Chapter XX (2)

The Tsungli-Yamên, accustomed to act on hand-to-mouth views of policy, would do anything to relieve the pressure of the moment, but nothing to prevent a recurrence of it. Indisposed to follow up the sequences of cause and effect, they would in emergencies become impatient of ratiocination and attempt to reach the foregone conclusion by a shorter cut. Common gossip in China thus fairly summarised their attitude in certain crises of this kind. If discussion with the British Legation ran high, the Yamên would send for the inspector-general and ask simply, "Does this mean war?" The answer being "No," the question ceased to trouble the Yamên, and the foreign Minister would be allowed to rage at his pleasure. Their Excellencies would even help him out with the opprobrious terms he was searching for, and then listen placidly to the remainder of the tirade. Great Britain having not only the preponderating interest, but being still the leading Power in the Far East, it was obviously a great advantage for the Chinese that it should be that Power which came particularly under the influence of the inspector-general. To tie the hands of the British Government for a whole generation was, indeed, an achievement worthy of a master of policy; but it was by no means the only service which might be rendered to China even by an Inspector-General of Customs.

The same agency was destined in later days to unravel many tangled skeins in China's international relations. It brought Gordon to her rescue in 1880; by sheer innate ability in the use of the most unpromising means, it brought about peace with France in 1885; and, though with less success, it procured the attempted intervention of Great Britain with Japan in 1894.

How far these great potentialities were foreseen in the earlier years of the Customs service is doubtful. Even in their parental complacency Sir Rutherford Alcock and Mr Wade may well have failed to realise, as an uninterested outsider might have done, the nature of the power that was being nursed in their infant Hercules. Certain it is that they reckoned it as a factor on their own side. It is clear that Sir Rutherford Alcock, so far from regarding the inspector-general as an opponent, commended him to the Foreign Office as a valuable auxiliary. Mr Wade clung to the same belief for a good many years longer.

The first to perceive the tendency of the new relationship which events were bringing about was, no doubt, the inspector-general himself. China, he saw, could be best served by a virtual control of the British Legation. The nascent power was, however, too precious to be trusted to personal accidents, and the inspector-general wisely availed himself of circumstances as they arose to widen his basis of influence by establishing such relations with the Home Government as might save him from being wholly dependent on the life or the caprice of the representative for the time being at Peking. Such to an ordinary man might have appeared a hopeless ambition, considering the circumstance of distance and other adverse conditions. Yet by gradual steps this too was accomplished. A well-directed stroke or a happy accident established the inspector-general in high favour with the Board of Trade when under the presidency of Mr John Bright. He had summed up the results of the treaty revision[13] negotiations in 1868 in a congratulatory letter to the British Minister which has been many times published. As a masterly exposition of the State of China in its relation to foreign Powers it was warmly indorsed by Sir Rutherford Alcock, and is well worth perusal even at this day. The Board of Trade was much impressed by a presentment of the Chinese case so much in sympathy with the views often expressed by Mr Cobden and Mr Bright, and which are traditional in the Board of Trade. Their policy was noninterference in the affairs of China, based largely on their disparagement of the value of British interests in that country. In commenting on this closely reasoned State Paper, the Board of Trade specially selected for illustration of its merit the following passage: "Of course, force will wrest anything from China: but wherever there is action there is reaction; and as sure as natural laws continue to act, so sure it is that appeals to force in one age will give to the men of a later day a heritage of vengeance,--the Europeans of some future day may wish that their forefathers had not sown the seeds of hatred in the bayonet-ploughed soil of Cathay."

Nor was this the only result of the happy success of the new customs diplomacy, for, as the connecting link between commerce and politics, the Board of Trade was a potent agency in determining the political action of the Government, more especially when there was a strong man at the head of it and a weak one at the Foreign Office.

The rising power in China did not seek fresh conquests, but was adroit in seizing on such as came in its way, and circumstances having brought it in direct touch with the Foreign Office, that department was drawn into close relation with the Chinese customs.

