THE relation of the missionary to the consular and diplomatic representatives of his own government is another topic of perennial criticism. Some European Governments have persistently and notoriously sought to advance their national interest through their missionaries. France and Russia have been particularly active in this way, the former claiming large rights by virtue of its position as ``the protector of Catholic missions.'' The result is that the average Chinese official regards all missionaries as political agents who are to be watched and feared. Dr. L. J. Davies, a Presbyterian missionary, says that he has been repeatedly asked his rank as ``an American official,'' whether he ``reported in person'' to his ``emperor'' on his return to his native land, how much salary his government allowed him, and many other questions the import of which was manifest.
The typical consul and minister, moreover, find that no small part of their business relates to matters that are brought to their attention by missionaries. Sometimes they manifest impatience on this account. One consul profanely complained to me that three-fourths of his business related to the missionary question. He forgot, however, that nine-tenths of the nationals under his jurisdiction were missionaries, so that in proportion to their numbers, the missionaries gave him less trouble than the non-missionary Americans. In answer to an inquiry by the Rev. Dr. Paul D. Bergen, of the Presbyterian Mission, seventy- three missionaries, of from five to thirty years' experience, and representing most of the Protestant boards, reported a total of only fifty-two applications through consul or minister. The Hon. John Barrett, formerly Minister of the United States to Siam, writes: ``Let us be fair in judging the missionaries. Let the complaining merchant, traveller or clubman take the beam from his own eye before he demands that the mote be taken from the missionary's eye. In my diplomatic experience in Siam, 150 missionaries gave me less trouble in five years than fifteen merchants gave me in five months.''
Doubtless some diplomats would be glad to have the missionaries expatriate themselves. In the United States Senate the Hon. John Sherman is reported to have said that ``if our citizens go to a far-distant country, semi-civilized and bitterly opposed to their movements, we cannot follow them there and protect them. They ought to come home.'' Is, then, the missionary's business less legitimate than the trader's? Is a man entitled to the protection of his country if he goes to the Orient to sell whiskey and rifles, but does he forfeit that protection if he goes there to preach the gospel of temperance and peace?
Critics may be reminded that missionaries are American citizens; that when gamblers and drunkards and adventurers and distillery agents in China claim the rights of citizenship, the missionary does not forfeit his rights by a residence in China for the purpose of teaching the young, healing the sick, distributing the Bible and preaching the gospel of Christ, particularly when treaties expressly guarantee him protection in the exercise of these very privileges. It is odd to find some people insisting that a dissolute trader should be allowed to go wherever he pleases and raising a tremendous hubbub if a hair of his head is injured, while at the same time they appear to deem it an unwarranted thing for a decent man to go to China on a mission of peace and good-will.
While the individual missionary is, of course, free to renounce his claim to the protection of home citizenship, such renunciation is neither necessary nor expedient. There is not the slightest probability that our Government will require it, and if it should, the public sentiment of the United States would not tolerate such an order for a week. No self-respecting nation can expatriate its citizens who go abroad to do good. The policy of the United States was indicated in the note of the Hon. J. C. B. Davis, acting Secretary of State, to the United States Minister at Peking, October 19, 1871.
``The rights of citizens of the United States in China are well defined by treaty. So long as they attend peaceably to their affairs they are to be placed on a common footing of amity and good-will with subjects of China, and are to receive and enjoy for themselves, and everything appertaining to them, protection and defense from all insults and injuries. They have the right to reside at any of the ports open to foreign commerce, to rent houses and places of business, or to build such upon sites which they have the right to hire. They have secured to them the right to build churches and cemeteries, and they may teach or worship in those churches without being harassed, persecuted, interfered with, or molested. These are some of the rights which are expressly and in terms granted to the United States, for their citizens, by the Treaty of 1858. If I rightly apprehend the spirit of the note of the Foreign Office, and of the regulations which accompany it, there is, to state it in the least objectionable form, an apprehension in the yamen that it may become necessary to curtail some of these rights, in consequence of the alleged conduct of French missionaries. This idea cannot be entertained for one moment by the United States.''
This position was given new emphasis by the note sent by
Secretary of State John Hay to the Hon. Horace Porter, United
States Ambassador to France, in response to a communication
from the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris in 1903.
In this note Mr. Hay said:
``The Government holds that every citizen sojourning or travelling abroad in pursuit of his lawful affairs is entitled to a passport, and the duration of such sojourn the department does not arrogate to itself the right to limit or prescribe.''
The governments of continental Europe have repeatedly shown themselves quick to resent an infringement upon the treaty rights of their subjects who are in China as missionaries. The Hon. Thomas Francis Wade, British Minister at Peking, wrote to Minister Wen Hsiang in June, 1871:—``The British Government draws no distinction between the missionaries and any other of its non-official subjects.'' This sentiment was emphatically reiterated by Earl Granville in a note from the foreign office in London to Mr. Wade dated August 21, 1871:
``Her Majesty's Government cannot allow the claim that the missionaries residing in China must conform to the laws and customs of China to pass unchallenged. It is the duty of a missionary, as of every other British subject, to avoid giving offense as far as possible to the Chinese authorities or people, but he does not forfeit the rights to which he is entitled under the treaty as a British subject because of his missionary character.''