The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era, Vol. 2 (of 2) / As Illustrated in the Career of Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., D.C.L., Many Years Consul and Minister in China and Japan

by Alexander Michie

VII. THE VISIT OF THE CZAREVITCH, 1891.

Worthy reception in Peking impossible—Attempted substitution of provincial reception—Czarevitch visits only the Russian communities in China.

Closely connected in point of time, and possibly by a more vital link, with the imperial audience was the voyage of the Czarevitch to India, China, and Japan in 1890-91. There was no precedent in China for the reception of the member of any foreign royal family. In the days before the first audience the Duke of Edinburgh, while in command of the Galatea, visited Peking, but strictly incognito, no visits being exchanged with any Chinese. But times had changed considerably in the twenty years that had since elapsed, and with an emperor of full age on the throne things that were winked at during his minority could no longer be so lightly treated. The Chinese Government were, in fact, perfectly conscious of the responsibility which lay upon them to show courtesy to so distinguished a visitor as the heir to the throne of Russia, and they took timely measures for his reception.

The position of the audience question convinced the Ministers that it would be impossible to receive him worthily in Peking, since to do so would be to admit equality with foreign States. The first care of the Chinese, therefore, was to induce his Imperial Highness to stay away from the capital. The Russian Government were told that Li Hung-chang, representing the Chinese Emperor, would meet the Czarevitch at Chefoo, and that his reception by other Governors of provinces would be deemed equivalent to one by the emperor in person. The Russian Government fell into the trap, and the programme of provincial receptions would have been carried out but for the eccentricity of Chang Chih-tung, the governor-general of the Hu provinces on the Yangtze. He, with the other provincials, had received the instructions about the reception of the Czarevitch, but he alone treated the order with contempt, not even deigning to answer it or to explain his reason. The order did not emanate from Peking, and he would not accept a mandate from an equal. Evidently the emperor had no hand in drawing up the programme, and this Chang had the best means of knowing, for he had a brother in the Inner Council. This action of a high authority throws full light on the difference between an imperial and a provincial transaction, as the Chinese themselves regard it.

In keeping with this independent attitude of Chang was the rudeness with which he received the officer deputed by the Russian admiral to arrange details of the reception at Wuchang. In this way the intended imposture was exposed. But if the Russian Government had been too easily led into a false position, it must be admitted they extricated themselves cleverly, by simply demanding a yellow chair for the Czarevitch, a colour reserved exclusively for the emperor. As this could not be conceded the official ceremonies fell through, and the Czarevitch contented himself with visiting the Russian communities at the Chinese ports. He then proceeded to Japan, where a brilliant reception awaited him; and from Japan to Vladivostock, where he turned the first sod of the Trans-Siberian Railway, 19th May 1891.

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE TONGKING QUARREL.

Rapid advance of French towards China proper—The Black Flags—Discussions between France and China—Attempted negotiations—Conquest of Tongking decided upon—Chinese feared attack on Canton—City defenceless—Negotiation with France recommended—Captain Fournier concludes convention with Li Hung-chang in Tientsin—Strong opposition in the capital—Collision between forces in Tongking—French make war on China—Peace concluded through customs agency, April 1885—The Li-Fournier convention ratified.

The progress of the French in the annexation of Cochin China, Annam, and Tongking was phenomenally rapid. These aggressions on her tributary States were far from agreeable to China, but no effective means of resistance was proposed. The Chinese policy, wrote Sir R. Alcock,[26] "has been one of drift, and letting things slide into irretrievable confusion and disaster for want of courage and decisive action at the right time. Between the Dupuis and Garnier expeditions, in which a handful of men were seizing towns, storming citadels, and terrorising the Annamite mandarins and king into virtual submission to any terms dictated to them, and Captain Rivière's very similar proceedings in 1883, there was abundant time and opportunity for China either to fight or to negotiate with effect, but she did neither."

When, however, the advance of the French brought them within measurable distance of the southern provinces of China proper, a more serious view of the invasion was forced upon the Government. A body of irregular troops, called the Black Flags, for some time stood in the way of the French, who designated them "pirates." The status of these Black Flags was, indeed, somewhat ambiguous, as they had been virtually outlawed by the Chinese. But when it was seen that they were harassing the French, the provincial authorities recognised that they were fighting the battle of China and of her tributary. The Annamese Government had, in the first instance, invited the assistance of the Black Flags, and the Chinese Government officially encouraged them, while hoping to evade direct responsibility for doing so. The French had made the useless mistake of wounding China in a tender spot by destroying the seal granted to the Annamese sovereign by the emperor, and it was probably this insult rather than the territorial seizures which induced China to reinforce the Black Flags by a body of imperial troops, and to lay down distinctly the line which she would consider herself bound to defend.

The annexation of Annam became the subject of protracted discussions between France and China. The diplomacy of the Marquis Tsêng in Paris, and of Li Hung-chang in China—a convention had actually been concluded between the latter and the French Minister, Bourrée—failed to arrest the progress of France, and the question between the two countries reached a burning point after the capture by the French of Sontay and Bacninh in the spring of 1884.

The Chinese envoy had declared to M. Ferry that a French advance on these places would be regarded by his Government as a casus belli. Seeing, however, that no action was taken by China after their actual capture, the French took fresh courage, and their programme of conquest became so much expanded that what had been the dream of a few became the definitive policy of the Republic. "The conquest of Tongking had been decided upon in principle," wrote Admiral Jaurèguiberry to Captain Rivière at the time when M. de Freycinet was declaring that there should be no policy of aggression. The taking of the two citadels sealed the policy of the admiral and falsified that of the Foreign Minister. From that point may be dated the important position which France has since assumed in claiming to direct, in conjunction with Russia, the destinies of the Chinese Empire.

On the fall of the two cities the Chinese officials of the southern provinces were filled with consternation. They feared that the successes of the French would encourage them, if not to invade China, at least to force a settlement with her on their own terms. They had before them the brochure of Captain Rivière, commander of the French forces in Tongking, in which he advocated a quarrel with China as a preliminary to the seizure of the three southern provinces, Kwangtung, Kwangsi, and Yunnan. An obvious step towards the execution of such a design would be an attack on the provincial capital, Canton, an event which was not only anticipated by the authorities, but was thought feasible, and even probable, by disinterested onlookers. How little prepared were the Chinese to resist such an attack will be best understood by the measures they took to avert it.

An officer of the Chinese customs service, Mr G. Detring, returning from furlough, brought with him the details of the Marquis Tsêng's abortive negotiations in Paris. He arrived in China immediately after the capture of the two strongholds of Sontay and Bacninh. In proceeding from Hongkong to take up his official post at Canton he accepted a passage in the French aviso Volta, which conveyed Rear-Admiral Lespès to the latter city. She was commanded by Commandant Fournier, with whom Mr Detring had been some years before on terms of intimacy in the north of China. The principal topic discussed on the passage was naturally Tongking, and, judging from subsequent developments, it is reasonable to suppose that the seeds of the settlement eventually concluded between China and France were sown during that short but interesting voyage. When Mr Detring reported himself to the provincial authorities they evinced the greatest anxiety as to what they conceived to be the threatening attitude of the French against Canton. Asked if their river defences were in a position to resist attack, they frankly avowed that they were not; but yet, being personally responsible for the defence, they dared not confess the true state of affairs to the Imperial Government. The viceroy of Canton and the governor of Yunnan were already under censure, and the military commanders in Tongking were even threatened with decapitation "pour encourager les autres." The Canton authorities were thus, in fact, in the dilemma in which Chinese provincial officials have so frequently found themselves in dealing with foreign exigencies—responsible yet helpless. Since they were avowedly incapable of resistance, the viceroy and governor were advised at once to open negotiations with the French, and, as a first step, to report the actual position frankly to the Central Government,—in other words, to Li Hung-chang, who in this, as in all other crises, had to bear the burden of every initiative. Having had experience of the capacity of Mr Detring, first in the negotiating of the Chefoo convention, and subsequently during several years of official intercourse at Tientsin, Li Hung-chang moved the Central Government to summon the Canton commissioner of customs to Tientsin for consultation.

The way being thus partially opened to negotiation, Rear-Admiral Lespès held himself in readiness to proceed to Tientsin in response to any invitation that might be conveyed to him. Captain Fournier was sent on in advance to the rendezvous at Chefoo, where he was to remain until the real views of the Chinese Government respecting a settlement of the Tongking dispute had been ascertained. The French having set their hearts on extorting a large indemnity, it was emphatically declared to them that China would never pay one farthing. Any negotiation, therefore, would be futile unless this question was first eliminated. Having paved the way with Li Hung-chang, Mr Detring next proceeded to Chefoo to invite Captain Fournier to Tientsin. From previous good relations he was persona grata with Li, and on that account was thought a not unfit agent with whom to discuss preliminaries in anticipation of the arrival of his admiral. But that there should be no mistake about the indemnity, Captain Fournier was once more told that unless it were dropped it would be useless his proceeding to Tientsin. His doing so, therefore, was a tacit withdrawal of that important item in the French demands. Both parties being equally desirous of a settlement, all official technical difficulties were promptly overcome, and Captain Fournier, from a mere herald of the French admiral, was by telegraphic instructions from Paris at once promoted to the rank of plenipotentiary for France, and this notwithstanding that there was an accredited representative of the Republic eighty miles off in Peking. The two negotiators, in short, fell into each other's arms, and the convention of May 11, 1884, was the result.

The peace so suddenly and irregularly patched up was not, however, destined to endure. Li Hung-chang, knowing better than any of his peers the risks of a war with France, had stretched his authority to the uttermost in concluding a treaty which practically ceded Annam and Tongking to that Power. For though in this as in all his other acts he carried with him the approval of the empress-dowager, he knew that he had to brave the ferocious opposition of the ignorant fanatics of the capital, which he himself described as the "howling of dogs." The moment the announcement was made, indeed, the furies were let loose upon him, and he had practically no support but that of the empress-dowager; for the Tsungli-Yamên, so far as they were not opposed to the treaty, were invertebrate. It is necessary to bear in mind this critical position of Li Hung-chang in order to understand the series of blunders, misunderstandings, recriminations, and actual war which ensued.

After the ratification of the treaty, arrangements had to be made for the withdrawal of the Chinese forces from the territory which had been ceded to France. Captain Fournier, in an interview with Li Hung-chang, presented a memorandum fixing the dates on which the troops were to evacuate the several positions specified. A long discussion appears to have taken place, in which it is not difficult, from the circumstances above referred to, to divine what the viceroy's attitude must have been. He wished to avoid the invidious responsibility of asking the Central Government to order the withdrawal of the troops from Langson, as to do so would obviously add fuel to the fire of those powerful functionaries who were clamouring for the repudiation of the treaty, and for the negotiator's head. In vain endeavouring to obtain from Fournier an indefinite delay in carrying out the stipulation for the retirement of the Chinese troops, Li perhaps trusted that the French commanders in Tongking would themselves cut the knot by marching forward with an adequate force and brushing away the Chinese troops opposing them. The accomplished fact would then have settled everything.

It has been said that the clever interpreter, instead of translating all the viceroy's arguments and explaining his difficulties, summed the whole up to Captain Fournier in two words, "Avancez donc"—advice which would no doubt have been sufficient if only the French military commander, Colonel Dugenne, had marched with a reasonable force, or even if he had carried with him a competent interpreter, through whom he might have communicated with the Chinese commander. The latter officer, however, when called upon to evacuate the post, pleaded that he had received no instructions to that effect, and asked for time to communicate with Peking. The letter to the French commander containing these reasonable pleas for delay was either wrongly translated or left untranslated for months. In the meantime Colonel Dugenne advanced with a small party, and was forced to retreat with loss, for which he was not unjustly recalled by his own authorities; and thereupon ensued the Franco-Chinese war.

This was not, however, the only contretemps in connection with this lamentable outbreak. The Chinese commander had actually telegraphed to Li Hung-chang for instructions; but, still unwilling to face the responsibility, the latter left the reply to his council, among whom there happened to be for the moment his evil genius, Chang Pei-lun, a fire-eating member of the Tsungli-Yamên, who was on his way to take up the post of governor of Fukien province and Imperial Commissioner of the Foochow arsenal.

Laudable efforts were made to repair the mischief, and in the conferences which followed in Paris peace was more than once all but assured; but owing to a series of accidents and misunderstandings, in which the authorities at Peking, the French representative there, the French commanders on the Chinese coast, and the telegraph were all implicated, the die was cast in August 1884, and the war was continued till the following April.

For reasons of their own the French Government were averse to calling the hostilities "war," preferring reprisals and "intelligent destruction." By whatever name it may be called, the French did not distinguish themselves greatly in the conduct of the operations. Their only feat of arms was the destruction, at their anchorage in the river Min, of the Chinese ships belonging to the Foochow squadron, and of the arsenal, which, as Li Hung-chang bitterly reflected, had been erected by "French genius." Admiral Courbet found his destructive work easy, having entered the river and taken up a position in the rear of the batteries during time of peace. The subsequent operations in Formosa were without result; and the French Government refused permission to Admiral Courbet to attack Port Arthur, on the non-military ground of wishing to save the prestige of "notre ami Li Hung-chang." So far as the naval operations were concerned, even when most successful in intelligent destruction, they were quite ineffective towards ending the war until the method which has never failed to bring the Chinese Government to terms was resorted to—the stoppage of the grain-supply to the capital. This was accomplished by a patrol of the coast for the purpose of intercepting vessels carrying rice to Tientsin. The work performed during the winter and spring of 1885 by the French cruisers, in keeping the sea without any base and performing their patrol duties in all weathers, excited the admiration of seamen. It should be mentioned that they were precluded from acting offensively against the Yangtze by tacit understanding with Great Britain and other Powers.

If the breach of the peace between France and China was a historical curiosity, the eventual settlement of the dispute resembled a dramatic extravaganza. The final incident of the war in Tongking was the defeat of the French, followed by a panic, caused apparently by General Négrier being wounded. The force then made a disorderly retreat before imaginary pursuers. In the meantime the empress-dowager had given positive orders that peace should be made on any terms. Both parties had thus come round to the status quo ante bellum—that is to say, they were both equally urgent to obtain peace, as they had been in May 1884. The agent in bringing this about was Sir Robert Hart; and it was effected, as great things usually are, by the adroit use of very simple means. During the blockade of Formosa a small Chinese lighthouse tender was captured by the French admiral and detained. As she was essentially non-combatant, and was serving the interests of humanity in supplying the numerous lighthouses on the coast of China for the benefit of the commerce of all nations, Sir Robert Hart instructed his very capable London agent, Mr Duncan Campbell, to go to Paris and represent the case to the French Ministers, with a view to obtaining the release of so useful and harmless a vessel. In this manner the door was opened to the larger negotiation. Mr Campbell executed his delicate mission with so much tact, that in the amicable conversations which ensued between him and certain French officials the idea of putting an end to a war of which both parties were tired, and which, moreover, seemed objectless, was ventilated; and in a few days authority was telegraphed from Peking to Mr Campbell to sign a protocol.

This was done before the news of the French reverse at Langson reached Paris. After such a military success M. Jules Ferry could not imagine that the Chinese Government would adhere to the terms of the protocol, and therefore he kept the whole negotiation secret from the Chambers. In the meanwhile the mishap to the French troops, being greatly exaggerated, excited such intense feeling in France that M. Ferry, le Tonkinois, was obliged to resign, with the treaty which might have saved him in his pocket. As for the empress-dowager, she recked nothing of the success of her brave troops on the outskirts of the empire, but thought only of the enormous expense of the war, which had been unpleasantly brought home to her, and of matters affecting her own convenience. She therefore had no thought of going back on the treaty, but was even more urgent than before to have it promptly signed and ratified. The honours of the peace thus fell in a few days to M. Ferry's successor.

And what was the outcome of a year's fighting which cost China 100,000,000 taels and France some proportionate amount? A simple reaffirmation of the Li-Fournier convention of May 1884! The convention itself was short and simple—one clause only exciting much interest during the negotiations, and that provoked a hot discussion, not on the substance, but on the verbal form. It was a stipulation by which the two contracting parties consciously meant different things, and each fought hard for a phrase sufficiently subtle to allow each to interpret it in his own way when the time came for the fulfilment of the treaty provisions. The French were most desirous of binding the Chinese to employ French industries in all their new undertakings. China was equally resolute in avoiding any such obligation. In the end each was satisfied that he could read the treaty clause in his own favour. But the final victory in the struggle would go to the side that was most persistent in forcing its meaning into practice. The French Ministry had announced to the Chambers a great victory for French manufacturing industries, which were represented as having by it obtained a monopoly in China. The text of the treaty, even in the French version, did not, indeed, bear this out; but the French had the primâ facie argument on their side, that the introduction of a clause in a treaty referring to the Chinese patronage of French industries, however worded, must have meant something more than merely to register the common fact that China was at liberty to deal with whom she pleased. In the end a compromise was effected by China's giving to a French syndicate the contract for excavating the basin and dock at Port Arthur and certain orders for material, among which was a famous military balloon, wonderfully symbolic of the whole proceeding.

CHAPTER XXVII.
THE FRENCH PROTECTORATE OF CHRISTIANS.

Alliance with Church the corner-stone of French conquest—Persistence of French ambitions in the Far East—Protectorate of native Christians—Its abuse by the propaganda—Forcible erection of cathedrals in Peking—Imperial family aggrieved thereby—Negotiations for removal of church from palace grounds—Mr Dunn's mission to Rome—Vatican to send a nuncio—French Government vetos—French minister vetos transfer of cathedral—Unless transaction placed in his hands.

