CHAPTER XXII.
MISSIONARY PROBLEM—TIENTSIN MASSACRE OF 1870.
Importance of missionary question long foreseen by Consul Alcock—Introduction of missionaries under two French treaties—Toleration of Christians under treaties of 1858—Forced upon China—Ardour of missionary spirit uncontrollable—Negligence of treaty-makers in providing no regulations for admission of the propaganda—Contrasted with the care bestowed on trade regulations—Religious toleration of the Chinese—Christian intolerance—Surreptitious article in French Convention of 1860—Giving large privileges to missionaries in the interior—Its abuse complained of by Chinese—Enforced restitution of old property—Bitter injustice—Disintegrating action of the propaganda—Abuses of extra-territoriality—Interference in local affairs—Detaching natives from their allegiance—Causes of strife—Chinese Government culpable in permitting abuses—Disputes about land and houses—Chinese official laxity compensated for by unofficial illegitimate methods—Attacks on missions fomented thereby—No remedy possible without the unanimous consent of the Powers—Each having different objects—Fruits of widespread hostility to missions appeared in 1868—Riot and outrage—Culminated in Tientsin massacre of 1870—Details of the occurrence—Treated cavalierly by Imperial Government—Culpability of officials—Pressure by foreign Ministers induces Chinese to execute sixteen criminals—Apologetic mission of Chunghou to France—Suspicions of his complicity unfounded—Causes of the hostility to foreigners—Government fear of reprisals by France—They begin to take the missionary question seriously—Issue an important circular—Badly received by the Powers.
No subject more seriously engaged the attention of Sir Rutherford Alcock during his whole term of service than that of the Christian propaganda. While it was yet in embryo, and long before the untoward consequences now so familiar had declared themselves, the evil to come formed the theme of many anxious despatches. For, with the exception of Mr T. T. Meadows, he was the only one of the early consuls who attempted to read the horoscope of China with a conscious participation in the responsibility for its welfare. Their warnings were, of course, wasted on the desert air, for statesmen whose hands are on the lever of events are like the signalmen on a busy railway, recking nothing of the origin or destination of the train, careful only that it pass their own "point" in safety. The thin end of the entering wedge destined to split China into fragments, unless anticipated (as in fact it has been) in its disruptive work by some ruder allied agency, was clearly discerned by Consul Alcock while at Shanghai. Under cover of the first French treaties in 1844 and 1846 missionaries effected a legal lodgment on the coast of China, from which they cast longing eyes on the vast interior of the country. Rivalry between the Christian sects brought fresh pressure to bear on the plenipotentiaries, and the "toleration clause" was introduced into all the treaties negotiated at Tientsin in 1858, and in the German treaty of 1861.
Russia led the way, followed by the United States, Great Britain, and France. The "clause" was substantially the same in all, the toleration of Christianity being based on its moral character exclusively—"Hommes de bien qui ne cherchent pas d'avantages matériels" (Russian); "Teaching men to do good, and to do to others as they would have others do to them" (American); "Inculcates the practice of virtue, and teaches man to do as he would be done by" (English); "Ayant pour objet essentiel de porter les hommes à la vertu" (French).[16] Yet this apparent unanimity concealed essential differences in aim and motive. Russia, France, and the United States, to leave England out of the account, each meant something specifically distinct from the other by the practically identical clause.
What the Chinese would have said, had they been free to discuss the demand made upon them, we can hardly conjecture; but in the position in which they actually found themselves they would have subscribed to any form of words submitted to them, their sole anxiety then being to get rid of the barbarians on any terms. Had the preamble run, "Whereas the Christian religion as practised for 1800 years has not brought peace but a sword upon the earth, has set the father against the son, nation against nation, instigated crimes without number, sided with the oppressor and the unrighteous judge, and is daily prostituted for political ends," the Chinese would have signed the toleration clause just the same. The phraseology was nothing to them, whence it follows that the responsibility for the consequences rests on the Powers who imposed the form as well as the substance of the obligations. These Powers placed themselves in a self-contradictory position both towards China and the Church, for the only ground on which they claimed protection for missionaries in the framing of the treaty is the one which they cannot so much as consider in the fulfilment of it. The ethical and religious side of the propaganda is to the executive official a negligible quantity, while he can take cognisance only of that aspect of Christianity which was studiously kept out of sight in the treaty—its political character, the temper of the missionaries and of the people among whom they work, and all that makes for good or bad relations between them.
Amid mixed and perverted motives there is doubtless in all sections of the propaganda a residuum of pure zeal in a holy cause. The medieval solicitude for "saving the heathen" survives, and men and women, fired with the conviction that they are engaged in such a godlike enterprise, constitute an ever-living force with which statesmen have to lay their account. It can neither be reasoned with nor turned aside, and is the more intractable in that the logical effect of its inspiration is to place it above civil law, but under a divine law of its own interpreting, the interpretation varying indefinitely with the divisions of the force, each division, and sometimes each individual, selecting such portions of the code and bending them to such meaning as may support the objects and the methods of the sect. To introduce such a complex ferment into the Chinese body politic was a psychological experiment on a colossal scale, and also irrevocable. It was, therefore, an experiment which demanded the kind of precaution used in handling dangerous chemicals.
Yet absolutely no thought was bestowed on the subject; the explosive was imported with less ceremony than is bestowed on a bale of long cloth, and left to spread according to its own laws in the living tissue into which it was injected. So far at least as the English treaty was concerned, we have it on the authority of the actual negotiator that the Christian clause was an after-thought "shoved in" at the last moment. The same authority adds, "The treaty was left to carry out itself"—in other respects besides that of the missionary question. Sir Rutherford Alcock speaks of "the futility of grafting on to a treaty of commerce, forced upon the Chinese under circumstances which left them no power to refuse, a proselytising agency for the conversion of the nation to Christianity.... Whatever aims at these ends under the stipulation of a treaty of commerce and amity introduces a cause of distrust and an element of disturbance. This we have done, and are now reaping the fruit." But a rose-cutting would not be grafted with the insouciance with which this spiritual element was incongruously inserted in a commercial treaty. Commenting directly upon the toleration clause itself, Sir Rutherford wrote: "It is only necessary to read carefully the words of the article to be aware that in the whole range of the treaty, from the 1st to the 56th article, there is nothing stipulated for so difficult to secure as the fulfilment in its integrity of this one clause."