Instead they were causes of terrible diseases which none but the foreign dogs or their agents could cure. And to get cured, one must join the foreign religion or else give great sums. It was asserted that all this poison emanated from the foreign chapels, was often thrown into wells, and secretly put into fish or other food in the markets.
A preacher, sixty miles from Foochow, one hundred and fifty miles north of Amoy, barely escaped with his life. He was pounded with stones while the bystanders called out, "Kill the poisoner, the foreign devils' poisoner!"
The whole object of this diabolical calumniating was to kindle the people into a frenzy against foreigners, especially missionaries, and to make foreign powers believe that the people are so anti-foreign that the authorities cannot secure a foreigner's safety outside of the treaty ports.
Even when these reports were traveling like wildfire there were those among the Chinese who knew better, and it was often said, "It cannot be the missionaries and native Christians, for have they not been going in and out among us all these years and they never did us any harm?"
Speaking of the "Political State of the Country," Dr. Talmage says:
"With the atrocities committed at Tientsin the world is acquainted, though many seem still to be under the grievous error that these atrocities were designed only against Romanism and the French nation.
"If this were the fact, it would be no justification. Others are under an error equally grievous, that the Chinese Government has given reasonable redress. It has given no proper redress at all. Instead of reprobating the massacre, it has almost, and doubtless to the ideas of the Chinese, fully sanctioned it. The leaders in the massacre have not been brought to justice. The Government has readily given life for life—a very easy matter in China—but it has so highly rewarded the families of the victims thus sacrificed to placate the barbarians, and put so much honor on the corpses of these martyrs to foreign demands, that it has encouraged similar atrocities whenever a suitable time shall arrive for their perpetration. The Imperial proclamation stating even this unsatisfactory redress, which the Government solemnly promised should be published throughout the land, has not been published except in a few instances where foreigners have compelled it. The massacre at Tientsin is known throughout the empire, but it is not known generally that any redress at all has been given.
"Instead of the publication of this proclamation the vilest calumnies—too vile to be even mentioned in Christian ears—have been circulated secretly, but widely throughout the land. Throughout the coast provinces of this southern half of the empire the people have been warned of a grand poisoning scheme gotten up by foreigners for the destruction of the Chinese.
"Because the foreign residents in China report the truth in regard to the feeling of hatred to foreigners, and warn the nations of the West of the coming war and designed extirpation of all foreigners, for which China is assuredly preparing with all its might, we are charged as being desirous of bringing on war. We know that the Church will not impute such motives to her missionaries. But the testimony of missionaries agrees in this respect with that of other foreign residents. We see the evidence, as we walk the streets, in the countenances and demeanor of the literati and officials, and somewhat in the countenances and demeanor of the masses.
"We see it in the changed policy of the local magistrates toward the Christians; we learn it from rumors which are circulated from time to time among the people; we see it in the activity manifested in forming a proper navy and in preparing the army.