chinese had always been at liberty to levy what internal taxation they pleased on opium; but, said the Chamber of Commerce, for the "English Government to make itself even indirectly answerable for the collection from Chinese of an impost of indefinite amount, varying at each port according to the caprice or the necessities of local authorities who are not even specified, would surely be to introduce a most inconvenient precedent." The convention was left for nine years unratified by the British Government. It could not be ratified because, among other reasons, five of the treaty Powers took the same objection as the British and other merchants had taken to the curtailment of the area of exemption from inland taxation—in other words, to the legal sanction extended by the agreement to unlimited exactions of the Chinese tax-collectors which had up till then been resisted as illegal.
During the eight years following the signature of the Chefoo convention incessant discussion and agitation on the subject of the duties on opium and general merchandise kept the British Legation in Peking, and in a lesser degree the Foreign Office at home, in full activity. The question was turned over in all its aspects, threshed out on this side and on that, and numerous schemes were proposed for readjusting the imposts. The British Minister displayed the utmost ingenuity in evolving variations on the central theme, in which ethical, political, and sentimental considerations played their part, but without advancing the solution of the problem. The problem was altogether too simple for such recondite treatment. The Chinese throughout all the tortuous disquisitions pressed towards the one object of a substantial increase in their revenue, by whatever means it might be arrived at; and eventually they attained their object, as those generally do who concentrate their attention on a single point.