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THE ENGLISHMAN IN CHINA
Chap, xxiil: Tsze-kung asked, saying, "Is there one word which
may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?" The Master
said, "Is not Reciprocity such a w(yrdf What you do not
want done to yourself, do not do to others."
.»>■.-
K
Wajiu.-i*.Cockerelltjh.:
PEEFACE
Reminiscences of the Far East called up by the
death of Sir Rutherford Alcock in November 1897
prompted the writer to send a contribution on the
subject to ' Blackwood's Magazine.' Being appreci-
ated by the family, the article suggested to them
some more substantial memorial of the deceased
statesman, a scheme with which the writer fell in
the more readily that it seemed to harmonise with
the task which friends had been already urging upon
him — that of writinof some account of occurrences in
the Far East during his own residence there. For
there was no other name round w^hich these events
could be so consistently grouped during the thirty
years when British policy was a power in that part
of the world. As Consul and Minister Alcock was
so interwoven with the history of the period that
neither the life of the man nor the times in which
he lived could be treated apart. And the personal
element renders his connection with Far Eastern
affairs particularly instructive, for, combining the
highest executive qualities with a philosophic grasp
of the problems with which he had to deal, he at
vi PREFACE.
the same time possessed the faculty of exposition,
whereby the vital relation between the theoretical
and the practical sides of Far Eastern politics was
made plain. The student may thus draw his lessons
equally from the actions and the reflections of this
great official.
The life history of Sir Kutherford Alcock is that of
the progressive development of a sterling character
making in all circumstances the most of itself, self-
reliant, self-supporting, without friends or fortune,
without interest or advantage of any kind whatso-
ever. From first to last the record is clear, without
sediment or anything requiring to be veiled or
extenuated. Every achievement, great or small, is
stamped with the hall-mark of duty, of unfaltering
devotion to the service of the nation and to the
interests of humanity.
A copious and facile writer, he has left singularly
little in the way of personal history. The only
journal he seems ever to have kept was consigned
by him to oblivion, a few early dates and remarks
having alone been rescued. When in recent years
he was approached by friends on the subject of auto-
biography, he was wont to reply, "My life is in my
work ; by that I am content to be remembered."
We must needs therefore take him at his word and
judge by the fruit what was the nature of the tree.
In the following work the reader may trace in
more or less continuous outline the stages by which
the present relation between China and foreign nations
has been reached. In the earlier portion the course
of events indicated is comparatively simple, being con-
fined to Anglo-Chinese developing into Anglo-Franco-
PREFACE. Vll
Chinese relations. In the latter portion, corresponding
roughly with the second volume, the stream becomes
subdivided into many collateral branches, as all the
Western nations and Japan, with their separate in-
terests, came to claim their share, each in its own
way, of the intercourse with China. It is hoped that
the data submitted to the reader will enable him to
draw such conclusions as to past transactions as may
furnish a basis for estimating future probabilities.
The scope of the work being restricted to the points
of contact between China and the rest of the world,
nothing recondite is attempted, still less is any enigma
solved. It is the belief of the author that the so-called
Chinese mystery has been a source of needless mysti-
fication ; that the relation between China and the
outer world was intrinsically simple ; and that to
have worked from the basis of their resemblances
to the rest of humanity would have been a shorter
way to an amicable understanding with the Chinese
than the crude attempt to accommodate Western
procedure to the uncompreh ended differences which
divided them. It needed no mastery of their sociology
to keep the Chinese strictly to their written engage-
ments and to deter them from outrage. But discussion
was the invitation to laxity ; and laxity, condoned and
pampered, then defiant and triumphant, lies at the root
of the disasters which have befallen the Chinese Empire
itself, and now threaten to recoil also upon the foreign
nations which are responsible for them. This responsi-
bility was never more tersely summed up than by Mr
Burlingame in his capacity of Chinese Envoy. After
sounding the Foreign Ofiice that astute diplomatist was
able to inform the Tsungli-Yamen in 1869 that *'the
viii PREFACE.
British Government was so friendly and pacific that
they would endure anything." The dictum, though
true, was fatal, and the operation of it during thii'ty
subsequent years explains most that has happened
during that period, at least in the relations between
China and Great Britain.
A word as to the orthography may be useful to the
reader. The impossibility of transliterating Chinese
sounds into any alphabetical language causes great
confusion in the spelling of names. A uniform system
would indeed be most desirable, but common practice
has already fixed so many of them that it seems
better, in a book intended for general reading, not
to depart too much from the conventional usage,
or attempt to follow any scientific system, which
must, after all, be based upon mispronunciation of
the Chinese sounds.
As regards personal names, it may be convenient
to call attention to the distinction between Chinese
and Manchu forms. In the case of the former the
custom is to write the nomen, or family name, separ-
ately, and the pre-nomen (which by Chinese practice
becomes the post-nomen) by itself, and, when it con-
sists of two characters, separated by a hyphen — e.g.,
Li [nomen) Hung-chang (post-nomen). In the case
of Manchus, who are known not by a family name,
but by what may be termed, for want of a better
expression, their pre-nomen, it is customary to write
the name in one word, without hyphens — for example,
Kiying, Ilipu. As the Chinese name usually consists
of three characters or syllables, and the Manchu
usually of two, the form of name affords a p)rima
facie indication of the extraction of the personage
PREFACE. IX
referred to. Polysyllabic names, as San-ko-lin-sin,
are generally Mongol.
The sovereign is not referred to by name, the terms
Kwanghsu, Tungchih, and so forth, being the Chinese
characters chosen to designate, or, as we might say,
idealise the reign, in the same way as impersonal titles
are selected for houses of business.
I desire to express my deep obligation to Sir Ruther-
ford Alcock's stepdaughter Amy, Lady Pelly, without
whose efficient aid the book could not have been
compiled. It is a subject of regret to all concerned
that Lady Alcock herself did not live to see the
completion of a task in the inception of which she
took a keen and loving interest.
To the other friends who have in different ways
helped in the production of the book, and particularly
to Mr William Keswick, M.P., for the loan of his
valuable Chinnery and Crealock drawings, my best
thanks are due.
A. M.
London, November 2wc?, 1900.
Postscript. — The legend on the front cover is a paraphrase of Chapter
xxiii,, Book xv., of the Analects of Confucius, Dr Legge's translation of
which has been adopted by me as the motto of these volumes.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAP.
I. THE ARMY SURGEON
I. YOUTH
II. THE PENINSULA, 1832-1837 .
III. ENGLAND, 1838-1844 ....
IL SENT TO CHINA
FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA
III. ANTECEDENTS OP THE WAR
I. THE OPIUM TRADE ....
IL THE SEQUEL TO THE SURRENDER OF OPIUM
IV. THE FIRST CHINA WAR, 1839-1842
V. THE TREATY OF 1842 .....
VL THE FRUITS OF THE WAR AND PROSPECTS OF PEACE
VIL THE NEW INTERCOURSE : CANTON, 1842-1847
VIIL THE NEW TREATY PORTS FOOCHOW, AMOY, NINGPO
IX. SHANGHAI
I. THE TSINGPU AFFA.IR ....
IL REBELLION
III. THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS .
IV. CREATION OF THE FOREIGN CUSTOMS
V. MR ALCOCk's DEPARTURE FROM SHANGHAI
X. CONSUL ALCOCk's VIEWS ON GENERAL POLICY .
XL TRADE UNDER THE TREATY OF NANKING
I. TEA .
II. SILK .
III. OPIUM
IV. CHINESE EXPORTS
V. BRITISH EXPORTS
VL NATIVE TRADE .
