PRINCE KUNG.
Relations which might be called intimate had been established between the two Manchu statesmen, Prince Kung and Wênsiang, and the foreign representatives. When these high personages were forced to assume responsibility for international relations, they were not only unversed in foreign affairs but untrained to any kind of business. The work of the six Boards was carried on by expert secretaries, and the presidency of one of them would have been no qualification for the new duty thrust upon the emperor's Ministers of transacting business with foreign officials standing on an equality with themselves. Their older colleague, Hangki, had gained a little foreign knowledge by observation and hearsay while filling the lucrative office of hoppo at Canton; but the two younger men mistrusted him, perhaps with reason, possibly from the suspicion naturally aroused by his possession of superior knowledge. Prince Kung and Wênsiang recognised that they had everything to learn, and they were apt and eager scholars. Considering all the circumstances, it is indeed marvellous how they adjusted themselves by innate tact to the novel position, and how quickly they assimilated new knowledge. Many illuminating discussions were carried on between them and the foreign representatives, who on their part were no less desirous of imparting than the Chinese were of acquiring information respecting the outer world. In these interesting symposia Mr Wade naturally played the prominent part. On the enchanted ground of Chinese history and literature, also, the interlocutors made endless excursions together; and Chinese philosophy being directed to conduct rather than speculation, it was possible to deduce from the teaching of the sages authority for the adoption of almost any useful measure. Between the modern innovator, therefore, though in foreign garb, and the ancient moralists there was no such intellectual disagreement as sympathetic explanations could not resolve.
It might have been justifiable to conclude that the Chinese were being influenced for good by the well-meant counsels so copiously addressed to them, were it not that the tutorial being so entirely incompatible with the diplomatic function, no useful result could be expected from their strained combination. It was as if one were to teach a novice the moves in a game which the two were at the same time playing for serious stakes.
These interminable interviews and voluminous memoranda were wholly unproductive, owing, no doubt, to the fact that the ideas of the parties ran on parallel lines destined never to come to any point of fertile contact. The burden of the cry of the Western people was "progress," a word without equivalent in the language, and expressing an idea which had no place in the conception of the Chinese. Incessant repetition with varying illustrations were to the Chinese as flowers of rhetoric wasted on a deaf man, and that simply because the basis of the Chinese political thought lay at the opposite pole from that of the European. On one occasion a distinguished American promoter was expatiating to the governor of Formosa on the advantages of railway communication, his most telling example being his own experience in being rushed along after an early breakfast from his house in Albany to New York, where he spent the day transacting important business and got wheeled back again to Albany for dinner. The governor stopped him, and asked what in the name of sanity possessed him to lead such a wearing life, as the last thing he (the governor) would dream of doing would be to live a hundred miles from his work. Though the earliest public advocate of railroads in China, the governor regarded their utility from a far different point of view.
WÊNSIANG.
From a photo by J. Thomson, Grosvenor Street, W.
So eager were the foreigners for progress, which in their mind included the regeneration of the Chinese empire and the development of its full capacity for self-defence, that they were wont to rejoice over the slightest indications of a beginning being made. Thus the mission of a man of no standing as a secretary of the Tsungli-Yamên, who was sent to Europe in 1866 to take observations, was hailed as the beginning of the new era, and commended so warmly by the foreign Ministers to their Governments that the emissary was received like the Queen of Sheba by King Solomon, and shown—at least in Great Britain—everything that was admirable from the Western point of view. He was as far, however, from appreciating the triumph of science as was Cetewayo, the Zulu, whose admiration of England focussed itself on the elephant "Jumbo" at the Zoological Gardens, or the Scotswoman who, after being shown over the British Museum, had carried away from it one impression, and that of the "graund mat" at the door. The Chinese Government's appreciation of Western progress was by no means increased by the mission of Pin, which rather indeed produced a contrary effect. China soon began to put forth fresh claims to go her own way, her own way being directly opposed to the kind of progress which was being pressed upon her.
The Chinese in following the doctrines of the sages felt they were under the guidance of Heaven, so that innovations appeared to them tainted with impiety. So deeply did the worship of the past pervade their field of thought, that when high officials ventured to introduce something new, they usually endeavoured to disarm opposition by gilding their proposals with well-selected texts from the classics.