The claim of France to protect Christians against the native authorities in the Far East constitutes the basis and the origin of her present political position in those countries. The propagation of the faith was, indeed, a recognised element in the adventures of other countries besides France; but she has, since the eclipse of Portugal and Spain, enjoyed the distinction of a working alliance with the Church in furthering the foreign domination of both. "Church and State, linked in alliance close and potential, played faithfully into each other's hands," says Parkman ('Jesuits in North America'). In the reign of Louis XIV. the kingdom of Siam was the object of their joint attention. A missionary bishop persuaded the most Christian king that to establish the Church in Siam and convert king and country to the Catholic faith would open an effectual door for the extension of French commerce. A century later another bishop persuaded another Louis to interfere in the affairs of Annam, and only the events of 1789 cut short an expedition that was being prepared of politico-ecclesiastical propagandism. Napoleon III. took up the cause, and actually effected the conquest of Cochin China; and Gambetta was so enthusiastic on the subject that, while persecuting the Catholics in France, he was ready to expend the forces of the Republic in protecting them in distant countries.

There is here, therefore, irrespective of persons or forms of government, an unbroken tradition, which furnishes a key to the successive operations of France in the Far East. Thus when she resolved to join England in hostilities against China in 1857 a pretext was ready to hand in the murder of a Catholic priest in the interior of the country, his presence there being a defiance of the laws of the empire. There has been flux and reflux in French policy, but no change in its direction; and though prudence has from time to time set limits to its full expression, the claim to a special representation of Chinese Christians has been consistently pursued as a cardinal object of the French military, naval, and diplomatic forces in the Far East.

The treaties of 1858 for the first time authorised travelling into the interior, and placed French subjects, whether missionary or not, who availed themselves of the permission, under the protection of their own country. But ever since the convention of Peking in 1860 it has been sought by indirect and unobtrusive means to assume the protectorate over native Christians as well. The interpolated clause in the Chinese, which was no part of the authentic French version of the convention, lent a certain colour to the pretension by seeming to recognise communities of Chinese Christians as legal units and fit subjects of international agreement between China and France. Nevertheless, "French interference between the Chinese authorities and the subjects of the empire of China has never had any treaty warrant or justification by the law of nations," wrote Sir Rutherford Alcock in the 'Nineteenth Century,' November 1886; and he added, "China has the remedy in her own hands, to a certain extent, by refusing to admit the pretension." The Chinese Government had long been alive to the danger, as its elaborate appeal to the reason of the Powers in 1871 amply testified, but its eyes were opened still wider by the lesson of the Tongking war. A disposition was thereafter evinced to withstand the claim of the French, and the action of Germany afforded sufficient support to the Chinese position, had the Government only had the courage and perspicacity to lean upon it. For in the Catholic propaganda were missionaries of German origin, who were not permitted to divest themselves of their nationality, but were made to apply for their passports into the interior not to the French, but the German, Legation in Peking. Had Italy and Spain been equally independent, the question of the French, or any other protectorate, could scarcely have been entertained without introducing the element of separate foreign nationalism into the constitution of the Christian communities in China, which would not, perhaps, have been agreeable to the views of the Catholic propagandists, for they naturally aspired to maintain their independence as a compact ecclesiastical organisation.

The dread of the French protectorate was much accentuated by the enforced restitution of ancient buildings, the most conspicuous examples of which occurred in the city of Peking itself, and even within the area of the imperial palace. The sites of three ancient churches being claimed by the French Minister, the emperor's Government was compelled to violate its sense of justice by evicting the existing owners. The original building of one of the three was found practically intact, though hidden by the houses built round and against its walls. These of course had to be cleared away, regardless of the rights of their occupants. The interior fittings and decorations of the church had disappeared, but, strange to say, much of the wood carving and other ornaments were gradually recovered from the old-curiosity shops, where the parts not destroyed had, by the instinct of the Wardour Street craft, been preserved, begrimed with the dust of a hundred years and hopelessly unsaleable. By patiently collecting these disjointed fragments and piecing them together like a Chinese puzzle, the Fathers were able gradually to restore the church to something like its original state, so that it became itself an interesting relic of the golden age of the Jesuits in Peking.

The other two churches had been demolished, and the sites converted to secular uses, requiring some ingenuity to identify. When these sites were, under the new dispensation, cleared of superincumbent buildings, churches were erected as much exceeding the original as the glory of the Jewish temple, rebuilt after the Captivity, excelled that of the former house. The restrictions imposed by the Government on the style of the buildings, the last vestige of power which they dared assert, bore lightly on the astute constructors of the new churches. In deference to a common Chinese objection, perhaps partly superstitious, to lofty structures overlooking them, a limit was set to the height of the new buildings. But remonstrances after completion were easily disposed of by the pious Fathers inviting the objectors to go and measure the towers! The Chinese seem to have the same constitutional dislike of a demonstration that they have to a straight line or a right angle, and a challenge like this never failed to put them to silence. As to their neglect to exercise their right of supervision during construction, the shortest way to characterise it is merely to say it was Chinese. The same kind of negligence also allowed roofs of cathedrals, not in the capital alone, but in distant provinces, to be covered with yellow tiles, a colour reserved exclusively for imperial use. It is true the process was disguised, for the benefit of those who chose to be blind, by the tiles being whitewashed before being sent aloft, leaving to the slow action of the weather the gradual revelation of the imperial colour, which might then, indeed, be represented as the act of Heaven. Nothing is too transparent to deceive those who are willing to be deceived.

PEI-T'ANG CATHEDRAL IN PEKING, PURCHASED BY CHINESE GOVERNMENT.

The cathedral around which the greatest interest centred, however, was the one which was erected within the palace grounds. The site had been granted by the great Emperor Kanghsi, the most imperial of the Manchu line, to the learned fathers who cured his fever by administering Jesuits' bark, then a new discovery, and whom he reckoned on attaching to his house by the favours bestowed on them. The new building was presumably erected on or near the site of the old, against the most urgent protests of the Court. Every inducement was offered to the French—larger and better sites, perhaps other compensations as well—if they would forego their demand for the resumption of the ground; but the French Government being set upon marking its ascendancy by a permanent sign, compelled the erection of the Pei-t'ang Cathedral on the spot indicated. The Lazarists, who had succeeded to the Jesuits in North China, had a kindly bishop at their head, who conceded much in the structure of the new building to soothe the feelings of the imperial family. Nevertheless, stunted as they were, from the point of view of architectural symmetry, the double towers of the cathedral were visible from the palace, and the two belfries commanded a view over a large part of the precincts. The building was therefore an eyesore to the inmates for twenty years, on the common ground on which it would have been offensive even to a provincial population, but still more as a staring monument of the deepest humiliation the dynasty had endured.[27] The empress-dowager bore the grievance, but not with resignation, for soon after the affairs of the empire assumed a settled aspect she urged her Ministers to find a way to get rid of the obnoxious building.

Monseigneur Delaplace had, in his former diocese of Chêkiang, rendered good service to the Government in opposing the rebels, for which he was granted high Chinese rank. Being dissatisfied with the action of France after the Tientsin massacre of 1870, he extricated his mission from the control of the French Legation in Peking, and from that date till his death in 1882 conducted its affairs in direct communication with the Tsungli-Yamên. Fully recognising how hateful his cathedral was to the Chinese, he co-operated with Prince Kung and Wênsiang in their efforts to remove it, and in 1874 he actually concluded an agreement with them to that effect. But the contract was vetoed by the French Government. The sore was thus reopened and continued to fester until 1881, when there was so much excitement in the capital that the Church and mission were thought to be in great danger. During the Tongking troubles the question of the cathedral was allowed to rest, but no sooner was peace assured than the Court again became restless, and with renewed urgency sought a remedy for its grievance.

The negotiations, which proved successful, were entered upon in an irregular manner, such as has characterised so many of the Chinese official acts. An Englishman in Peking, who had had business dealings with the Government, was asked one day by the confidential factotum of Prince Ch'un whether he could render assistance in the matter of the Pei-t'ang. The case was explained at length, and the foreigner, not being then aware of the negotiations of 1874, suggested, as the most obvious course, trying to make an arrangement with the Lazarist mission. The Manchu shook his head, to signify the futility of that proceeding. The enterprise thus seemed desperate, unless the Imperial Government should exercise its sovereign right of expropriation,—much too drastic a measure for any Chinese Government to attempt.

One hope only seemed to remain, a direct appeal to the Vatican. This led to a long conversation on the Papacy, and the Manchu official,[28] being a pious and even a learned Buddhist, became intensely interested in hearing much that was new to him respecting the position and prerogatives of the European Dalai Lama. Nor did the "great Western Saint," whose vicegerent the Pope claims to be, fail to evoke the deep reverence of both the Manchu and the Chinese who were present, so that one might be almost justified in appropriating words uttered on a different occasion,—they were "not very far from the kingdom" ruled by "the Western Saint."

But the interesting question was, How was the Vatican to be approached? By a qualified secret agent intrusted with the full confidence of the Chinese Court. The mission would be by no means easy, for should its object become known, it would be thwarted in advance from mere jealousy, if from no other motive, by Lazarist and perhaps other Catholic missions, so that access to the Supreme Pontiff would be blocked at the outset. The mission would also be certain to arouse the strenuous hostility of the French Government. After discussing the problem from all sides for three hours, the Manchu cut it short by the abrupt question, "Will you go?" "No," said the foreigner; "such an undertaking requires quite other qualities than any I possess. But," he added, after considering the matter, "I think I know the man who might carry it through." "Where is he? in Peking? Bring him here," were rapped out like musketry-fire, showing how urgent was the subject. The agent recommended to him was Mr J. G. Dunn, a man of genius and of varied accomplishments, a Catholic, and having an extensive personal acquaintance with the propaganda. He was at once invited to Peking, when another long conference ensued, and Mr Dunn was requested to draw up a memorandum on the whole scheme for the information of Prince Ch'un. After waiting some time for a response Mr Dunn left the capital, decidedly disappointed, for he was eager for a service so congenial to his character and feelings. Indeed had the mission been created for the man, or the man for the mission, the harmony between means and ends could hardly have been closer.

Several months elapsed before the question emerged again from official obscurity, and the manner of it is worth relating if only for the side-light it throws on Chinese methods. Li Hung-chang paid a visit to the capital in 1885, and soon after his return to Tientsin he requested his secretaries to find out where Mr Dunn was and to invite him by telegraph to come to see the viceroy. Not knowing why he was sent for, any more than Gordon did when summoned from India five years before, Mr Dunn came, and Li at once entered on the Pei-t'ang question, showing him his own memorandum on the subject. The affair having been placed by Prince Ch'un in the hands of Li Hung-chang to be carried through, Mr Dunn was promptly commissioned, and in concert with the viceroy's secretary, the very capable officer who now represents China at Washington, the emissary's instructions and credentials were drawn up. There were two separate instructions, and no little confusion was caused thereby.

On leaving China for Rome, Mr Dunn stipulated that a competent intermediary should be appointed to interpret his correspondence to Li Hung-chang, a duty which was intrusted to the commissioner of customs in Tientsin. The utility of this provision was soon made manifest, for when telegrams began to arrive from Rome, their purport was unintelligible, as they seemed irrelevant to the expropriation of the cathedral, which was Mr Dunn's special mission. Irritated by this apparent aberration, the viceroy's idea was to recall the emissary. But when it was suggested that the copies of his credentials should be first carefully examined the position became clearer. One part of his instructions was then found to be directed towards the question of the Christian protectorate, and Mr Dunn was, in fact, diplomatising with the Pope with a view to his appointing a nuncio or apostolic delegate to China to represent all the Catholic missions. The Chinese had not fully mastered this idea, and even Li Hung-chang, who has a wonderful memory, had forgotten the existence of the second section of his instructions, which no doubt Mr Dunn had drawn up himself. The Tsungli-Yamên, languid and bemused, hesitated to express any opinion, and assumed their habitual passive attitude. One person alone really grasped the importance of having the Church in China represented by the delegate of a Power "which has no armies or fleets wherewith to threaten or attack." The empress-dowager, when the nomination of Mgr. Agliardi was announced, and his coming depended on formal imperial invitation, sent the urgent message to the Yamên, "Get that man here; lose no time."

Mr Dunn's negotiations with the Vatican of course soon leaked out; notices appeared in the press; Mr Punch had his little joke that though there was evidently a good deal doing, the question was, Who was Dunn? The French Government took the matter up energetically through their Minister in Rome, and their diplomatic efforts having failed, they presented an ultimatum to the Pope which compelled him to cancel the appointment of his nuncio. France threatening to terminate the concordat, withdraw the subvention to the Church in France, and sequestrate its ministers, the Holy Father had no option but to submit. With tears in his eyes he deplored his impotence to respond to the invitation of China under such a truculent menace to "his children in France."

While these things were going on in Rome the transference of the Pei-t'ang Cathedral, which had been settled in principle through Mr Dunn, was then taken up by the Lazarist Mission, and the popular Père Favier was deputed by the Bishop of Peking to proceed to Rome and to Paris to obtain from the Vatican and the General of the Lazarist Order the specific authority to negotiate the transfer. Having brought back the necessary powers, a convention was shortly concluded between Bishop Tagliabue and Li Hung-chang. The Church made an excellent bargain, as it generally does: a new site of about thrice the area was granted close to the old on the opposite side of the broad roadway, and a bountiful compensation in money was made for the trouble and cost of removal. But after the agreement was signed the French Government interposed its veto so far as to insist on being the intermediary through whose hands the transaction should pass. France also, it was said, had previously essayed to marchander with China for her consent, but withdrew when it became clear that further obstruction might entail untoward consequences. To mark its satisfaction at the final solution of this question, the Chinese Government eulogised all those who had helped to bring it about, and bestowed high rank on Bishop Tagliabue and the Abbé Favier (now bishop).

This transaction supplied a crucial test of French policy and pretensions in China, the first concrete expression of both that had been obtained since the forcible restitution of Church property immediately after the capture of Peking. The coercion, indeed, was applied on this occasion to the Roman Pontiff and the Catholic Church rather than to the Chinese Government; but the latter were not so dull as not to see to what ulterior objects the French scheme might be extended, given convenient circumstances. They were, in fact, really alarmed, and the question was discussed with some warmth in the Chinese as well as in the European press. "The end is not yet," wrote Sir Rutherford Alcock; "China may be less open to intimidation than heretofore, and assert her undoubted right to refuse the recognition of an assumed protectorate over Roman missions, irrespective of the nationality of their members." The French press espoused the cause of the protectorate warmly, treating it as a most valuable national asset. The Chinese press took up the question in reply. Their view of the position was comprehensively summed up in a native newspaper in October 1886 in the following terms:—

It has been said by them of old time that when a man is found acting injuriously to his own family but benevolently to strangers his behaviour is unnatural, and there is something hidden under the cloak of outward kindness.

We have from time to time printed translations from various foreign newspapers on the subject of the relations between the Chinese Government and the Pope. Some days ago we reproduced an article on the same subject from the 'Temps,' a French newspaper of the highest authority. These articles all indicate that the French Government is greatly troubled at the prospect of losing what is called the right to protect Christians in China. This is a question which has not hitherto been much considered by Chinese statesmen. Those of them who have been in Europe, or who have studied political affairs there, know something of the importance of the issues which are covered up in that apparently harmless word "protection"; but it is hardly to be expected that the Ministers and statesmen who have scarcely travelled beyond the walls of Peking can realise the full significance of the phrase. Nothing is better calculated to quicken the apprehension of the Government on this point than the extraordinary excitement of the French Government, which insists on protecting the Christians in China whether they desire this protection or not. For now that the French have so plainly shown their secret designs, it would be impossible for China to acquiesce, by word or deed, in the pretensions which France sets up. It is rather suspicious that the French Government, the greatest enemy of Christianity, which is constantly oppressing the priests and confiscating their property in France, should be so intensely desirous of protecting Christians in China, where this protection is not required. A leading French statesman, Gambetta, who died a few years ago, left as a legacy to his followers the doctrine that the Church should be suppressed in France but supported in all foreign countries. Gambetta was a man who had no reverence for Heaven, and no religion, and seems to have regarded Christianity as a disease which he wished his own country to be rid of, but was not sorry to see it spreading elsewhere. It is necessary to keep these ideas in mind in order to understand the action of the French Government to-day.

