Subsequent events have not led me to alter an opinion formed so many years ago. So long as Peking remains the capital so long will it be impossible to bring home to the Government certain facts which are well known to many of the provincial governors, but which only in rare instances they dare to report to headquarters. It is not conceivable that, if the Empress Tsŭ Hsi had known what a hornet’s nest she was stirring, she would have acted as she must have done in encouraging Prince Tuan and the Boxers. But it is a far cry to Peking.
It cannot be said that the policy of foreign governments in China has been calculated to raise the powers in the estimate of those very Chinese whom it ought to be our chief duty to impress. Take the outrages upon missionaries and the constant murders of which we have had to complain—until the German Emperor seized Kwei Chao we have always been content to accept a money indemnity as reparation; so that the local mandarins must have looked upon the death of a few missionaries—the most sweet-smelling offering that could be made to Tsŭ Hsi and her eunuchs—as a mere question of cost, and that moreover not to be defrayed by themselves, but squeezed out of the people. If some poor wretch or wretches were decapitated, the instigator, the real culprit, could enjoy the luxury of sitting in judgment over his own crime, and sentencing to death some victim caught at random out of the prisons, or perhaps even—for Chinese methods are ingenious—paying off an old score.
As regards intercourse with the ruling classes, or obtaining any influence with the court, our presence at Peking has been useless—perhaps worse than useless, actually mischievous. For what can a Chinese gentleman think when he sees the filthiest beggar pass freely without let or hindrance in parts of the city where the presence of the minister of the proudest nation in Europe would be deemed a pollution? We have been tolerated in Peking as a necessary evil—accepted we have never been. The receptions at court have been so rare, and made such a great favour of, that they have been a mere farce, and in some cases, such as the visit of the ladies of the Corps diplomatique to the Empress Tsŭ Hsi, a degradation. Compare with the position of the British Minister at Peking—stoned and insulted in the streets, and unable to obtain protection or redress—the reception of Li Hung Chang by all Europe three years ago. How that astute old intriguer must have laughed in his sleeve when he found himself petted, coaxed, and flattered, treated like a royal personage! and what must have been the inference drawn by every ignorant Chinese, from Tsŭ Hsi and the poor down-trampled Emperor Kwang Hsu down to the meanest beggar on the bridge? Crystal is not so clear as the fact that the Son of Heaven is the ruler of the world, and all other monarchs mere vassals, doing homage to the steps of the Jasper Throne.
Peking has exercised upon foreign representatives a sort of unholy glamour. They have been bewitched. Some have fallen down and worshipped before its scholastic and historical traditions; others have treated the great city and its rulers as a sort of gigantic “curio”; optimism has been the bane of all. If any serious attempt has been made to bring the mandarins into the pale of statesmanship it has been singularly unsuccessful. They remain as retrograde and as hopelessly obstructive as ever. They have occasionally been clever enough, like Li, to throw dust in the eyes of foreigners, and that is all. Unless a radical change is effected European diplomacy will continue to be abortive; to effect that change it is absolutely necessary that the court should be removed from the headquarters of obstruction, and brought into actual contact with our civilisation and with the material evidence of Western power. The old-world prejudices of Moscow were a hindrance to Peter the Great; the Kugés buried for centuries at Kiyôto were a drag upon the reformers of Japan; the capitals were moved. These are the two great precedents for such a policy.
In spite of protesting princes and potentates, it seems as if the partition of China, that unwieldy monster, was at hand. When the phrases “Sphere of Influence” and “Hinterland,” diplomatic expressions recently invented for the benefit of savage Africa, came, three or four years ago, to be applied to China, then nominally a friendly power, it was not difficult to foresee what must follow. The events of the last three months have precipitated matters. Germany is in honour bound to exact exemplary retribution for the murder of her minister, the deadliest insult that could be offered to a great nation. If she were minded to take Shantung, where she might establish a flourishing colony, she would act as a buffer state between Central China and Russia, who has already to all intents possessed herself of Manchuria, and has for many a year cast longing eyes upon Chihli; and after all, if Russia were to annex Chihli with Peking would the world have any great cause for lamentation? Apart from all other considerations, Russia with a nucleus of co-religionists in the Albazines, of whom there is a short account at p. 211 of these letters, would have more in hand towards Christianising the people than any other nation or sect; and it seems to me that Peking Russian, and possibly Christian, would be far better than Peking Chinese, and certainly heathen. If further encroachment were guarded against by Germany in Shantung we should not be losers. Should France want a rectification of frontier for her great Asiatic colony—why should we interfere? The restoration of the old frontier of Burmah and the freedom of the Yangtze region should suffice us.
