FIG. 45.—A TEMPLE AT TSIN.
THE PURCHASE OF GIRLS
The Sisters, however, set to work directly they arrived, aided by the French Abbé Chevrier, M. Fontanier, the French Consul, and his assistant, M. Simon. They quickly organized their plan of campaign; some opening a hospital where all sufferers were received, no matter of what nationality or religion, whilst others devoted themselves to the education of the little girls bought by the Abbé with the fund known in France as that of the Sainte-Enfance or Holy Infancy. In the school kept by the devoted ladies, the Chinese maidens were lodged, fed, and taught to do different kinds of needlework, as well as educated in the Roman Catholic religion. It was the purchase of the pupils that was really at the root of the terrible troubles which overtook the Mission. The Celestials, as has already been explained above, are in the habit of buying girls, but for a very different purpose to that of the devoted priests and Sisters. They too have hospitals for the indigent and infirm, but they could not be brought to believe that the missionaries received the children merely to feed, educate, and make Christians of them. The rumour quickly spread, not only in Tien-tsin, but in Shanghai and elsewhere, that good money was to be got by selling children to the Sisters, and certain natives at once set to work to kidnap little ones with a view to securing what they thought would be a lucrative trade. So many girls were stolen, and the missionaries lent so much colour to the accusation against them of connivance by the increasing number of their protegées that public feeling was thoroughly aroused. The cry of "Stealers of children" was raised, and foreigners, especially the French, had stones thrown at them in the streets.
There is no doubt that if the missionaries had been wise, they would have given up receiving children for a time, whether in the orphanage or the hospital, but religious zeal was not in this case tempered with discretion, and terrible indeed were the results of this short-sighted policy. Of course all the girls rescued by the nuns were not bought, but a great many of them were, for the Chinese law encourages the selling of female children. Moreover, if calumnies were circulated about foreigners, they in their turn did not hesitate to spread reports of the unnatural way in which Chinese mothers treated their children, and much was written on the subject in the reports sent home. I, however, can testify from personal inquiry that these were quite unfounded libels. In Canton every one I questioned on the subject repudiated the accusations with the greatest indignation. There was, however, the question to which I never could get a satisfactory reply, and that was, "Is it true that the Chinese cause the death of deformed children at their birth?" Evasive answers were always made to this downright inquiry, but with regard to healthy, well-formed infants of either sex, I will quote verbatim what a wealthy Chinese merchant of very influential position said to me:
A FALSE ACCUSATION
"It is unfortunately true," he said, "that children have sometimes been abandoned by Chinese mothers, but only under very sad circumstances, generally the failure of the harvest. Do you know what has led to some of your priests accusing the Chinese of being unnatural parents, mere brutes resembling cats and dogs? It is because now and then our teeming population of four hundred million souls is visited by terrible and extraordinary misfortunes, such as a sudden outbreak of the cholera or the plague, which are, however, among the least of our troubles, for even more frequent, more destructive to life, is the famine which occurs every year, now in the north, now in the south, now in the east, now in the west. If the rice-crop fail through a dry season, thirty or fifty millions of human creatures are in danger of perishing from hunger if sufficient relief does not reach them in time. We have not the means you in Europe have of speedy communication between our provinces; we have no railways, no fleets of steamers to take grain from one place to another. Well, what happens? Just what occurs when some town or island is blockaded in war. Old men and children perish first, and if a few of the infants do survive, what can the mothers do but thrust them away from them when the milk in their breasts is all dried up? Under these circumstances you may see able-bodied men eating such things as rats, snakes, and vermin, which the Chinese are accused of devouring with delight even in times of plenty. I know nothing about the history of your country, but you ought to know it well. Will you swear to me that there has never been a time when women have been driven to let their children die for want of nourishment and warmth? You do not answer. So it is evident that terrible things such as this have happened in Europe. Well now, would it not be downright unfair of me, if knowing this to be truth, I turned your silence against you by preaching throughout China that French mothers, like those in China, fling their children into the gutter?"
Was not this a sensible speech?—and would it not be well if missionaries were equally wise in their way of looking at things? Is it not a pity that so many enthusiastic young men and women should be sent to meet a terrible death in a vain effort to alter what cannot be changed? Those who sanction the going forth of these bands of devoted martyrs do not make sufficient allowance for the fact that the indifference of the Chinese to Christianity is really a part of their own religion. They cultivate stoicism, they never allow anything to upset their sangfroid, but meet torture and death with equal composure. It is a hopeless task to endeavour to rouse them to enthusiasm about anything. It would be wiser to leave their conversion alone. All this does not, however, detract in any way from the heroism of the Sisters at Tien-tsin, who, in spite of the ever-increasing hostility to them, went on doing their charitable work, unheeding the danger in which they must have known they stood.
CHUNG-HO
It was on June 22, 1870, that fatal year for France, just before the breaking out of the Franco-German War, when the relations between the French Government and that of Pekin were considerably strained, that the long-smouldering fire broke into flame in Tien-tsin. The Governor, Chung-Ho by name, a Tartar by birth, a kindly man enough, but far too weak for the position he held, was really responsible for the massacre, though he endeavoured to shelter himself from responsibility behind the mandarins, whom he ought to have controlled. The rising against the foreigners had evidently been preconcerted, for there was really no apparent cause for the sudden rush of the bravos upon their victims. It has been said that the French Consul, M. Fontanier, who was the first to fall beneath the blows of the assassins, really gave the signal for the massacre by presenting his revolver at the head of the Governor, but this of course was only an excuse, and nothing could really have averted the catastrophe.