It would be out of place here to discuss what Christianity is. Like Buddhism, it had a very pure origin, and the living principles of both are mercy, benevolence, and peace. But both religions have in course of ages been overlaid with doctrines and practices which have obscured the simplicity of their origin, and even changed their character. But the greatest misfortune to Christianity is that it has been made use of by princes as a pretext for wars of aggression. In fact, nearly all the wars of Europe for the last thousand years have been in some way connected with religion. This is sometimes made a reproach against Christianity, which professes to be founded on peace and self-sacrifice, but the reproach is scarcely just. Rather it is the peaceful character of Christianity which has induced ambitious statesmen to make use of it to work out their own designs, just as in private life unscrupulous men are sometimes enabled to carry out questionable plans by using the names of men of blameless character. We are only now concerned with the political aspect of Christianity, not its merits as a religion. The modern history of Turkey affords the best illustration of the danger of allowing foreign Powers to interfere in matters of religion. During the last hundred years Russia has several times made war on Turkey, always on the pretext of protecting Christians, and it is this which is fast breaking up the Turkish empire. It is interesting to observe that Russia and France follow the same policy in this matter. When the French Legation withdrew from Peking on the 2nd day of the 7th moon of the 10th year of Kwanghsu (22nd August 1884), the affairs of the Christians were transferred to the Russian Legation. The Ministers of the Tsungli-Yamên remember very well how eagerly the Russian Minister assumed the office of protector of Christians, going to even greater lengths in the way of protection than the French themselves had done. The reason for this is plain. Russia, although she has none now, expects to have by-and-by many Christians in Mongolia and Manchuria who may be extremely useful to her in her aggressive designs on China. Therefore the Russian officials, always looking very far ahead, were most anxious to establish a right of interference for the protection of Christians. And they could do this without reproach when they were acting not for themselves but for France during war-time; well knowing that, whatever position she succeeded in establishing for France, Russia could claim for herself when the proper time came. But the more anxious Russia and France are to assert the right of interfering with Chinese Christians, the more resolute China should be in resisting all such interference. The only safety for China is to treat Christians, whether Chinese or foreign, exactly as all other people are treated—to make no distinctions. Foreign missionaries have the right to travel and reside in the interior; they can exercise this right without getting passports from the French Minister. The Catholic missions are composed of men of all nations, but they all have Ministers in Peking to whom they can apply for passports. Let the Germans get their passports from the German Legation, the Spaniards from the Spanish, Italians, Belgians, and Hollanders from their respective Legations, but no European State has any right to arrogate to itself the position of protector of missionaries in general.

It is satisfactory to learn that the head of the Catholic Church is of this opinion, and although grateful to France for what she has done in the past, is now desirous of being free from French protection in the future. To carry out these views, the Pope is about to send to China a very high official to reside in Peking and perform the functions of a Minister. As the Pope has no troops and no territory, but is merely a kind of Dalai Lama, there is no danger to China from opening direct relations with him. The affairs of the missionaries can then be dealt with in an open and straightforward manner, as no fear of political traps will lurk behind. The Christians when they know they are no longer protected by a military State will understand that their security will depend on their own wisdom in avoiding offence. And the officials and people, on the other hand, will gradually learn that the Christians are only anxious to lead virtuous lives, without any political ambition, and they will respect them. The Imperial Government will then also be able to extend its favour to all Christians and missionaries without the fear of nursing traitors in its bosom. The missionaries have among them men of great learning and much skill in sciences, which the Emperor Kanghsi—who must always stand as the model for Chinese rulers—knew very well how to utilise. The present generation possesses men no less capable of rendering good services to China, and there would be no reason for not using them if the suspicion of their being agents of the French Government were once cleared away.

Notwithstanding so much clear thinking, however, the action of the Chinese continued, as before, nebulous. They seemed never able to seize the bull by the horns, but drifted on, allowing themselves constantly to be put in the wrong, hoping perhaps to accomplish by illegitimate means what was within their legal competence. Afraid or unwilling to control the provincial authorities, they allowed outrages to be perpetrated for which they refused redress until coercion was applied, thus affording to foreign Powers a not in all cases unwelcome pretext for extending their protection even to Chinese Christians. Within a month of the consummation of the transfer of the Pei-t'ang Cathedral, and after the Marquis Tsêng, fresh from Europe, had taken his seat at the Board, the Tsungli-Yamên had fallen into its chronic apathy with regard to Christians. A missionary named Bodinier arrived in Peking from distant Kweichow for the purpose of soliciting the intervention or intercession of the French Legation in favour of the persecuted Christians in that province. While he was on his journey the Catholics of Chungking in Szechuan were being similarly maltreated. Certain disturbances in that great commercial mart culminated in the attack on the house of a wealthy Christian family, which resisted the assailants, several of whom were killed in the affray. The magistrates, who had been supine during the time when the mischief was brewing, thereupon arrested the head of the Lo family and condemned him to death,—an exercise of authority which was held to be arbitrary, and invidiously directed against Christians. Here was an occasion when the Central Government should have taken prompt action, and so deprived the French Government of any pretext for interference. It was a moment when that Government was less apt than usual to put forth its power in the Christian cause. M. Constans was Minister in China, and he was personally not at all disposed to assume the protection of Chinese Christians. Nevertheless, the case being urgent, and the Tsungli-Yamên either cowardly or indifferent, M. Constans broke through the rule he had laid down for himself so far as to telegraph to Paris for instructions. The reply was prompt, doubtless inspired by the propaganda at home, to the effect that he should take up the case of Mr Lo. Thus the Chinese threw away a golden opportunity of showing to the world that the Chinese Christians did not stand in need of any foreign aid. An impartial investigation might have shown, indeed, that the Christians were the aggressors, and the local Chinese officials might have been vindicated from the charges made against them. But the Government's inaction constantly puts it in the wrong even when it may be substantially in the right. The same fatal course has been regularly pursued even to our day, with results patent to all.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
BRITISH SERVICES: DIPLOMATIC, CONSULAR, AND JUDICIAL.

Necessity for administrative and judicial control over British subjects—Consular courts—Supreme court for China and Japan—Personnel of the consular service—Functions of the diplomatic representatives—Absence of distinction explained by apathy of Home Government—Need of reform.

The frequent references throughout this work to the part played by British agents in the development of intercourse with China seem to call for a short account of the character and status of the official machinery which served for so many years as the principal working joint between the two opposed systems of civilisation.

The relations between Great Britain and China were necessarily at first experimental. The consuls appointed to the five ports were selected with no special training, and the chief superintendent, to whom they looked for guidance, was scarcely better furnished than themselves. Yet, as has been shown, the remoteness of the consuls from their chief, and of both from the Government they served, threw them much upon their own resources. How the demand for independent initiative was responded to by some of the individuals concerned has been incidentally noticed in previous chapters.

From the time when it assumed direct relations with China, the need of an effective control over British subjects resorting to that country weighed heavily on the British Government; for in exempting them from native jurisdiction the Government took on itself the responsibility for the good behaviour of its people. The exercise of this control was necessarily tentative, proceeding step by step as occasions arose. The unceasing solicitude of the Government for the orderly conduct of its subjects in China is testified by a long series of Orders in Council conferring on the consuls and their superintendent an almost despotic authority over the persons of the British residents. The operation of this arbitrary system was more satisfactory than could have been expected, thanks to the high character of the parties concerned and the common-sense which governed their mutual relations. In their double capacity, however, of protectors of Chinese and foreigners against the inroads of British subjects, and of the latter against the inroads of the Chinese, the consuls soon discovered that the one part of their duty was easy and the other difficult; and it is no matter for wonder, therefore, if, following the line of least resistance, some of them should have leaned to the side of repression rather than to that of the encouragement of their countrymen. This was noticeable even in judicial proceedings, where the consul was supreme over his own nationals, but had no authority over their opponents. Some check on the consequences of consular idiosyncrasies and defective legal knowledge was maintained by a supreme court in Hongkong, independent alike of the superintendent of trade and of the governor of the colony, to which court appeals lay from consular decisions. This prerogative of the colonial court was not unnaturally irksome to the diplomatic and consular servants of the Foreign Office, and was doubtless one cause of the coolness, not to say antipathy, with which the colony has generally been regarded by them.

The treaties of 1858 and 1860 were followed by a great development in all three services—diplomatic, consular, and judicial. Some years previously the China consular service began to be treated as a career for which special preparation was required, the entry being by competitive examination, through which a certain number of students were annually sent out to China, there to complete their education and then take their part in executive work. When additional ports were opened, therefore, making about twenty in all, in 1861, there was the full complement of qualified men ready to occupy the new consular posts, each of them competent to be his own interpreter. Diplomatic functions were at the same time withdrawn from Hongkong, where they had been merely nominal for eighteen years, and became centred in the Chinese capital. A few years later the judicial authority, so far as it related to the communities at the Chinese ports, was also withdrawn from Hongkong, and was conferred upon the Supreme Court for China and Japan, having its headquarters in Shanghai, established by the Queen's Order in Council of 1864. The new court was inaugurated by Sir Edmund Hornby, who brought to the work practical experience gained in the Levant, the assistant judge being Mr C. W. Goodwin, Barrister of the Inner Temple. This establishment has furnished a solvent for many of the difficulties connected with British residence in the Far East. Adapted with judgment to local circumstances, the court has proved of immense assistance to the consuls, who, subordinated judicially to the chief judge, could now obtain from him proper guidance in their difficulties, a facility of which they availed themselves freely.

Although a great advance on what preceded it, the Supreme Court could not of course escape from all the drawbacks which affected the consular courts. As between British subjects, it enjoyed the full powers of law courts in the mother country; but as between British subjects on the one hand, and the natives of the country, or non-British residents, on the other, the authority of the British court could only be exercised over the former. This one-sided action has been to some extent compensated in later times by the judicial qualifications of consuls representing other Western nationalities, who administer their own laws with the same impartiality as the British courts do theirs. But as regards the Chinese no such compensation operates, for although the treaties make provision for the judicial action of the Chinese authorities, their conceptions of equity and forms of procedure being wholly alien to those of the Western nations, their decisions seldom satisfy the foreign litigant. An attempt to supply a connecting-link between two radically different juridical ideals was made in the setting up of mixed courts for the purpose of dealing with petty cases between natives and foreigners within the settlements of Shanghai. These courts have been occasionally presided over by honest and competent judges, assisted by able foreign assessors; but as the native magistrates, being men of low rank, could always be overruled by the local executive, they lacked the power to make their decisions effective.

As it was impossible to set up a separate judicial establishment at each treaty port where there was but a handful of residents, the consuls had to continue to perform magisterial duty with all the inconveniences attending their double function. Efforts were made by the Home Government to minimise these disadvantages by infusing a modicum of legal knowledge into the service, for which purpose they offered inducements to consular officials who should qualify as barristers. Notwithstanding all this, however, the simple fact that a consul is bound in his administrative capacity to take a part in matters which may afterwards come before him as a judge perpetuates an element of incongruity demanding an uncommon degree of tact on the part of the official. Some of the worst consequences to be apprehended from this state of things are partially obviated by the judge or assistant judge of the Supreme Court going on circuit, when important cases in the consular districts require it; but that expedient is only possible at rare intervals.

The wisdom with which the Supreme Court has been directed is attested by the absence of incident in its history, and by the universal tacit approval of its proceedings. Its success, indeed, soon came to be accepted so much as a matter of course that the true source of it was forgotten. It was, however, recalled vividly to the public memory by a certain retrograde movement. After a quarter of a century of satisfactory working her Majesty's Government took a step which was equivalent to pulling out the corner-stone of the edifice—the absolute independence of the bench. In order to effect an economy in salaries, it was ordained that the two incompatible offices—the judicial and political—should be merged into one, making the chief judge consul-general, and the assistant judge consul for Shanghai. By this move the judges became subordinate to the Legation in Peking, and the Supreme Court itself was subjected to all the evils of the dual function under which the consuls had been labouring. Thanks to the exceptional qualities of the holders of the double office, no glaring scandal arose out of the unnatural combination; but the protests of the community, and of the incumbent of the two offices himself, were strong enough to induce the Foreign Office, after a few years' trial, to retrace their false step and restore the judge to his independence.

The twenty consular establishments in China on which the Select Committee of the House of Commons reported in 1872 were manned by forty "effectives on duty," besides a considerable contingent on furlough. The ten posts subsequently created employ on an average twenty more. Two complete generations of officials have passed through the consular mill in fifty years, which may be moderately reckoned at two hundred men, all of them selected by a competitive examination only one degree less stringent than that for the Indian Civil Service, and nearly all of them men of varied accomplishments. They have been placed in every part of the wide empire of China, and during their career have been shifted about so that every one has had chances of interesting himself in localities strongly contrasted with each other, both as regards official labour and personal recreation and study. From a body of highly educated men so situated, it was naturally to be expected that much enlightenment would be obtained concerning China and its people, and considerable progress made in the promotion of amiable intercourse between them and foreigners. These expectations have not been disappointed. In the period immediately following the peace of 1860 remarkable activity was shown by British consular officers. The names of Meadows, Markham, Alabaster, Oxenham, recall many exploits of exploration in the interior during very troublous times. Swinhoe, Baber, Hosie, Bourne, Spence, Davenport, Parker, have continued the work and greatly extended its area. Others have distinguished themselves in the held of literary research, and some have found their appropriate reward in honourable appointments in English universities. On the whole, there has been lack of neither energy nor capacity in the British consular service; and yet it is a matter of common remark, even by its members themselves, that in their primary duty of promoting and defending the interests of British commerce they have been unsuccessful. Treaty rights, they admit, have not been safeguarded at the Chinese ports, and this in spite of every apparent incentive to exertion in their defence. A distinction, however, must be drawn between an apparent incentive which is general and remote, such as the patriotic desire for the advancement of their country's interests, and those influences which are nearer and more personal. The attitude of the China consuls can only be fairly estimated in its relation to that of their chief, and his again in relation to that of the Home Government. "Like master, like man," is an adage which fits the case, and it is to Peking and to London we must look for the key to the character of the consular rank and file.

The British Ministers at Peking have been selected without any fixed rule. The first of the series was taken from the diplomatic circle. The succeeding three, whose term of office covered a period of twenty years, were chosen from among the veterans of the consular service. The next two were taken from the junior ranks of diplomacy, and the seventh was a military officer from Africa. The appointment of Sir Robert Hart in 1885, which was cancelled by his wish, afforded further illustration of the extreme catholicity of the Government's elective faculty.

The witnesses examined before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1872 were unanimous in insisting on the necessity for long and special training for the office of consul in China, and this principle has been strictly followed by the Government. But for the higher post of superintendent of all the consuls the Government has, at least since 1885, acted on the theory that no such qualification is necessary. But the task of a Minister to China is by no means an easy one. It may be left undone, or it may be done so badly that it were better not to be done at all, but to discharge the duties of the office in a creditable manner requires not only high training but large capacity. The Minister has to conduct his own diplomatic duties in the capital, in which not the Chinese alone but all or nearly all his foreign colleagues are openly or secretly thwarting him. He has at the same time to direct the proceedings of twenty or thirty officers placed at great distances, whom he has never seen, and every one of whom is superior to himself in the knowledge of the conditions to be dealt with. For such a duty it is obvious that an officer sent from Europe must be incompetent, the circumstances of the service in China differing essentially from those prevailing elsewhere. The new incumbent, unless he were a born genius, could never get beyond the elementary lessons of experience before, overtaken by promotion, he shakes the Chinese dust off his feet for ever. Much might of course be learned by personal observation at the consular ports and conference with local officials and people in the provinces, but it is somewhat singular that this obvious source of intelligence has been taken advantage of almost exclusively by those of the British Ministers who stood the least in need of it. Indeed the only one of them who made it a rule to visit the treaty ports at intervals was Sir Rutherford Alcock, whose long experience convinced him of the necessity of constantly refreshing and extending his knowledge of local circumstances and people.

A service dispersed over such a large area as the Chinese empire, carried on by despatches between parties who were strangers to each other, and one of whom at least had no personal knowledge of the subjects treated, must have been characterised by an absence of reality, and must have tended more and more towards a perfunctory routine. For this, however, the system of appointing Ministers who were strangers to the country was not wholly responsible. Long before the Ministers were so selected the secretaries began to be sent from European schools, and thus the consular service, disheartened by inadequate pay and a constant menace of further diminution, saw the few prizes of their profession withdrawn from their reach. To serve his time quietly, therefore, to earn his pension and retire without a stain on his character, became more or less the consular ideal. Ambition was starved among those who had to bear the burden and heat of a thirty years' residence in China, when they saw good posts thrown away upon men imported for two or three years, who were almost useless, and who themselves deplored their enforced idleness. The disadvantages attending these exotic importations have been often insisted upon. An old member of the consul staff comments upon it in the following practical manner:—

In every country administered by the British Crown, or at every Court at which there is a British representative, the administrator or envoy has from the moment of his entering on the duties of his office the assistance of an experienced staff, well versed in the local history and traditions, or finds himself in the midst of a society the language and usages of which are familiar to him. In China, where we have been fighting and negotiating for over fifty years, we are not so fortunate. A Minister proceeds there, and on his arrival finds himself in a new and to him unknown country, the staff which he may bring with him being like himself utterly unacquainted with the East and its peoples. The Minister is obliged either to grope his way unassisted, or to rely on the aids and advice of experienced (but not always disinterested) outsiders. Under these circumstances his only wise course is to put himself entirely in the hands of the permanent local staff, which, for this purpose, means the Chinese Secretary. That officer, the real motive force of the Legation, occupies a position of greater importance than that of the nominal head of the mission, but, with an irony which is not uncommon in Government administration, he is the least appreciated member of the staff. His salary is that of the junior ranks in the consular service, and yet it is to him that the seniors in that service look for instructions which he is incompetent to give them: the result may be imagined. Why should these things be? The Indian Government has in its service many men of brilliant attainments, and of knowledge gained in long years of service in the East, who might be called upon to fill the post of Minister which would be suitable and congenial to them. And there is an abundance of choice of junior Legation officers in the well-trained consular service. Would it not be very advantageous if the working hands in the Legation were chosen from the most competent Chinese scholars in the consular service?

Considering their initial qualifications, their social standing, and their great opportunities, it must be admitted that the men of distinction who have emerged from the consular service during the last fifty years seems disproportionately small. It is perhaps invidious to mention names in this connection, but in response to inquiries addressed to veterans in the service, four men only are placed in the first rank as the best representatives of the consular training school. These are Sir Harry Parkes, Mr T. T. Meadows, Mr H. N. Lay, and Mr W. F. Mayers. Sir Robert Hart, it should be mentioned, left the service so early, and Sir Rutherford Alcock joined it so late, in life, that their distinguished careers can scarcely be claimed as the product of the consular nursery.

