During the time when the envoy designate remained in Peking a very high personage arrived from Tibet, and it was on his conferences with the Chinese Court that the success of the intended mission depended. It would be presumptuous on the part of any foreigner to attempt to divine what passed between the delegate from the Grand Lama and the Chinese Ministers; but were it possible for any one to penetrate into those secret counsels, the babu was the man to do it. There is no doubt that he did. In fact, he had positive information that the Indian mission to Tibet would be stopped at the instance of the Chinese Government, and that the issue of the passport was an empty form. Such information would naturally be unwelcome to the envoy, and the sequel seems to show that the warning was disregarded. The expedition was organised, fully equipped, ready for a march into Tibet. Had it proceeded it is highly improbable that the babu would have accompanied it as interpreter, for he could not have exonerated himself from the imputation of bad faith towards his Tibetan hosts in acting as guide to an armed force into a country where he had been received and reinvited as a private guest.
What would have been the consequence of the mission proceeding into Tibet it is, of course, impossible to say, but the circumstances of its recall were not conducive to satisfactory relations between China and Great Britain. Mistrusting the effectiveness of the Tibetan opposition to the Indian mission—for the force could very likely have made good its passage to Lhassa—the Chinese Government resorted to diplomatic means of stopping its advance. Its never-failing emergency man, the Inspector-General of Customs, was called upon, and he intervened with the British Government with such good effect that they sent orders to India to stop the Tibetan mission. Thus the Indian Government was a second time overruled: first, in being made to organise the mission against its will; and secondly, in being forced to recall it when its recall involved immeasurable loss of influence in future dealings with China. An attempt was made to cover the retreat in a cloud of verbiage by a convention signed at Peking in 1886, which, however, only made the case worse, in that it was a retrograde step, virtually cancelling the right of visiting Tibet, which had been conferred by the Chefoo convention of ten years before. The same treaty which embodied this renunciation, perhaps the weakest to which any British representative ever set his name, also fostered the illusions which have been so detrimental to the welfare of China, by promising a continuance of the tribute missions from Burma after that country had become an integral part of the Indian Empire.
The fruits of this diplomatic surrender were not long in showing themselves, for it was soon followed by an invasion of British Sikkim from the Tibetan side. This aggression of the lamas was of necessity resisted by the Indian Government, and an unexpected opportunity was thus offered to them of settling the whole Tibetan question by the rapid march of a small force to Lhassa. There is good reason to believe that this solution of the difficulty was the one which commended itself to the practical statesmen and soldiers of India; but their action was paralysed by the orders of the Home Government, which continued to be ruled by influences which were neither military nor political nor practical. Discussions between the Indian Government and the Chinese amban or Resident at Lhassa, professing to speak for the Tibetan Lama Government, were protracted year after year, and seemed interminable. At last even the Chinese themselves grew weary of the comedy, and experienced in Tibet something of the difficulty which occasionally beset them in China—that is to say, they were unable to exorcise the demon they had invoked. They had stirred up the Tibetans to the point of obstructing the Macaulay mission, but seemed really to lose control of the force after it had been set in motion. After some years of futile talk the statesmen of China would perhaps have hailed with satisfaction the advance of a British force to Lhassa to cut the Gordian knot; but they dared not, of course, give such a hint as was conveyed to Captain Fournier, "Avancez donc,"[25] and the Indian Government, not having the wit to divine it, had to submit to a long-drawn-out and permanent humiliation, that was in no wise mended by the Calcutta convention of 1890, which, professing only to settle the existing frontiers, did not even settle them.
V. THE CRUISE OF THE SEVENTH PRINCE, 1886.
Character and position of Prince Ch'un—Had been misunderstood by foreigners while he was in seclusion—An amiable and progressive man—His visit to Port Arthur in 1886—Intercourse with many foreigners.
