Foreigners could of course have had no success whatever in such man-hunting schemes without the interested co-operation of the natives. How this was obtained may be gathered from such reports as that of Mr W. M. Cooper, acting consul at Swatow, one of the principal entrepots.
Nowhere [he says] is population more dense than in the plains of the Han. There is a constant tendency, where the struggle for existence is so keen, and no drain exists as that caused by recruiting for an army, towards the formation of a scum of bad characters, whom their idleness or ill-deeds drive to prey on the more industrious. These, frequently discarded by their families, are seen by the official and the village elder on their way to the coolie-house with a sense of relief and satisfaction; and not seldom is the coolie-broker aided in his object of obtaining men by persons of this class, and frequently by the relations of the men themselves. Thus the trade is allowed to take root with the concurrence of the heads of the people, who not only rid themselves by means of it of a nuisance and a burden, but make money by the transaction; and a connection is formed which the broker, in his thirst for dollars, becoming gradually hardened and more ruthless, is not slow to avail himself of in carrying out, with greater boldness, evil designs on his victim.
But if the atrocities incident to the capture and embarkation cried aloud for a remedy, the brutalities of the middle passage were no less heinous; and though the light could not easily penetrate the scenes enacted in the distant mines and plantations which were the ultimate destination of the coolies, enough was known to show that their lot in Spanish-American and other countries and colonies was far from enviable.
To efface this blot on civilisation was the first object which engaged the attention of Sir Rutherford Alcock in Peking. The Chinese Government itself had remained for many years callous to the cruelties perpetrated on its subjects; but this was in keeping with its tolerant habit, its blindness to things disagreeable, and its constitutional aversion to overt action of any kind. The Peking authorities seem, however, to have been at last aroused by the interest in the question evinced by foreign Governments, and in 1866 the Chinese Ministers were induced to join the foreign Powers in devising means to ameliorate the condition of the emigrants. The suggestions of Prince Kung were practical and well directed towards a solution of the problem.
The problem, however, was by no means simple; for to be effective, regulations must be of universal obligation, and receive the sanction of all the interested Powers. There was no desire in any quarter to arrest the stream of honest and free emigration; on the contrary, it was welcomed as an outlet for destitute Chinese. To impose restrictions on Hongkong while the neighbouring colony was lawless and free; to place obstacles in the way of emigration to Demerara and Trinidad, where the coolies were happy and contented, thereby driving them in greater numbers to territories where they were enslaved,—was obviously no gain to humanity. The question, however, was as urgent as it was difficult.
Yet there were circumstances in the situation favourable to a satisfactory issue. Chief among these was the fact that France and England were still working loyally together in matters of cosmopolitan concern. Sir Rutherford Alcock found his French colleagues in Peking as amenable as he had found those in Yedo. The consequence was that, as the result of the winter's labours, a tripartite convention for the regulation of coolie emigration was signed in March 1866 by the British and French Ministers and Prince Kung. The convention was approved by the Ministers of Russia, the United States, and Prussia, though they were not parties to it. But the French Government took exception to certain of its provisions, and deferred ratification until these should be modified. The British Colonial Office and Emigration Board fell in with the views of the French Government. The settlement of the question was thereupon shifted from Peking to Paris and London, when voluminous correspondence ensued between the two Foreign Offices, extending through the years 1866, 1867, and into 1868. The co-operation between the two Governments was hearty and complete; and the amount of patient labour devoted to the task, especially by the French Foreign Office, which had not the auxiliary machinery at its disposal which existed in the Government departments in England, was in the highest degree creditable to both. It may suffice to say that after eighteen months of earnest work a "Projet de Règlement International d'Emigration" was completed in twenty-three articles with subsidiary forms, and was despatched to Peking at the end of 1867, the discussions having resulted in the retention of almost the entire text of the original convention—a fact which reflected no small credit on the Ministers in Peking who had drawn it up.
But when the time came for resuming negotiations in the Chinese capital, the Government there had relapsed into its habitual apathy respecting the welfare of its people. Possibly, also, the zeal of the resident Ministers of France and England may have cooled during the interval which had elapsed since their previous efforts. Their attention was becoming engrossed with other subjects. Effective co-operation between the three parties was evidently no longer feasible. The attempt to regulate emigration by a comprehensive international agreement was tacitly abandoned, and the evils of the coolie trade were left to be dealt with sporadically.
Free emigration from Hongkong—that is to say, of emigrants who paid their own passage—proceeded all the while on an extensive scale. But the laws of the colony did not permit contract emigration except to British colonies, and under elaborate supervision both at embarkation and after arrival at the field of labour. Although coolie ships could not be despatched from Hongkong, a certain amount of indirect participation in the traffic was maintained for some years by residents in the colony who supplied fittings for the coolie ships preparatory to their proceeding to the port of embarkation. Colonial legislation, however, gradually put an end to this, and successive ordinances so narrowed the field of the contractors' operations that the trade, both direct and indirect, was practically extinguished so far as Hongkong was concerned. A declaration by the Chief Justice in 1873 summed up the various prohibitory laws by enacting that the coolie trade would be treated as a slave trade, aiding or abetting which would be felony. In the year following, the Portuguese Government, yielding to the friendly pressure that had been for a long time put upon them, passed a law prohibiting the coolie trade at Macao.
While the emigrants were so anxiously protected at the outset of their voyage, the immigration of Chinese into the United States and the Australian colonies was exciting interest of a different kind in those countries. Legislation was continuously directed against the influx of Chinese, and not legislation only, but barbarous ill-treatment and outrages on a par with those perpetrated against foreigners in China. Mr Secretary Seward on his round-the-world tour in 1871 expressed himself highly favourable to Chinese labour in the United States, and his views afforded great encouragement to emigration to California for some years after. The treaty concluded at Washington in 1868 by Mr Burlingame accorded full privileges to Chinese in the United States. But a sharp reaction occurred in the views of American statesmen, and in 1880 the Chinese Government, by treaty made in Peking, consented to a modification of the Washington treaty of 1868, which would allow the United States to limit or suspend, though not absolutely to prohibit, Chinese immigration. This step towards prohibition was completed in another convention signed at Washington in 1894. Why the Chinese Government should have gratuitously consented to attach a stigma to their country and people is one of those inexplicable matters which abound in the history of China's foreign relations.