With scowls that speak of anything but pleasure,
Daunts ill-advised invaders of his leisure;
From outward signs of courtesy exempt,
Treats their just protests with a fine contempt;
Does little, strives to make that little less,
And leads a life of cultured uselessness.
Such is the happy Consul. Such is he
That each aspiring sub. should wish to be."
Even, however, where the Consul is all he should be—and probably no body of men ever was more respected and trusted than the British Consular Body in China—yet British subjects' interests must suffer, if the British Minister will not support them. Nor can the British Minister do much, if the permanent officials at the Foreign Office wish him to do little.
When two men were murdered at Wusüeh, the village ought, at least, to have been razed to the ground. When the Kucheng massacre occurred, the Viceroy and the Chinese officials, who laughed about it all as they talked with the British officials sent to settle about compensation with them, ought one and all to have been degraded at the very least. No one likes bloodshed. The Chinese only get on as they do without an army or a police force by means of very exemplary punishments; they understand slight punishment as a confession of weakness, or an acknowledgment that the offender was not so much to blame after all. Nor does any one who lives in China believe in Chinese peasantry ever daring to murder foreigners except at the instigation of men in high place. People in England often fancy missionaries are very much disliked in China. As a rule, they seem greatly liked and respected each in his own neighbourhood, although in the abstract officials and old-fashioned literati may object to them.