The field of diplomacy in the orthodox sense being closed, and there being no foreign interests in Peking, the subject-matter for the Ministers' activity was furnished entirely from the trading-ports. Of these there were fifteen open in 1861. The kind of questions which arose may be generally defined as claims arising out of breaches of treaty by provincial officials, for which redress was sought from the Central Government. This was a reversal of Chinese methods, which, even had the Government been well disposed, would not have been easy to effect; and as the Government was hostile, difficulty became impossibility. The British Minister after a year's trial began to realise the magnitude of his Sisyphean task. "In a country like China," he wrote to the Foreign Office in July 1862, "where the principles of administration differ entirely from those practised by us, the conclusion of a treaty is the commencement, not the termination, of difficulties."
To a consul he wrote at the same time: "The important result to be gained by the establishment of direct relations with the Government of Peking is the avoidance of local acts of violence.... Time will elapse before the new system will work smoothly and efficiently, ... but you must not go beyond pacific efforts to remedy the abuses complained of." A few months later, in a general circular to consuls, he thus carefully recapitulated the instruction:—
The object to be attained is that of forcing the local officials to observe the treaty ... through the pressure brought to bear upon them by the Peking Government, and thus escape from the false position in which we have hitherto been placed of coercing the local authorities and people, and thus doing the work of the Imperial Government. To initiate this new system of relations is a task which can only be effected gradually and patiently; but the attempt must be steadily and perseveringly made, in order that the Chinese Government may be forced to teach its people, &c.
And at the same time he summed up the situation to the Foreign Office in these words: "Our relations with China cannot be put upon a safe footing until the Imperial Government itself compels its local officers to observe treaties"—a matter in which the Central Government itself most needed compulsion!
But all this about "forcing" the local officials and "forcing" the Imperial Government, without using any force, recalls the ancient Chinese maxim of "ruling barbarians by misrule." The world rested securely enough on the tortoise, but what did the tortoise itself rest on? With grim satisfaction must the Chinese Ministers have watched the foreigners entering on a desert campaign where they would exhaust their strength without reaching the enemy. The warnings and threats which alone the Minister allowed himself to use to enforce his demands or his admonitions, as the case might be, were to the Chinese mere blank cartridge. Prince Kung, replying to one of those minatory despatches, "imagines that his Excellency uses this outspoken language for the purpose of stimulating the Chinese Government to activity. His Highness is sure that it is not his Excellency's desire to act in the manner indicated." And so on indefinitely. The impression made on the Chinese Government by the force of foreign diplomacy was likened by an American Minister twenty years afterwards to "boxing a feather-bed." The policy above described, inaugurated by Mr Bruce and followed consistently by the British Government, was pithily termed by Lord Salisbury, when in Opposition, as an "ideal policy" in pursuit of which the concrete interests of the country were allowed to lapse.
It would be tedious to trace in detail the process of disintegration of treaty rights which followed these interesting overtures. It will be more to the purpose to cite the British Minister's review of the results twelve months later in a despatch to Prince Kung. This despatch and the reply to it were deemed so important at the time that they were separately called for by the House of Commons, and were published as independent Blue Books (Nos. 6 and 8, 1864):—
Sir Frederick Bruce wished the Prince of Kung to understand that he had reason to be greatly dissatisfied
1. With the general disregard of treaty provisions manifested at the ports.
2. With the tone of the Government generally towards foreigners.
It is entirely due to the exertions of the Allied forces that Shanghai and Ningpo are not now in rebel possession. Had Shanghai fallen, the imperial authority would have received a blow from which it could never have recovered....