1
8
23
29
31
42
55
60
78
86
93
112
124
129
135
143
149
156
161
167
178
187
191
200
203
207
Xll
CONTENTS.
XII. SHIPPING
XIII. THE TRADERS
I. FOREIGN
II. CHINESE
XIV. HONGKONG .
XV. MACAO
XVI. PIRACY
XVII. THE ARROW WAR
I. THE EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION
II. LORD Elgin's second mission .
XVIII. INTERCOURSE UNDER THE TREATIES OF 1858 AND 1860
I. THE DIPLOMATIC OVERTURE
IL NEW PORTS AND OPENING OF YANGTZE
IIL ADMIRAL HOPe's POLICY TOWARDS INSURGENTS
IV. THE LAY-OSBORN FLOTILLA
V. THE END OF THE REBELLION
VI. EVACUATION OF CANTON ....
VII. DEATH OF THE EMPEROR ....
VIII. INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS ON PROGRESS OF
DIPLOMACY ......
211
248
263
271
287
299
303
320
349
361
369
375
387
392
396
397
398
APPENDIX.
I. NOTE ON OUR PRESENT POSITION AND THE STATE OF OUR
RELATIONS WITH CHINA, BY CONSUL ALCOCK, JANUARY
19, 1849 411
II. CONFIDENTIAL DESPATCH BY CONSUL ALCOCK TO SIR GEORGE
BONHAM, JANUARY 13, 1852 ..... 428
III. CONFIDENTIAL DESPATCH TO SIR GEORGE BONHAM, DATED JUNE
17, 1852. (extract) 432
IV. ACCOUNT OF THE SALT TRADE ANNEXED TO MR PARKES' SUM-
MARY OF THE NATIVE MARITIME TRADE OF FOOCHOW,
1846. (extracts) 439
ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE FIRST TOLUME.
DENTS VERANDAH, MACAO ......
GEORGE CHINNERY
From ail oil-painting by himself.
SIR FREDERICK BRUCE .......
MR LOCH DEPARTS FROM PEKING FOR ENGLAND WITH CHINESE
TREATY ........
MONSEIGNEUR MOUILLI .......
FIRST BRITISH CONSULATE AT KOLENGSOO, 1844
48
MR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-FOUR . FrontlSpiece
From a drawing by L. A. de Fabeck.
MACAO .........
H.M. SHIPS IMOGEN AND ANDROMACHE PASSING BOCCA TIGRIS
BATTERIES ........
THE LAKES, NINGPO .......
THE FIRST CONSULAR RESIDENCE AT FOOCHOW .
BRIDGE OVER RIVER MIN ......
THE SECOND CONSULAR RESIDENCE AT FOOCHOW, 1848
BAMBOO BRIDGE AT FOOCHOW ......
COUNTRY WATERWAY NEAR SHANGHAI ....
ENTRANCE TO SZE-KING, NEAR SHANGHAI . .
RUSTIC SCENE NEAR SHANGHAI
VILLAGE ON THE CANALS . ' .
70
114
116
120
122
124
126
136
156
200
294
298
348
354
356
370
MAPS.
MAP OF CANTON WATERS
YANGTZE AND GRAND CANAL .....
MOUTH OF YANGTZE AND CHUSAN ARCHIPELAGO
ROADS AND WATERWAYS BETWEEN PEKING AND TIENTSIN
62
75
132
331
THE ENGLISHMAN IN CHINA.
CHAPTER I.
THE ARMY SURGEON.
I. YOUTH.
Birth at Ealing — Motherless childhood — Feeble health — Irregular schooling
— Medical education— Student days in Paris — Wax-modelling — Admis-
sion to College of Surgeons — House Surgeon at Westminster Hospital.
Born in the same year as Mr Gladstone, May 1809,
John Rutherford Alcock^ predeceased that statesman
by only six months. His birthplace was Ealing, and he
died in Westminster, after a residence there in retire-
ment of twenty-seven years. Being a delicate infant,
he was baptised in Ealing church when one day old.
His childhood was deprived of its sunshine by the loss
of his mother, and it does not appear that his father, a
medical man of some note, and an artist to boot, was
equal to filling the void in the young life. Consequently
boyhood had for him none of the halo of a golden age,
but was, on the contrary, a grey and cheerless memory,
1 He dropped the " John " so early in life that he was never known by it.
VOL. I. A
2 YOUTH. [chap. I.
furnishing tests of hardihood rather than those glowing
aspirations which generally kindle young ambitions.
His early life was passed with relatives in the north
of England, and he went to school at Hexham, where
he had for companions Sir John Swinburne and Mr
Dawson Lambton.
Of his school-days there is little to remark. Indeed
his early education seems to have been most irregular,
having been subject to long and frequent interruptions
on account of ill-health, which necessitated sea- voyages
and other changes of air. Nevertheless the diligence
which was part of his nature compensated for these
drawbacks of his youth, and set its seal on his whole
after-career.
On returning to his father's house at the age of
fifteen, the boy began his medical education, being,
according to the fashion of the day, apprenticed to his
father, and at the same time entered as a student at
the Westminster Hospital and the Eoyal Westminster
Ophthalmic Hospital under that distinguished surgeon,
G. J. Guthrie. His passion for art had already asserted
itself, and he was enabled to indulge it by constant
visits to Chantrey's studio, where, ''amid the musical
sounds of the chisel on the marble, with snatches of
airs from the workmen, where all breathed a calm and
happy repose, he passed delightful hours." His half-
holidays were spent at Chantrey's in modelling.
In the following year he visited Paris, and seems
ever after to have looked back on the gay city as a
kind of paradise, for there the world first really opened
to the young man of sixteen. Then began that life of
work and enjoyment, so blended as to be inseparable,
which continued without intermission for more than
seventy years. In the stimulating atmosphere of Paris,
i
THE MEDICAL STUDENT. 3
and its free and independent life, the boy's faculties
rapidly developed. He seemed, indeed, to expand
suddenly into full manhood. Destined for the medical
profession, he worked hard at anatomy, chemistry, and
natural history, while taking also a keen interest in
artistic and literary subjects ; mastered French and
Italian ; and, in short, turned his twelve or eighteen
months' sojourn to highly practical account.
From a small pocket-book containing notes of the
journey to France, and part of his work in Paris, we
give some extracts illustrative of the boy's character
and powers of observation.
It was on the 17th of August 1825 that the party
embarked at the Custom-House Stairs for Calais, the
voyage occupying fourteen hours. On landing the lad
" amused himself by observing the effects in the sky
and the sea, and by picking up shells, bones of birds
and animals, which having remained in the sea until
perfectly clean, looked beautiful and white as ivory."
Simple things interested him, and after dinner at the
Hotel Meurice in Paris he " listened with much plea-
sure to a man playing airs on what he called an Ameri-
can flute" — which he goes on to describe : "The tones
were mellow in the extreme, and the airs he played
I think were much superior in sweetness to any I have
ever heard from an instrument so clear," and so on.
Obviously a subjective impression ; it is his own eman-
cipation that beautifies the simplest things and inspires
the simplest sounds. Like the convalescent in Gray —
" The meanest floweret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening Paradise."
Od his first Sunday in Paris he was " much struck
4 YOUTH. [chap. I.
with the beauty of the paintings and a great number
of pieces sculptured in has-relief." Then he walked in
the gardens of the Tuileries, "which in extent, in
statues and in fountains, in the appearance of it taking
it altogether, far exceeded anything my imagination
had conceived concerning it."
