It is impossible to look back over the forty years which have elapsed since the new relations were established in China without being struck by a certain change which passed over the character of the diplomatic and consular services between the first decade of that period and the second. The anxious years of the rebellion evoked much active energy on the part of British officials. The serious opposition to the operation of the treaties was met by very vigorous action on the part of the consuls at the ports and of the Minister at the capital. The years 1868 and 1869 may be considered to have marked the culminating-point of the British official effort to enforce observance of the treaties in letter and spirit, and to protect all commercial interests. The change which came over the diplomatic and consular services at the end of the first decade of diplomatic relations may be likened to the rising followed by the receding of a tide. Up till the years we have specified, whatever the difficulties which beset their office, the consuls showed earnestness in the defence of the interests confided to them, and acted on the conviction that their exertions were pleasing to those who were set in authority over them. Their sense of duty was sustained by the hope of distinction. After 1869 the discovery was made that the situation had been undergoing a change of which the service had been unaware. What was formerly deemed a merit had become a demerit in consular officers, and on this discovery zeal naturally fell to a discount. It was but a reflex of the change that had crept over the spirit of the British Foreign Office, a change which also had escaped notice until circumstances forced it into publicity. This seems to have originated with the removal from the scene of Lord Palmerston, the statesman who for forty years had stood in a general way for what was manly and straightforward in the British national character. Though he left a tried and trusted colleague, Lord Clarendon, in charge of the Foreign Office, and a sturdy permanent Under-Secretary, perhaps the last custodian of the Palmerstonian tradition, and who remained at his post for five years longer, yet it was made evident by results that the spirit which had animated that great department of State had vanished. The Foreign Office became nerveless and invertebrate, sentimental and unstable. Those who had to do with it in the time of Palmerston, Layard, and Hammond know that since their time the officials bearing the same titles have been of quite another calibre, have been swayed by different influences, and above all have exhibited no such knowledge of the affairs with which they had to deal as their predecessors of the Palmerstonian era. Many explanations may be given for the new departure without disparagement of the capacities of the individuals concerned. Such explanations interest those who may desire to promote reform in the constitution and the inspiration of the Foreign Office. It suffices us merely to note the fact by way of accounting for some of the shortcomings which have been laid to the charge of our representation in China. We have seen how easily one Foreign Secretary yielded to the meretricious solicitations of the envoy Burlingame, and how another allowed himself to be cajoled by the Marquis Tsêng. After these, and sundry other such, exhibitions it was impossible for any Minister serving the country in the Far East to place the old reliance on the support of his Government. With John Bright, the implacable opponent of Palmerston and his works, installed at the Board of Trade, whose word was law on such matters as Chinese commercial treaties, and apparently more anxious to undo the work of Palmerston than to promote a trade which both he and his department unaffectedly despised, it was not likely that the commercial communities trading with China should cherish any hope of redress of grievances from a Government whose face seemed set against them. Apathy, therefore, became the principle, to keep the peace at all sacrifices the avowed policy of British diplomacy in China. The apparent exception to this rule in the attempted reclamations in connection with the Margary murder in 1875 afforded in its abortive ending a new corroboration of the rule. The diplomatic and consular establishments went on grinding out routine despatches and publishing statistical reports, but with the tacit understanding that whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Under such conditions it was of little consequence how the Peking representation might be filled, since it has not for thirty years risen above the level of comedy, the term applied to it by those who have grown old in its service.
Such was the situation of affairs when the greatest crisis in the history of China, or of foreign relations with that country, was sprung upon the world in 1894. A Legation equal only to clerical routine suddenly called upon to play a part in a commotion which unhinged the policy of the world was totally inadequate to the strain, and as a consequence of the impotence of the Foreign Office and its agent in China, the interests of Great Britain and, what was only second in importance, the interests of the Chinese empire were allowed to go by default. The Chinese were, and perhaps even still remain, unconscious of the reasons of the collapse of their empire. Perhaps something of the same kind might be said of the British Foreign Office in regard to the interests of Great Britain in China. Certainly there is as yet little sign of a determination to reform the mechanism of the country's representation, and this, perhaps, because the preliminary step thereto would be the reform of the Foreign Office itself. And so the Legation goes on under the nominal headship of a Minister who must be guided entirely by his Chinese Secretary, an official of inferior rank and position to the body of consuls whom he has to control, and for whose authority they can never have genuine respect.
