In the chronicles of that long history there are many deeds worthy of remembrance, as well as many of another hue, neither being confined to one side. There were good and bad among the early adventurers, as there are at all times in every other section of mankind. Of two brothers, for example, connected with the very early times, the first comer ingratiated himself with the Chinese, and left such a good impression behind him that the second was received with open arms: very soon, however, he abused the liberality of the natives, committing outrages upon them, which led ultimately to his forcible expulsion from the country and to restrictions on the outlets for trade. Taking it as a whole, the record of the pioneers in China is rather a despicable one, in which violence, cupidity, and cowardice formed large ingredients.
The English, as latest comers, being served heirs to the turpitudes of all Europe, paid the penalty for the misdeeds and shortcomings of their predecessors and their neighbours, as well as for their own. The penalty was the intolerable degradation they had been made to endure, with ever-increasing aggravation, at the only port where they were permitted to trade—Canton.
As there are forms of impurity which can only be cleansed by fire, so there was no possible remedy for the miseries of Anglo-Chinese intercourse short of open war. The hostilities begun in 1839, and brought to a conclusion by the treaty of Nanking in 1842, were naturally held as a drastic liquidation of long-standing grievances and the harbinger of a new era of peace and mutual respect. Why even the decisive and one-sided war should have proved an inadequate solvent of the perennial strife may partly appear as our story proceeds.
The chasm between the Chinese and the Western world, as then represented by Great Britain, was in fact much too deep to be bridged over by any convention. Intercommunion between bodies so alien was as the welding of heterogeneous metals, contact without fusion. From one point of view, indeed, circumstances were highly favourable to a sympathetic attachment, for there is no safer medium of intercourse between nations than the commerce which blesses him that buys and him that sells. It was the pursuit of commerce alone that drew men from afar to the Asiatic coasts, and the reciprocal desire on the part of the natives which opened for the strangers, be it ever so little, the gates of the Chinese empire. The purely commercial relation left little to be desired on the side of mutual goodwill. The impression of it left on the mind of old residents in Canton is thus recorded by Mr W. C. Hunter, an American merchant, who lived there from 1824: "From the facility of all dealings with the Chinese who were assigned to transact business with us, together with their proverbial honesty, combined with a sense of perfect security to person and property, scarcely a resident of any lengthened time—in short, any 'Old Canton'—but finally left them with regret."
Mr Hunter goes further and testifies to the "vigilant care over the personal safety of strangers who came to live in the midst of a population whose customs and prejudices were so opposed to everything foreign."
Why, then, was it that on the ground-level of common material interest, and under the sunshine of the protection spontaneously accorded by authority, the parties failed in two hundred years to evolve between them a modus vivendi? The solution of this riddle can only be found in a patient survey of events both before and after the war.
It would carry us far beyond our limits even to summarise the history of foreign intercourse with China. Nor is such a task necessary, since our concern lies mainly with those later developments which culminated in the war of 1839-42, a glance at which seems essential to any fair appreciation of the sequel.
That there was no material cause of difference between the Chinese Government and people on the one hand and the foreign traders and their representatives on the other was made manifest by the persistence and continuous growth of their mutual commerce. And their common appreciation of the advantages of the trade is shown by the readiness of each in turn to resort to the threat of stopping business as a means of pressure on the other side. It is not therefore the substance, but the accidents and conditions, of the intercourse that generated the friction which led through outrage to reprisals; and the two conditions most fruitful in conflict were the necessary absence of law and the inevitable incomprehension of each others status.
Left to themselves, the traders on either side, though without law, would have been a law to themselves, both parties having been habituated to a discipline of custom more potent within its sphere than any code, commercial or penal. But as no problem in life can ever be isolated, so in this case the twofold interference of the State and the populace constantly obstructed the genial flow of commercial intercourse.
The interference of the Chinese bore no resemblance to the restrictions imposed on trade by Western Governments, for these, even when most oppressive, are usually specific and calculable. There is a tariff of duties, there are harbour and police regulations, and there are the laws of the land. The peculiarity of the Chinese official supervision of foreign trade was that it was incalculable and arbitrary, governed by cupidities and jealousies, and subject to individual caprice. Having barbarians to deal with, the Chinese authorities followed the maxims of their ancient kings and "ruled them by misrule, which is the true and the only way of ruling them." And finding the barbarians submissive, they grew accustomed to practise on them such indignities as a wanton schoolboy might inflict on a captive animal, unrestrained by any consideration save the risk of retaliation. The Chinese had no conscience to be shocked by the persecution of foreigners, for in relation to them justice and injustice were meaningless terms. Such arrogance was not so much the result of any formulated belief as of a traditional feeling lying at the bottom of their moral conceptions; and just as the Chinese people to-day speak of foreigners, without consciousness of offence, as "devils," so did the best educated officials in the days before the war sincerely regard strangers as an inferior, if not a degraded, race. As late as 1870 a British representative writing to the Chinese Prime Minister complained that "the educated class, both by speech and writing, lets the people see that it regards the foreigner as a barbarian, a devil, or a brute." And there has been no change since except what is enforced by prudence. To the absence of law in their intercourse was therefore superadded a special negation of human rights, naturally accompanied by an overbearing demeanour on the side of the natives. The strangers were in effect outlawed. The attempts made from time to time to assert their independence resembled the spasmodic kicking of the ox against the goad which led rather to aggravation than amelioration of the pain. The prevailing tone was that of submission, inviting more and more aggression, until the cup overflowed and war ensued.