Affairs in Shanghai had followed a placid and uneventful course until an incident occurred which brought into sudden activity the latent forces of disorder. Within little more than a year after the arrival of Mr Alcock at his new post an outrage was perpetrated on the persons of three English missionaries, which led to the first and the last important struggle between the British and Chinese authorities in Shanghai. The assailants of Messrs Medhurst, Lockhart, and Muirhead, the three missionaries concerned, were not the peaceably disposed natives of the place, but the discharged crews of the Government grain-junks, who had been cast adrift by the officials and left to shift for themselves after the manner of disbanded soldiers. The attack took place at a small walled town called Tsingpu, within the authorised radius, and the three Englishmen came very near losing their lives. Mr Alcock lost not a moment in demanding full redress from the Chinese authorities, who instinctively sheltered themselves under the old evasive pleas which had proved so effective at Canton. It happened that the highest local official, the Taotai, had had experience of the southern port, and, entirely unaware that he was confronted in Shanghai with a man of very different calibre from any he had encountered before, he brought out all the rusty weapons of the Canton armoury, in sure and certain hope of reducing the consul's demands to nullity. Evasion being exhausted, intimidation was tried, and the consul and his interpreter were threatened with the vengeance of an outraged people, quite in the Canton manner. But intimidation was the very worst tactics to try on two Englishmen of the stamp of Alcock and Parkes, and when that card had been played the Chinese game was up.
The situation was one of those critical ones that test moral stamina, that discriminate crucially between a man and a copying-machine. It was also one which illuminated, as by an electric flash, the pivotal point of all our relations with China then as now, for the principle never grows old. It is therefore important to set forth the part played by the responsible officer, the support he obtained, the risks he ran, and the effective results of his action. An absolutely unprovoked murderous outrage had been perpetrated on three Englishmen; the Chinese authorities refused redress with insolence and evasion; acquiescence in the denial of justice would have been as fatal to future good relations at Shanghai as it had been in the previous decade in Canton. What was the official charged with the protection of his countrymen to do? He had no instructions except to conciliate the Chinese; there was no telegraph to England; communication even with the chief superintendent of trade at Hongkong, 850 miles off, was dependent on chance sailing vessels. Delay was equivalent to surrender. Now or never was the peremptory alternative presented to the consul, who, taking his official life in his hands, had to decide and act on his own personal responsibility. Had time allowed of an exchange of views with the plenipotentiary in Hongkong, we know for certain that nothing would have been done, for the first announcement of Mr Alcock's strong measures filled Mr Bonham (who had just succeeded Sir John Davis) with genuine alarm.
Considering the instructions [he wrote] with which you have been furnished from the Foreign Office, dated December 18, 1846, and the limited power and duties of a consul, I cannot but express my regret that you should have taken the steps you have seen fit to do without previous reference to her Majesty's plenipotentiary, as undoubtedly, under the peremptory orders recently received from her Majesty's Government, I should not have considered myself warranted in sanctioning, &c., &c.
Fortunately for the consul and for the peaceful development of British trade, one of Palmerston's specific instructions had been obeyed in Shanghai. There was a British ship of war in port, the 10-gun brig Childers, and, what was of still more importance, a real British man on board of her, Commander Pitman, who shared to the full the Consul's responsibility for what was done.
The measures adopted by Consul Alcock—when negotiation was exhausted—were to announce to the Chinese authorities that, until satisfaction had been obtained, no duties should be paid on cargo imported or exported in British ships: furthermore, that the great junk fleet of 1400 sail, laden and ready for sea with the tribute rice for Peking, should not be allowed to leave the port. The Childers, moored in the stream below the junk anchorage, was in a position to make this a most effective blockade. The rage of the Taotai rose to fever heat, and it was then he threatened, and no doubt attempted to inflame the populace and the whole vagabond class. The Taotai ordered some of the rice-laden junks to proceed; but though there were fifty war-junks to guard them, the masters dared not attempt to pass the ideal barrier thrown across the river by the resolute Captain Pitman.
MOUTH OF YANGTZE AND CHUSAN ARCHIPELAGO.
The outrage took place on the 8th of March. On the 13th the consul presented an ultimatum to the Taotai giving him forty-eight hours to produce the criminals. This being disregarded, the measures above referred to were enforced, with the full approval, it may be mentioned, of the consuls of the two other treaty Powers. At the same time Vice-Consul Robertson, with Parkes for interpreter, was despatched to Nanking on board her Majesty's ship Espiègle to lay the whole case before the viceroy of Kiangnan. The matter was there promptly attended to, full redress was ordered, and the culprits punished exactly three weeks after the assault. The embargo on the rice-junks was removed, and affairs resumed their normal course.[15] The effect of this lesson has never been effaced, harmony having prevailed between British and Chinese officials and people in Shanghai and the province from that day to this.
The circumstances were of course very unusual which placed such ready means of bloodless coercion in the hands of the British consul. The fortuitous coincidence of the time of the outrage with the period of departure of the grain fleet placed a weapon in the consul's hands which of itself would have eventually brought the Chinese to terms, should the matter in the mean time not have been taken out of the hands of the consul and dealt with from Hongkong by the plenipotentiary, whose views have been given above. So soon as the detention of the grain fleet became known to the Government of Peking, orders of a very drastic nature would undoubtedly have been despatched to the viceroy of the province, and both he and his subordinate would have been made answerable for their incompetence in imperilling the supply of rice for the Government. But the pressure was doubly intensified by the appearance of a foreign ship of war under the walls of Nanking. Six years had not elapsed since a similar demonstration had brought the Government to its knees, and to have allowed such an invasion a second time would have drawn down the imperial wrath on the luckless provincial authorities. For Nanking differs from the other provincial capitals, such as Canton and Foochow, inasmuch as it is near the strategic centre of the empire, commanding the main artery of communication with the interior of the country, at the point of intersection of the Yangtze river by the famous Imperial Canal which connects the capital with the richest region in the Yangtze valley. A blockade of the sea-going grain fleet with a simultaneous blockade of these inland waters, so easily effected, would have throttled China. The viceroy, who sent a report on the transaction to the throne by special express, explained away his own hasty action by saying "that the appearance of the barbarian chiefs at the provincial city may have caused anxiety in the sacred breast."