At Versailles he was " highly delighted with many
of the paintings. The gardens are extremely extensive
and the fountains very numerous ; . . . but it is all
extremely artificial, and therefore soon fatigues the
eye." In these slight observations are perceptible
the artistic instinct and sense of fitness, faculties
which served him so admirably in his future work, and
mifi-ht have won him distinction in other fields than
those in which his lot was ultimately cast.
He was in Paris for a serious purpose, the study of
medicine and surgery, and seriously he followed it.
At the same time he mixed freely in the artistic and
literary society of the French capital, and left none of
his talents uncultivated. A characteristic incident in
his educational career was his mastering the art of
modelling in wax and in plaster. Following up his
experiments in Chantrey's studio, he took regular
lessons in Paris, and attained such proficiency that,
young as he was, he was able to maintain himself
while in that city by the sale of his anatomical models.
For one of these he mentions receiving fifty guineas,
and a few years after " for two arms and two legs the
size of life" he notes receiving 140 guineas.. These
also won for him distinctions at home, for in the year
1825 he was awarded the "Gold Isis Medal" of the
Society of Arts, and in the following year the " laro"e
gold medal" of that society, for original models in
WORK AND STUDY. 5
coloured wax. And it may be mentioned as character-
istic that although in later years an active member of
that society, Sir H. T. Wood, the secretary, who knew
him well, was unaware of Sir Rutherford Alcock's
having so early in life received the society's medals.
"The fact is an interesting one," he says, "and I am
glad to have had my attention drawn to it." Some of
these works were preserved in the Museum of the
College of Surgeons, while others, prepared in special
wax, were bought by Government for the use of the
Indian medical schools.
From the small pocket-book to which we have al-
ready referred, and which contains concise notes of his
course of instruction in modelling under a M. Dupont,
we extract the note of his first lesson. It shows
thoroughness of mind, keenness of observation, and
the instinct for accuracy which enabled him so soon
to attain to excellence in the art, and led to success
in all the other pursuits of his life : —
Sept. 1. — To-day my first lesson in modelling began. I saw
M. Dupont work upcm a mask of a little boy's face in wax.
He opened the eyes, but did not in my opinion make them
quite correct. The only thing I observed in particular was his
using oil very freely with his tool. I afterwards saw three
moulds of a thigh near the hip after amputation, cast in wax.
One was soaked in water, another was rubbed with soft-soap,
and a third was well oiled. The one that was oiled produced
the most perfect cast, but I should have thought both water,
soap, and oil were used much too freely. They were all cast in
wax of a deep red colour, and one of them was placed in the
stump of one of the thighs of the model on which M. Dupont
was engaged. It was not quite large enough for the thigh in
some places, and too large in others. This he altered without
scruple, so that when the stump was finished, though it looked
extremely natural, it was by no means accurate.
6 YOUTH. [chap. I.
Before quitting the life in Paris the following sample
of its popular amusements as they presented themselves
to the young student may be interesting to readers, and
it is unfortunately the last entry in the pocket-book,
and almost the last assistance we shall get from jour-
nals during the seventy years of crowded life which
followed : —
I went yesterday [Sunday, September 10, 1826] to the
Swiss Mountain, very extensive gardens on the Boulevards,
where the most respectable part of the pleasure - seeking
Parisians assemble on Sunday : you pay ten sous admittance.
Here there is a large establishment for dinners where you may
dine as at the restaurateurs, in a public room, or there are a
long suite of apartments for parties of four, six, or twelve each,
looking out into the gardens, and immediately before the
windows was the space enclosed by trees, which form a canopy
over it, and which is allotted to dancing. On one side is the
orchestra; and when I heard it there was a very excellent
band of musicians in it. It was rather unfavourable weather,
as there were in the course of the day several very heavy
showers, yet there seemed to be a very great number of ele-
gantly dressed females and respectable-looking men ; and some
even highly-dressed, which is a wonder, I think, for the gentle-
men in Paris seem to dress as much inferior to us as the French
ladies dress better than the English. Indeed it is quite delight-
ful to see the great taste with which they dress and the
elegance of contour in all their figures. I don't know how it
happens, but I never recollect seeing a French woman that was
at all above the lowest class of society that was a slovenly or
slattern figure, and very few that were not really elegant,
though their faces are, generally speaking, plain.
After having dined I went to see the Swiss Mountain, which
had made a noise whilst I was at dinner that very much
resembled distant thunder. I had no idea what it was ; my
surprise may therefore be conceived when, on coming suddenly
in sight of it, I saw a man, apparently sitting on a chair, whirl
past me with a velocity more resembling the speed of lightning
than anything I had before seen, — so much so, that though
from the top to the bottom where they drop might be about
AMUSEMENTS IN PARIS. 7
200 feet, I had merely time to perceive that there was a man
seated on some sort of vehicle like a chair.
The mountain consisted of boards raised at an angle of about
from 60° to 70° with the ground, and gradually becoming level.
The distance from where they set off to where they stop I have
before stated, I think, to be about 200 feet.
This platform is sufficiently broad to allow three of the
vehicles to go down and one to return up at the same time —
that is to say, there are four iron grooves accurately fitted to
the small wheels on which the vehicles move. There are
horses as well as chairs for both ladies and gentlemen. I saw
several gentlemen on horseback and one lady. The horses
appear to me to be real horses' hides, perhaps covering a wooden
horse. They are accoutred with saddle, stirrups, and bridle.
One person who came down on one of these horses rose and
fell in his stirrups as though riding a real horse ; it created much
laughter, and the people surrounding immediately called out
" Un Anglais ! un Anglais ! " I believe he was an Englishman.
It had a ridiculous effect to observe the anxiety depicted on the
countenances of the heroes, and compare them, with the know-
ledge of their perfect safety, with the laughing groups that
surrounded them. Sometimes a veteran hero would mount one
of the horses and come down with triumph in his countenance ;
the effect then became still more ridiculous, for he seemed like
a great baby mounted on a hobby-horse proportionately large.
But so it is through life, I think ; one sees people capable of
being elated as much by actions little in themselves, but en-
larged for the instant by circumstances, as, for instance, in this
case — the rapidity of motion, the gay crowd, and the distant
music — as they would have been by an action really great in
itself but unembroidered by outward show.
Hearing the music and wishing to see the dancing I had
heard so much of, I approached the dancers. We read that the
French enjoy dancing with great zest ; certes, to see them dance
a quadrille, one would not say so : 'tis true it is a dance in
which custom has forbidden much exertion, still the entire
listlessness they show induced me to think it was a task rather
than a pleasure. But when a lively waltz struck up and the
waltzing began, I . . .
Here the notes break off.
8 THE PENINSULA. [cHAP. I.
Of the student's life of four years from 1828 to 1832
there is little which can or need be said. For two
years and a half out of the four he was house surgeon
at the Westminster Hospital and the Ophthalmic
Hospital, having received, at the age of twenty-
one, the diploma from the Royal College to practise
surgery. During this period he continued modelling,
and took pupils in that art. Writing for periodicals
also occupied some of his leisure time.
No sooner was his student career ended than an
opening presented itself which determined the future
course of his life, but in a way very different from
what could possibly have been anticipated.
