II. THE BURLINGAME MISSION.
Mysterious inception—American Minister becomes Chinese envoy to Western countries—Objects of mission concealed—Its first adventure—Mr Burlingame concludes treaty at Washington—Persuades British Government to adopt new policy in China.
Three processes—separate, though not independent—were going on simultaneously during the year 1868: the revision of the British treaty in Peking; an epidemic of anti-foreign demonstrations in the provinces; and the progress of the Burlingame mission in Europe. One of them cannot be understood without the other; but taking the revision of the treaty as the object towards which the other two converged, it will be simpler to reserve the special consideration of the treaty question until we have given a short outline of the accessory episodes.
Of the eight questions submitted to the provincials, one was disposed of, and that in a surprisingly precipitate manner, a month before even the memorials of the various authorities were sent in. An embassy to Europe and America was appointed, equipped, and despatched in the month of November 1867, and with a foreigner at its head. A proceeding so contrary to Chinese tradition naturally excited curiosity as to its origin,—a curiosity which has been tantalised but not to this day satisfied, though the mission itself soon became ancient history. It is certain none of the representatives of foreign Powers then in the capital were consulted, or in any way taken into confidence with regard to the scheme—except, of course, the one who transferred himself from the service of his own country to that of China. "No one," wrote Sir Rutherford Alcock, "knew that the Chinese were on the eve of a revolution which would materially change the aspect of affairs." This by way of explaining an important memorandum he had just written on the state of China, which would have been of a different tenor had any hint of what was intended been given to him.
As the embassy was the first that China had sent to a foreign country, and as it was commissioned under some urgent demand which evidently would brook no delay, its composition, character, and objects are all interesting to the student of Chinese politics. There were three envoys, two Chinese and one foreign. The latter was the Hon. Anson Burlingame, Minister of the United States to China, who of course was the spokesman of the mission. A better selection for the purpose could not have been made, had even a larger choice of men been open to the Chinese. Mr Burlingame had been an active politician in his time, and was a practised orator. If we add the epithet "sophisticated rhetorician," which was ten years later applied to a still more eminent personage, that is little more than to say he was a special pleader. And he was engaged on special pleader's duty. Whatever the genesis of the mission, therefore, it was a master stroke of the Chinese Government, eclipsing all their other contrivances to resist the expected demands of foreigners at the revision of the treaties. It was the first open attempt by the Chinese to apply the homœopathic principle to their international affairs in using the foreigner as an antidote to the foreigner.
The Burlingame mission left Peking with the ostensible approval of the foreign representatives. The support of the British Minister was given in the most practical way by the permission granted to the acting Chinese secretary, Mr J. McLeavy Brown, to accept the secretaryship of the mission—a favour the more marked in that Mr Brown happened to be the locum tenens of Mr Wade, who had just gone on leave, so that his departure left the British Legation destitute at a season of the year when it was impossible to call up substitutes from the ports, and at a time when the greatest burden of work was in prospect. And yet the true object of the mission was concealed from Sir Rutherford Alcock. "I do not know what Mr Burlingame's instructions may ultimately be," he wrote in January 1868, adding, "but it is very obvious what is the work which devolves upon him." Sir Rutherford's judgment of its purpose seems to have been based on his own inferences from the facts of the situation and his unquestioning faith in Mr Burlingame's loyalty to his professed principles.
He had known Mr Burlingame for two years as the doyen of the diplomatic body, the most fervid champion of that "co-operative policy" whereby the treaty Powers agreed to act as a united body in pursuit of identical objects. He could not suppose that his late colleague had turned his back on those common objects without notice. Although, therefore, the suddenness and secrecy of the move might have suggested misgivings as to the mission being intended to promote the views of the diplomatic body in Peking, yet it is beyond question that Sir Rutherford Alcock heartily favoured the embassy. His confidence in it is further attested by a very long and elaborate memorandum which he addressed to Prince Kung, indicating the uses to which the embassy should be put in bringing about an understanding with the Powers, whereby Chinese interests would be safeguarded while the treaty rights of foreigners should be amply fulfilled. "I see in the mission a hope of improvement and a material change in the whole aspect of affairs.... Proves there are Ministers with power and influence in the councils of the emperor who believe the time has come for breaking with the past.... After a long night of weariness and futile efforts, daylight begins to appear.... I hail the appointment of a representative to the Western Powers as the beginning of a new era." Such was the Minister's valediction in his report to the Foreign Office. But he had been mightily deceived. The night had indeed been long, but it was not the true dawn which was welcomed with this joyful acclamation. How quickly the gloom settled down again on that scene of fruitless toil will presently be seen.