It is impossible to look back over the forty years which have elapsed since the new relations were established in China without being struck by a certain change which passed over the character of the diplomatic and consular services between the first decade of that period and the second. The anxious years of the rebellion evoked much active energy on the part of British officials. The serious opposition to the operation of the treaties was met by very vigorous action on the part of the consuls at the ports and of the Minister at the capital. The years 1868 and 1869 may be considered to have marked the culminating-point of the British official effort to enforce observance of the treaties in letter and spirit, and to protect all commercial interests. The change which came over the diplomatic and consular services at the end of the first decade of diplomatic relations may be likened to the rising followed by the receding of a tide. Up till the years we have specified, whatever the difficulties which beset their office, the consuls showed earnestness in the defence of the interests confided to them, and acted on the conviction that their exertions were pleasing to those who were set in authority over them. Their sense of duty was sustained by the hope of distinction. After 1869 the discovery was made that the situation had been undergoing a change of which the service had been unaware. What was formerly deemed a merit had become a demerit in consular officers, and on this discovery zeal naturally fell to a discount. It was but a reflex of the change that had crept over the spirit of the British Foreign Office, a change which also had escaped notice until circumstances forced it into publicity. This seems to have originated with the removal from the scene of Lord Palmerston, the statesman who for forty years had stood in a general way for what was manly and straightforward in the British national character. Though he left a tried and trusted colleague, Lord Clarendon, in charge of the Foreign Office, and a sturdy permanent Under-Secretary, perhaps the last custodian of the Palmerstonian tradition, and who remained at his post for five years longer, yet it was made evident by results that the spirit which had animated that great department of State had vanished. The Foreign Office became nerveless and invertebrate, sentimental and unstable. Those who had to do with it in the time of Palmerston, Layard, and Hammond know that since their time the officials bearing the same titles have been of quite another calibre, have been swayed by different influences, and above all have exhibited no such knowledge of the affairs with which they had to deal as their predecessors of the Palmerstonian era. Many explanations may be given for the new departure without disparagement of the capacities of the individuals concerned. Such explanations interest those who may desire to promote reform in the constitution and the inspiration of the Foreign Office. It suffices us merely to note the fact by way of accounting for some of the shortcomings which have been laid to the charge of our representation in China. We have seen how easily one Foreign Secretary yielded to the meretricious solicitations of the envoy Burlingame, and how another allowed himself to be cajoled by the Marquis Tsêng. After these, and sundry other such, exhibitions it was impossible for any Minister serving the country in the Far East to place the old reliance on the support of his Government. With John Bright, the implacable opponent of Palmerston and his works, installed at the Board of Trade, whose word was law on such matters as Chinese commercial treaties, and apparently more anxious to undo the work of Palmerston than to promote a trade which both he and his department unaffectedly despised, it was not likely that the commercial communities trading with China should cherish any hope of redress of grievances from a Government whose face seemed set against them. Apathy, therefore, became the principle, to keep the peace at all sacrifices the avowed policy of British diplomacy in China. The apparent exception to this rule in the attempted reclamations in connection with the Margary murder in 1875 afforded in its abortive ending a new corroboration of the rule. The diplomatic and consular establishments went on grinding out routine despatches and publishing statistical reports, but with the tacit understanding that whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Under such conditions it was of little consequence how the Peking representation might be filled, since it has not for thirty years risen above the level of comedy, the term applied to it by those who have grown old in its service.

Such was the situation of affairs when the greatest crisis in the history of China, or of foreign relations with that country, was sprung upon the world in 1894. A Legation equal only to clerical routine suddenly called upon to play a part in a commotion which unhinged the policy of the world was totally inadequate to the strain, and as a consequence of the impotence of the Foreign Office and its agent in China, the interests of Great Britain and, what was only second in importance, the interests of the Chinese empire were allowed to go by default. The Chinese were, and perhaps even still remain, unconscious of the reasons of the collapse of their empire. Perhaps something of the same kind might be said of the British Foreign Office in regard to the interests of Great Britain in China. Certainly there is as yet little sign of a determination to reform the mechanism of the country's representation, and this, perhaps, because the preliminary step thereto would be the reform of the Foreign Office itself. And so the Legation goes on under the nominal headship of a Minister who must be guided entirely by his Chinese Secretary, an official of inferior rank and position to the body of consuls whom he has to control, and for whose authority they can never have genuine respect.

The recent upheaval has offered many new opportunities of distinction for the consuls, especially in the interior of China. That these openings have infused new life into the consular ranks has been shown in many ways during the last few years; and if natural selection be allowed to operate freely and the best men be not discouraged in their efforts for their country's benefit by undue interferences from Peking, where there is neither knowledge nor capacity to guide them, it is still possible that the consular service may play a valuable part in the reconstruction of the foreign relations of China.

CHAPTER XXIX.
CHINA AND HER RULERS.

Longevity of the State—Government by prestige—Necessity of adaptation to European ideas—The Empress-dowager—Prince Kung—Wênsiang—Hu Lin-yi—Tsêng Kwo-fan—Tso Tsung-tang—Chang Chih-tung—Li Hung-chang—His long and consistent career—Efforts at reorganising national forces.

The long continuance of a State more populous than any other on record is a phenomenon which to thoughtful minds can hardly fail to evoke a feeling akin to reverence. De Quincey declared if he met a Chinaman he would make obeisance to him, saying, "There goes a man 2000 years old." Be the causes of this national longevity what they may, the fact should make us pause to consider on what foundation does this great vital national system rest? The most realistic word-painter of China represents the country as a collection of villages, each being a unit of self-government,[29] and in describing "village life" in minute detail, seems to depict the great empire, of which each village is a pattern in miniature. Dynasties may come and dynasties may go, but the Chinese families, their industries and their customs, go on for ever. It is remarkable with what ease the people adapt themselves to changes in their ruling powers, regardless of race or origin; indeed it is a noteworthy fact that the rulers have for many centuries been more often foreign than native.[30] Foreign, however, not quite in the sense in which the word is so easily translated "barbarian" by the Chinese, and applied by them to the hated Aryans of the West. The rulers of China have been of cognate races, more or less imbued with the same generic ideas as the Chinese themselves, and with tastes akin to theirs. How this succession of dynasties, each established by violence, has coexisted with the continuity of the grand national idea of the emperor being the Son of Heaven can only be explained by the very practical character of the race, who accept the usurper as divinely appointed from the moment he has proved himself successful. What holds, and has held together from ancient times, this great aggregate of mankind in common usages and ideas is naturally a mystery to Occidentals, the cohesive principle not being perceptible to them. China occupies the unique position of a State resting on moral force,[31] a conception almost as alien to the Western mind as material progress is to the Eastern, hence the proposition is apt to be received with amused contempt. Yet a State administered without police, and ruled without an army, is a something which cannot be explained away. Government by prestige is, other things being equal, surely the most economical as well as the most humane of all species of government; but an obvious consequence is that in emergencies the Government is beholden to volunteers, and is often driven to enlist the services of banditti and other forces proscribed by the law. Imperial prestige, which embraces the relations of the surrounding tributaries, is but an expansion of the authority of the head of the family and of the elders of the village, which rests on moral sanction only. The first collision, however, with the material forces of Christendom proved that in the system of the modern world the Chinese principle of government was an anachronism, and that moral must succumb to physical force. Yet in the midst of the world's triumph in the pricking of the great Chinese bubble, it had been well to reflect what the kind of bubble was that was being pricked. China with her self-contained, self-secreted knowledge, could not be expected to foresee how the impact of the West was likely to affect her ancient polity. She had nothing wherewith to compare herself, and no criterion of good or evil except her own isolated experience; nor did she know aught of human development except what was, so to speak, forcibly injected into her, but never assimilated. What, then, could she do to be saved but to take herself entirely to pieces like a house that has to be rebuilt on a new plan, and so fit herself for the companionship and competition of the worldly Powers, from whose pressure she could by no means escape? She had to put away the wisdom of ages, the traditions of a civilisation unbroken for thousands of years, and convert herself into a mechanical, scientific, and military Power. Something more radical than reform is involved in such a root-and-branch change: it was not improvement but transformation that was demanded.

That some such essential changes are necessary to the preservation of the Chinese empire is probably recognised by all who interest themselves in the subject—including a large ever-increasing number of the Chinese themselves; but the gravity of the revolution may well cause misgivings both as to its possibility and its incalculable effects. Who among the Chinese rulers is sufficient for such things?

It is not always possible to locate the nervous centre of any Government in the West, whether its form be autocratic or representative. With regard to that of China we may safely say it is never possible—at least for any foreigner. The attempts which have been from time to time made to assign acts of Government to the will or influence of certain individuals have in general proved in the sequel to have been far from hitting the mark. The monarch under whose authority the whole machine moves is not necessarily the directing will: indeed he is very often little better than a puppet. "The eunuchs, concubines, and play-actors, who constituted the Court of the late Emperor Hsien-fêng, the father of the present young emperor, had more influence probably in bringing on the war that led the Allies to Peking than any of the high officers or Ministers," wrote Sir Rutherford Alcock in 1871. Another writer put it in a more paradoxical form: "There is in China something more powerful than the Emperor, and that is the Viceroy; more powerful than the Viceroy, and that is the Taotai; more powerful than the Taotai, and that is the Weiyuen," meaning that the power of obstruction, extending through every grade of officialdom, is most widely diffused at the base. Official responsibility and moral responsibility do not therefore coincide—men in highest positions being unable to do the things they would, while the things they would not they are often obliged to do. The Government is consequently carried on by continual compromise beyond the limits to which we are accustomed in Western Governments, because it is not confronted with outspoken opposition with which it can reason, but with a network of secret machinations which can only be met by correlative tactics. But though Government in China may seem by this state of things to be reduced to an almost passive condition, yet the individuality of statesmen is not altogether destroyed. In some respects, indeed, the circumstances we have noted rather favour the influence of men of mark; for where the complicated machine is held in a state of equilibrium by innumerable neutralising checks, it would appear that any determined will could set it in motion in a given direction. The character of Chinese statesmen, therefore, is not a factor to be ignored in considering either the present or the future of China, although the very partial knowledge of them which is accessible to Europeans must constantly lead to erroneous conclusions.

Of the statesmen who have appeared since the opening of Peking in 1860, it would probably be fair to consider the two emperors as negligible quantities. The potent personage in the empire during that period is no doubt the Empress-dowager, who has, in so far as any one can be said to have done so, ruled China for forty years. Apart from ethical considerations, which have less to do with matters of government than could be wished, the empress's characteristics are clearness of purpose, strength of will, a ready accommodation of means to ends, and frank acceptance of the inevitable. There are no signs of the bigot or the doctrinaire about her. Mundane in her objects, she is practical in seeking them; and if to hold an entirely anomalous position of authority opposed to legitimacy and the traditions of the dynasty and the empire be evidence of success, then the empress-dowager must be admitted to be a successful woman. In the position she has occupied, and still occupies, she would appear to be the principal force in the State. Whatever may be her power of initiative, which is so attenuated in the high State functionaries, her power of veto probably stands pre-eminent.

The anomalous relations which have subsisted between the empress-dowager and her imperial nephew are too intricate for us to attempt to unravel them. But the facts resulting from them, which are patent to the world, point to conditions which are not without danger to the empire. Indeed the Emperor himself constituted such a danger from the moment when as an infant he was placed on the Dragon Throne by usurped authority. His personal imperfections added materially to that danger, and his final efforts to free himself from the leading-strings of his patroness have indefinitely enhanced the evil by destroying the personal prestige of the sovereign. For what can be thought of a Son of Heaven who has his prerogatives doled out to him and again withdrawn by the will of another, and where is the force to meet the crisis in the State which may yet result from the illegitimacy of the emperors succession? The worship accorded throughout the empire to the Son of Heaven may indeed be transferred unimpaired to a new possessor of that dignity. But a reigning emperor shorn of his governing faculty must, one would think, put the allegiance of the people to a severe strain. How far such considerations may go in weakening the ties of loyalty in the provinces and in letting loose the spectre of rebellion cannot be known, but it may be guessed and feared.

Leaving out the Camarilla of the Court, of whom nothing certain can be predicated, the executive statesmen who have to outward appearance directed the public affairs of the Chinese empire for forty years may almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. Prince Kung, the highest in station and nearest to the throne, was rather a moderating than an active force in the State, and his attention was very much divided between public affairs and those of more personal concern. His colleague, Wênsiang, was a more energetic character. By common consent he was the most conscientious as well as the most liberal-minded statesman that China has produced during the sixty years of foreign intercourse. Mr Adkins, who knew him intimately in the early days, says: "He was courteous in manner and a lively conversationalist. He once told me over the teacups that, if he could have his will, every brick and stone of Hongkong city should be torn down and thrown into the sea." This was not the kind of language he held at a later period; for, in a private interview with Sir Rutherford Alcock in 1869, while admitting the hostility of his class and that he himself had originally shared all their prejudices, he declared that his long and intimate relations with the foreign Legations had opened his eyes to the favourable side of the foreign character and progressive policy. Perhaps the best account of this Manchu statesman is that given by Sir Rutherford Alcock himself in an article in 'Fraser's Magazine,' 1871:—

Wênsiang is by far the most distinguished, both from his superior knowledge and his intellectual grasp of the position occupied by China in its relations with foreign States.... As a member of the Grand Secretariat, and vested with other high functions, his influence is very great, both personal and official—subject, nevertheless, to such attenuation as the active hostility of a very powerful party of anti-foreign functionaries within and without the palace can effect. This party, if party that can properly be called which is composed of nearly the whole of the educated classes of the empire—officials, literati, and gentry—are unceasing in their opposition to all progressive measures, whether emanating from the Foreign Board or elsewhere. But Wênsiang is held in especial hatred as the known advocate of a policy of progressive improvement with foreign aid and appliances. The failure of the Lay-Osborn fleet very nearly effected his ruin, and that of his patron the prince [Kung] also, and has ever since told against his influence. The cost and humiliation of that most disastrous experiment were all visited on his head, and it has no doubt tended not solely to impair his power, but also to render him more timid and less disposed to make any further venture in the same direction. He has the reputation among his own people of being honest, and foreigners know him to be patriotic and earnest in what he believes to be for the good of his country, while far in advance of all his contemporaries in enlightened views as to how in the actual situation of affairs that end may best be served. Upon occasions he can be both bitter and sarcastic, and speaks out his mind plainly enough against the pretensions of foreigners to shape everything to their own ends in China. He nevertheless gets little credit from the opposite faction for patriotism or a disinterested love of his country, and of late there has been remarked, with failing health, an expression of weariness, as if he were losing heart and hope, and began to feel unequal to any further struggle. With the ever-increasing demands for better execution of treaties—in things often materially and legally impossible in the present state of affairs, for larger facilities and increased privileges on the foreign side, and the gathering of hostile elements in front and all round him proceeding from the Chinese national party, who would refuse everything, and, if left to themselves, precipitate the country into another war with the Western Powers, he may well feel weary.

Wênsiang, in short, suffered the fate of those who are too liberal and too far advanced for their surroundings, and became a martyr to his own disappointment. Old before his time, and overwhelmed with difficulties which he was unable to surmount, his mind became depressed, and his death in 1876 cost China the ablest, the best, and most devoted of her public men. No doubt there have been good and well-meaning men since his time, both in the Tsungli-Yamên, the Great Council, and in the provincial governments; but none of them has shown any quality of leadership, and all have for the most part been content with the maxim, "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."

The comparatively early death of Hu Lin-yi, a Hunanese, Governor of the province of Hupei, who, in conjunction with Kuanwen, the Governor-General of the Hu provinces, originated the scheme for repressing the Taiping rebellion, prevented him from receiving the credit of that notable achievement. The institutions of the country paralysed its defence, for a provincial army was an object of dread to the Manchu rulers, while they possessed no imperial organisation to cope with the calamity. No attempt, therefore, could be made to organise a force to resist the rebellion, and so the devastation was allowed to spread from province to province without check. Hu Lin-yi set himself to overcome this difficulty, and thought out a scheme by which the rebellion might be overcome. Before taking any action, however, it was necessary that he should bring the Peking Government to his views, which he accomplished by first converting the Governor-General, who was a Manchu. The two thereupon joined in a memorial to the throne, praying that they might be permitted to raise in the Central Provinces a mobile military force to repel the invasion of the insurgents.

The nucleus of this force already existed in the province of Hunan, where volunteer levies under the leadership of Tsêng Kwo-fan, the father of the late Marquis Tsêng, Minister to Great Britain, had done good service in several small engagements with the rebels. The execution of the general scheme of defence against the rebels fell naturally, therefore, to the lot of Tsêng, who during his subsequent governor-generalship of the Lower Yangtze had the honour of putting an end to the ravages of the Taipings. No man was held in higher esteem among the counsellors of the Chinese empire than this sagacious statesman. At once moderate and resolute, he perceived the need of accommodation to the exigencies of the new time, and though he would have resisted the ingress of foreigners to the uttermost, he had the wisdom to see that this was no longer possible, and the advice tendered to his sovereign, while tempered to the susceptibilities of the Court, was distinctly in favour of respecting the treaties and avoiding conflict with foreign nations.