As for a change of dynasty in China, which some writers are crying for, that is an impossibility, because there is no Chinese pretender ready to replace the Manchus. It would mean chaos such as the world has never seen.
Freed from the incubus of the Empress Tsŭ Hsi and her eunuchs, freed from Prince Tuan and the other bloodguilty Manchus, the Emperor, surrounded by a more enlightened court, and acting under capable advisers, would be enabled to rule peacefully and honestly over an immense and prosperous empire; while the removal of the capital would, without any act of vandalism, such as the suggested destruction of the Tombs, read China that lesson which is so sorely needed, and which the absurd reprisals of 1860 utterly failed to convey. After the second occupation of Peking we should not again hear of the Barbarians bringing tribute to the Son of Heaven from his vassals.
The idea of a change of capital is not one that is of itself strange or repugnant to the Chinese mind. It has even, apparently, been contemplated by the Dowager-Empress herself, though her choice would not unnaturally fall upon a spot like Hsi An Fu, near which town, at Hao, at Hsien Yang, and at Chang An, the emperors of the Chou dynasty (B.C. 1122–781), the Tsin (B.C. 249–200), and the Sui (A.D. 582–904) held their courts. But the chief charm of such a capital would be its inaccessibility and remoteness from the haunts of the foreign devil. Hsi An Fu would be Peking over again, and worse. It would give the coup de grâce to all hope of civilising the court.
In a letter published in the Times newspaper of June 22 I advocated once more the choice of Nanking as a new seat of Government, and I said that such a change would be hailed with joy by many millions of Chinese. A few days after that letter appeared my arguments received a very remarkable confirmation. A telegram from Yokohama informed us that the Chinese community in Japan, a highly intelligent, educated, and respectable body of men, of first-rate business capacity, had presented a petition urging the foreign powers to take advantage of the settlement which must follow upon the present troubles, to insist upon the removal of the capital from Peking to Nanking. Now these men know what they are talking about. They know that such a change would work wonders in the direction of good government; that it would take the power out of the fossilised hands of the court; that the light of day would be fatal to the bats and owls of the forbidden city; that the secret societies would be deprived of their chief support; that the viceroys and the whole descending scale of mandarins, brought under control of an intelligible and intelligent Government, would no longer be able to squeeze and persecute the people, paralysing trade by their extortions and blackmailing, and setting up insuperable barriers to the progress of civilisation.
In the Blue Book published recently (July 30) we have the first instalment of the official history of the tragedy of Peking—most melancholy reading, truly! But there is one bright spot in this miserable record. The attitude of our Foreign Office in all the negotiations which have taken place appears to have been altogether admirable. In spite of the cold water thrown by international jealousies upon Lord Salisbury’s efforts to retrieve the situation, he has held his own position, and he has succeeded in using the best means which were available without in any way compromising the future. Japan is to furnish troops, but there are no vague promises, no encouragement of inordinate ambitions, and no raising of hopes, which, if realised, might be fraught with dangers beside which even the horrors of the last few weeks would be as child’s play. Lord Salisbury boldly promises to find the money, and England will honour his bill. That is all. “Her Majesty’s Government wish to draw a sharp distinction between immediate operations which may be still in time to save the Legations, and any ulterior operations which may be undertaken.” No language could be clearer or more satisfactory than this. Is it too much to hope that when the final settlement comes, the counsels of the same master-mind may devise a solution which shall bring about a happier era for China, without endangering the harmony of those nations which are now united in their resentment of outrages, for which the history of the world finds no parallel?