The result of all this, briefly stated, was the partial effacement of the Legation and the gradual promotion of Sir Robert Hart to the first place in the confidence of the British Government. As the Foreign Office had, since the suppression of the Taiping rebellion and the death of Lord Palmerston, been most reluctant either to busy itself or to inform itself respecting affairs in China, and was, moreover, anxious to minimise the cost of the Legation in Peking, it was rather predisposed to accept volunteer assistance in the management of British interests in China. The Legation was then, as now, without any intelligence department, the cost of which was saved under the vague belief that all needful information might be obtained from the customs. Thus relegated to a secondary place, the Legation was more and more neglected by Her Majesty's Government, until at last representatives were selected at random and sent out without instructions, in blind reliance on the good offices of the Inspector-General of Customs.

Before this final stage had been reached, however, such an opportunity occurred, through the death of Sir Harry Parkes, of legitimising the irregular connection, as a death sometimes provides in certain relations of domestic life, and Sir Robert Hart was himself appointed British Minister. This step was recognised as so far appropriate to the circumstances that it conjoined responsibility with power, which had been too long divorced from each other. But just as the new Minister was about to assume his duties a hitch occurred with the Tsungli-Yamên, whose views as to the succession to the post of head of the customs not coinciding with Sir Robert Hart's, he thereupon resigned the office of British Minister and resumed his Chinese service. The incident made no difference in the confidence which Sir Robert Hart inspired in the Foreign Office, which had, in fact, drifted into a position of dependence on the inspector-general. This close relationship continued until the Japanese war in 1894, when the British Government, the victim of many illusions, found itself in a condition of bewilderment, like King Lear on the heath, quite unfurnished with the means of coping with the superior intelligence of the other European Powers.

Throughout all these years the attitude of the inspector-general towards his Chinese employers was absolutely above suspicion. He served them loyally throughout, and if the British Government imagined he was using his highly paid position under the Chinese Government in any way to promote other than Chinese interests, that was a gratuitous assumption on their part for which they alone were responsible, and for which, as for all false strategy, the inevitable penalty must be paid.

Among the important international services rendered by the foreign customs, the effective lighting of the coast deserves the first place. Next to that may be reckoned the compilation of accurate statistics of foreign trade with China, more complete perhaps than exists in any other country. The reports of the commissioners of customs at the various ports are also replete with varied and useful information concerning the commerce, industry, and agriculture, with other conditions of the life of the Chinese. Special subjects assigned to individual men are treated as exhaustively as if investigated by a Royal Commission. These valuable papers constitute a modern Chinese Repository to which there is but one drawback--its inaccessibility.

IV. EMIGRATION.

Extensive emigration of Chinese labourers in consequence of
gold discoveries--Great abuses--Attempt to diminish same by
international action--Tripartite treaty concluded in Peking--Not
ratified by France and England--Who send out amended treaty,
but negotiations never resumed by Chinese--Opposition of British
colonies and the United States to Chinese emigration.

The first public question with which Sir Rutherford Alcock was called upon to deal was that of the emigration or exportation of Chinese coolies. Among the consequences of the gold discoveries of the middle of the century was a demand for human labour, which China of all countries was best able to supply. Voluntary emigration to California and Australia (the "Old" and the "New Gold Mountain") was considerable; but it did not meet the requirements of those enterprises in tropical and subtropical countries which, if not originated, were at least stirred into activity by the impulse radiating from the gold mines. The contractor was called into requisition, and Chinese were carried off in shiploads to Cuba, Peru, Chili, "where they were sold into virtual slavery" under agreements over which there was no legal supervision. Terrible abuses characterised the traffic; mutiny and massacre on the high seas were among the natural consequences. "Another coolie tragedy" was as common a newspaper heading in the 'Fifties as "another missionary outrage" in the subsequent decades of the nineteenth century.