A contemporary of Tsêng Kwo-fan, and his equal in rank and authority, was Tso Tsung-tang, best known as the Conqueror of Kashgar, where he was credited with military exploits which history will scarcely ratify. He was a thoroughgoing man, blunt in manner, but straightforward, and loyal to his engagements. He was somewhat rash and uncompromising, seeking the end sometimes without considering the means, and his opinion on matters of State would have carried no weight but for his reputation for exemption from the prevailing vice of his class—financial corruption. This character obtained him toleration for many originalities. On one occasion he camped outside the walls of Peking for several days because he refused to pay the customary exactions of the officials in charge of the gates, so that his audience of the emperor seemed likely to be indefinitely postponed. But high officials in China of austere views have usually a man of business in attendance who oils the wheels while saving the face of their master. Tso's money matters were in the hands of a very politic gentleman of this class, and so the Grand Secretary's entry into the city was duly arranged. Tso had a lofty idea of the dignity of his country, and of the necessity for its defending itself against all enemies. To this end he threw his energies into the development of the arsenal and shipbuilding-yard at the Pagoda anchorage in the Foochow river. He was generally considered an opponent of his younger contemporary, Li Hung-chang, the one being held to stand for the old conservatism of China, and the other for its liberalisation. They were for many years the two chief provincials, the one being Imperial Commissioner for the southern and the other for the northern ports of China. It was customary for the emperor to refer important questions connected with foreign affairs to these two advisers, whose opinions must very often have neutralised each other. In the end Tso recognised the necessity for a change of policy for the preservation of the empire, but being himself too old to change he recommended his rival, Li Hung-chang, to the Throne as the fitting man to introduce needed innovations. If the records are to be implicitly trusted Tso would appear to have undergone a sort of death-bed repentance, for in his political testament, a document which is regarded with a kind of sacred authority in China, he recommended to the throne the improvements he had steadfastly opposed, including even the introduction of railways into the country.

Although out of the chronological order, we may mention here another eminent official, distinguished by many of the characteristics of Tso Tsung-tang, who has been Governor of the province of Shansi, Governor-General of the Canton provinces, and is now Governor-General of the central provinces. Wherever he has been, Chang Chih-tung has proved himself bold and original. His open mind has led him to take up schemes warmly without counting the cost, and under his inspiration immense sums have been spent in both his viceroyalties for which but little return was obtained, and of which indeed it was scarcely possible to render a clear account. His reputation for purity, however, has saved him from the consequences of his recklessness, both in the eyes of the people and of the Government, and enabled him to hold office long enough to show some results of his expensive enterprises. The great ironworks which he set up in Hanyang, with very little consideration as to how they were to become effective, have at last produced iron of a quality sufficient to make inferior rails, thus giving an earnest of the ultimate realisation of his dream of rendering China independent of foreign countries. Chang's literary power is of a very high order, his style is terse and incisive, and this is a weapon which renders him formidable in a country which cultivates literature as a religion. To say that Chang Chih-tung is the opponent of foreigners is merely to credit him with the ordinary patriotism of his countrymen. But though he often treats strangers with the studied discourtesy which characterised the older generation of Chinese officials, he has never allowed his prejudices to stand in the way of free intercourse with any foreigner whom he thought he could make subservient to some purpose of his own. As a statesman Chang Chih-tung has failed through intensity and want of comprehensiveness. In fact he is not a statesman, but a sciolist, and a trenchant essayist, unaccustomed to accommodate his ideas to the circumstances of actual life. He, too, has been a bitter opponent of Li Hung-chang, which, however, did not hinder him from composing a most fulsome panegyric on that statesman on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, in which he was credited with all the attributes of all the heroes of Chinese mythology. The many fantastic schemes which Chang has originated would in any Western country have relegated their author to the custody of the Commissioners of Lunacy. One of these was to prevent foreign ships entering the Gulf of Pecheli by sinking tiers of junks between Shantung and Talien-wan; another was to catch the Japanese soldiers in a gigantic locust-trap, consisting of a deep trench to be dug at their supposed landing-place near Shanhai-kwan, and the fact of this proposal being seriously adopted and some miles of the trench actually dug by the Chinese soldiers reveals more of the military impotence of China than the most voluminous dissertations.

Without carrying the exhaustive process further, it is safe to say that whatever concrete statesmanship there has been in China during the past generation has been embodied in the person of Li Hung-chang. He alone has a continuous record, has followed a definite line, and kept his ideals, like a captive balloon, strictly attached to the earth on which he had to work. He also was a literate of distinction, having taken the highest degree, that of the Hanlin College. But though his literary tastes have not been left wholly uncultivated, they have never intruded themselves into his conduct of affairs, so that an estimate of his position cannot be based upon his writings, but only on his actions. He indulged in no speculations, propounded no theories, but was eminently a man of fact. Contrary to all Chinese tradition he laid himself out for personal intercourse with foreigners, from whom he was never weary of learning, and in doing so he braved the odium of his peers, and incurred the charge of treason as a truckler to barbarians. Living in the eyes of the world, both of his own and foreign countries, for a period of nearly forty years, he has been the one familiar figure in modern China. His accessibility has afforded to travellers and visitors endless opportunities of delineation, so that if ever a Chinese of rank was known throughout the world it must be Li Hung-chang.

The interest attaching to this statesman consists in his having in his own person, and without a party, stood between the Old World and the New, having devoted his life to working out in practice a modus vivendi between them. His methods have been wholly empirical and opportunist, and hence no synthesis of his plan of operations is available, except such as we may compose out of the facts themselves. A few cardinal principles, nevertheless, stand out clearly in the life-work of this statesman. One is that of reorganising the defensive forces of the empire in accordance with the lessons learned from foreign raids; a second has been so to observe the treaties made with foreigners as to afford them no ground for complaint; and a third, when causes of difference arose, whether by inadvertence or by design, to agree with the adversary quickly. The following out of the first two might very well have entailed upon Li the reproach of favouring foreigners; the following out of the third may with greater justice have earned for him the character of a peace-at-any-price man. So consistently did he follow the line of action dictated by these principles, that no attacks on foreigners or on Christian missions have ever been tolerated within his jurisdiction. During the twenty-four years of his governor-generalship of Chihli, whose population is one of the most turbulent in the empire, there was not a single missionary outrage, his instructions to his district officials being peremptory, that, right or wrong, they must have no questions with foreigners. Had the other viceroys been similarly minded and equally resolute, no attacks on missionaries would have been recorded throughout the Chinese Empire. Though Li Hung-chang was as much anti-foreign at heart as every true Chinaman must be, he endeavoured, crudely following the example of the Japanese, to employ foreign men and appliances in order the more effectually to resist them. His pacific tendencies were no proof of pusillanimity, but rather of a deep consciousness, derived from personal experience, of the incapacity of China to resist foreign attack. Li Hung-chang's external policy, therefore, may be defined as the strengthening of the country to meet invasion, and the avoidance, while such preparations were being made, of every cause of collision with foreigners. These cardinal points had to be kept in view, like guiding stars, amid the exigencies of daily affairs, which alone were sufficient to fill up the measure of one man's capacity. The administration of two populous provinces, the superintendency of the maritime trade of half the empire, and incessant consultations concerning imperial affairs generally, constituted a burden which no one man could bear. While to these were added the whole details of national defence, naval and military reorganisation, the construction of a navy on foreign lines, the whole of which was undertaken by Li Hung-chang, working not only without a party but practically without a staff, and at the mercy of technical advisers who owed him no allegiance. The briefest recapitulation of the duties so undertaken would be enough to stagger the credulity of the most active administrator of the West; the recital would suffice, without any proof from experience, to show that these labours of Hercules could never, in fact, be performed. But the difference between performance and non-performance marks the chasm which divides the Chinese from the Western world, and distinguishes the order of ideas and practice which make for the preservation, from those which tend to the disintegration, of the Chinese empire itself. The task from which the mass of Chinese statesmen have recoiled, and which has only been attempted in a persistent manner by Li Hung-chang himself, was probably beyond the power of any man and of any party.

But here the inquiry suggests itself, why a strong-headed and practical-minded man should have devoted a lifetime to impossible achievements, and why in a nation of great intellects the task should have been virtually relegated to one man? The Chinese are not fools; their mental capacity is second to that of no other race. Their culture is excessive, though narrow; and if we find them exhibiting in great national affairs no more intelligence than that shown by children in building castles of sand, it is natural to conclude that there is some fundamental misconception either on their part or on ours of the problem before them. But if we consider the Chinese as belonging to the world of moral force, then their misconception of all that belongs to the world of physical force is not only explicable, but it is inevitable; for between the two there is no common ground on which even a compromise might be effected, and the one must eternally misunderstand the other.

The burden of the memorials of the Chinese high functionaries on this subject have been that the Middle Kingdom being overcome by the brute force of the rebellious barbarians, the obvious way to restore the lapsed authority of the empire was to acquire the instruments of foreign strength. This they diligently set themselves to do, but apparently without the slightest comprehension of the secret of the strength of the foreigners. The Chinese being what they were, could no more win the secret of the Western power by buying its weapons than a musical tyro could hope to rival the greatest artistes by possessing himself of a Stradivarius. Guns, ships, explosives of the latest type, are worse than dummies without the organised human force that gives them life. The element which would have infused vitality into the new organisation was the one thing beyond their imagination, and so far as they did comprehend it, it inspired them with aversion and awe, for it meant in their eyes delivering the keys of power into the hands of strangers. What was needed to regenerate the army, to create a navy, to reform the finances, was the liberal importation of men. This necessity was no doubt partially perceived by Li Hung-chang and his like, but never entirely even by him; for he remained throughout the one-eyed man among the blind, groping after something which he could only guess at. Teachers from Europe and America were employed in the country, and natives were sent to foreign countries to be instructed; but the spirit of the new instruction was never allowed to vitalise the organisation, and consequently all the knowledge that was acquired by both methods remained barren and unfruitful. Thus Li Hung-chang's efforts fell short of their object, and China continued to be the land of moral force for the iron-shod physical forces to trample on.

From the earliest period of his career Li Hung-chang stood out far in advance of his fellows, and in all the troubles which have beset the empire during his time, it is he who has been thrust into the breach and made to bear the brunt of its misfortunes. Being the only man who did anything, he was naturally made responsible for all, and critics, both foreign and native, have had an easy task in laying bare his failures, which his contemporaries have escaped by confining themselves to official routine and playing for their own safety. Though the burden of the State has fallen upon the shoulders of Li Hung-chang more than upon any other individual, he has never flinched from the responsibility. The occurrences of 1894 and subsequently threw him into greater prominence than ever before. Forced to carry on the war with Japan, during which the defences of the empire for which he was responsible completely broke down, he was next also forced to make peace with that Power on very humiliating conditions. Seldom was a more pathetic scene witnessed than the virtual controller of the Chinese empire lying at the feet of a victorious enemy in a foreign country, with the bullet of an assassin in his cheek. More tragic still was his return to the capital with the treaty of Shimonoseki. An intense feeling against Li had been roused throughout the country. The provincial officials with singular unanimity denounced his treachery as they considered it, for the treaty was in their eyes no less disgraceful than the conduct of the war, for both of which Li alone was deemed responsible. The sentiment of the provinces was echoed in Peking, where his enemies in high places had almost secured the capital punishment of the negotiator, and failing that, his assassination, from which fate he was only saved by the veto of Prince Kung and the subsequent protection of the empress-dowager. He was also in an important sense under the protection of Russia, that Power having undertaken to hold him harmless from the consequences of his surrender to the Japanese. In order to take him out of the way of the conspiracies in Peking, Russia requested that an Imperial prince might be sent to the coronation ceremony in 1896. That being impossible by the laws of the empire, which Russia very well knew, a substitute of the highest rank had to be found, and thus Li Hung-chang was designated, by the approval of the empress-dowager and by the consent—reluctant it is believed—of the Emperor, for the mission of congratulation to the Czar. After the festivities at Moscow, Li made the tour of Europe and the United States, meeting everywhere with a distinguished reception.

CHAPTER XXX.
CHINA'S AWAKENING.

Prestige gained, 1880-90—Yields to Japan in Korea while reasserting full suzerainty—The lessons of adversity—Schemes for naval and military reforms—Purchase and manufacture—Provincial system antagonistic to reform—Li Hung-Chang's efforts—Faithful service of foreign experts—Drill-instructors—Creation of a navy—Coast fortification—Superior efficiency of navy compared with army—Corruption and nepotism—Awakening of China apparent, not real.

The service of the navy in the conveyance of troops and of a special envoy to Korea in 1882 was the first which that luckless force was able to render to China. The service was repeated on two other occasions: when a High Commissioner was sent on a mission of imperial condolence in 1890, and again when an assassin was rescued from the revenge of counter-assassins and conveyed safely from China to Korea in 1894. The little kingdom thus played a considerable part in the awakening scenes of the suzerain empire.

On a retrospective view, indeed, it would appear that during the period in question China passed the culminating-point in her efforts to regain national prestige. She had just asserted herself in an unexpected manner in her dealings with Russia, playing a very different part in regard to her distant and worthless possessions in the north-west from what she had done twenty years before in regard to the integral part of her proper territories in the north-east, which she had surrendered with scarcely a protest. The world began to respect China as a power. Her decisive action in Korea showed that she was no longer disposed to permit her neighbours to trifle with the question of her suzerainty in that kingdom, and for ten years she was pre-eminent there in fact as well as of right. Yet with a significant qualification. For, being challenged by Japan while at war with France in 1885, she was unable to vindicate her sole supremacy in Korea, and was constrained to admit her rival into partnership. Thus was the first irrevocable step taken towards the future realisation of the Japanese designs on the peninsula. A condominium must ever be destructive to the policy of the less energetic member, and the treaty concluded between Li Hung-chang and Count Ito in 1885 was the fatal prelude to the events of ten years later. As the treaties granting to Russia a coequal right of navigating the Amur and a joint ownership of the Usuri province constituted the virtual surrender of Chinese rights, so any treaty with Japan, no matter on what conditions, respecting Korea, was a virtual abdication of the Chinese suzerainty. The right in common to send troops into Korea on notice given could have no other effect than to deliver up the kingdom to the Power which was the most alert in taking advantage of the agreement. In giving up half her rights China retreated from an inexpugnable position, and left herself no footing for defending the remaining half, when its turn came to be assailed.

But with the irony which is the very pathos of human and national decline, the outward pretence to authority became more demonstrative as the substance of the claim slipped away. Not for two hundred and fifty years had China asserted her prerogative with such uncompromising arrogance as when she sent an imperial mission of condolence to the royal Court in 1890, years after the keystone of her Korean arch had been pulled away. It was also about this period that the Chinese Minister to England lent his name to a manifesto warning the world of the coming resurrection of China. "The sleep and the awakening" strictly followed the law above alluded to, that hollowness, not solidity, makes the loudest sound.

But so many interests are now inextricably interwoven with the destinies of China that her effort at reform and its failure compel us to give attention to the opening of a new chapter in the world's history. The humiliating foreign invasions, the three rebellions that shook the empire, and the numerous minor risings, had all left their impression. The lessons taught by these adversities had been taken to heart, and the rulers of the empire were called upon to devise a remedy. The first and most obvious desideratum was, of course, naval and military reform, or rather regeneration, whereby they might be strengthened to speak with their enemies in the gates. On this subject Chinese statesmen were absolutely at one with their officious foreign advisers: it was a subject which inspired many of the early homilies of the British Minister, if no others. There was, however, this essential difference in the conception of the means of carrying out the reform, that the foreign advisers of China were completely prepossessed by the notion that an imperial executive, if it did not exist, must be promptly created, while nothing was further from the imagination of the Chinese. They were entirely prepossessed by their tradition and the state of things actually existing, which they did not dream of changing. That was the provincial system on which the administration of the empire rested. The fiasco of the Lay-Osborn flotilla, which was the first crude attempt to mix the oil and vinegar of the two conflicting systems, revealed the fundamental, irreconcilable divergence between the two sets of ideas, which rendered all advice from the one side to the other futile, and co-operation impossible. That palpable failure of the Central Government was calculated to discourage fresh innovations from the same quarter, and the incident was constantly referred to by diplomatists as having blighted the promising career of Wênsiang as a reformer, he being the minister personally responsible for the scheme.

The Chinese, nevertheless, proceeded according to their own lights to set their house in order in so far as its defensive services were concerned. The successful employment of foreign arms and foreign auxiliaries in the suppression of the Taiping rebellion showed them the way. It was a natural but a fatal error, which the Chinese have not to this day abjured, to attach too much importance to the arms, and too little to the man using them. They accordingly commenced in a rather wild and wayward manner to buy weapons and munitions, and then to set up in their own country the means of manufacturing the simpler kinds. The chief promoter, if not the originator, of these novelties was Li Hung-chang, who continued to be the presiding genius of military and naval reform, no matter in what province his official duties happened to lie. The personal authority wielded by the Grand Secretary in provinces beyond his own government was really a step towards centralisation of the executive, and with time and an adequate succession of followers in the same path there is no telling what changes in the Government system might not have been evolved from such a nucleus. But the one-man power was unequal to any great result; it also weakened with age, opposition, and discouragement. The actual reforms inaugurated remained strictly provincial, and even local. There was no evidence of initiative or supervision from the Central Government. The nearest approach to it was the establishment of an arsenal at Tientsin by Chunghou, the first superintendent of trade for the northern ports, and a member of the imperial clan. It would almost appear as if the Government had no concern with the more distant parts of the country, and the strange anomaly presented itself to the onlookers of large sums being expended on the most modern artillery and in the manufacture of thousands of arms of precision while the Peking field force was equipped with bows and arrows.