II. THE PENINSULA, 1832-1837.
Dynastic quarrel in Portugal — Foreign legion — Mr Alcock enters the
service, 1832 — Character of the force and its leaders — Colonel Shaw
— Incidents of the campaign — Important medical services of Mr
Alcock — Joins the Spanish Foreign Legion, 1836 — Termination of the
campaign.
There were troubles in Portugal. The usurper Dom
Miguel was on the throne. It was proposed to seat
the rightful sovereign. Donna Maria, there — her father,
Dom Pedro, ex-Emperor of Brazil, who assumed the
title of Duke of Braganza, heading the movement.
Sympathy was excited in France and England, in
both of which countries irregular forces were levied
to co-operate with the constitutional party in Portugal
led by his imperial majesty. It was a kind of service
which tempted alike young bloods and old soldiers who
had been languishing in peace and idleness since 1815,
THE ARMY SURGEON. 9
and a small army of "Liberators" was got together
in England, with a corresponding naval force.
It has been mentioned that young Alcock had
studied under the eminent army surgeon Guthrie.
Feelings of regard had sprung up between the two
which extended far beyond the professional sphere.
Not only had the boy been a favourite pupil whose
aptitude reflected credit on his teacher, but it is
quite evident that a personal affection which lasted
their respective lifetimes was rekindled during the
years they subsequently spent together in West-
minster. When, therefore, Mr Guthrie was applied
to by Mr O'Meara, who had been in attendance on
Napoleon at St Helena, to recommend a surgeon for
the British - Portuguese force, Guthrie sent at once
for Alcock and discussed with him his professional
prospects. The upshot was that as, considering his
youth, — he was then only twenty-two, — it was useless
for him to think of beginning practice in London, a
few years might be most advantageously passed in
military service abroad. The young man was only
too eager to close with the offer then made to him,
which not only afforded the prospect of active pro-
fessional work, but seemed to open the way for ad-
ventures such as the soul of a young man loveth.
Within twenty - four hours of accepting the offer
Alcock was on the way to Portsmouth and the
Azores. For some time after his arrival there he
did duty on board ship. His ambition being
cramped by this restricted service, however, he was
anxious to be transferred to the military force. He
accordingly applied to Colonel Hodges, who com-
manded the marine battalion, to be taken on his
10 THE PENINSULA. [chap. i.
staff. The colonel looked at him with some hesita-
tion owing to his extremely youthful appearance, but
on hearing that he had been specially recommended
by Guthrie, said, "Oh, that is a different matter ; come
along."
Of the Peninsular expeditions of 1832-37 the interest
for the present generation lies less in their origin, aims,
and results, than in their conduct and incidents. They
were episodes which have left no marks on the general
course of history visible to the ordinary observer, and
are memorable chiefly for their dramatic effects, the
play of character, the exhibitions of personal courage,
capacity, and devotion ; of jealousy, intrigue, and in-
capacity ; of love and hate ; and of the lights and
shadows that flit across the theatre of human life.
Interferences in other people's quarrels naturally bring
to the surface all the incongruities. The auxiliaries
are sure to be thought arrogant whether they are
really so or not, and the proteges are no less certain
to be deemed ungrateful. Each party is apt to under-
estimate the exploits of the other and to exaggerate
his own. They take widely different views of the
conditions under which their respective services are
rendered ; they misconstrue each other's motives, as-
sessing them at their lowest apparent value. Each
side looks for certain sentimental acknowledgments
from the other, while daily frictions and inevitable
misunderstandings continually embitter the disappoint-
ment felt at their absence. And there are not two
parties, but many. There are wheels within wheels ;
sections playing on each other tricks which savour
of treachery on the one side, while on the other side
there may be sulks which are constructive mutiny.
SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. 11
The question of pay is naturally a constant source of
bitterness, for countries that need foreign assistance
are impecunious and dilatory. Few of them would be
entitled to the certificate which Dugald Dalgetty gave
to his excellent paymasters, the Dutch. Yet in spite
of drawbacks, there is a kind of method in the whole
business, a movement towards a goal, though at a
maximum of cost, with the greatest waste and the
most poignant regrets over mismanagement.
But what in these irregular campaigns is so remark-
able as to be almost repugnant to common reason is
the devotion of the mercenary soldier. This inspirit-
ing sentiment, which springs up spontaneously like
a wild-flower in desert places, seems to put patriotism
in the shade as a motive for sacrifice. The hired
soldier, though an alien, is often indeed more faithful
than the son of the soil, perhaps for the reason that
his allegiance is of a simpler nature, more categorical
and explicit. The direct personal character of such
alien allegiance and its transferability are exemplified
in the lives of soldiers of fortune in general : never
better, perhaps, than in the wild and dangerous career
of Alexander Gardner, colonel of artillery in the
service of Maharaja Eanjit Singh, whose Memoirs
have been recently edited by Major Hugh Pearse.
Is it the fighting instinct, hereditary heroism, or
military discipline that makes the soldier? Is it the
cause that inspires him, or is it only devotion to
his immediate leader ? Explain it how we may, the
British Legion both in Portugal and in Spain main-
tained the character of their race for pluck and ten-
acity as well as if they had been fighting for their
own king and country. And this is rendered stiU
12 THE PENINSULA. [chap. i.
more remarkable when the promiscuous manner of
their muster is considered. Clandestine engagements
in the slums of Soho, under the guise of labour or
emigrant contracts, in evasion of the Foreign Enlist-
ment Acts ; surreptitious journeys, as " hop-pickers,"
to Gravesend ; secret embarkations under cover of
night ; and the disciplining of a mob composed of
the dregs of the streets, afford subject of some
graphic and humorous descriptions on the part of
the officers concerned in raising the squad and lick-
ing them into shape. It must have required a very-
sanguine faith in the radical qualities of the stock
for any officer of repute to consent to " march
through Coventry" with such a herd of scalliwags.
The officer who seems to have had a principal
share in collecting these raw levies, and distinguished
himself in both campaigns in the Peninsula, in which
he bore a leading part, has left us some racy de-
scriptions of the force and its experiences in the field.
Sir Charles Shaw was himself a typical soldier by
nature and by practice. Circumstances alone would
determine whether it should be as a soldier of fortune,
a patriot defending hearths and homes, or as an
Ishmaelite adventurer, that his sword would be un-
sheathed. The sporting and adventurous instinct
scents danger afar, like the war-horse in the book of
Job which laughs at the spears. The manner in
which he came to embrace the profession of arms
was itself so characteristic as to deserve mention.
As a youth he was passionately devoted to sport,
and when that momentous question the choice of a
profession came up for consideration, sport decided
it in favour of law, for the somewhat original reason
COLONEL SHAW. 13
that the young gentleman had observed that lawyers
seemed to enjoy the longest holidays ! He had begun
his studies, and was on his way to St Andrews to
enter on a new course when an incident occurred
which diverted the current of his thoughts. He met
a batch of French prisoners of war being removed
from one garrison to another, whose misery affected
him so much that he was instantly seized with the
idea of becoming a soldier. The particular form in
which the inspiration took him was that he put
himself in the position of one of these prisoners and
imaofined himself the hero of his own and his
comrades' deliverance.
His studies at St Andrews, perturbed by the new
passion, made indifferent progress. The historic golf-
links afforded some relief, acting as a kind of neutral
soothing medium between antagonistic aspirations.
But the final solution of his troubles came from a
famous piece of water which is there, called the
Witches Pond. The virtue of this water was great
in the barbaric age when the curse of witchcraft lay
heavy on the land. The suspected person was thrown
into the water. If she floated, her guilt was proven
and she was incontinently burned ; if she sank, it
proved the high specific gravity of flesh and bone.
