Compare this with the state of things existing only three years before! Much of the success of the occupation and its good permanent results were unquestionably due to the high qualities of Parkes, the British commissioner, who thus modestly refers to the matter in his despatch: "The confidence of the people in a strong and inoppressive Government, added to their own governable character, materially facilitated the task of maintaining order in a vast and most intricate city containing a population of upwards of 1,000,000 inhabitants." The "Canton question" was thus finally disposed of to the satisfaction of all parties.
VII. DEATH OF THE EMPEROR.
His flight from the capital—Succession of his son—Regency of the two empresses—Prince Kung's sanguinary coup d'état.
Next in importance to the suppression of the Taiping rebellion, the death of the Emperor Hsienfêng marked the period we are now considering. That unfortunate monarch, who deserted his capital against the strongest remonstrances of his advisers, on the approach of the Allied forces, died at his hiding-place in August 1861, and his only son was proclaimed in his stead under the style of Tungchih. The new emperor was a child, and provision had to be made for a regency. How this regency fell into the hands of two empresses—one the mother of the young emperor, the other the true widow of the deceased—was not very well understood by the foreigners then in the capital. Prince Kung's coup d'état, by which the three male members of the regency were elaborately arraigned and then assassinated, was not organised to get rid of any imaginary "anti-foreign faction," as was too easily assumed at the time, but simply and solely to place the empire at the feet of himself and the emperor's mother. "Parties" in Peking have always been, and are to this day, a puzzle to foreigners, who, having seldom at the moment any trustworthy means of informing themselves, are apt to be carried away by "cries," sometimes got up for the purpose of misleading them,—for the Chinese are not at all averse from turning to account the half knowledge on which foreigners are prone to form their opinions.
VIII. INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS ON PROGRESS OF DIPLOMACY.
Inadequacy of foreign diplomacy—Absence of sovereign—Allies committed to protection of China—Coercion impossible—Large outlook of Mr Bruce—The provincial versus imperial administration—Attempt to force Central Government to coerce provincial—Contemptuous attitude of Chinese Ministers—Sir F. Bruce's despair—He clutches at various straws—General reaction of Chinese.
How did these various occurrences influence the progress of diplomatic relations with the Government? We have seen that diplomacy in Peking was a venture launched on imported capital, which, meeting with no indigenous support, was doomed from the first to feed upon itself. There was no dialect through which the foreign idea could translate itself to Chinese comprehension, no medium by which Chinese political conceptions could be made intelligible to the foreigner. When Gordon could not get his meaning filtered through an interpreter, he called for a dictionary and put his finger on the word "idiotcy"—and the most orthodox interpreting could not get much beyond this point in establishing a common currency for the interchange of national ideas. The initial difficulty in imposing foreign forms, foreign terms, foreign procedure—of revolutionising at a stroke a system of administration petrified by ancient usage—would have existed even if the statesmen of China had been sincere converts to the innovation. The contrary was, of course, the case: they were as much opposed to the new relations as they had been to the military invasion itself. No help, therefore, was to be expected from the Chinese side in creating a workable scheme of international intercourse. They desired nothing of that kind, their ambition soaring no higher than the creation of a buffer against which external impulsion might expend its force. That buffer was the Tsungli-Yamên. Foreign diplomacy, therefore, if it were to subsist at all, must subsist on its own resources, the foundation of which was force. The force that brought foreigners to Peking must, either in esse or in posse, for an indefinite time keep them there and render them efficient. Force no doubt would have enabled the foreign Ministers to bring about even those structural changes in the Chinese system which were necessary to clear the ground for the operation of their diplomacy. But if there was one thing more than another of which Western Governments were determined to convince themselves, it was that the law of force was finally abrogated in China; that on a certain day at a certain hour, coincident with the signing (by force) of a sheet of paper, the spirit of hostility had departed from the Chinese mind; and that the law of love and reason was, without preamble, to take the place of that which had brought about the new relations. Whether believed in or not, this curious paradox was to be the rule of all future action.
The game that opens with the "king" off the board, and is afterwards continued with the "queen" protected, is an obviously impossible one. The foreign Ministers had to do with a Government of irresponsibility, and instead of teaching its members from the outset to recognise their new obligations—training them as children, which as regards foreign matters they really were—the foreign Ministers began by treating the Chinese Government rather as an infant too delicate for discipline, with the familiar results of such treatment. The diplomats betrayed so much anxiety to lure the sovereign back to his palace, that the Chinese Ministers soon learned to exploit this feeling for their own ends. That such and such a concession "would have a good effect at Jêho" was inducement enough to the foreign representatives to waive one point after another in the transaction of public business. When the emperor died, after six months of this régime of indulgence, the position was changed materially for the worse,—for the diplomats had now a veritable infant on their hands, with a female regent "behind the curtain." No prospect thenceforth of even the initial formality of delivering letters of credence until the child should grow up, by which time many things might happen. Thus the European scheme of diplomacy, which was to have been imposed bodily on the Court of Peking, stumbled heavily on the threshold, and never recovered itself. But the Chinese recovered. Their fear of the "fierce barbarians" disappeared as they saw them throw away their weapons, and the process was resumed by which the fruits of the war and of the treaties of peace were gradually nibbled away.
And of course the whole idea of coercing the Imperial Government, even had it ever been entertained, was openly reduced to nullity when the foreign Powers interfered for the suppression of the rebellion. The Allies could not knock down with one hand what they were propping up with the other, and thus the Imperial Government not only enjoyed immunity, but knew that they possessed it,—that their late conquerors were now fully committed to the upholding of the integrity of China and the maintenance of the dynasty. Any liberties might consequently be taken: remonstrances from the foreigners would be loud in proportion to their hollowness, but the barbarians could not attack a citadel full of their own hostages.
Although remoteness from the scene of action and imperfect acquaintance with local requirements were apt to invalidate his conclusions on points of detail, and to compel him occasionally to follow where he might have been expected to guide the action of his subordinate executive, yet whenever Sir Frederick Bruce delivered his mind on the position of China and her foreign relations as a whole, his views were large, luminous, and statesmanlike. He foresaw from the first what the degradation of the Chinese Government must inevitably lead to. His outlook is revealed in a brief sentence in one of his earlier despatches: "The weakness of China rather than her strength is likely to create a fresh Eastern question in these seas." There need be little doubt that that idea dominated his Chinese diplomacy. Severity, or even strictness, may well have seemed on the face of the matter inconsistent with the pious wish to strengthen China, yet we now know that what she then most needed was to be braced up to the fulfilment of her obligations as a necessity of her own wellbeing.