There came a time at last when the necessity of some kind of centralisation was forced on the Government. It was after Prince Kung had been sent into retirement in 1884, when his younger brother, the father of the emperor, had decided to "come out" and take a part in the executive government, and especially after Prince Ch'un had made a short cruise in salt water in 1886, that a Naval Board was established in Peking itself with the prince at its head. The institution was of course laughed at, as the beginnings of things usually are, and its inefficiency was indeed glaring enough. It would have taken a generation in slow-moving China for such a board to have learned the rudiments of its duties.

What we are at the moment concerned with is the naval and military reform of the twenty-five years preceding the advent of Prince Ch'un to power. In the purchase of war material no single system was followed. The provincial rulers at Canton, Foochow, Nanking, and Tientsin no doubt had to sanction what was done within their respective provinces—a check which might be perfunctory or conscientious—but practically the management was in the hands of subordinate officials without knowledge or training or visible responsibility. As in war each Chinese regiment fights for its own hand, or runs away as the case may be, so in the supply of arms each local official did pretty much what seemed right in his own eyes. Hence the heterogeneous composition of matériel, one small body of troops carrying in a campaign thirteen different patterns of rifle, with ammunition still more curiously diversified.

Concerning the arsenals established under the auspices of the various governors-general from Canton even to Kirin in Manchuria, and under the technical management of foreigners, the most remarkable point to be noted—and it applies generally to the employment of foreigners in China—is the faithful service the Chinese have been able to command in circumstances where it was hardly to be expected. An ignorant employer and an expert employee is a combination apt to engender the worst abuses, and the way the Chinese selected their foreign executive—a marine engineer here, a surgeon of a marching regiment there, a naval lieutenant somewhere else—was not the way, one would have thought, to obtain either honesty or efficiency. Yet the foreigners selected either possessed or acquired adequate qualifications, and one and all rendered devoted service to their employers. The position of these foreigners, however, never was or could be one of authority: whatever they did was under the orders of their Chinese superior, who was often too ignorant to weigh the reasons for what was done. In course of time the natives themselves became more instructed, but whether their half-knowledge was a help or a hindrance to the work of their foreign experts is problematical. Of the quality or quantity of the matériel turned out in the various Chinese arsenals it were useless to speak. It produced an illusory sense of security, and for a time imposed equally on native and foreigner.

Nor was training entirely neglected. Drill-masters were engaged. Schools were established in connection with the arsenals, where naval instruction especially was carried to a high standard. Students sent to Europe proved themselves most apt to assimilate the instruction given to them. Of those who distinguished themselves at Greenwich may be mentioned the present Minister to the Court of St James's. Cadets were also received into the British navy, and some very expert officers were turned out by these means. A large number of youths were at one time selected to be educated in the United States, remaining there long enough to learn to read and write English, and to become enamoured of Western life. This educational experiment was interesting in many ways. The youths who were sent to America under the care and at the instigation of the Cantonese, Yung Wing, who had himself been educated in the United States, were domiciled for the most part with private families there; and they so imbibed the influence of their surroundings that a high sense of honour was developed in them. The writer can speak from personal experience of the fidelity and efficiency of some of these students. Captain Clayson, who had several serving under him in the "Peiyang Squadron," has said that although on their return to China the authorities had distributed them in services other than those for which they had been trained, yet because of the school discipline they had been subjected to, and the sense of honour developed by their contact with Western people, he found them far more useful and trustworthy than the men who had been trained in Chinese naval schools. This experience seems to suggest that there are good moral qualities of the Chinese waiting, like the mineral ores in their country, for an awakening influence. In all these progressive efforts Li Hung-chang retained the lead, and his own province was well in advance in educational enterprises. Besides a military school with German, and a naval school with English, instructors, he set up within a mile of his Yamên a fairly furnished medical school with a hospital attached. His special corps of foreign-drilled troops was the best equipped and best disciplined force in the empire.

While all this progress was being made in the direction of military efficiency, the naval requirements of the country were not neglected. The failure of the undigested Lay-Osborn scheme showed the Chinese that the naval problem must be attacked in a different fashion. It was a false start, and they must begin again. Accordingly, profiting by what they had heard and seen of the efficient service rendered in their narrow waters by foreign gunboats, the Chinese Government contracted with the Armstrong firm for a small flotilla carrying one heavy gun with a wide range of fire. These craft were little more than floating gun-carriages; but notwithstanding broad beam and flat bottoms, they were moderately sea-worthy. They were known as the Alphabeticals, from being named after the Greek letters. This modest flotilla was the nucleus of the Chinese navy.

Attempts at naval construction were made at Shanghai, Foochow, and Canton; but beyond providing work and training for native artificers, and acting occasionally as transports on a small scale, despatch-carriers, and official yachts, the vessels turned out from native yards rendered no service to the country. The Chinese navy as a potential military arm only took shape when Li Hung-chang was able to carry the Government with him so far as to purchase effective war-ships in Europe, to institute a system of training under competent foreign officers, and to establish naval harbours with docks and workshops. Two iron-clad battleships, a respectable squadron of cruisers, and some smaller craft, manned by trained crews and officered by men who had received a regular naval education and perfectly understood their duties, constituted the fighting navy of China. The two English officers who supervised the training, Captain Tracy at Foochow and Captain Lang in the Gulf of Pechili, were thoroughly satisfied with the capacity of both officers and men, and what was distinguished as the Peiyang or Northern Squadron was brought up by the latter officer to such a state of efficiency that he reckoned that a further two years' drill would enable the Chinese to take its place, on a small scale, among the best equipped fleets in the world.

And while the navy was developing so satisfactorily, coast fortifications also made great progress. The mouths of rivers were all defended by the best modern guns; three naval ports in the Gulf of Pechili—Port Arthur, Weihai-wei, and Talien-wan—were fortified at great expense, and everything externally evinced a determination on the part of China to place herself in a position of independence, delivered from the fear of foreign attack, except of course by land, and even that had been partially provided for, as we have seen, by the military establishments in Manchuria.

Between the naval and the military preparations, however, there was an immense disparity. The force for which Li Hung-chang was personally responsible was carefully drilled, armed, fed, and paid, and, given competent leading, would no doubt have rendered a good account of itself; but the army as a whole was never brought to a state approaching efficiency. The navy, on the other hand, possessed the best ships and the best armament that money could buy, with the most modern appliances for war, and its personnel was subjected to the most careful discipline. The fortress guns were also of the newest and best pattern, and nothing was spared, apparently, to fit them for the purpose for which they were intended. It was generally conceded that the fortresses so armed were safe from attack by sea.

The explanation of the great difference between the organisation of the sea and the land forces seems to be that the former, being a new creation, was beyond the range of criticism and was unhampered by any traditions, while the reform of the army was merely patching a worn-out garment. The immemorial conditions of military service were unchanged. No army was formed, but a series of local levies raised without cohesion or central control. The foreign instructors were kept strictly to their class-work, were subordinated to the people whom they had to instruct, and possessed no kind of authority. They were allowed to drill the men, while the officers for the most part held themselves above the drudgery of the parade-ground. The few who had acquired a smattering of military education in Europe were as helpless as the foreign drill-masters to move their wholly ignorant superiors. Hence abuses of the most grotesque kind did not creep but rushed into every camp and every school, reducing the scientific teaching to a hollow farce.

The familiar factors of peculation and nepotism had an important influence on these naval and military developments in China. Such things are no monopoly of the Chinese. If corruption could ruin a State, it would not be necessary to look so far afield as China for national disasters. But the form which the vice takes in China has a determining effect on the administration quite irrespective of the waste of resources and diminution of efficiency which are common to corruption in all its forms. Thus if we have to reconcile the lavish purchases of material with the attenuation of personnel, we need only reflect that the former bring large emoluments with little labour to the official employed, while the training of men involves much work and little profit. Further, if we want an explanation of the infinite diversity of the arms which are furnished to the troops, we may find it in the excessive competition among officials for a share of the traffic, and the interest which the higher authorities have in passing without inspection what is purveyed by their subordinates.

Nepotism in China is part and parcel of the family system, which is the palladium of the nation. Every military corps raised is essentially territorial; and if ever it is moved from one province to another, it looks to a territorial chief, and no stranger can command it. Li Hung-chang's disciplined troops, if not all of his own clan, were at least the natives of his province and spoke his dialect. His subordinate officials were blood relations and family adherents. It needs no argument to show how such a survival of feudalism militates against national organisation. Pure feudalism, indeed, would be less detrimental; for under it territorial exclusiveness would at least be balanced by territorial responsibility, but under the short-service system of China a governor or governor-general may during his three years' term throw everything into confusion and half ruin the finances of a province with which he is precluded from having any territorial tie, and then proceed to another and repeat the performance. The navy, though, as we have said, exempt from the incubus of tradition, was nevertheless unable to withstand the pressure of immemorial heredity. As the first and principal naval school happened to be at Foochow, it was natural that new battleships and cruisers should be officered and manned in the first instance by natives of Fukien province. The admiral, however, hailed from another province—that of Li Hung-chang. Though brave and capable, Admiral Ting was uneducated, and found it hard to hold his own among the captains and lieutenants who had been to Greenwich and could speak and write English, and some of them French. Neither the Chinese admiral nor the English co-admiral—who was led to believe he possessed authority, but was deceived—were able to repress the intrigues which ran riot among the Foochow officers,—intrigues having for their object the complete control of the fleet, the power of keeping out and admitting whom they chose without reference to qualifications, and the general determination to subordinate the naval service to their personal and family advantage. The presence of Captain Lang was a hindrance to their schemes, and they intrigued him out. But as the fleet belonged to the north, they were unable to exclude northern seamen from the country round Weihai-wei, who proved when the day of trial came the most intelligent and the staunchest force that China possessed.

The Peiyang Squadron was the nearest approach to an imperial navy that China ever possessed, and yet it was so far provincial that it could not be sent into the central or southern waters without creating jealousy on the part of the local authorities, just as if it had been a foreign force. In 1891, when anti-foreign riots in various places on the Yangtze threatened to endanger the peace of the empire, the Imperial Government allowed foreign ships of war to proceed up the river for the purpose of preventing outbreaks rather than offend the susceptibilities of the provincial authorities by employing their own naval forces on that duty. During that critical period the Peiyang Squadron was cruising in Japanese waters while the Great River was being patrolled by foreign gunboats.

These various evidences of martial energy procured for China the credit of a real awakening, and ensured her the respect due to a serious Power. Yet the unsoundness of the foundation on which her new prestige rested was no secret to any one who took the trouble to consider the facts, for all the weaknesses we have mentioned, with many more, were notorious to every foreign resident in China; nor was there a naval officer of any nation who did not regard the fighting value of the Chinese fleet as nothing. Ships were good, officers and men in themselves were passable, but without organisation, while the whole force was governed by other than militant principles. The attempted military reorganisation could, in fact, have no vitality except as a branch of a general reform of the administration, the keystone of which was fiscal. Of this, however, the Chinese rulers seemed to take no heed, contenting themselves with snatching at what was superficial and conspicuous to the eye. The Chinese florists in the spring-time supply to hawkers shrubs covered with blossom which is so cleverly attached by fine wire to the twigs as almost to deceive the elect. This is practically what the Chinese Government bad been doing with their national defences, so that on the first trial they collapsed like a sapless flower. These experiences have an important bearing on the large problem of Chinese reform and reorganisation, and indeed on the continued existence of the empire.

CHAPTER XXXI.
THE COLLAPSE.

China clings to universal sovereignty—Demonstration of same towards Korea—Irritating to Japanese—Their aspirations in Korea—Insurrection in southern districts—Chinese troops sent there—Japanese simultaneously occupy Korean capital—War between China and Japan—China defeated—Causes and consequences—General sympathy with Japan.

We have seen that up to the end of 1892 the Chinese Government clung to the figment of universal sovereignty. Perhaps it was the figment that clung to them, they not knowing how to drop it. When they had, under stress, seemed to concede the principle of equality, it was not done heartily, but to serve a momentary purpose. Like a belligerent who continues a guerilla warfare after concluding peace, they fought inch by inch for the rags of the old prerogative after having by treaty surrendered it. It had been long predicted that their refusal or inability to bring their theories into agreement with patent facts, and to come into line with the Powers of the world, must lead to tragic consequences. Foreign nations laughed at the Chinese pretension as an innocent archaic survival. But those individuals to whose lot it fell, in their own persons, to suffer the continued humiliation which was a consequence of the survival, did not find the comedy of the situation quite so congenial. The high-spirited nation living in the closest neighbourhood to China, using its language and literature, was naturally more galled by the Chinese assumption than those distant peoples who only suffered in the persons of their diplomatic agents. Though it would be more than the evidence warrants to say that the pretension of the Chinese Government was directly provocative of the events of 1894, yet it is certain that it had a full share in filling the cup. Nowhere had the Chinese conception of supremacy been exemplified in a more uncompromising form than in her relations with Korea. Her position as suzerain was a reality. She had in times past defended her tributary at great cost, had marked the relationship by permanent monuments, and had maintained the rites necessary to keep her title alive. As late as 1890 the tributary formalities were repeated conspicuously before the world. In that year the "Grand" Queen-Dowager Chao of Korea died. According to custom the king despatched a messenger to Peking to report the death to his suzerain. The envoy presented his papers kneeling before the vice-president of the Board of Rites. He was the bearer of a petition from the king descanting on the miseries of his country, and expressing regret that, owing to the straitened circumstances of his Court, he might be unable to carry out all the ceremonies required for the entertainment of the usual mission of condolence from the emperor; therefore, as "an infant trusting to the tender mercies of his parents," the king begged that not a mission, but a message only, might be returned to him by the hands of his own envoy. The imperial decree in reply to this petition, while admitting the facts of the situation as set forth by the king, nevertheless announced that the customary usage must be maintained, only an important concession would be made to the poverty of Korea in the route which would be followed by the new mission. Previous envoys had made the whole journey between the two capitals by land, and after entering Korean territory they had to pass many stations in their slow march to the capital, involving much expense to the country through which they travelled. All this would be saved on the present occasion by the two commissioners travelling by sea, and landing at Chemulpo, a few miles only from the capital. The king had to submit to the modified burden, if such he really considered it. The ceremonies observed were elaborate and impressive. Frequent prostrations by Korean officials before the emperor's tablet, and before the Imperial Commissioners, introduced the proceedings; afterwards the king was taken charge of by the Chinese master of ceremonies, led through a complicated ritual, and told to bend, kneel, kotow, and stand erect at so many different stages that the mere reading of the official account of them is bewildering. The reporter's conclusion gives the gist of the whole ceremonial from the Chinese point of view: "The emperor's consideration for his vassal State as evinced by his thoughtfulness in matters pertaining to the mission is fathomless. How admirable and satisfactory! And how glorious!"

All this was unexceptionably correct, and in its fantastic way expressed an actuality not to be contested. Yet to the Japanese, with their antagonistic policy, we can well understand that this renewed assertion of the Chinese suzerainty, after the convention of 1885, must have been highly irritating. Scarcely less so was the superior position habitually assigned to the Chinese Resident over all the other foreign representatives at the Korean Court. He alone at all times had the ear of the king; he was the only one privileged to enter the palace in his sedan chair, the others having to leave theirs at the gate and walk. While abstaining from interference in small things, the Chinese Resident did, in fact, direct the national policy of Korea so far as such a thing could be said to exist.

As the affairs of Korea formed the occasion, if not the cause, of the Japanese War in 1894, it might seem desirable to refer once more to the troubles and misgovernment of that country. To explain them would be quite impossible, for to say that there are wheels within wheels, intrigue within intrigue, the whole revolving round a pivot of sordid corruption, is perhaps the only general account that can be given of the state of the Government and of its official hierarchy. But the conflict between China and Japan held on its way through the labyrinth of local intrigue, and eventually produced a result which, strange to say, seems never to have been anticipated by any one outside the Government circles of Japan. The energetic Chinese Resident at the Korean Court may perhaps have been needlessly ostentatious in asserting the legitimate paramountcy of China, but the aggression of the Japanese in various parts of the country, and the extravagant claims they founded upon these aggressions, really called for a champion of Korean independence, a function which Yuan Shih-kai[32] filled with considerable ability. The subordination of Korea to China was nowhere visible except in Court relations. The subjugation of the peninsula by the Japanese, on the other hand, was rapidly bringing the population itself into bondage to alien merchants, adventurers, and usurers, actively supported by their own Government. If they had had the patience to wait a few years, the Japanese must have won Korea by energetic infiltration alone.

But these things did not move fast enough for the settled ambition of Japan, which she with diligence, unanimity, and wonderful secrecy determined to develop by force of arms. It would be idle to seek for the causes of the war elsewhere than in this forward national policy of Japan. Alert as she had been to seize every chance that offered of detaching Korea from her allegiance to China, her preparations were not sufficiently complete to justify her unmasking her whole policy until 1894, when the grand opportunity for which she had been waiting, if she did not actively assist in bringing it about, presented itself. What proved to be an ill-advised interference of China in the internal affairs of Korea furnished the occasion. An insurrection had broken out in the southern part of the peninsula, and the king had no forces to put it down. Various versions had been circulated of the extent and character of the insurrection; but when it had continued for some time, and nothing was done to check it, the advisers of the Chinese Government became apprehensive of interference by some foreign Power for the restoration of order. Strangely enough, Japan was the very last quarter from which this danger was anticipated. The Chinese at length summoned resolution to send a force to the king's assistance to put down the insurrection, but whether the king in his heart desired this armed interference it is impossible for us to say.