Hongkong being the most convenient shipping port, it was natural that thence should emanate the first efforts to suppress the abuses of the traffic. The "Chinese Passengers Act" passed by the Colonial Legislature in 1855 was a well-considered step in that direction, and the establishment of responsible emigration agencies was another. Such efforts, however, could only be partially successful; for while they cleared the colony from participation in a nefarious trade, they made no impression on the trade itself. Indeed, by throwing it into the least reputable channels, the fate of the victims may even have been rendered less endurable by the restrictive measures conceived for their benefit. The Portuguese settlement of Macao remained open, and there the coolie traffic flourished exceedingly, to the pecuniary advantage of that colony and of the maternal Government, which levies an annual tribute from its Far Eastern offspring. The trade was also carried on in a more or less clandestine and irregular manner at Canton, Swatow, and other Chinese ports, under non-British flags.

For years the colonial press was filled with the horrors of the traffic. Such paragraphs as the following were continually appearing in the Hongkong newspapers:--

At Macao the coolie trade is still rampant, with all its
abominations. The inquiries instituted, or said to have been
instituted, by Governor Amaral, have ended in smoke. Day after day
some additional iniquity comes to light in connection with this
horrible traffic. Coolies kidnapped, imprisoned in barracoons,
flogged to make them consent to sign the iniquitous contract that
binds them to a life of slavery, marched with a strong guard to
testify at the Government offices to their signature as given
voluntarily and freely, half-starved, exposed to blindness and
disease on board ship in transit to the place of their exile,
tossed overboard, or left on some barren isle to die, if loss of
sight or sickness renders them useless to their masters. Such
are the grand features of the Macao coolie trade, supported by
the governor in his official acts, and the semi-official paper he
edits. Such are the horrors of a slave-trade worse than that of
the poor African negro, which all nations ought to unite to put
an end to.

Foreigners could of course have had no success whatever in such man-hunting schemes without the interested co-operation of the natives. How this was obtained may be gathered from such reports as that of Mr W. M. Cooper, acting consul at Swatow, one of the principal entrepots.

Nowhere [he says] is population more dense than in the plains
of the Han. There is a constant tendency, where the struggle
for existence is so keen, and no drain exists as that caused by
recruiting for an army, towards the formation of a scum of bad
characters, whom their idleness or ill-deeds drive to prey on the
more industrious. These, frequently discarded by their families,
are seen by the official and the village elder on their way to
the coolie-house with a sense of relief and satisfaction; and
not seldom is the coolie-broker aided in his object of obtaining
men by persons of this class, and frequently by the relations of
the men themselves. Thus the trade is allowed to take root with
the concurrence of the heads of the people, who not only rid
themselves by means of it of a nuisance and a burden, but make
money by the transaction; and a connection is formed which the
broker, in his thirst for dollars, becoming gradually hardened and
more ruthless, is not slow to avail himself of in carrying out,
with greater boldness, evil designs on his victim.

But if the atrocities incident to the capture and embarkation cried aloud for a remedy, the brutalities of the middle passage were no less heinous; and though the light could not easily penetrate the scenes enacted in the distant mines and plantations which were the ultimate destination of the coolies, enough was known to show that their lot in Spanish-American and other countries and colonies was far from enviable.

To efface this blot on civilisation was the first object which engaged the attention of Sir Rutherford Alcock in Peking. The Chinese Government itself had remained for many years callous to the cruelties perpetrated on its subjects; but this was in keeping with its tolerant habit, its blindness to things disagreeable, and its constitutional aversion to overt action of any kind. The Peking authorities seem, however, to have been at last aroused by the interest in the question evinced by foreign Governments, and in 1866 the Chinese Ministers were induced to join the foreign Powers in devising means to ameliorate the condition of the emigrants. The suggestions of Prince Kung were practical and well directed towards a solution of the problem.