Happy thought ! The young man would subject
his life's destiny to this convenient ordeal. He
would jump into the pond, and either sink as a
lawyer or emerge as a soldier !
After this original form of baptism, initiation into
the mysteries soon followed, and the young soldier
saw much active service during the Napoleonic wars
in the Peninsula and in the Low Countries. He
14 THE PENINSULA. [chap. l.
missed Waterloo through being on other duty, and
in the piping times of peace which followed that
decisive battle an idyllic life at Eichmond seemed
to bound the horizon of his unsatisfied ambition for
some fifteen years. From a totally unexpected
quarter the call to arms reached him in his retreat,
and suddenly roused all his sleeping energies. The
offer of a commission in the service of the young
Queen of Portugal met with an eager response, and
Shaw entered heart and soul into the service of
Donna Maria.
As well as being an active soldier. Major Shaw
was a lively correspondent, and it is from his letters
to his family that we get the most brilliant flash-
lights on the incidents of his military career generally,
and more particularly on that exciting portion of it
which most concerns the subject of these volumes.
These letters were edited and published by himself
at the close of the operations in Spain.
Colonel Hodges, who commanded the foreign brigade
in Portugal, and seems to have left the queen's service
in a huff, also published a narrative of the campaign,
of which, however, the historical value is not enhanced
by its apologetic and explanatory motive.
From the contemporary notes of these two officers
we get generous and emphatic testimony to the
manner in which Mr Alcock acquitted himself under
the ordeal of severe military service. Indeed his
comrades and commanding officers, first in Portugal
and afterwards in Spain, seem to have vied with
each other in spontaneous eulogy of the conduct of
the young surgeon, none of them more flattering
than General De Lacy Evans, who commanded in
THE CAMPAIGN. 15
Spain. It is the record of a hero and a philan-
thropist, of high mihtary ardour subordinated to still
higher duty both to the cause he was serving and
to the comrades whose lives were under his care.
The valour of a non-combatant makes no less a
demand on the virile stamina than the valour of the
soldier, — oftentimes indeed more, since he lacks the
stimulus of active conflict and confronts danger passive
and unarmed. A few extracts from these really re-
markable testimonials may still be read with pleasure
after the lapse of sixty years.
Shaw writes to his family : —
A peasant led the way (they wear no shoes and their feet
are like hands). I took off my shoes, and after getting down
about fifty yards, I looked up and saw a favourite soldier of
mine close above me, and an intimate friend of Eamus, the
assistant-surgeon Alcock (a nice young fellow), following. I
ordered the soldier to halt ; but his answer of, " I'll follow your
honour to death, captain," made me silent. I tried military
authority with young Alcock, as I saw he was much excited ;
but no, his professional services were, he thought, required, and
follow he would. Every moment expecting he would roll
down, I clasped my toes and fingers close to the precipice,
that he might fall without sweeping me with him : such is
selfish nature ! Two or three times I determined to return,
but the soldier's speech forced me on. We reached the
bottom in about half an hour, and, believe me, I returned
thanks.
I proceeded along the rocky beach, and there found poor
Ramus lying on a rock, in a sleeping position, with all his
clothes torn, and a dreadful gash in his head; his body all
broken ; but with an expression of countenance indicating he
had suffered no pain. I was astonished to see him without his
shoes ; but in ascending a sharp rock I found them, with the
marks where his heels had caught as he tumbled backwards
head foremost. Finding that our descent had been useless, I
told those who had come down that I would not allow them
16 THE PENINSULA. [chap. I.
to risk their lives in ascending, and sent off a peasant to get a
boat ; but lie failed both in this and in getting ropes to pull
us up. Self again stepped in, and as senior I led the way —
one great reason being that no one could tumble back on me !
I reached the top — hands torn and feet bruised ; and to my
joy young Alcock made his appearance, but so faint that I
was obliged to supply him liberally with my brandy.
The duty which now had to be performed by the medical
men was of the most arduous character. The surgeon of the
British battalion, Souper, carried away by the military spirit
instilled into him by being an actor in the " Three Days of
July," resigned his commission as surgeon, and on this day
commenced and finished his military career, being killed at
Hodges' side while carrying orders to the French battalion.
His place was filled up by Mr Eutherford Alcock, who had
the same love for "fire," but for a different object — that of
being close at hand to give prompt assistance to any one who
was wounded. Although young, Alcock was old in know-
ledge and experience : he was highly respected by all who
knew him, and beloved by those who entered into action, as
they felt assured that he thought not of his own safety when
his services could be of benefit to them. In the most exposed
situations I saw him this day, dressing officers and men with
the same coolness as if he were in a London hospital ; and I
cannot refrain from expressing envy at the gratified feeling he
must ever possess when he thinks of the number of human
beings he has saved by his knowledge, experience, bravery, and
activity, both at Oporto, Vittoria, and St Sebastian. But his
trials after the fight of the 29th of September were great.
Owing to the fights of Pennafiel, Ponte Fereira, and the
different affairs on the Lugar das Antas, the wards allotted to
the British in the general hospitals were full ; therefore, one
may form some idea of the misery of the British when scat-
tered among the different hospitals, speaking a language which
was not understood. Measures were taken by Hodges and
Alcock to gather the wounded foreigners together, but the
Minister of War threw every impediment in the way of this ;
almost making one suspect, that now that the soldier had done
his work and was useless, the sooner he died the better.
Truth compels me to state a fact I should wish to avoid,
but it is right that those who are to be soldiers should know
SURGICAL SERVICES. 17
the value that is sometimes put upon their services. The
words were made use of by Dom Pedro, but from what I have
seen of him, I think others must have at the moment prompted
him. The medical man was mentioning that it would be
necessary to amputate the legs and arms of some of the British.
" No, no," said Dom Pedro, " you British are fond of amputa-
tions, because your men are to have pensions, and that is
expensive."
No application from myself as commanding the battalion ;
from Alcock, as senior medical officer ; nor from Hodges, as
the representative of the foreigners, had any effect on August-
inho Jos^ Freire : thus the poor fellows, crowded together,
without beds, without nurses, without clothes, and even with-
out medicines, died in numbers.
The references to Alcock's services are so frequent in
these letters, so unconventional and spontaneous, as to
prove the deep and lasting impression the young sur-
geon had made on his companions in arms. " I am
glad for all your sakes to tell you that my wounds
have healed in an extraordinary manner. ... I con-
sider myself greatly indebted to Alcock both for his
skill and attention." And at the close of the Por-
tuguese campaign : "I wonder if Alcock knows that
he has got the decoration of the Tower and Sword?
No man in the service deserves it more, both for
bravery^ and kindness to the wounded." " The scarcity
of medicines was dreadful ; but with the active and
willing assistance of Alcock, and the Portuguese medi-
cal gentlemen, it is quite wonderful what has been
accomplished."
The bad condition of the hospitals at Oporto is
the burden of many references in both Shaw's letters
and Hodges' more formal narrative ; and as the only-
records of the campaign from Alcock's own pen
happen to be in official documents connected with
VOL. I. B
18 THE PENINSULA. [chap. i.
the medical service, we give in extenso one of his
despatches, showing in an inexperienced boy of twenty-
three a maturity of judgment and a broad grasp of
duty, with, what is perhaps more important, a mastery
of work, that would not discredit a veteran.
Oporto, Sept. 20, 1832.
