In 1897 a Chinese in foreign employ was had up about an alleged debt of 500 taels. By a bribe his accuser had the matter brought before a magistrate who was well known as anti-foreign, and who no sooner heard he was in foreign employ than he ordered him to be beaten without going into the case. This was contrary even to Chinese law. The unfortunate bookkeeper was unable to do his work again for months; he was disfigured past all recognition, and, indeed, too horrible to look upon. His offence was "foreign employ." Can we wonder that the Chinese are not very fond of us? The marvel to me is that they dare associate with us at all.
GIVING EVIDENCE IN A COURT OF JUSTICE.
Lent by Mr. Willett.
Other nations seem to protect their nationals and those dependent upon them far more vigorously than the British Government does. When Chungking was first made a Treaty Port, the then British Consul, a most able and energetic man, was not even advised from Peking that the port was open. Consequently, he was absent from all public functions instituted at the formal opening, took no part in the drawing up of the regulations under which British trade was to be established there, had no voice in the rules issued by the Chinese Customs. Subsequent incumbents of the Consulate have not unnaturally employed any liberty of action given them less in promoting British interests than in keeping things quiet for the Chinese, and so have refrained from endorsing the requests made from time to time to have the obstructive Customs rules modified or the position of the port in any way improved. The rules, issued in Chinese, were so impracticable that successive Commissioners of Customs suspended their action from the day they were published; but this suspension, it afterwards appeared, was a privilege revocable at the arbitrary will of the Commissioner for the time being, and an American Commissioner revoked them to the detriment of the only bona-fide European shipping firm as yet established there, thus doing what lay in his power to take away business from European firms and throw it into the hands of the Chinese firms, which continued as before to enjoy a suspension of the Customs rules.
Business at Chungking is all carried on by so-called chartered junks. They are not really chartered; but before they can clear the Customs, they must fly a foreign house-flag and number. The permission to fly this must be obtained by a foreigner through his Consul. The British Consul, up till then the only one there, resided at the opposite end of the city to the business quarter, where the Customs Office is situated. This entailed some hours delay. And when it is considered that one junk carries as a rule from fifty to a hundred packages only, it "passeth the wit of man" to conceive why this red-tapeism was allowed to continue. The China Merchants' Steamship Co., the largest shippers in Chungking, were allowed to obtain their "passes" from the Custom-house direct—a great convenience, as the Custom-house is in one part of this city, the Customs' Bank in another, and the examining-pontoon across the river at the head of a rapid. The junks mostly lie in a reach below; and it is no exaggeration to say that it takes a day for a man to get round to the three places. Yet the Customs rules do not allow the duty to be paid until the cargo has passed examination at the pontoon; nor is the cargo-boat allowed to leave it until a duty-paid certificate is brought back and exhibited at the pontoon. This necessitates the cargo being left in an open boat all night at the head of a rapid, and much loss has resulted from the delay that occurs there in any case. Consequently, this rule had never been enforced, and the cargo-boat had been allowed to leave and proceed to load the chartered junk in safety immediately after examination. But an application to his Consul by the Britisher was met by a "despatch" in the stereotyped language, "I cannot interfere with the Customs regulations."
The telegraph office, formerly situated in the business quarter of the city, was then moved into the distant country enclosure which forms a part of all Chinese cities, because the manager owned a piece of land there, and thus rented it to advantage. Naturally here the foreign merchant could not expect a remonstrance to be of any avail, as the telegraph is a purely native concern.
It would take too much space to enumerate the further difficulties to which a foreigner is at present exposed. To enforce a claim for debt he must apply to his Consul. A Chinaman unwilling to pay is never at a loss to invent an excuse,—the papers are not in order, just as in cases of sale the land was not really his. If the Consul is content to become merely the translator of these Chinese excuses, which by transmission he appears, indeed, even to accept, and to a certain extent to endorse, we, as the farmer said, "seem to get no forrader." How far the actions of Consuls in these matters, and with regard to obstructions about buying land and renting houses, come from individual action or from instructions from Peking, of course it is not for a mere woman to decide. We used in China at one time to put down everything that went wrong to Lord Kimberley. Now even sometimes we fancy it is a Kimberley legacy. But very likely we are quite wrong.
It will be obvious from the above how much depends upon the disposition of the Consuls. Naturally they vary greatly. The theory used to be that they were too apt to look upon themselves as protectors of the Chinese against the encroachments of their nationals. Having suffered severely under the most flagrant specimen of this class, I am happy to add that I think it is dying out. Most of the Consuls in China now seem only too able for the importance of their posts. At the same time, one never knows when a crisis may arise; and then the men, who as a rule have been foremost in all the social life each of his own port, are admirably seconded by willing communities, that rejoice to follow the lead of those who are certainly generally in all things the opposite to the delightful caricature sketch well known to have been written by a leading member of the China Consular body:
"THE HAPPY CONSUL.