After the peace of 1842, our exports increased steadily up to 1845, in which year they doubled the value of 1835, the year that followed the abolition of the East India Company's monopoly. For ten years, after 1845, the value of our exports fell to a lower level. Yet during that time we were at peace with China. A marked falling off occurred in 1854, but that was caused by the prostration of trade consequent on the outbreak of the Taeping rebellion, a circumstance wholly overlooked by Mr. Cobden. The wars of 1856-60 were followed by an unprecedented increase in our exports in 1859, 1860 and 1861. Mr. Cobden is perfectly right in saying that the trade of these years was vastly overdone, and a recoil was inevitable. But even in the two following years, when the re-action was operating in full force, the export returns showed a vast increase beyond the highest point reached in 1845, or in any year previous to 1859. At this point, Mr. Cobden, probably discovering that he had proved too much, shifts his ground to the single article—cotton. If, as the member for Portsmouth said, Mr. Cobden considers Manchester as the centre of the world, the cotton test is probably to his mind the most infallible. The exports of cotton goods to China fell from 243,000,000 yards in 1861, to 80,000,000 yards in 1862; and to 46,000,000 yards in 1863. "That," says Mr. Cobden, "is the character of the business you are transacting in China."
A word from Mr. Cobden would have explained the diminution of the export of cotton goods on an hypothesis, not at all involving the general decadence of our trade with China. The cotton famine had raised the value of the raw material to two shillings per pound, and the enhanced price which the manufactured goods cost to the Chinese naturally diminished consumption. Again, the Chinese happened, at the beginning of the cotton famine, to be over supplied with cheaper and better goods, and old stocks had to be used up before a response to the exorbitant prices paid in Manchester or an active resumption of business could be looked for.
While surveying our relations with China from the "cotton" point of view, Mr. Cobden might have had the candour to acknowledge the handsome contributions of the raw material which Lancashire has received from China during the last three years.
Sir Frederick Bruce is a better authority than Mr. Cobden on Chinese affairs, and he says, in a report to the Foreign Office, dated Peking, June 7th, and published in the "Times," September 7th, 1864, "The import trade has increased from 41,000,000 taels (about 13,000,000l.) in 1860 (the last year before the opening of the Yang-tsze and the northern ports), to 81,000,000 taels (about 27,000,000l.), in 1863. The increase is due in a great measure to the large and increasing trade from the ports on the Yang-tsze in Chinese produce of all descriptions."
The vastly increasing trade in imports into this country from China, compared with which the exports are a bagatelle, Mr. Cobden passes over as having no bearing on the question. The opium revenue to the Indian government is also overlooked. The large shipping interest engaged in the China trade goes for nothing in Mr. Cobden's estimate, but it is nevertheless of great importance to the country, even though the vessels are not all owned in Lancashire, and do not all carry cotton. The amount of capital that British ship-owners find employment for in connection with China, is not limited to the large fleet of vessels engaged in the direct trade with this country, but is spread all over the coast and rivers of China. In the dispatch above quoted, Sir F. Bruce states that the entries of foreign shipping in China have increased from 293,568 tons, in 1860, to 996,890 tons in 1863.
The interest which British merchants, and through them the nation at large, possess in the prosperity of China is widely ramified. They are closely involved in the local and coasting trade; large amounts of British capital are sunk in fixed property of various kinds at all the open ports; and such investments are increasing at a rapid rate. These things lie under the surface, and are not generally considered in estimates that are formed in this country of the actual stake Great Britain has in China. But they are none the less real on that account. Theorists may say what they will, but our establishment on the territory of China is a great and important fact; and whether the process which led to it was theoretically correct or not, it will be impossible to undo it.
Not only are we fixed in China ourselves, but large native populations at the treaty parts have thrown in their fortunes with ours, to abandon whom would bring calamities on the Chinese for which it would baffle Mr. Cobden to find a remedy.
To reverse our progress is, however, the policy or the hobby of Mr. Cobden. He would not only undo what has been done, but he would urge the Government on to a new career of conquest in China, without even a pretext for war. He would seize two more islands on the coast in order to make free ports which would draw trade away from those now established. "Get two other small islands ... merely establish them as free ports; I don't ask you to do more." Mr. Cobden does not commit himself to say how the islands are to be acquired, but he knows very well there is but one way of acquiring them. And supposing we took possession of two islands, how many would France take? and if England were to lead the way in such schemes of aggrandisement, would the ambition of France stop short at islands? Many high-handed proceedings have been laid to the charge of this country, but this scheme of spoliation would surpass everything else of the kind. Mr. Cobden would probably suggest purchasing the islands, which would be, at least, a civil way of putting it.
But the whole scheme is so purely utopian that one marvels that a practical thinker could have shown such contempt for his audience as to propound it. Hong-Kong is the model on which Mr. Cobden would shape his new colonies; very flattering to Hong-Kong, perhaps, but betraying an incredible forgetfulness of the whole history of that colony. The "London and China Telegraph," of 13th June last, in commenting on Mr. Cobden's speech, shows clearly that the advancement of Hong-Kong as a port of trade was due to purely adventitious circumstances; and that for many years, when it rested on its own merits for success, it was an absolute failure, and a constant expense to the country. If Mr. Cobden aspires to be a second Stamford Raffles, he is beginning at the wrong end. Our policy in China will be more safely left to the chapter of accidents than to visionaries. We have hard facts to deal with, and not phantoms of a lively imagination.
The suppression of the Taeping rebellion cannot fail to produce remarkable effects on the condition of the Chinese people. They are ripe for great changes, not in the government or social institutions (the first is of little or no importance to the people, and the second are stereotyped), but in their relation to the progress of the world. Amid all political convulsions the people have remained unchanged, and that mainly because they are a non-political people. They are indifferent to affairs of state, but intent on their own business. Yet they have the faculty of self-government developed in an eminent degree. They are quiet, orderly, and industrious; averse to agitation of any kind, and ready to endure great sacrifices for the sake of peace. Such a people are easily governed, and their instinct of self-government is one important element in their longevity as a nation; it has enabled successive dynasties, often weak and vacillating, arbitrary and corrupt, to control three hundred millions of people. This constitutes the elasticity by which they regain lost ground after any temporary disturbance. Let the present reign of brigandage be destroyed, and the people will soon rise again; like pent-up waters they will flow into their former channels, and in a few years scarcely a trace of desolation would be left.