Sir, — The danger to which the patients were found to be
exposed by the fire of the enemy caused their removal to a
place of greater safety, where they might at least have nothing
to fear from the enemy's shells. This change in the arrange-
ments, however, has been in other respects extremely disadvan-
tageous to the sick and wounded men. They are now crowded
from the higher parts of the building into the corridors and
ground-floors — a situation well known to be unfavourable to
the recovery of sick men, from the air being so much less pure.
Our own men, including the English sailors, have been placed
in one ward, which, though of tolerably large dimensions, is
very far from affording the necessary space and quantum of air
required for forty-eight or fifty patients, which for some time
has been the average — an average which we may rather expect
to see increased than diminished during the approaching wet
season. Moreover, from peculiar localities, it is quite impossible
efficiently to ventilate the room, or to ensure a free circulation
of air, which is as essential as any other means employed for
the recovery of health.
It is under these circumstances that I feel not only author-
ised, but bound in duty, to draw your attention to the subject ;
assured that in any measures proposed for the benefit or well-
being of the men under your command it is only necessary to
show they are really required to meet your cordial support.
Many difficulties, and many disadvantageous arrangements,
have always attended the treatment of the patients in the
present establishment ; but these last compulsory changes,
when added to the former state, place my patients in too
dangerous a position to allow me to be silent or inactive.
Situated as we are, I cannot promise the speedy recovery of
any of the gunshot wounds, nor indeed of the sick generally,
and their liability to any of the epidemics unfortunately so
common in crowded hospitals renders me exceedingly anxious
REPORT OX HOSPITALS. 19
to have some steps taken to place them in a more favourable
position.
The means I have to submit for your consideration and
approval are, I believe and hope, extremely feasible. I desire
to have some large dwelling-house appropriated for the reception
of all English and French sick and wounded, by which means
the General Hospital would be relieved of nearly a hundred
patients, and of those, moreover, who, from the difference of
language, are a fruitful and constant source of trouble and
inconvenience — nay, more, of irregularity as prejudicial to the
patients as it is discreditable to a military establishment of
such importance. Many houses well adapted for this purpose
might easily be mentioned, already at the disposal of the
Government by the flight of the owners. One I could point
out at this moment which, from a superficial inspection, I
believe might be advantageously appropriated — a corner house
in the Praga de St Ildefonso, adjoining the church.
The advantages which would accrue from this arrangement
cannot for a moment be counterbalanced by the trouble or
difficulty of first organising the separate establishment. The
patients could then be classed and placed in different rooms,
and not, as now, promiscuously crowded together — surgical and
medical, fevers and amputations ; by which arrangement their
liability to any epidemic would be exceedingly diminished,
w^hile the patients would be more immediately under the eye
and control of the medical attendants. Both surgeon and
patient would thus be placed under more favourable circum-
stances, and the general service much facilitated by the
removal of foreign troops from an establishment entirely
Portuguese.
In glancing at the advantages, I should omit one of very
great importance if I did not submit to you the facility it
would afford for the good treatment of wounded and sick
officers. Instead of being attended at their own quarters, often
just within the first line, to their own great risk and the
inconvenience of the surgeon, they would be removed to a
place of safety, and where, moreover, from being entirely
under medical command, their rank would procure them none
of those injurious indulgences in the way of diet, &c., which
even the wisest of us are apt to risk the enjoyment of when
in our power. They might easily enjoy every necessary
20 THE PENINSULA. [chap. i.
comfort, while they would be carefully guarded from all im-
prudent excess.
The chief difficulties I foresee, and which I have no doubt
will immediately present themselves to your mind, appear to me
very far from insurmountable. I require the assistance of no
Portuguese officer whatever, except a commissary or purveyor,
on whom I csmfidly depend, for the due and regular supply of
fuel, meat, wine, fowls, and such other articles as are required
for the good treatment of the patients, and which are daily
supplied to the General Hospital. This is of the greatest im-
portance, as any irregularity in this branch of the service would
not only cripple my efforts, but be of serious injury to all under
my care. In addition to this I should require one Portuguese
domestic to every fifteen cases, for the purpose of cooking, wash-
ing the linen, keeping the wards clean, and such other menial
duties as are independent of those appertaining to the orderlies.
The expense of a separate establishment ought to be, and would
be, of the most trifling kind. The same beds, trussels, and
utensils, now exclusively appropriated to us, would be equally
serviceable in any other hospital. Two or three boilers, and a
few cooking utensils, with a slipper bath, are really the chief
and most expensive things required. I may safely leave it to
you, sir, to decide if this can cause any grievous outlay.
Should it be any convenience, or be deemed by you, sir,
advantageous to the service, to the English and French might
be added the wounded Portuguese soldiers of your brigade. I
have little more to add, but should you require further detail, I
beg to refer to a letter addressed to Major Shaw on this subject.
I am fully conscious and aware of the labour I am entailing on
myself, and that which is still more irksome, the heavy respon-
sibility, but I have a duty to perform. I neither court the
labour nor desire the responsibility ; but if they come as a con-
sequence of my efforts to do that duty I can look steadfastly on
them, and I trust I have energy and perseverance enough to do
all that depends upon me in spite of them. My most ardent
wish is to prove myself worthy of the confidence you have
honoured me with, and the trust conferred upon me. — I have
the honour to be, sir, your obedient humble servant,
KUTHERFORD AlCOCK.
To Colonel Hodges,
commanding Foreign Brigade, &c., &c.
SPANISH LEGION. 21
As the campaign in defence of the Queen of Por-
tugal closed, that in defence of the Queen Christina
of Spain opened, and their rough experiences in the
former did not deter either Colonel Shaw or Sur-
geon Alcock from accepting service in the Spanish
Legion organised and commanded by De Lacy Evans.
"On my arrival in London," writes Shaw in 1836,
"you may suppose how delighted I was to find my
friend Alcock at the head of the medical depart-
ment, as his experiences in difficulties made him
decidedly the most proper man." As it is no part
of our plan to trace the operations, we give one
characteristic letter from Colonel Shaw. It is dated
San Sebastian, 2 o'clock, May 6, 1836 :—
My dear Mother. — The steamer is detained, so I write to
you once more. I and my brigade are so fatigued and cut up
that we have been allowed to return here for the night. We
had a terrible morning's work of it, the brigade having lost, in
killed and wounded, about 400 men and 27 officers; others not
so much. How I escaped I know not ; kind Providence was my
protector. My watch is smashed, the ball having cut through
cloak, coat, trousers, drawers, and shirt, and only bruised me.
A spent ball hit me on the chest, and my gaiter was cut across
by another. We had dreadful lines to force : very steep, vomit-
ing fire ; and the clay up to our ankles made us so slow that
they picked as they chose. The enemy not only behaved well
behind their lines, but charged out, and twice or thrice put us
for a moment in confusion. Alcock is slightly wounded.
And as an agreeable pendant to the severe stric-
tures on the state of the Portuguese hospitals, the
following may fitly close our extracts from these
racy records of arduous military adventure : —
Bayonne, September 1836.
When you land, introduce yourself to my friend Alcock, and
beg him to take you through the hospitals. You will, or I am
22 THE PENINSULA. [chap. i.
greatly mistaken, be agreeably surprised by the prevailing
cleanliness and regularity, as also the care and attendance
bestowed on the sick and wounded. Alcock has had a most
difficult card to play. He knows well that there are many
disabled poor fellows who, if they were in the British service,
would be sent to England, certain of receiving their pensions ;
but he is also aware that a poor fellow sent to England from
the service of Queen Christina, instead of receiving his pension,
is generally left to starve. It is therefore from a praiseworthy
charity that he keeps many in hospital, under his own eye, in
order that they may in this manner get as much as will keep
body and soul together.
