Whatever grounds of complaint the British authorities might have against the Chinese, nothing was left undone to conciliate the good opinion of the mandarins. In 1854 an application was made by Yeh to this effect: he feared a rupture of the public peace, and feeling himself too weak to protect Canton from the invasion of the rebels, he asked for the assistance of the naval forces of the treaty powers. Sir John Bowring accompanied the admiral and the British fleet to the neighbourhood of that city, and in co-operation with the Americans, took such effectual measures for its security, that the intended attack was abandoned, and general tranquillity remained uninterrupted. This intervention was gratefully acknowledged by the people of Canton; but there is every reason to believe that the commissioner represented our amicable intervention as an act of vassalage, and the assistance rendered as having been in obedience to orders issued by imperial authority. Notwithstanding this and many other evidences of friendly sentiment and useful aid on our part, Yeh did not hesitate to represent to the court that the rebels and Western “barbarians” were acting in union, and he expressed his conviction that his policy would lead to the extermination of both.
No one, in fact, who had attended to the progress of public events, could be unaware of the insecure position of our relations with the Chinese. Lord Palmerston said, in 1854:—
“So far from our proceedings in China having had a tendency to disturb the peaceful relations between the British government and the Chinese empire, and to lead to encroachments upon their territory, we had, on the contrary, acted with the greatest forbearance. Ever since the conclusion of the treaty of Nanking the conduct of the Chinese authorities had been such as would have justified a rupture with that government. They had violated the engagements into which they had entered; and if any desire existed on the part of the British government to proceed against them, abundant cause had existed, almost since the termination of the last war. They had refused, on divers pretences, to admit us to parts of Canton to which we ought to have access, avoided their engagements with respect to the Hongs, and nullified their stipulations in regard to the Tariff. In point of fact, there was scarcely a single engagement they had not broken.”[7]
Wearied with so many evasions, difficulties and delays, the ministers of the treaty powers, in 1854, determined to approach the capital, in order to represent to the court the unsatisfactory state of foreign relations with the imperial commissioner at Canton, and the necessity of redressing the many grievances of which they had to complain, and thus putting an end to a policy essentially unfriendly, which could not but lead to a fatal crisis, and which imperilled alike the interests of China and of all the nations who came into contact with her. It was hoped that the strong and united representations of the three ministers might alarm the emperor, or at all events obtain his serious attention to the dangers with which he was menaced. The attempt failed.[8] It could not but fail, through the incredible misrepresentations made to the Chinese court by the commissioners who were sent down by the emperor to meet the foreign envoys. As regards the outward forms of courtesy, the latter had perhaps no special ground of complaint. Tents were erected for their reception in the neighbourhood of the Takoo forts; and they were invited to a repast, in which, it may be worth notice, there was a display of ancient European steel knives and forks, with handsome porcelain handles, apparently of the age of Louis XIV. They were met on terms of equality, and the posts of honour were graciously conceded to them. But the urbane manners of the mandarins did not mislead the foreign ministers, who left them with the declaration that they were insuring for their country days of future sorrow. On the subject of their reports to the court of Peking, Mr. Reed says: “They illustrate the habitual faithlessness of Chinese officials.... They were certainly the most painful revelations of the mendacity and treacherous habits of the high officials of this empire ever given to the world. They cannot be read without contemptuous resentment.”[9]
There was only one possible termination to a state of things so obviously unsatisfactory, menacing, and untenable. Everything that could be said or done, in the shape of friendly counsel, had been exhausted. The American commissioner, Mr. M‘Lane, reports to his government,[10] that on leaving China, he addressed to Keih,[11] the governor of Kiangsoo, the following memorable warning:—
“Now, as my parting words, I say to you, if something is not done, our relations will become bad, our amity be disturbed. I believe that but for the officers of both governments there now might have been a state of things that might have led to a war; but we have exerted ourselves to prevent it.” [Governor Keih—“Yes.”] “I have done well, and on the eve of my departure am most disinterested in what I say. I do not think it is in the power of either officers of either government long to preserve the peace. If the emperor does not listen, and appoint a commissioner to adjust the foreign relations, so sure as there is a God in the heavens, amity cannot be preserved. I say it in sincerity, as my parting words.”
The personal character of Yeh tended greatly to complicate every international question. He represented the pride, presumption, and ignorance of a high mandarin, without the restraints which fear of imperial displeasure generally places upon Chinese functionaries. He was the instrument, and for some time the successful instrument, for carrying out the imperial policy as regarded foreign nations. He had a great reputation for learning, had won the most eminent literary grades, was a distinguished member of the highest college (the Hanlin), and the guardian of the heir apparent—indeed, on one occasion he called himself the fourth personage of the empire. Moreover, his despatches were much admired for their perspicuity and purity of language. He was strangely unacquainted with the geography, institutions, and policy of remote nations, and even made his ignorance a ground for self-congratulation. When questions of commercial interest were brought before him, he treated them as altogether below his notice, and on one occasion abruptly terminated a conversation by saying, “You speak to me as if I were a merchant, and not a mandarin.” He devoted himself to the study of necromancy, and relied on his “fortunate star;” believing that the city of Canton was impregnable, he made no serious arrangements for its defence.
What Ke-ying preached, Yeh-ming practised; but Ke was a man of a gentle, Yeh of a ferocious nature; and the cautious cunning which often marked the course of the one was wholly wanting to the other. Yeh, armed as he was with powers of life and death, exercised them with a recklessness of which there is no equal example in history. He turned the execution-ground at Canton into a huge lake of blood; hundreds of rebels were beheaded daily. When he was asked whether he had really caused seventy thousand men to be decapitated, he boastingly replied that the number exceeded a hundred thousand; and to an inquiry whether he had inflicted upon women the horrible punishment called the cutting into ten thousand pieces, he answered, “Ay! they were worse than the men.”[12]
It was the affair of the Arrow which brought about the inevitable crisis. The question of Sir John Bowring’s action on that occasion was entangled with the party politics of the day, and little more need now be said than that the verdict of the country reversed the condemnatory decision of the House of Commons. Certain it is that the very build of a lorcha, so altogether unlike any Chinese junk in its external appearance, ought to have led the local authorities in Canton to be very cautious in their interference with her crew; and that the fact of her papers being in the hands of the British consul, and not of the Chinese custom-house, was primâ facie evidence of her nationality. Since the brutal character of ex-Commissioner Yeh has been better understood, even those most forward to censure Sir John Bowring, for refusing to deliver over to that savage and sanguinary personage men who at all events believed themselves to be entitled to the protection of British authority,[13] cannot but have felt that they ought to have been more indulgent to his hesitation. That he carried with him the sympathy of the representatives of the treaty powers,—that Yeh’s policy was condemned by his colleagues and by the people in general,[14]—and that Yeh himself was finally degraded and disgraced by his own sovereign for his proceedings, are matters of historical record. Yeh, there is little doubt, would have been publicly executed, had he returned to China, notwithstanding the efforts of his father, who betook himself to Peking with a very large sum of money, hoping to be able—but failing—to propitiate the court.[15]