The problem, however, was by no means simple; for to be effective, regulations must be of universal obligation, and receive the sanction of all the interested Powers. There was no desire in any quarter to arrest the stream of honest and free emigration; on the contrary, it was welcomed as an outlet for destitute Chinese. To impose restrictions on Hongkong while the neighbouring colony was lawless and free; to place obstacles in the way of emigration to Demerara and Trinidad, where the coolies were happy and contented, thereby driving them in greater numbers to territories where they were enslaved,--was obviously no gain to humanity. The question, however, was as urgent as it was difficult.

Yet there were circumstances in the situation favourable to a satisfactory issue. Chief among these was the fact that France and England were still working loyally together in matters of cosmopolitan concern. Sir Rutherford Alcock found his French colleagues in Peking as amenable as he had found those in Yedo. The consequence was that, as the result of the winter's labours, a tripartite convention for the regulation of coolie emigration was signed in March 1866 by the British and French Ministers and Prince Kung. The convention was approved by the Ministers of Russia, the United States, and Prussia, though they were not parties to it. But the French Government took exception to certain of its provisions, and deferred ratification until these should be modified. The British Colonial Office and Emigration Board fell in with the views of the French Government. The settlement of the question was thereupon shifted from Peking to Paris and London, when voluminous correspondence ensued between the two Foreign Offices, extending through the years 1866, 1867, and into 1868. The co-operation between the two Governments was hearty and complete; and the amount of patient labour devoted to the task, especially by the French Foreign Office, which had not the auxiliary machinery at its disposal which existed in the Government departments in England, was in the highest degree creditable to both. It may suffice to say that after eighteen months of earnest work a "Projet de Règlement International d'Emigration" was completed in twenty-three articles with subsidiary forms, and was despatched to Peking at the end of 1867, the discussions having resulted in the retention of almost the entire text of the original convention--a fact which reflected no small credit on the Ministers in Peking who had drawn it up.

But when the time came for resuming negotiations in the Chinese capital, the Government there had relapsed into its habitual apathy respecting the welfare of its people. Possibly, also, the zeal of the resident Ministers of France and England may have cooled during the interval which had elapsed since their previous efforts. Their attention was becoming engrossed with other subjects. Effective co-operation between the three parties was evidently no longer feasible. The attempt to regulate emigration by a comprehensive international agreement was tacitly abandoned, and the evils of the coolie trade were left to be dealt with sporadically.

Free emigration from Hongkong--that is to say, of emigrants who paid their own passage--proceeded all the while on an extensive scale. But the laws of the colony did not permit contract emigration except to British colonies, and under elaborate supervision both at embarkation and after arrival at the field of labour. Although coolie ships could not be despatched from Hongkong, a certain amount of indirect participation in the traffic was maintained for some years by residents in the colony who supplied fittings for the coolie ships preparatory to their proceeding to the port of embarkation. Colonial legislation, however, gradually put an end to this, and successive ordinances so narrowed the field of the contractors' operations that the trade, both direct and indirect, was practically extinguished so far as Hongkong was concerned. A declaration by the Chief Justice in 1873 summed up the various prohibitory laws by enacting that the coolie trade would be treated as a slave trade, aiding or abetting which would be felony. In the year following, the Portuguese Government, yielding to the friendly pressure that had been for a long time put upon them, passed a law prohibiting the coolie trade at Macao.

While the emigrants were so anxiously protected at the outset of their voyage, the immigration of Chinese into the United States and the Australian colonies was exciting interest of a different kind in those countries. Legislation was continuously directed against the influx of Chinese, and not legislation only, but barbarous ill-treatment and outrages on a par with those perpetrated against foreigners in China. Mr Secretary Seward on his round-the-world tour in 1871 expressed himself highly favourable to Chinese labour in the United States, and his views afforded great encouragement to emigration to California for some years after. The treaty concluded at Washington in 1868 by Mr Burlingame accorded full privileges to Chinese in the United States. But a sharp reaction occurred in the views of American statesmen, and in 1880 the Chinese Government, by treaty made in Peking, consented to a modification of the Washington treaty of 1868, which would allow the United States to limit or suspend, though not absolutely to prohibit, Chinese immigration. This step towards prohibition was completed in another convention signed at Washington in 1894. Why the Chinese Government should have gratuitously consented to attach a stigma to their country and people is one of those inexplicable matters which abound in the history of China's foreign relations.