Mr Alcock retired from military service in 1837
with the rank of Deputy - Inspector of Hospitals,
having received the Order of the Tower and Sword
together with the war medal of the three years'
service in Portugal, and the Cross of the Order of
Charles III. and Commander's Cross of Isabella the
Catholic, with medals for the two principal actions
against the Carlists.
The six years of Peninsular experiences he declared
to have been "the most stirring and attractive of
his life," and in some portions of that period he
had " more complete personal gratification and ma-
terial happiness than could be safely anticipated in
the future." He was now to have six years of quite
a different experience, which led up to the turning-
point in his life.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO SURGICAL LITERATURE. 23
III. ENGLAND, 1838-1844.
Returns to England, 1838— Alcock resumes professional work — Prize essays
and publications — Sir James Paget's testimonial — A Commissioner for
adjusting Peninsular claims — Appointed Inspector of Anatomy, 1842
—Imperfections of the Anatomy Act— Marriage to Miss Bacon, 1841 —
His enforced abandonment of a surgical career.
On his return to England in 1838 Alcock at once
resumed the work of his profession. In that year he
published in a small 8vo volume ' Notes on the Medical
History and Statistics of the British Legion of Spain ' ;
and in 1839, and again in 1841, he carried off the Jack-
sonian prizes of the Royal College of Surgeons awarded
for the best essays on subjects selected by the Council.
The first of these was " On Concussion or Commotion
of the Brain " ; the second, " On Injuries of the Thorax
and Operations on its Parietes " ; and naturally the
value of the papers lay in the extent to which the
author was able to draw on his own observation and
experience of gunshot wounds during his seven years
of Peninsular service.
Of these contributions to medical literature Sir James
Paget remarks that " they may make one regret that
he was ever induced to give up the study of surgery.
For they show an immense power of accurately observ-
ing and recording facts, and of testing his own and
others' opinions by the help of all the knowledge of
the facts possessed by others at that time. ... I
doubt whether in the first half of this century better
essays on gunshot wounds of the head and of the
thorax had been written."
And the small volume dealing with hospital ex-
24 ENGLAND. [chap. i.
periences in Spain has drawn from the same eminent
authority the comment that " it tells in a most graphic
and clear manner the difficulties which, sixty years
ago, beset the practice of surgery and the care of
troops during war. These difficulties may have been
greater at that time in Spain than in any other
country in Western Europe, and may be thought now
impossible, but they may be read with great interest,
and one cannot doubt that Sir Rutherford Alcock's
true account of them helped to remedy them, . . .
contributed to the improvement of the medical depart-
ment of the army in this country."
Mr Alcock joined the Royal Medical and Chirurgical
Society in 1839, and was appointed Lecturer in Sur-
gery at Sydenham College, where he delivered a series
of lectures on complicated injuries, amputations, &c.
His professional labours were soon diversified by an
employment which could scarcely have been consistent
with a large practice, though in the beginning of his
surgical career it might not seem to involve much
sacrifice except of time. But it was arduous, onerous,
and absolutely gratuitous. Great trouble had arisen
between the Spanish Government and the Foreign
Legion in regard to pay. No settlement could be
obtained, and eventually a commission was appointed
to examine ^ and adjudicate the numerous claims, to
which commission Mr Alcock was appointed by express
and unanimous request of the general and the field
officers of the corps. His qualifications for such an
office were quite exceptional, for to first-rate business
capacity, which had been shown in the campaign, he
added a knowledge of the language and the country
which was not common, and a character which com-
INSPECTOR OF ANATOMY. 25
manded universal confidence. His work on this com-
mission extended over two years, and was brought to a
satisfactory termination in 1839.
No sooner were the labours of the Spanish com-
mission concluded than Mr Alcock was, in 1840,
appointed by the Foreign Office to a similar duty in
an Anglo -Portuguese commission constituted by the
two Governments to adjust the claims of British
subjects who had served in the Miguelite war of
1832-35. The work of that commission also was
satisfactorily accomplished in 1844, and, as in the
Spanish commission, Mr Alcock's labours were given
without remuneration, in order, as he said, that his
judgment might be unbiassed.^
During the course of the Spanish commission Mr
Alcock was, in 1842, appointed, on the strong recom-
mendation of Sir Benjamin Brodie, to a post under the
Home Office, that of Inspector of Anatomy. It would
be distasteful and of no utility to rake up the circum-
stances which set on foot an agitation culmmating in
the passing of an Act of Parliament in 1832 known as
" The Anatomy Act." Like many other Acts of legis-
lature in this country, it was a compromise by which
difficulties were sought to be evaded by cunningly
devised phrases whereby the thing that was meant
was so disguised as to appear to be something else.
" The Act failed in two most important points ; it failed
in honesty, and was wanting in the extent of the
powers conferred." In short, after ten years' trial
the Act was becoming unworkable, and a reform in
^ The only valuable consideration he received for these labours was
bestowed some years later, when his entry into the service of the Foreign
Office was ante-dated to 1840, so as to include the period of the Peninsular
commissions.
26 ENGLAND. [chap. i.
its administration was imperatively demanded. It
was at that critical moment that Mr Alcock was
nominated as one of the two inspectors under the
Act, and he entered on his duties with his well-
proved practical energy. Before the end of the first
year a long and interesting report was sent in by
the inspectors, and we may judge by the sample of
the Hospital Report in Oporto how thoroughly they
exposed the difficulties and how practically they
proposed to overcome them. A second report fol-
lowed in 1843. But Government is a lumbering
machine, always waiting for some stronger compul-
sion than a mere demonstration of what ought to be ;
and we are not surprised, therefore, to find fifteen
years later, and fourteen after his connection with
the Home Department had ceased, Mr Alcock still
writing the most lucid and matter-of-fact memoranda
on the conditions under which competent inspectors
might be induced " to w^ork a very imperfect Act of
Parliament."
It was during the period under review that the most
interesting episode in a young man's life occurred. On
the 17th of May 1841, Avhen he had just completed his
thirty-second year, he was married to Miss Bacon,
daughter of the sculptor of that name. The ceremony
took place at St Margaret's, Westminster, Dean Mil-
man, then a Canon of Westminster, officiating. His
domestic bliss was unruffled, the couple being pro-
foundly congenial.
But now " a change came o'er the spirit of his
dream." The career which opened before the young
surgeon was full of promise. So far as the personal
factor was concerned, no man could have started
MEDICAL CAREER CLOSED BY ILLNESS. 27
with a better equipment. There were efficiency,
thoroughness, enthusiasm, courage, and common-sense ;
there were, as we have seen in the student days,
manual dexterity and exactness and artistic power of
no contemptible order ; there was, in short, every
attribute of an accomplished surgeon, who must in
the course of nature rise to eminence. A chair of
military surgery was ready for him at King's College,
and an assistant-surgeonship at Westminster Hospital.
All that, however, had to be sacrificed and a new de-
parture taken, in consequence of an illness which left its
mark in the form of paralysis of hands and arms, and
thus put an end to " all dreams of surgical practice."