The mission was introduced to the notice of the world by a humorous prelude, which may be quoted for the sake of the light it incidentally throws on the chronic state of China. On their way from Peking to Tientsin, seventy or eighty miles, the envoys halted at a large market-town, where a report met them of a phenomenon not very uncommon in those parts, especially in winter—a band of marauders who had been annoying the neighbourhood. The mission took refuge in an inn, resolved to stand a siege until aid should come. In this strait Mr Burlingame seems never to have thought of applying either to the local authorities of the town or to the Government he was serving, but despatched urgent messages to Peking, where there were escorts kept at the Russian and British Legations, and to Tientsin, where was the British gunboat Dove. His appeals were answered with alacrity from both sides. From Peking came a relief party of British and Russian soldiers in charge of members of the two Legations; from Tientsin a party of mounted bluejackets under Lieutenant Dunlop. They met at the half-way house where the mission lay, but nothing could be seen or heard of the besiegers. Mr Burlingame's party reached their port of embarkation without further adventure. Indeed the only serious matter that arose out of the imbroglio was a difference of opinion between one Vodkansky of the Cossack guard and Mulvaney, a sturdy Hibernian of the British escort, which the latter proposed to settle by the means in vogue among heroes before the days of Agamemnon. Tragic consequences were, however, averted by the soothing diplomacy of the representative of her Majesty's Legation, Mr Conolly, and the two Burlingame relief expeditions returned to their respective stations nothing the worse for a couple of days' outing in the bracing November air.
Mr Burlingame made his début in the United States, first by eloquent speeches in San Francisco, and next by what assumed the form of serious negotiations at Washington. An orator cannot reasonably be held accountable for every detail of his orations, but Mr Burlingame's mission may be most favourably summarised by a few carefully chosen words of his own:—
1st. It was the object of the mission to disabuse the foreign Powers of an impression they were supposed to entertain, that the Chinese Government had entered upon a retrograde policy.
2nd. To deprecate a precipitate and unfriendly attempt on their part to enter upon a policy which might make all progress impossible from its menacing tone and "violent shock to the feelings, and even prejudices, of the people."
Translated into practice, these propositions meant that China wished to be let alone; and that, we may safely assume, represented the whole extent of Mr Burlingame's instructions. This claim was embodied in a convention which he made at Washington, comprising certain "additional articles" to the American treaty of 1858, the purport of which was that the United States undertook to apply no pressure to China, which, it may be presumed, that Power had never the intention of doing. The convention was for several reasons not welcomed at Peking, but it served the only purpose which perhaps it was ever expected to serve, that of giving the keynote to the representations which the envoy was afterwards to make to the various Powers in Europe.
The next Government to which Mr Burlingame addressed himself was that of Great Britain, over which he obtained a more important success than over that of the United States. In fact, he persuaded Lord Clarendon to discard all the information that ever reached the Foreign Office from its own responsible agents in China—men who were bound by every consideration of loyalty and public duty to report only what was true, and to accept instead thereof the protestations of an agent hired to make out a case; for it is superfluous to add that Mr Burlingame was far indeed from representing the true state of facts. He succeeded in so altering the course of the British Government that their agent in China was discredited, stultified, and rendered powerless to effect the objects for which he had been labouring. This was the first step of the Foreign Office in the new departure which had many evil results—that, namely, of taking their cue not from agents in their own pay, but from others over whom they could exercise no control, and who had alien interests to serve.
From the Chinese point of view the Burlingame mission was a decided success.