V. KOREA.

Comes into the sphere of international relations in 1866--Illegal
propagandism followed by persecutions--France adopts the
cause of the missions--Calls upon China as suzerain to punish
Koreans--Which failing, French Minister proclaims annexation
of Korea--Naval expedition repulsed--American naval expedition
repulsed in 1871.

It was in the year 1866 that foreign aggression first complicated the relations between China and her tributaries. The kingdom of Korea had with more consistency and more success than either China or Japan secluded itself absolutely from foreign intrusion. Nevertheless, the ubiquitous Jesuit had found his way there, under desperate subterfuges; for if the foreigner in general was proscribed, the foreign religionist was anathema to the rulers of Korea. The laws of the country were draconic in their severity against all priests or pretenders to supernatural authority; but the zeal of the Catholic propaganda defied the laws, though not always with impunity. "Persecutions," in fact, occasionally broke out, and "massacres" was a not inappropriate description of the repressive measures adopted by the Government in vindication of what it considered the law of the State. The French Government, or at least its representative in Peking, resolved to espouse the cause of the persecuted missionaries in 1866, and to make reprisals on the King of Korea. But that country being a vassal state, the demand was first made formally on the suzerain, that he should cause the Korean persecutors to be punished and the missionaries avenged. This was not only prejudging the particular case, but was yet another instance of foreigners forcing a formula on China, and making her answerable to a tribunal of whose jurisdiction she had no cognisance. The relations of China to the surrounding States which acknowledged her suzerainty were vague and various, imperfectly understood by Western States, as was sufficiently proved in the Burma Convention concluded between Great Britain and China in 1886. But the French _chargé d'affaires_ recognised no debatable ground such as even in the international comity of the West differentiates one dependent State from another, and one suzerain Power from another. In the British system alone the diversity in the relations of the members to the head is sufficient to exclude the application of any general rule. While the touchstone of war would no doubt reduce all to one level, yet in the matter of administrative responsibility what single rule could embrace, for example, India, Malta, the self-governing colonies, the Transvaal, and the African Protectorates? M. de Bellonet, however, was not embarrassed by any dubitations about the clean-cut rule to be enforced on China and Korea. He simply demanded that the suzerain should punish the vassal, failing which, he would take the affair into his own hands. Logical, no doubt, and not unreasonable, assuming the quarrel to be just. But the French _chargé_ went a step further in adjudging the actual dissolution of the family compact and sequestration of the inferior kingdom. On Prince Kung's declining responsibility for the Korean persecutions, M. de Bellonet, without further ado, annexed Korea to the empire of France, dethroned the king, and posted placards about the streets of Peking promulgating the fact. To Prince Kung he addressed a weighty despatch, in which he said, "The same day on which the King of Korea laid his hands on my unhappy countrymen was the last of his reign. He himself declared its end, which I, in my turn, solemnly declare to-day."[14]

This was carrying the question beyond the scope of international law.

Taking an analogy from common life, a father may neglect to correct a mischievous son, and thus leave his neighbours free to take the law into their own hands, but their right to chastise or prosecute does not include that of annulling the parental relationship, and of making a bondman of the offender. Force, of course, may effect such a rupture in the connection between nations, but in this case the force had not yet been applied. Admiral Roze proceeded with a squadron to the mouth of the Han, the waterway to the Korean capital, bombarded forts, and left his name to an island which faces the port of Chemulpo. The incident was then at an end.