Li Hung-chang was personally opposed to any such expedition, and when goaded to action from Peking, where the bellicose spirit had been generated, he pointed out that no request had been received from the king. This omission was also remarked upon by the practical Admiral Ting, and both may have hoped that the absence of so important a link in the chain would enable them to avoid the overt action which they had the best grounds for deprecating. Such a hope, if it existed, was of brief duration; for the King of Korea was induced, by influences brought to bear on him, "to place himself in order" and implore his suzerain for assistance, which the suzerain could no longer withhold. Then was Li Hung-chang pressed by that body whose characteristic was the negation of initiative, the Tsungli-Yamên, and like a sluggish horse which once takes the bit in its teeth, the Yamên became as impatient for action as in all its previous history it had been resolute in evasion. When but a few days had elapsed since the issue of the order, and the troops were not yet embarked, the Ministers, quite ignorant of what was involved in sending a military force across the sea, began to jeer Li Hung-chang on his delay, hinting that he was perhaps growing stale with age. The troops were, nevertheless, despatched all too soon. On their landing at Yashan in Southern Korea, the insurrection immediately collapsed: such was the prestige of the imperial authority.

In order to comply with the letter of the Li-Ito convention China notified Japan officially of the despatch of these troops, some 2000 in all, and of the purpose for which they were sent. But Japan had no need to wait for any such formal intimation. She had her Intelligence Department, remarkably alert. Japanese—not perhaps always known as such—were employed in the Chinese official bureaus, even in the most confidential departments, while Japanese in disguise swarmed in all the military centres. The Chinese telegraph service has no secrets from any one who thinks it worth his while to possess them. Consequently every detail of the preparation, every point in the discussion, and every step in embarkation, was punctually telegraphed by the Japanese consul to the Foreign Office in Tokio. Hence it was that Japanese troops arrived in Korea simultaneously with the Chinese, only they numbered 10,000 against 2000, and instead of being assigned to the region of the insurrection, in accordance with the provisions of the Li-Ito convention, they marched straight to the capital and took possession of the king. The insurrection having collapsed, the Chinese troops were under orders of withdrawal, and would have returned home in the same transports that conveyed them to Korea but for the unaccountable, and of course illegitimate, presence of Japanese troops at the capital. Notwithstanding the provocation to retain the Chinese troops in Korea as a counterbalance to those, five times more numerous, which had been sent by Japan, the Chinese authorities were advised by their best friends to recall their troops, even though the Japanese should thereby be apparently left in possession of the field. The Chinese would in that case have maintained an unassailably correct position, and Japan would have had to dispense with her pretexts for war. Evacuation by the Chinese had been actually decided upon, and the steamer Kowshing was chartered for the purpose of bringing back the troops. Before the measure was carried out, however, other counsels prevailed, and that very ship was employed in conveying more troops to reinforce the first expedition, and in the midst of pretended negotiations for an arrangement between the two Powers, the Japanese sank the Kowshing on the high sea with all on board.

It is usual, as a matter of form, if nothing else, to assign some specific cause for a war; but though many able writers have essayed to explain the Japanese action in 1894, they have all of them left the question in greater obscurity than they found it. Nor did the formal declaration of war by the Mikado throw any light on the subject. A Japanese statesman being asked what the war was about, replied bluntly, "It is to defeat China," and the most elaborate exposition of motives or policy does not carry us perceptibly further than this concise and straightforward statement. The Chinese Government itself held precisely the same view as to the object of the war, though its perceptions were so obscured that it was quite unaware of its incapacity for defence. Neither did it during the actual progress of hostilities realise the cause of its defeat. Indeed there is no evidence to show that China has even to this day discovered the secret of her impotence.

The course and immediate consequence of the war itself have been set forth in many books, and are so well known as to render it superfluous to enter into any detail here. A few general points only need be mentioned as a key to what followed.

1. Russia took unusual pains to dissuade Japan from engaging in the war, pointing out in clear terms that her interests would not allow her to be an indifferent spectator of any changes on the continent of Asia.

2. Great Britain next endeavoured to patch up the supposed quarrel—which could never be defined in words—between China and Japan, and on the day on which her agent in Tokio expressed himself confident that the differences, so far as he understood them, would be arranged without recourse to war, the British chartered transport Kowshing was sunk with 1200 men on board.

3. The solution of the question which would have reconciled the views of the four Powers more immediately concerned was the neutralisation of Korea. Great Britain, Russia, and Japan were of one mind on this subject, and China would have hailed such an escape from her chronic embarrassment respecting Korea. Why, then, was no attempt made to bring about such a solution? Want of co-ordination, it would appear; diplomatic paralysis. Though the views of each Power separately ascertained were identical, none of them would speak first, and there was no fifth party to assume the initiative in bringing them to a common understanding. The blame of this must be equally distributed, though in point of fact there were degrees of responsibility which it would be useless now to recall. It is only one example the more of the great gap which often yawns between professional diplomacy and practical politics.

The issue of the war was a foregone conclusion, both by sea and land. China had no army, and the more numerous her levies the more helpless they were before a disciplined enemy. The navy failed precisely where it was expected to fail. It was an incomplete machine, neglected and in disorder, deficient in many essential things. Worst of all, there was no heart in it. Captain Lang, R.N., and other British officers had been expelled from the service through a conspiracy of the captains in 1890, and thenceforth its deterioration became rapid. The efficiency of the navy for its main purpose was the last thing considered by the cabal. They relied absolutely on the diplomatic resources of Li Hung-chang to save them from any possible trial of strength, and refused to face an alternative even by way of argument. Bravery was by no means lacking in the ranks, nor professional education among the officers. There were some who had Nelson's maxims at the tip of their tongue, and there were some who added to a thorough naval training the spirit of devotion which makes heroes. But these qualities were isolated and incoherent; there was no tradition to render them fruitful, no martial spirit, no disgrace for the coward, no honour for the valiant. The fleet was a body, defective enough at that, but without a soul. The minds of the captains being set on quite other objects than the efficiency of their service, when the crisis threatened they were intent only on evading collisions. The valour of the admiral, the fine sense of duty of individual officers, and the fighting qualities of a considerable body of the seamen, were swamped in the prevailing pusillanimity of the service; the choice spirits were discouraged by the fatuous neglect at headquarters to supply the ordinary necessaries of warfare. It was the writer's fortune to make a passage in a Chinese protected cruiser in September 1894, a few days before the great naval action off the Yalu, and it was most pathetic to hear the defects pointed out by the captain and first lieutenant—defects in ammunition for the guns mounted, absence of gun crews, so that in action men would have to be taken from one gun to another and put to work for which they had no training, everywhere the ship spoiled for want of the ha'porth of tar. That particular vessel was not disgraced in the Yalu fight, but was brought into Port Arthur by the superhuman exertions of her officers, her iron deck beams twisted by the fire and her plates red hot. A second conversation with the captain and first lieutenant after the action was but a painful commentary on that of the week before. The one was prediction, the other fulfilment. Perhaps the state of the navy could not be more forcibly illustrated than by the fact that the fleet was led into action at the Yalu by a German military officer.

China was indeed defeated, amid the applause of Europe and the whole world, and the primeval law of violence received a new consecration. This is the one outcome of the war which seems likely to leave a permanent impress on the surface of our civilisation, for the spontaneous outburst from the four corners of the earth cannot be referred to any venal or wire-pulling agency. There had been foreign wars in China before, wars entered upon after long discussion and accumulating causes of quarrel. Their merits divided the opinion of the world—they divided even the nations that waged them; and the opposition was on one occasion strong enough to overturn a British Government that had actually entered into hostilities against China. But in 1894 there was not a dissentient voice. The cause of the war was not known and not inquired into, the universal enthusiasm was simply for the victor, as such, without regard to anything but his military prowess. That was what the world fell down and worshipped. Not any righteous cause, or racial sympathy, or community of interest, inspired their acclamations; for none of these things were considered or understood by the masses who chorussed the triumph of the conqueror of China. English pens and tongues beyond all others urged the victorious Power to make crushing conditions of peace, and in the clamour traditional landmarks were forgotten. The policy of saving China, the great English milch cow, from destruction, which had been patiently followed by Great Britain for forty years, was thus suddenly submerged in a wave of warlike enthusiasm.

Press-made feeling was both stronger and had more influence on the action of Government in England than in any other country. The war had upset the balance of power in Asia, but the press took no heed of that, and urged with conspicuous success that the Japanese should on no account be hindered in their seizure of the spoils. Other countries, keeping a cooler outlook on eventualities, were unable to regard the occupation of Liao-tung by Japanese forces with the equanimity with which it was viewed in England, though they made no objection to the enormous indemnities forced from China, which might indeed be philosophically regarded by them as a tax levied specially on British trade. Being threatened in her weakest frontier by this ambitious military Power, Russia had intimated before war began, in no ambiguous terms, that she could not tolerate such a neighbour, and on the conclusion of peace she took steps to give effect to that resolution. Russia had throughout the war been extremely nervous about the possible action of Great Britain, and would have gone considerable lengths to come to an understanding with her; but towards the end, when the pretensions of the Japanese began to assume extravagant dimensions, their moral effect on the Great Powers enabled her to dispense with English favour by drawing France and Germany to her support. The gravity of the Japanese demands was the factor that drew the three Powers together, and Li Hung-chang, when he went as envoy to Japan in March 1895, assented to the indemnity and the surrender of territory on the assurance given him that the more excessive the conditions of peace he might be forced to sign, the more certain were they to be revised by the intervention of the Powers. The three Powers proved strong enough to induce Japan to give up Liao-tung for an increased indemnity, and the future of the Far East thus was arranged in conferences from which Great Britain had excluded herself. There were several reasons for the abstention of the British Government from taking a share in this settlement. One was the complete failure of their Intelligence Department before, during, and after the war. But the fervour of the nation in deprecating interference with the Japanese was a sufficient, and no doubt a welcome, warrant for the inaction of the Government. An experienced observer of English public life remarked afterwards that he had never known a situation in which the press, metropolitan and provincial, had displayed such entire unanimity and lavished such unmixed praise on the Government for its isolation. And yet it was a unanimity of nescience, of simple abdication, the surrender of a position in the Far East which had been built up for two generations on the permanent interests of the country, and which, sacrificed at the critical moment, is gone beyond recall. The "new diplomacy," uninstructed popular impulse, never had a freer field; for the Government which it dominated was scarcely more enlightened, and decidedly more apathetic, than the nation itself.

MINISTERS OF THE YAMÊN OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
H.E. Shên Kuei-fên.
H.E. Tung Hsün.
H.E. Mao Chang-tsi.
From a photo by J. Thomson, Grosvenor Street, W.

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE FAR EAST.

An unsettlement—Interference of Russia, Germany, and France—China reduced to dependence—Disintegration proceeds—France forces China to violate her treaties with England—Russian approval—The loans pressed upon China—Russia vetoes English loan, substituting a French one, Russia standing security—Germany seizes Kiaochow—Russia seizes Port-Arthur—England's remonstrance unheeded—A diplomatic correspondence explained—British public aroused to importance of the Far Eastern question—Call upon Government to take protective action.

It would perhaps be in stricter accordance with facts to describe what ensued on the Chinese collapse as a process of unsettlement than resettlement, since no man now living is likely to see the end of the dislocation effected by the transactions of 1895. The crude ingredients of national policy, stripped of the international decencies with which they were wont to be invested, were then thrown into the caldron; elementary forces, naked and undisguised, confronted each other; and the scramble which moderate men had hoped to see indefinitely postponed was entered into with the zest of a Cornish wrecking raid. The officious interference of quasi-friendly Powers to save the derelict empire from mutilation proved, according to unvarying experience, a remedy which was worse than the disease. Russia, Germany, and France proceeded to treat China as a No Man's Land; disintegration was the order of the day. The example was, of course, contagious. Other Powers, with no more substantial ground of claim than was afforded by the defencelessness of China, began whetting their knives to carve the moribund carcass.

A momentous transformation had been effected in a few months. China now occupied the paradoxical position of a protected State without protection; of a sovereign State shorn of the power of fulfilling her obligations. To this impossible situation the Government itself had been an efficient contributor. During the progress of the war China had, of her own motion, thrown herself on the mercy of the world. Before all the Powers, great and small, with whom she had intercourse, she humbled herself in the dust, imploring them collectively, separately, or anyhow, to save her from her relentless foe. She, the titular mistress of the world, grovelled thus at the feet of Powers to whom she would not, even then, in plain words, have conceded equality. And when assistance eventually came it was imposed on her by external force. She could make no conditions.

The revolution which the revised treaty of Shimonoseki effected in the international status of China was naturally first realised by those who had brought it about. China ceased to be a free agent; she became a vassal, and not to one Power only. And the intervening Powers lost no time in demonstrating the fact, France taking the lead. Within two months of the revision of the treaty of Shimonoseki the French Minister in Peking compelled China to sign a treaty granting to France large territorial concessions on which she had long had her eye, with commercial privileges never before granted to any Power. But the stipulations of the French convention were in open conflict with those of an existing treaty with this country, inasmuch as they gave to France a portion of the Shan States, which had been expressly reserved as a neutral zone in the treaty between China and Great Britain. The British Minister, pointing this out before the French treaty was concluded, protested against its signature. The Ministers of the Yamên admitted the justice of his contention, nor can it be said the protest was unheeded. With the Yamên it was a question solely of the balance of power, and feeling that the French force was the heaviest in the scale, they yielded to that and signed the treaty with France in direct violation of that which they had previously signed with Great Britain. As if to leave no ambiguity as to the true significance of the change of status which had come over China, the Russian Minister on the day following made a formal visit to the Tsungli-Yamên, with more than the customary display, to congratulate the Chinese Ministers on what they had done, and to assure them of the approval of his Government.

This novel application of the law of force threw out of gear the whole system of Chinese national engagements, and was quite incompatible with normal diplomatic relations. Formerly the struggle had lain between China and all the Powers, her obligations to whom were observed in proportion to the amount of coercion applied by, or to be apprehended from, each. From this resulted a chronic demand for the fulfilment of agreements, and constant reclamations for non-fulfilment. But now the native reluctance to observe treaties was potentially reinforced by the action of foreign Powers in not only condoning, but explicitly insisting upon, China's violating her engagements.

It may be that this species of force majeure was not wholly unwelcome to the Chinese. It certainly widened the field for their favourite tactics of playing off one foreign Power against another. A better answer than heretofore was now available to all demands and remonstrances. "We should for our part be most happy to do as you desire, but—what would Russia say, what would France say?" Thus diplomacy in China at once degenerated into a "tug of war" contest, China herself being merely the rope which was pulled. She was virtually ruled out of the active management of her own affairs and became the corpus vile for rival aggressors.

Aggression sometimes assumed strange forms. One of the first which the treaty of peace with Japan developed was a remarkable competition in lending money to the Chinese. The indemnities to be paid to Japan were heavy, and it was obvious that China must borrow. But before she had time to take any step in that direction money was being thrust upon her. First in the ranks were English loan-mongers, who had had some experience in the business. Their negotiations were slow and halting; and when they had at last concluded a contract it was only to be told that Russia objected to the transaction, and required that China should borrow from French capitalists, who were willing to lend on the guarantee of Russia. The Chinese Government were absolutely passive, not willingly, but of necessity; they had not asked for the guarantee which Russia volunteered, and were quite willing to accept the loan of £16,000,000 sterling on the English terms. But Russia simply insisted on their taking the French money, under an ominous threat, while she herself stood security for the solvency of China, thereby assuming the position of first mortgagee on the revenues of that empire. That accomplished, Russia stipulated that China should contract no further loan for a period of six months.

The precedent set by Russia and France of ignoring the Government of China as an efficient factor in negotiations respecting her territory or her obligations was followed to the letter by Germany when in November 1897 she took possession of the most important naval harbour on the Chinese coast, with an adequate hinterland, carrying elastic rights extending over an immense area of country. Admiral von Diedrichs reduced the question of the acquisition to its very simplest expression. "Common-sense," he submitted to the Chinese commandant, "must tell you on which side the superior force lies, and therefore you would be wise to make way for me without resistance." With the prize in her hands, Germany next demanded a formal title to what she had seized, and instead of giving the German Minister his passports the Chinese Government granted the request.

In this unceremonious manner was the new status of China embodied in monumental facts. She was the common victim, having no power to bind or loose save in accordance with the dictates of her masters. The Chinese Government seemed to have abdicated sovereign functions.

After France and Germany it was Russia's turn to give tangible evidence of the real ascendancy she had gained over the Chinese Imperial Government. Hers was the only true mastery. The others might wrest provinces and extort concessions from a prostrate Government, but Russia alone reached the cerebral centre and controlled—so far as outward effect went—the volition of the organism. Negotiations, partly revealed in 1895, showed conclusively the scope and direction of her Chinese policy. It was profound and practical, continuing on the lines that had proved so successful in the past. The basis of it was an ostensible friendship for China, out of which grew a protective alliance, and the peculiar kind of partnership which had constituted the intermediate stage in the previous great territorial acquisitions of Russia. The joint right of the two Powers—to the exclusion of all others—to navigate the Amur and the Songari, and the joint possession of the Usuri territory—"details to be hereafter settled"—was now to be applied to the coast and harbours of Liao-tung, of which Russia was to have the use, afterwards defined in a treaty as the "usufruct." The gentlest methods were to be used, and so far as mere phrases were concerned, a matter on which the Chinese always were punctilious, the utmost consideration for their feelings was to be shown. Russia had two immediate objects in view, both of cardinal importance to her. The first was to obtain a terminus for the Great Siberian Railway more southerly than Vladivostock, which could only be obtained in Korean or Chinese territory. The second—the necessary corollary of the first—was to bring the territory through which the railway should run within the Russian administration. The sanction of China to a branch of the Siberian Railway being carried through Manchuria to a terminus on the Liao-tung littoral was formally given in conferences between Li Hung-chang and the Czar on the occasion of the coronation at Moscow in 1896. The details were afterwards developed in a way of which it is probable the Chinese Government had little foresight; but it would have made no difference, for to Russia nothing could be denied.

