To the north and west of Aberdeen lies Elgin, which has in its name so many associations of classic and Oriental lands, in addition to those with the Timepiece City in Illinois.
The eighth Earl of Elgin (1811–63), James Bruce, was great both in America and Asia. He served not only as Governor of Jamaica, but also as Viceroy and Governor-General of Canada. His warm relations with the United States and his conciliatory treatment—in spite of the mob pelting his carriage with stones—of those who suffered in the troubles of 1837, were not at first appreciated. “He rewarded the rebels for their rebellion,” as the then fiery Mr. Gladstone declared in Parliament. Yet it was the efforts of this Lord Elgin, with those of our Millard Fillmore in Congress, that gave permanent effect to that provision in the Treaty of Ghent, which, for a hundred years, has secured, between two great friendly nations, a peaceful frontier, three thousand miles long.
It was Thomas Bruce (1766–1841), the father of this Lord Elgin, who secured the sculptures in marble from Athens, which are now in the British Museum.
In India, George Bruce, another Earl of Elgin, enabled a handful of white men, fighting for civilization against fearful odds, to break the back of the Sepoy Mutiny, in 1857, even before British reinforcements arrived. In China, James Bruce negotiated the Treaty of Tientsin. In Japan, he followed up the work initiated by the Americans, President Millard Fillmore, Commodore Perry, and Townsend Harris, using their interpreters and profiting by their precedents. He thus inaugurated British influence in the most progressive country of Asia.
While Elgin returned to England, his brother George and the allied forces attempted to proceed to Peking with the ratified treaty. In front of the Taku forts, built at the mouth of the Pei-ho, they were fired on and the flotilla of British gunboats was nearly destroyed, on the 25th of June, 1859. Then it was that our own Commodore Tatnall, technically violating neutrality, came to the aid of the British, not only to offer his surgeons for the scores of wounded that lay on the decks of the shattered ships, but to blink at his boat’s crew of American sailors, as they served the one British gun on the flagship that was left unhurt.
Later on, he lent the aid of his boats to land detachments, which turned the Chinese defences from the rear. Tatnall gained world-wide reputation by his declaring that “Blood is thicker than water.” This phrase, now international, in its original form, was an old Scottish proverb, and as used by Sir Walter Scott more than once, it reads, “Blood is warmer than water.”
“For course of blood, our proverbs deem,
Is warmer than the mountain-stream,”—
says Scott in his introduction to Canto VI of “Marmion.”
Lord Elgin was sent again to China to demand apology, the execution of the treaty, and an indemnity from the Chinese. Then took place that awful sacking of the Imperial Summer Palace, by which the accumulations of art and taste for centuries were given over to the British and French common soldiers for plunder and devastation. The purpose in view was that the punishment for perfidy should fall, not on the common people, but immediately and personally on the faithless rulers. When, later, Elgin was sent as Viceroy and Governor-General of India,—the first appointed directly by the Crown,—he showed wonderful energy, firmness, and dignity, but died in the midst of his labors.