The recent upheaval has offered many new opportunities of distinction for the consuls, especially in the interior of China. That these openings have infused new life into the consular ranks has been shown in many ways during the last few years; and if natural selection be allowed to operate freely and the best men be not discouraged in their efforts for their country's benefit by undue interferences from Peking, where there is neither knowledge nor capacity to guide them, it is still possible that the consular service may play a valuable part in the reconstruction of the foreign relations of China.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHINA AND HER RULERS.
Longevity of the State—Government by prestige—Necessity of adaptation to European ideas—The Empress-dowager—Prince Kung—Wênsiang—Hu Lin-yi—Tsêng Kwo-fan—Tso Tsung-tang—Chang Chih-tung—Li Hung-chang—His long and consistent career—Efforts at reorganising national forces.
The long continuance of a State more populous than any other on record is a phenomenon which to thoughtful minds can hardly fail to evoke a feeling akin to reverence. De Quincey declared if he met a Chinaman he would make obeisance to him, saying, "There goes a man 2000 years old." Be the causes of this national longevity what they may, the fact should make us pause to consider on what foundation does this great vital national system rest? The most realistic word-painter of China represents the country as a collection of villages, each being a unit of self-government,[29] and in describing "village life" in minute detail, seems to depict the great empire, of which each village is a pattern in miniature. Dynasties may come and dynasties may go, but the Chinese families, their industries and their customs, go on for ever. It is remarkable with what ease the people adapt themselves to changes in their ruling powers, regardless of race or origin; indeed it is a noteworthy fact that the rulers have for many centuries been more often foreign than native.[30] Foreign, however, not quite in the sense in which the word is so easily translated "barbarian" by the Chinese, and applied by them to the hated Aryans of the West. The rulers of China have been of cognate races, more or less imbued with the same generic ideas as the Chinese themselves, and with tastes akin to theirs. How this succession of dynasties, each established by violence, has coexisted with the continuity of the grand national idea of the emperor being the Son of Heaven can only be explained by the very practical character of the race, who accept the usurper as divinely appointed from the moment he has proved himself successful. What holds, and has held together from ancient times, this great aggregate of mankind in common usages and ideas is naturally a mystery to Occidentals, the cohesive principle not being perceptible to them. China occupies the unique position of a State resting on moral force,[31] a conception almost as alien to the Western mind as material progress is to the Eastern, hence the proposition is apt to be received with amused contempt. Yet a State administered without police, and ruled without an army, is a something which cannot be explained away. Government by prestige is, other things being equal, surely the most economical as well as the most humane of all species of government; but an obvious consequence is that in emergencies the Government is beholden to volunteers, and is often driven to enlist the services of banditti and other forces proscribed by the law. Imperial prestige, which embraces the relations of the surrounding tributaries, is but an expansion of the authority of the head of the family and of the elders of the village, which rests on moral sanction only. The first collision, however, with the material forces of Christendom proved that in the system of the modern world the Chinese principle of government was an anachronism, and that moral must succumb to physical force. Yet in the midst of the world's triumph in the pricking of the great Chinese bubble, it had been well to reflect what the kind of bubble was that was being pricked. China with her self-contained, self-secreted knowledge, could not be expected to foresee how the impact of the West was likely to affect her ancient polity. She had nothing wherewith to compare herself, and no criterion of good or evil except her own isolated experience; nor did she know aught of human development except what was, so to speak, forcibly injected into her, but never assimilated. What, then, could she do to be saved but to take herself entirely to pieces like a house that has to be rebuilt on a new plan, and so fit herself for the companionship and competition of the worldly Powers, from whose pressure she could by no means escape? She had to put away the wisdom of ages, the traditions of a civilisation unbroken for thousands of years, and convert herself into a mechanical, scientific, and military Power. Something more radical than reform is involved in such a root-and-branch change: it was not improvement but transformation that was demanded.
