The treaties of 1858 and 1860 were followed by a great development in all three services—diplomatic, consular, and judicial. Some years previously the China consular service began to be treated as a career for which special preparation was required, the entry being by competitive examination, through which a certain number of students were annually sent out to China, there to complete their education and then take their part in executive work. When additional ports were opened, therefore, making about twenty in all, in 1861, there was the full complement of qualified men ready to occupy the new consular posts, each of them competent to be his own interpreter. Diplomatic functions were at the same time withdrawn from Hongkong, where they had been merely nominal for eighteen years, and became centred in the Chinese capital. A few years later the judicial authority, so far as it related to the communities at the Chinese ports, was also withdrawn from Hongkong, and was conferred upon the Supreme Court for China and Japan, having its headquarters in Shanghai, established by the Queen's Order in Council of 1864. The new court was inaugurated by Sir Edmund Hornby, who brought to the work practical experience gained in the Levant, the assistant judge being Mr C. W. Goodwin, Barrister of the Inner Temple. This establishment has furnished a solvent for many of the difficulties connected with British residence in the Far East. Adapted with judgment to local circumstances, the court has proved of immense assistance to the consuls, who, subordinated judicially to the chief judge, could now obtain from him proper guidance in their difficulties, a facility of which they availed themselves freely.
Although a great advance on what preceded it, the Supreme Court could not of course escape from all the drawbacks which affected the consular courts. As between British subjects, it enjoyed the full powers of law courts in the mother country; but as between British subjects on the one hand, and the natives of the country, or non-British residents, on the other, the authority of the British court could only be exercised over the former. This one-sided action has been to some extent compensated in later times by the judicial qualifications of consuls representing other Western nationalities, who administer their own laws with the same impartiality as the British courts do theirs. But as regards the Chinese no such compensation operates, for although the treaties make provision for the judicial action of the Chinese authorities, their conceptions of equity and forms of procedure being wholly alien to those of the Western nations, their decisions seldom satisfy the foreign litigant. An attempt to supply a connecting-link between two radically different juridical ideals was made in the setting up of mixed courts for the purpose of dealing with petty cases between natives and foreigners within the settlements of Shanghai. These courts have been occasionally presided over by honest and competent judges, assisted by able foreign assessors; but as the native magistrates, being men of low rank, could always be overruled by the local executive, they lacked the power to make their decisions effective.
As it was impossible to set up a separate judicial establishment at each treaty port where there was but a handful of residents, the consuls had to continue to perform magisterial duty with all the inconveniences attending their double function. Efforts were made by the Home Government to minimise these disadvantages by infusing a modicum of legal knowledge into the service, for which purpose they offered inducements to consular officials who should qualify as barristers. Notwithstanding all this, however, the simple fact that a consul is bound in his administrative capacity to take a part in matters which may afterwards come before him as a judge perpetuates an element of incongruity demanding an uncommon degree of tact on the part of the official. Some of the worst consequences to be apprehended from this state of things are partially obviated by the judge or assistant judge of the Supreme Court going on circuit, when important cases in the consular districts require it; but that expedient is only possible at rare intervals.
The wisdom with which the Supreme Court has been directed is attested by the absence of incident in its history, and by the universal tacit approval of its proceedings. Its success, indeed, soon came to be accepted so much as a matter of course that the true source of it was forgotten. It was, however, recalled vividly to the public memory by a certain retrograde movement. After a quarter of a century of satisfactory working her Majesty's Government took a step which was equivalent to pulling out the corner-stone of the edifice—the absolute independence of the bench. In order to effect an economy in salaries, it was ordained that the two incompatible offices—the judicial and political—should be merged into one, making the chief judge consul-general, and the assistant judge consul for Shanghai. By this move the judges became subordinate to the Legation in Peking, and the Supreme Court itself was subjected to all the evils of the dual function under which the consuls had been labouring. Thanks to the exceptional qualities of the holders of the double office, no glaring scandal arose out of the unnatural combination; but the protests of the community, and of the incumbent of the two offices himself, were strong enough to induce the Foreign Office, after a few years' trial, to retrace their false step and restore the judge to his independence.
The twenty consular establishments in China on which the Select Committee of the House of Commons reported in 1872 were manned by forty "effectives on duty," besides a considerable contingent on furlough. The ten posts subsequently created employ on an average twenty more. Two complete generations of officials have passed through the consular mill in fifty years, which may be moderately reckoned at two hundred men, all of them selected by a competitive examination only one degree less stringent than that for the Indian Civil Service, and nearly all of them men of varied accomplishments. They have been placed in every part of the wide empire of China, and during their career have been shifted about so that every one has had chances of interesting himself in localities strongly contrasted with each other, both as regards official labour and personal recreation and study. From a body of highly educated men so situated, it was naturally to be expected that much enlightenment would be obtained concerning China and its people, and considerable progress made in the promotion of amiable intercourse between them and foreigners. These expectations have not been disappointed. In the period immediately following the peace of 1860 remarkable activity was shown by British consular officers. The names of Meadows, Markham, Alabaster, Oxenham, recall many exploits of exploration in the interior during very troublous times. Swinhoe, Baber, Hosie, Bourne, Spence, Davenport, Parker, have continued the work and greatly extended its area. Others have distinguished themselves in the held of literary research, and some have found their appropriate reward in honourable appointments in English universities. On the whole, there has been lack of neither energy nor capacity in the British consular service; and yet it is a matter of common remark, even by its members themselves, that in their primary duty of promoting and defending the interests of British commerce they have been unsuccessful. Treaty rights, they admit, have not been safeguarded at the Chinese ports, and this in spite of every apparent incentive to exertion in their defence. A distinction, however, must be drawn between an apparent incentive which is general and remote, such as the patriotic desire for the advancement of their country's interests, and those influences which are nearer and more personal. The attitude of the China consuls can only be fairly estimated in its relation to that of their chief, and his again in relation to that of the Home Government. "Like master, like man," is an adage which fits the case, and it is to Peking and to London we must look for the key to the character of the consular rank and file.