The spring of 1884 witnessed a ministerial crisis of the first order in Peking. For twenty-four years Prince Kung, uncle to the deceased emperor Tungchih, had held a position equivalent to Chancellor of the empire. To the outside world he was only known as Minister for Foreign Affairs and head of the Tsungli-Yamên. During the greater part of the time he had been at feud with the empress-regent, from whom his power was derived, but, being indispensable to her, he was tolerated for want of a competent successor. The troubles in Tongking caused an agitation in the capital, and the empress seized the opportunity to dismiss Prince Kung with most of his colleagues of the Yamên and introduce a fresh set. The eminent position of the prince, however, was one difficult to fill; but the substitution was effected by a kind of coup d'état by which the empress brought the younger brother of Prince Kung out of his retirement and made him virtually, as far as it was possible, her coadjutor in the Government. But the peculiar status of Prince Ch'un, as father to the reigning emperor, rendered him immune from responsibility, since in China the son could not place the father under discipline. For this reason the prince could not in his own name exercise any of the great functions of the State. He was therefore obliged to keep in the background, while the executive service was performed by his nominees. Thus in foreign affairs he was efficiently represented by the Grand Secretary Li Hung-chang, and by Prince Ch'ing, a junior member of the imperial family, who was made president of the Tsungli-Yamên, and holds the office to the present day.
Whatever the true motives may have been for recasting the Tsungli-Yamên—and it would be hazardous for any foreigner to dogmatise about such matters—a great improvement was remarked in the efficiency of that body. Prince Ch'ing, though new to public affairs, acquitted himself like a gentleman, and gained the goodwill of all the foreign Legations by his laborious efforts to learn his work and to bring justice and reason as well as courtesy into the transaction of business. The circumstances of the time were also favourable to improvement; for being at war with one great Power, China was naturally most anxious to conciliate the others. While this amenable temper lasted, business was despatched by the Tsungli-Yamên with a celerity never before known, and good use was made of the opportunity to clear off legacies of arrears that had been accumulating in the foreign legations.
The Seventh Prince, so long as he was in seclusion, had stood in the opinion of foreigners for everything that was fanatical, obstructive, and irreconcilable, the head of the war party, and so forth. Even Sir Rutherford Alcock, in an article on Chinese Statesmen in 1871, adopted this popular estimate, calling him "violently hostile, joining with Wo in all efforts to make the anti-foreign faction predominate."
The announcement of Prince Ch'un, therefore, as the successor of Prince Kung not unnaturally aroused apprehension of a reactionary policy. His first public act, however, in so far as it was his, dispelled the misconception under which foreigners had been labouring for many years: it was to conclude a peace with France in the face of a rabid opposition. This misconception of Prince Ch'un's character and policy is only an example of how vain it is for foreigners to attempt to sound the currents of Chinese politics, more especially where palace factions are concerned.
The advent of the Seventh Prince having removed all friction between the empress-regent and the Government, it was a signal for tentative reforms and what foreigners call progress. Li Hung-chang had to a considerable extent imbued the Court with his own ideas. He assured them there was no danger in adopting foreign methods and foreign manners,—on the contrary, that to do so was the only means of safety to the empire. Within a few months of his taking the reins, the Prince established a precedent which amounted to a small revolution in its way. He began to transact business through his agents with foreigners in the capital itself, which had been up to that time strictly preserved from all contamination of foreign trade. The two "stores" which existed were not traders by right, but were under the special protection of certain foreign Ministers, who had represented to the Government the necessity of such agencies for the supply of necessaries for the use of their Legations. This was followed in course of time by the introduction of novelties in the palace, such as electric light, toy railways and steam launches in the imperial pleasure-grounds. The telegraph wire itself was introduced into the city during the summer of 1884, it having been previously jealously kept at a distance of thirteen miles, from superstitious fears concerning the sinister influence which the electric wire might exert over the fortunes of the capital. However real such fears may be in the minds of the Chinese, and however convenient they may be as a defence against proposals from without, they invariably yield to the pressure of necessity. While the terminus of the telegraph line was at Tungchow, the inconvenience of having to send mounted messengers thirteen miles to despatch and receive messages was for some time felt almost entirely by the foreign Legations; but when the war crisis with France arose, and the Chinese Government itself was sending urgent messages requiring immediate answers to the southern provinces and to Europe, the absurdity of losing more time between the Tsungli-Yamên and the telegraph station than was occupied by the transmission of the message and its reply from Europe became so striking, that the order was given to bring the telegraph into the city. No more was heard of geomantic difficulties.