In this prediction we have the experience of various episodes, even of the present rebellion, to guide us. The rapidity with which the city of Shanghae was re-built, after its destruction during the rebel occupation of 1853-5, was astonishing. Other cities have been re-built and re-peopled with equal rapidity. Han-Kow, on the great river, has been several times sacked and destroyed by the rebels, and in a short time after each visitation it was worth plundering again. The important city of Soo-chow, captured from the rebels last December, is reported in June following to be showing signs of commercial life, although the surrounding country was still the theatre of war.
The Chinese people have, however, little cause for confidence in the efficiency or the stability of their own government; they have on the other hand implicit faith in foreigners. It is obvious, therefore, that any guarantee from Western powers that peace should be maintained in the districts once recovered from the rebels, would stimulate the commercial and industrial energies of the people, and materially contribute to the renewed prosperity of the country.
The prosperity of China is, then, intimately interwoven with our own, for vast fields of enterprise would now be opened out to Europeans which have heretofore been closed. Its resources have been developed to the utmost, perhaps, that a fossil civilisation, unaided by modern invention, is capable of. The Chinese have been ahead of the world from time immemorial in agriculture, commercial economy, manufactures, and all industries; in short, in everything that constitutes material wealth; but now in these later days the world has in some things got a little ahead, and is waiting to impart its new accomplishments to them. The vast mineral wealth of the country has been but partially taken advantage of. Its coal, iron, gold, and silver have hitherto been worked by the most primitive and inadequate machinery. But we are prepared to teach the natives how to economise their forces, and to make the most of the natural resources of their country; and they are being prepared to receive the lesson.
The avidity with which the Chinese have grasped at the advantages offered to them by the steamers that now ply on the coast, and on the great river, is an earnest of their readiness to appreciate any other western inventions that are commended by their practical utility. The favourable introduction of steam on the Chinese rivers, and the popularity with which their earlier career was attended, were indeed due to fortuitous circumstances. On the Yangtsze Kiang steamers had not to compete with an old-established native trade—that had been for many years dead—but they reopened a commercial route that had been closed, and, at the time, they offered the only feasible means of navigating the great river. Under different conditions they would have had to work their way slowly into the favour of the Chinese; but now, having established a foothold, they will certainly maintain the position they have assumed, and the Chinese would be sorry to return to their former régime, under which they could hardly hope to accomplish in a month what is now easily performed in three or four days.[27]
There is still great room for the extension of steam traffic in the interior of China, and great need of it. For the present, however, foreigners are limited by the provisions of the existing treaties, to the ports formally opened by those treaties. Steamers may penetrate as far up the great river as Hankow, 600 miles from the sea; but the upper Yangtsze, which is navigable by steamers for 500 miles above that, must still be left to the monopoly of uncouth barges, which are slowly tracked up-stream by men who labour like beasts of burden. The navigation of the Poyang and Tung-ting lakes which communicate with the Yang-tsze; the Peiho river between Tientsin and Tungchow; the western river from Canton to the province of Kwangsi, and many other water routes—all practicable for properly constructed vessels—are equally excluded from foreign enterprise. The native traders on these routes are deprived of the aid which steam has afforded them in other quarters, and that by a decision of their government which, from a cosmopolitan point of view, is arbitrary and unjust. Inexperience may excuse the Chinese government for this narrow and pernicious jealousy, but what shall we say of European diplomatists who, in full view of the advantages which, as the past has shown, must accrue to natives and foreigners alike from the spread of foreign intercourse in China, would diminish "the points of contact" from a nervous, and not very rational, apprehension of possible complications?
Much has been said of the ruffianism that our newly established commerce on the Yangtsze Kiang has let loose on the great river. It cannot be denied; but it would be singular indeed if, with a weak government, a deplorably inefficient executive, and a timid people, outrages should not be committed. In every community there must be lawless characters whom physical force, or the dread of it, alone can restrain from criminal acts. Under existing circumstances in China, it is the duty of each foreign state to control its own subjects; but it is manifestly unfair to circumscribe the legitimate privileges of a whole community, in order to punish a few unworthy members of it. Such a policy can only be dictated by indolence in seeking out and punishing offenders. But the instances on record of piracy and other crimes on the Yangtsze Kiang, although authentic, are apt to engender exaggerated views of their relative importance. They are made unduly conspicuous by rhetoricians, who, on the other hand, ignore the smooth under-current of affairs which is silently conveying blessings to many thousands of people. These occasional outrages are, after all, mere excrescences on a system that, in an essential manner, ministers to the well-being of whole populations who would otherwise be in penury. At the worst, the good vastly outbalances the evil; and, to take the lowest view of the matter, it were better even that the lawless proceedings of a few rowdies should go on unchecked, rather than that the remedy for them should be found in the curtailment of a trade of such great promise. It must never be forgotten that it is the natives of China who derive the chief benefit from foreign commercial intercourse; and that, while arbitrary restrictions on the plain meaning of treaties, by which it has been sought to limit the application of their provisions, are unjust to foreigners, the refusal to extend foreign intercourse is an injustice of which the Chinese people have a right to complain.
The unexampled success of steamers in China, within the three past years, has paved the way for a similar result for railways. The Chinese, having satisfied themselves of the advantages that accrue to them from the former, will be perfectly ready to avail themselves of the latter. They are not naturally given to travel, that is, they travel for profit and not for pleasure. But the facilities for locomotion which steamers now afford them have created a large and increasing passenger traffic. The steamers on the coast and on the rivers are usually crowded with Chinese passengers, who seek very moderate accommodation, and therefore can be carried economically. The shortening of a month's journey to one of a few days has induced many thousands to travel who did not think of it before. It is, therefore, a fair inference that the greater economy of time which railways would secure would enable millions to travel who are at present excluded from it. The mere monopolising by railways of the revenues of the present passage-boats, and other means of passenger communication, in certain districts, would be but a trifle compared with the new traffic which railways would create for themselves in such a populous and eminently commercial country.
And, perhaps, no other country of equal area presents fewer natural obstacles to the construction of long lines of railway. This has been shown by the investigations of Sir Macdonald Stephenson, who has lately published a full report on the subject. The labour, and many of the materials, are to be found in the localities where they would be wanted.
It may safely be assumed, also, that in no other country would railway investments be more remunerative, if organised on a uniform and comprehensive plan, such as that proposed by Sir M. Stephenson.
The most populous parts of China are alluvial plains, either fed by great navigable rivers, or intersected in all directions by networks of canals. With regard to the great water routes, which are open to large vessels, it is very problematical whether railways could supersede, or even compete with, navigation in the carrying of bulky goods. It could not be expected, for example, that on the proposed line from Hankow to Shanghae, following the course of the great river for 650 miles, goods should be conveyed as economically as in steamers that can navigate the river easily, carrying 2000 tons of cargo.