But not the effects of it. It was to Chinese and Koreans a flash of the Röntgen rays that revealed the innermost hearts of the foreigners with a vividness not to be forgotten; it was the whole missionary question, from the Eastern point of view, in a nutshell. To violate the laws and teach the natives to do so, and then appeal to foreign Governments to back them in this insidious form of rebellion--that was the function of the missionaries. The foreign Government thereupon lays claim to the territory, and so the conspiracy is crowned. In the face of such an unveiling of motives the chance of the Chinese statesmen being led by the friendly counsel poured constantly into their ears by the foreign Ministers in Peking must have been small indeed.

About the same time a small American vessel called the General Sherman, with a cargo of notions and some passengers, including one English missionary, made her way through the archipelago which fringes the coast into the inner waters of Korea. She was never again heard of, and the fate of crew and passengers was for long a matter of report and surmise. At last, in 1868, a United States ship of war, the Shenandoah, was sent to the Korean coast to get information about the General Sherman. Nothing whatever was learned. Then Mr George F. Seward, consul-general in Shanghai, advocated a mission to Korea with a sufficient force to ensure respect. His persevering recommendations prevailed with the Government at Washington, and a squadron was equipped in 1871 to proceed to Korea and attempt to open the country, the admiral being furnished with copies of the Japan treaties of 1854 and 1858 as models. The Americans at once came into collision with the Korean troops, bombarded their forts, and defeated with considerable loss a military force marshalled to resist them. But no negotiations were possible. The Korean Government remained impervious to remonstrance and uncompromising in its refusal of intercourse. The following characteristic letter, addressed by the Korean authorities to Admiral Rogers, tersely expresses their attitude of resolute isolation:--

In the year 1868 a man of your nation, whose name was Febiger,
came here and communicated and went away; why cannot you do the
same? In 1866 a people called the French came here, and we refer
you to them for what happened. This people has lived 4000 years
in the enjoyment of its own civilisation, and we want no other.
We trouble no other nation--why do you trouble us? Our country
is in the extreme east, and yours in the extreme west; for what
purpose do you come so many thousand miles across the sea? Is it
to inquire about the ship destroyed [the General Sherman]? Her men
committed piracy and murder, and they were punished with death.
Do you want our land? That cannot be. Do you want intercourse with
us? That cannot be either.

The American ships withdrew, as the French had done, leaving the peninsula once more to its fate.

Previously to this a piratical expedition was attempted by a German in a North-German steamer, instigated and piloted by a French priest. Its purpose was to desecrate the tombs of the kings, with a view to carrying off the golden treasures with which they were believed to be buried.

The three fiascos left no outward trace in the current of affairs in China, and diplomatic intercourse proceeded in the capital as if the Korean peninsula did not exist. Let it not be supposed, however, that the statesmen of Peking failed to take these exhibitions to heart, although they maintained the strictest reserve on the subject. Christian proselytism and foreign domination were once more discovered in active alliance, justifying all the suspicions of the Asiatic nations.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] There is more truth than may appear in the bishop's paradox.
Peking is singularly free from epidemics, except occasionally
of smallpox. When Shanghai suffered so severely from cholera in
1862, there were two British regiments quartered there--one, the
67th, within the native city, amid filth and stagnant water; the
other, the 31st, in the foreign settlement, in quarters carefully
selected by the surgeon, Dr Rennie. The 31st lost a third of its
strength; the 67th suffered very little. Writing in August 1860
from Peitang, a town 500 yards square in the midst of a great
swamp, into which 17,000 men were huddled, Sir Hope Grant says:
"Notwithstanding the pestilential nature of the place, our troops,
wonderful to say, never enjoyed better health."

[13] See _infra_, "Revision of the Treaty," pp. 210-222.

[14] _Vide_ 'U.S. Diplomatic Corresp.,' vol. ii. for 1867, p. 424.