The British Ministers at Peking have been selected without any fixed rule. The first of the series was taken from the diplomatic circle. The succeeding three, whose term of office covered a period of twenty years, were chosen from among the veterans of the consular service. The next two were taken from the junior ranks of diplomacy, and the seventh was a military officer from Africa. The appointment of Sir Robert Hart in 1885, which was cancelled by his wish, afforded further illustration of the extreme catholicity of the Government's elective faculty.
The witnesses examined before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1872 were unanimous in insisting on the necessity for long and special training for the office of consul in China, and this principle has been strictly followed by the Government. But for the higher post of superintendent of all the consuls the Government has, at least since 1885, acted on the theory that no such qualification is necessary. But the task of a Minister to China is by no means an easy one. It may be left undone, or it may be done so badly that it were better not to be done at all, but to discharge the duties of the office in a creditable manner requires not only high training but large capacity. The Minister has to conduct his own diplomatic duties in the capital, in which not the Chinese alone but all or nearly all his foreign colleagues are openly or secretly thwarting him. He has at the same time to direct the proceedings of twenty or thirty officers placed at great distances, whom he has never seen, and every one of whom is superior to himself in the knowledge of the conditions to be dealt with. For such a duty it is obvious that an officer sent from Europe must be incompetent, the circumstances of the service in China differing essentially from those prevailing elsewhere. The new incumbent, unless he were a born genius, could never get beyond the elementary lessons of experience before, overtaken by promotion, he shakes the Chinese dust off his feet for ever. Much might of course be learned by personal observation at the consular ports and conference with local officials and people in the provinces, but it is somewhat singular that this obvious source of intelligence has been taken advantage of almost exclusively by those of the British Ministers who stood the least in need of it. Indeed the only one of them who made it a rule to visit the treaty ports at intervals was Sir Rutherford Alcock, whose long experience convinced him of the necessity of constantly refreshing and extending his knowledge of local circumstances and people.
A service dispersed over such a large area as the Chinese empire, carried on by despatches between parties who were strangers to each other, and one of whom at least had no personal knowledge of the subjects treated, must have been characterised by an absence of reality, and must have tended more and more towards a perfunctory routine. For this, however, the system of appointing Ministers who were strangers to the country was not wholly responsible. Long before the Ministers were so selected the secretaries began to be sent from European schools, and thus the consular service, disheartened by inadequate pay and a constant menace of further diminution, saw the few prizes of their profession withdrawn from their reach. To serve his time quietly, therefore, to earn his pension and retire without a stain on his character, became more or less the consular ideal. Ambition was starved among those who had to bear the burden and heat of a thirty years' residence in China, when they saw good posts thrown away upon men imported for two or three years, who were almost useless, and who themselves deplored their enforced idleness. The disadvantages attending these exotic importations have been often insisted upon. An old member of the consul staff comments upon it in the following practical manner:—
In every country administered by the British Crown, or at every Court at which there is a British representative, the administrator or envoy has from the moment of his entering on the duties of his office the assistance of an experienced staff, well versed in the local history and traditions, or finds himself in the midst of a society the language and usages of which are familiar to him. In China, where we have been fighting and negotiating for over fifty years, we are not so fortunate. A Minister proceeds there, and on his arrival finds himself in a new and to him unknown country, the staff which he may bring with him being like himself utterly unacquainted with the East and its peoples. The Minister is obliged either to grope his way unassisted, or to rely on the aids and advice of experienced (but not always disinterested) outsiders. Under these circumstances his only wise course is to put himself entirely in the hands of the permanent local staff, which, for this purpose, means the Chinese Secretary. That officer, the real motive force of the Legation, occupies a position of greater importance than that of the nominal head of the mission, but, with an irony which is not uncommon in Government administration, he is the least appreciated member of the staff. His salary is that of the junior ranks in the consular service, and yet it is to him that the seniors in that service look for instructions which he is incompetent to give them: the result may be imagined. Why should these things be? The Indian Government has in its service many men of brilliant attainments, and of knowledge gained in long years of service in the East, who might be called upon to fill the post of Minister which would be suitable and congenial to them. And there is an abundance of choice of junior Legation officers in the well-trained consular service. Would it not be very advantageous if the working hands in the Legation were chosen from the most competent Chinese scholars in the consular service?
Considering their initial qualifications, their social standing, and their great opportunities, it must be admitted that the men of distinction who have emerged from the consular service during the last fifty years seems disproportionately small. It is perhaps invidious to mention names in this connection, but in response to inquiries addressed to veterans in the service, four men only are placed in the first rank as the best representatives of the consular training school. These are Sir Harry Parkes, Mr T. T. Meadows, Mr H. N. Lay, and Mr W. F. Mayers. Sir Robert Hart, it should be mentioned, left the service so early, and Sir Rutherford Alcock joined it so late, in life, that their distinguished careers can scarcely be claimed as the product of the consular nursery.