Out of these comprehensive projects of Russia—projects which belonged to the very highest order of imperial statecraft—arose a strange unequal duel between Russian and British diplomacy, which has also left its mark on history. Her Majesty's Government and their agents abroad having been found wanting in the matter of information during the upheaval of the Far East, it appeared to be their rôle to ignore and deny the facts upon which other Powers were acting. In particular the whole Russian scheme of utilising Chinese territory and controlling the Chinese Government was discredited with considerable vehemence. The consequence of this attitude of scepticism was that whatever Great Britain might resolve to do must be done in the dark. Assured by their agents in the Far East that the bay of Kiaochow was worthless, the British Government satisfied themselves that Germany had made a poor bargain in taking it. Dismissing as a phantasy the whole string of facts concerning Russia's plans, the British Government exposed themselves to collision with those plans, and received in consequence a series of diplomatic humiliations, entailing upon the country permanent disadvantages of a most substantial kind. Towards the end of 1898, soon after the German seizure of Kiaochow, a harbour which had also proved a convenient winter rendezvous for the Russian fleet, the announcement came from China that the latter had received permission from the Chinese Government to winter at Port Arthur on the opposite coast of Liao-tung. Thereupon a discussion was raised between London and St Petersburg concerning the prospective designs of Russia. This discussion was stamped from its origin with futility by previous communications with the Russian Government, the purport of which was inferred from a speech by Mr Balfour in February 1896. On that occasion he declared that the British Government would not only not oppose, but would hail with satisfaction, the acquisition by Russia of an ice-free port in the Pacific. As her Majesty's Government held Russia to the pledge she gave in 1886 to respect the integrity of the Korean coast, it followed that the ice-free harbour contemplated by Mr Balfour could only be in Chinese territory, which, as affecting the dominating power of Russia in the Far East, was greatly in advance of what the occupation of a Korean harbour would have been. Korea had been safe-guarded from encroachment because it was the stepping-stone to China, but the Russian lodgment on the inner waters of China itself deprived Korea of most of its strategical value. Hence Russia kept silence when Mr Curzon stated in Parliament that the pledge held good which preserved the integrity of Korea, a pledge which had lost its significance. This acquiescence in Russia's taking an ice-free port on the Chinese coast was in direct contradiction to other no less authoritative statements of the British Government. As, for instance, the resolution passed by the House of Commons, and accepted by the Government, pledging them to maintain the integrity of China, followed by the statement by the Under Secretary of State that the Liao-tung coast with its harbours constituted an integral part of the Chinese dominions. It is obvious that this confusion arose either from lack of information or lack of interest in the subject, coupled in either case with absent-mindedness on the part of the British Government. But these inconsistencies of the members of the British Government made no difference to the steady prosecution of the Russian plans, which were now developed with great rapidity. These pretensions were signalised by two memorable incidents, following each other so closely as to be practically simultaneous, in January 1898. The first was a new loan to the Chinese under negotiation by British financiers, to assist which her Majesty's Government was strongly urged by the China merchants to give its guarantee to the lenders as Russia had done in the case of the previous loan. On being asked by the Foreign Office what securities it would be proper to demand from the Chinese Government as the equivalent of such British guarantee, the British Minister at Peking replied that one of the conditions should be the opening of Talien-wan as a treaty port by the Chinese Government. Whether he had considered in what way this concession was to benefit the position of Great Britain was not disclosed. The proposal was promptly vetoed by the Russian Government, whose ambassador in London urged strongly that "if we insisted on making Talien-wan an open port we should be encroaching on the Russian sphere of influence, and denying her in future that right to the use of Port Arthur to which the progress of events had given her a claim,"—adding, that without having any designs on the territory, "it was generally admitted that Russia might claim a commercial débouché upon the open sea, and that in order to enjoy that advantage fully she ought to be at liberty to make such arrangements with China as she could obtain with respect to the commercial régime which was to prevail there."

The second incident was that two British war-vessels which were anchored in Port Arthur—where, of course, they had the same right to be as any other foreign man-of-war—"made a bad impression" on the Russian Government, and formed the subject of complaint to the British Secretary of State. While denying the right of Russia to comment on the movements of British ships in Chinese waters, Lord Salisbury nevertheless allowed the vessels in question to depart, a movement which was reported with much colour of truth in Peking and St Petersburg as having been made by the order of Russia.

Thus within one month the exposition of the Russian designs was expanded from the first assurance of Count Muravieff that the wintering of the ships was merely for the temporary convenience of the fleet, to the assertion of vague territorial rights over the coast and harbours of Liao-tung. And Lord Salisbury observed with plaintive naïveté in the month of March, that whereas his Government "had always looked with favour upon the idea of Russia obtaining an ice-free port on the Pacific, Russia had now given a most unfortunate extension to this policy." It appears that the eyes of the British Government were not opened to the gravity of the situation until Russia, alleging that an ice-free port on the Chinese coast (no longer the Pacific) was a vital necessity to her, thereupon took possession of Port Arthur and Talien-wan. The British Government at the eleventh hour opposed the proceeding, for the reason that "the influence of Russia over the Government of Peking will be so increased to the detriment of that of her Majesty's Government, if the Russians are to have a lease of Port Arthur and Talien-wan, that it seems desirable for us to make some counter-move." Thus the British Government were brought to see, when too late, what those interested in Far Eastern affairs had been endeavouring to tell them years before; and there seems to be no doubt that the final discovery of the truth was due to the efforts of one or two persistent writers in the press during January and February 1898, but chiefly to the action of a small independent section of the British House of Commons led by Mr Yerburgh. On such trifling accidents do great events sometimes hang, that it seems probable that had Mr Yerburgh's movement taken effect three months earlier British ships would not have been withdrawn from Port Arthur, neither would China have been ousted from the possession of her only two naval harbours north of the Yangtze—at least not just then. It would serve no good purpose to follow the various explanations given by Ministers of the British Crown of their diplomatic encounters with Russia. They will have little interest for the historian. But a clear account of these transactions given in a letter to the 'Times,' May 19, 1898, may very well serve as a guide to future inquirers into these matters:—

The Legend of Talien-wan.

Before the recent diplomatic struggle in the Far East is allowed to pass away from the public mind, may I be permitted to say a few words on one of its aspects which seems to have received very little attention?

The bad faith of the Russian Government has been strongly, and not unreasonably, condemned; but no attempt has been made to explain it, except on the popular hypothesis that a double dose of original sin is normal in the Muscovite. It does not seem to have occurred to any writer on the subject that the Russians themselves may have a grievance, that they may have acted under a sense of injury, or that, in their view, the good faith of the British Government is not above reproach. I believe they are mistaken; but it is none the less true that the chain of facts on which they rely will well bear the interpretation they place upon it.

The great blot on the recently published "Correspondence respecting the affairs of China" (No. 1, 1898) is that it takes no account of its immediate Vorgeschichte. It relates to a diplomatic struggle of which we last heard officially as far back as 1887, when the Blue-book on Port Hamilton was published. Since then many important things have happened, notably the Chino-Japanese war and the intervention of Russia, France, and Germany in the settlement of Shimonoseki. To ignore these events is really to delude the public; for the chapter of Far Eastern politics which begins with the German descent on Kiaochow is little short of meaningless if the story of Shimonoseki is passed over. Indeed the legend of Talien-wan itself belongs to a policy which may easily be traced back half a century. It is, however, not necessary for my purpose that I should go behind the Shimonoseki intervention. What was the object of that transaction? No one who has given any attention to Far Eastern affairs has ever been under the slightest illusion on this point. The great problem of Russian statesmanship since the foundation of the empire has been to reach the open sea, first in the Baltic, then in the Euxine and the Mediterranean, and, after the Crimean war, in the Pacific. Since Muravieff and Nevelskoy opened the Amur Russia has neglected no opportunity of pushing southward in order to get beyond the line of winter ice, and every embarrassment of China has been skilfully used by her to bring her nearer her goal. We in England have consistently resisted this policy, and in 1886 we thought to have finally defeated it when, by seizing Port Hamilton, we extracted a pledge from Russia that she would not occupy Korean territory "under any circumstances whatever." To all outward seeming Russian expansion in the Far East was thus stopped in the ice-bound harbour of Vladivostock. This, however, was not the view of Russia herself. She was still confident that an opportunity would be afforded her of realising her ambition, for there were other harbours on the Pacific besides those of Korea, and if the road to them was longer and more difficult, Russian patience was equal to the task of covering it. In these circumstances Japan, victorious in her war with China, claimed and obtained the cession of the Liao-tung peninsula, and thus threatened to shut the door for ever against Russian access to the Pacific. The intervention of the Powers which Russia thereupon organised was ostensibly directed to the protection of the integrity and independence of China, but no intelligent politician doubted at the time, or has doubted since, that its real aim was to keep the Pacific door open for Russia.

Shortly after this event Lord Salisbury came into office. The problem which then most urgently demanded his attention was that of Armenia. Largely by its attitude in the Far East the Rosebery Cabinet had left our relations with Russia in a distinctly strained condition, and the one obvious remedy of the Armenian horrors—the coercion of the Sultan—was blocked by Russia. Lord Salisbury directed himself to the conciliation of Russia, wisely recognising that nothing could be done in the Near East without Russian goodwill and assistance. What were the means he employed? I cannot say what private negotiations may have taken place between the two Governments, but we seem to have a sufficiently significant illustration of the direction in which the Premier was disposed to make concessions to Russia in a speech delivered by Mr Balfour at Bristol on February 3, 1896. In that speech a British Minister announced for the first time that this country would not oppose Russian expansion to the Pacific. "I, for my part, frankly state," he said, "that, so far from regarding with fear and jealousy a commercial outlet for Russia in the Pacific Ocean which would not be ice-bound half the year, I should welcome such a result as a distinct advance in this far-distant region." This statement made a profound impression all over the world, as well it might, seeing that it implied the abandonment of a policy which had been consistently and vigilantly adhered to by Great Britain from the time of Lord Clarendon to that of Lord Rosebery.

A few days after Mr Balfour's Bristol speech—on February 20—it fell to Mr Curzon to explain in a negative way the scope of his leader's pronouncement. An impression had got abroad that the new policy implied the surrender of the pledge given by Russia in 1886 with regard to the occupation of Korean territory, and the Under Secretary was asked in the House of Commons for his views on the subject. Mr Curzon replied that "her Majesty's Government consider that the pledge given by the Russian Government is still binding." Was this a disavowal of the new Russophile policy. Obviously not: for later in the year, at the Guildhall banquet, Lord Salisbury made to Russia the friendliest overtures he has ever made in public speech. At the same time he especially accentuated the novelty of his attitude by asserting that "it is a superstition of an antiquated diplomacy that there is any necessary antagonism between Russia and Great Britain."

The position, then, of the Government was apparently this: they had abandoned the traditional hostility of this country to Russian expansion towards the ice-free Pacific on condition that it did not trench on Korean territory. It followed, then, that they were not disposed to offer any hindrance to the acquisition by Russia of a port on Chinese territory, westward of the Korean frontier—that is, somewhere between the mouth of the Yalu and Port Arthur. This must be clear to anybody who cares to glance at a map. The upshot of the speeches of Mr Balfour and Lord Salisbury and of the statement of Mr Curzon was, in short, to invite Russia, whenever she might feel so disposed, to plant the Russian flag on the southern coast of Manchuria. This, at any rate, was the view taken in Russia, and, for my part, I can see no escape from it. It is not a little significant of the satisfaction caused in Russia by this interpretation of the policy of Great Britain that, on November 25, a fortnight after Lord Salisbury's speech, the Tsar at last consented in principle to the British proposals for coercing the Sultan of Turkey on the Armenian question.

Now we come to the events of last November, when Germany suddenly swooped down on Kiaochow. This step is known to have been very distasteful to the Russian Government. It was the first appearance of a European Power in the northern waters of China, in a region which Russia had persuaded herself was reserved for her own domination. Long before the murder of the unfortunate German missionaries in Shantung it was well known in St Petersburg that Germany had her eyes on Kiaochow, and the Russian Minister at Peking had more than once warned Li Hung-chang and urged him to fortify the bay. The disappointment of Russia became intensified when it was observed that the step taken by Germany, was not resented in this country, and fears of an Anglo-German alliance in the Far East began to possess the Russian mind. Then suddenly there came the Talien-wan incident, and Russia found herself once more confronted by the danger which had threatened her in the treaty of Shimonoseki.

The real significance of the Talien-wan incident has never yet been fully set forth. Had Talien-wan been made a treaty port, and thus given more or less of an international status, Russia would have been practically shut out for ever from the ice-free ocean. The only stretch of coast on which she could obtain this outlet was, as I have already shown, the southern coast of Manchuria from the Korean frontier on the Yalu to Port Arthur. Now, if we examine this coast-line carefully we shall find that there is only one spot capable of being transformed into a commercial port, and that is Talien-wan. The China Sea Directory (vol. iii.), published by the Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty, gives us the fullest particulars on this subject. It traces the coast-line in microscopic detail and shows us that it has only five possible harbours. The first, westward from the Yalu, is Taku-shan, the approach to which is frozen during the winter months. The second is Pi-tse-wo,—here the water is too shallow even for large junks. The third is Yen-tao Bay, the anchorage of which is bad, and in places dangerous. The fourth is Talien-wan, and the fifth Port Arthur. Talien-wan has all the advantages which are absent from the other ports. It is ice-free, spacious, well sheltered, with excellent anchorage and considerable commercial possibilities. Is it surprising that Russia should have felt aggrieved when it was proposed to make Talien-wan a treaty port?

As a matter of fact, I believe Russia regarded this proposal as an attempt to evade the assurance given by Mr Balfour in his Bristol speech. She looked upon it as the design of a powerful Anglo-German combination to exclude her for ever from the China seas. It was to her mind a conspiracy of the most dangerous kind, and she bent all her efforts to defeat it. When she had defeated it she lost no time in securing her position. She took Port Arthur as well as Talien-wan, for the simple reason that her interpretation of the situation convinced her that a commercial port overlooked by a great citadel in foreign hands would be a vantage to her foes rather than a prize to herself. Can she be altogether blamed for taking this view?

The mistake the Russian Government made was in attaching a serious meaning to the casual blunders of our Government, and in imagining that these blunders marked a connected purpose, if not a consistent policy. They were not to know that the Russophile passage in Mr Balfour's Bristol speech was a mere oratorical tag; that our friendly attitude towards Germany at Kiaochow was only a sort of amiable tolerance of an act the scope and consequence of which we had not measured; and that our proposal to open Talien-wan was made at the suggestion of our Minister at Peking, who, of course, knew what he was about, while it was acquiesced in at home by Ministers who simply did not know what they were doing. That Sir Claude Macdonald designed the Talien-wan move as a check to Russia I have no doubt; that Lord Salisbury never dreamed of this aspect of it I am equally convinced.

However that may be, one thing, I think, is clear. The sense of injury and the complaints of bad faith are not all on one side. In diplomacy, as in most of the affairs in this world, it is a wise rule not to believe your opponent to be as stupid as he looks. Russia at any rate paid us this compliment during the recent negotiations. The result, no doubt, is that she has overreached us. But whose fault is it?

The Russian flag once hoisted over Port Arthur and Talien-wan (by what nominal authority makes no difference whatever to the fact) placed the new relation of China to the rest of the world beyond all discussion. China did not willingly surrender her territory: she looked in vain for help, but found none. She weighed in the balance the words and acts of one great Power against the words and acts of another, and had no choice but to place herself under authority of the strongest, finally and irrevocably. That fact must be taken as the master-key to her subsequent policy in all its phases.

These several events succeeding each other in close order awoke the British public from their optimistic dream, and forced them to reflect that there was after all something more in these Far Eastern readjustments than had occurred to them when cheering on gallant little Japan to the spoliation of China. The result obtained was certainly not that which was contemplated either by the nation or the Government when Great Britain settled down into her isolation. When the truth of the situation had revealed itself to the public there was naturally a loud call for something to be done to safeguard the commercial interests of the country, if not to recover lost prestige; but the Government were as far from having definite aims in China as they had ever been, and while goading them to action, the public was scarcely in a position to advise what that action should be. Neither had the Government, in spite of all that had taken place, fully realised to what extent China had added impotence to reluctance, for they continued to deal with China very much as if the events of 1895 to 1898 had never happened. They were reluctant to recognise the fact that Russia, in possession of the Liao-tung or Kwan-tung peninsula and of the railway line connecting it with Siberia, held a noose round the neck of the Peking Government, which she could tighten or relax, conceal or parade, as circumstances required, and that until some other Power or Powers were prepared to speak with equal authority Russia must be paramount, not by virtue of any convention, but as the outcome of accomplished facts.

Two measures adopted by Great Britain to rectify the preponderance of Russia were the seizure, under a form of negotiation, of the harbour of Weihai-wei and the forcing of money upon the Chinese by way of loan. The value of these strokes of policy has not yet become apparent.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE OUTCOME.