That some such essential changes are necessary to the preservation of the Chinese empire is probably recognised by all who interest themselves in the subject—including a large ever-increasing number of the Chinese themselves; but the gravity of the revolution may well cause misgivings both as to its possibility and its incalculable effects. Who among the Chinese rulers is sufficient for such things?
It is not always possible to locate the nervous centre of any Government in the West, whether its form be autocratic or representative. With regard to that of China we may safely say it is never possible—at least for any foreigner. The attempts which have been from time to time made to assign acts of Government to the will or influence of certain individuals have in general proved in the sequel to have been far from hitting the mark. The monarch under whose authority the whole machine moves is not necessarily the directing will: indeed he is very often little better than a puppet. "The eunuchs, concubines, and play-actors, who constituted the Court of the late Emperor Hsien-fêng, the father of the present young emperor, had more influence probably in bringing on the war that led the Allies to Peking than any of the high officers or Ministers," wrote Sir Rutherford Alcock in 1871. Another writer put it in a more paradoxical form: "There is in China something more powerful than the Emperor, and that is the Viceroy; more powerful than the Viceroy, and that is the Taotai; more powerful than the Taotai, and that is the Weiyuen," meaning that the power of obstruction, extending through every grade of officialdom, is most widely diffused at the base. Official responsibility and moral responsibility do not therefore coincide—men in highest positions being unable to do the things they would, while the things they would not they are often obliged to do. The Government is consequently carried on by continual compromise beyond the limits to which we are accustomed in Western Governments, because it is not confronted with outspoken opposition with which it can reason, but with a network of secret machinations which can only be met by correlative tactics. But though Government in China may seem by this state of things to be reduced to an almost passive condition, yet the individuality of statesmen is not altogether destroyed. In some respects, indeed, the circumstances we have noted rather favour the influence of men of mark; for where the complicated machine is held in a state of equilibrium by innumerable neutralising checks, it would appear that any determined will could set it in motion in a given direction. The character of Chinese statesmen, therefore, is not a factor to be ignored in considering either the present or the future of China, although the very partial knowledge of them which is accessible to Europeans must constantly lead to erroneous conclusions.
Of the statesmen who have appeared since the opening of Peking in 1860, it would probably be fair to consider the two emperors as negligible quantities. The potent personage in the empire during that period is no doubt the Empress-dowager, who has, in so far as any one can be said to have done so, ruled China for forty years. Apart from ethical considerations, which have less to do with matters of government than could be wished, the empress's characteristics are clearness of purpose, strength of will, a ready accommodation of means to ends, and frank acceptance of the inevitable. There are no signs of the bigot or the doctrinaire about her. Mundane in her objects, she is practical in seeking them; and if to hold an entirely anomalous position of authority opposed to legitimacy and the traditions of the dynasty and the empire be evidence of success, then the empress-dowager must be admitted to be a successful woman. In the position she has occupied, and still occupies, she would appear to be the principal force in the State. Whatever may be her power of initiative, which is so attenuated in the high State functionaries, her power of veto probably stands pre-eminent.
The anomalous relations which have subsisted between the empress-dowager and her imperial nephew are too intricate for us to attempt to unravel them. But the facts resulting from them, which are patent to the world, point to conditions which are not without danger to the empire. Indeed the Emperor himself constituted such a danger from the moment when as an infant he was placed on the Dragon Throne by usurped authority. His personal imperfections added materially to that danger, and his final efforts to free himself from the leading-strings of his patroness have indefinitely enhanced the evil by destroying the personal prestige of the sovereign. For what can be thought of a Son of Heaven who has his prerogatives doled out to him and again withdrawn by the will of another, and where is the force to meet the crisis in the State which may yet result from the illegitimacy of the emperors succession? The worship accorded throughout the empire to the Son of Heaven may indeed be transferred unimpaired to a new possessor of that dignity. But a reigning emperor shorn of his governing faculty must, one would think, put the allegiance of the people to a severe strain. How far such considerations may go in weakening the ties of loyalty in the provinces and in letting loose the spectre of rebellion cannot be known, but it may be guessed and feared.