This malady was a legacy from the Peninsula. Like
Caesar, " he had a fever when he was in Spain," a rheu-
matic fever of a particularly severe type contracted at
the siege of San Sebastian. This entailed indescribable
pain and misery during many months, and, in spite of
partial recoveries, seems to have left its after-effects
seven years later in what he calls the "mysterious"
affection in his hands. It was indeed considered
remarkable that he should have survived an attack
of so formidable a character. He never recovered
the use of his thumbs, which marred the legibility
of his writing to the. end of his life.
His professional career being thus rudely closed, it
might well have appeared to a man of thirty-five that
his life was shipwrecked ere the voyage was well begun.
It would have been in accord with the short-sighted
judgment which men usually form of their own for-
tunes. But
" There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will ; " —
28
ENGLAND.
[chap.
and Alcock learned, what many before and since have
learned, that prosperity and adversity oft visit men in
disguise, and are liable to be mistaken the one for
the other. Providence employs for its favourites an
alchemy whereby the very ashes of their misery may
be transmuted into pure gold ; and what looks like
disaster is but the rending of the veil which concealed
a world of richer promise than that which they abandon
with regret.
29
CHAPTEE II
SENT TO CHINA.
Importance of appointment — New position created by Treaty of Nanking
— Exceptional responsibility of the new consuls — The evolution and
scope of foreign intercourse — Pioneer traders — Mutual experiences
of Chinese and foreigners — Results — English inheritors of the
record — An intolerable state of things — Drastic remedy — Where
it failed — Chasm between Eastern and Western ideas — Commerce
alone supplied a safe medium of intercourse — Its healing qualities
— But social and political concomitants created friction — Arbitrary
interferences of Chinese Government — Their traditional mode
of treating barbarians — Denial of human rights — Absence of law
in their intercourse — Spasmodic resistance to Chinese tyranny
aggravated the evils — East India Company submitted for the sake
of gain — Close of the Company's charter — Followed by endeavour
of British Government to establish official intercourse — Determined
resistance of Chinese — Lord Napier, first British envoy, not received —
Loaded with insults — Contradictory instructions given by British
Government — To conciliate Chinese as in days of Company, and at
same time to open diplomatic relations — Lord Napier's appeal to
experience — His death at Macao — Captain Ellis, a third envoy, reverts
to the policy of submission — Has no success.
When thus thrown upon his beam-ends in 1844, an
appointment was conferred on Mr Alcock which was
not only honourable to him but creditable to the
Government which selected him. He was among the
five chosen to fill the oflfice of consul in China under
the treaty of Nanking, which had been concluded in
1842. And if any event in human life be deserving of
30 SENT TO CHINA. [cHAP. II.
such distinction, the opening thus provided for the
talents of Mr Alcock is on many grounds entitled to
rank as providential. To the end of his days he him-
self recognised that his previous training had not been
thrown away, but " had been unconsciously preparing
him for the great work of his life." The Minister
responsible for the appointment may be excused if,
while selecting a man of proved capacity for a post of
unknown requirements, he did not realise the full value
of the service he was rendering to his country. Govern-
ments are not always so perspicacious in gauging the
merits of the uncovenanted, and other nominations
made under circumstances not dissimilar have shown
how easily the efficiency of the candidate may be
subordinated to considerations extraneous to the public
weal.
The China consulates were a new creation, a venture
into the unknown, a voyage without landmarks or
chart, w^here success depended on the personal qualities
of the pioneer navigators — their judgment, resource-
fulness, and faculty of initiative. Great issues hung
upon the opening of the new world of the Far East,
the success of which was largely in the hands of the
agents who were employed, for they were practically
beyond the reach of instructions. There was no tele-
graph, and the so-called Overland Route to India was
just beginning to be exploited for the conveyance of
mails and passengers. Nor was it possible for even the
wisest Government to frame general instructions pro-
viding for eventualities out of the range of common
experience. The conditions of service were therefore
such as to constitute an ordeal under which a bureau-
cratic official would shrivel into uselessness or worse,
ONE OF THE NEW CONSULS. 31
while to a strong man they were a powerful stimulant,
the very breath of life.
It was therefore a matter of serious consequence who
should be intrusted with the actual inauguration of the
new relations with China ; and in the course of the
present narrative it will probably appear that it was
a happy accident by which the country lost one dis-
tinguished surgeon among many and gained in exchange
a political representative whose services must be con-
sidered unique.
FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA.
To understand fully the state of our relations with
China created by the treaty of Nanking, the whole
history not only of our own commercial intercourse,
but of that of the nations who were our forerunners
in the Far East, would have to be kept in mind. For
much as we tried and hoped then, and ever since, to
confine the international question to a few bald pro-
positions respecting trade, personal protection, and so
forth, it is impossible to eliminate the historical, the
human, and the general political elements from the
problem. For both good and evil we are the neces-
sary outcome of our own antecedents, as are the
Chinese of theirs, and if we had acquired a stock of
experience of the Chinese, no less had they of us ;
indeed, if we fairly consider the matter, theirs was
the more comprehensive. For to the Chinese we re-
presented not ourselves alone, nor the East India
Company, nor a generation or two of timid traders,
but Christendom as a whole — our Spanish, Portuguese,
32 FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA. [chap. ii.
and Dutch precursors, the Romish propaganda, and all
the abortive missions to Peking.
For three centuries and more what may be called
the foreign education of the Chinese had been pro-
ceeding : their habits were being formed in so far as
their dealings with strangers were concerned, and their
judgment was being trained by the authentic data with
which they had been plentifully supplied. European
intercourse, in short, had been one long lesson to the
Chinese in the art of managing men from the West.
Without meaning it, we had been teaching them how
to treat us, just as we train animals to perform tricks ;
and the worst we can say of the Chinese is that they
have bettered the instruction, to their loss perhaps as
well as ours.
In the chronicles of that long history there are
many deeds worthy of remembrance, as well as many
of another hue, neither being confined to one side.
There were good and bad among the early adven-
turers, as there are at all times in every other
section of mankind. Of two brothers, for example,
connected with the very early times, the first comer
ingratiated himself with the Chinese, and left such a
good impression behind him that the second was re-
ceived with open arms : very soon, however, he abused
the liberality of the natives, committing outrages upon
them, which led ultimately to his forcible expulsion
from the country and to restrictions on the outlets
for trade. Taking it as a whole, the record of
the pioneers in China is rather a despicable one, in
which violence, cupidity, and cowardice formed large
ingredients.
The English, as latest comers, being served heirs to
THE GULF BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. 33
the turpitudes of all Europe, paid the penalty for the
misdeeds and shortcomings of their predecessors and
their neighbours, as well as for their own. The penalty-
was the intolerable degradation they had been made
to endure, with ever-increasing aggravation, at the only
port where they were permitted to trade — Canton.
As there are forms of impurity which can only be
cleansed by fire, so there was no possible remedy for
the miseries of Anglo-Chinese intercourse short of open
war. The hostilities begun in 1839, and brought to
a conclusion by the treaty of Nanking in 1842, were
naturally held as a drastic liquidation of long-standing
grievances and the harbinger of a new era of peace
and mutual respect. Why even the decisive and one-
sided war should have proved an inadequate solvent
of the perennial strife may partly appear as our story
proceeds.
The chasm between the Chinese and the Western
world, as then represented by Great Britain, was in
fact much too deep to be bridged over by any con-
vention. Intercommunion between bodies so alien was
as the welding of heterogeneous metals, contact with-
out fusion. From one point of view, indeed, circum-
stances were highly favourable to a sympathetic
attachment, for there is no safer medium of inter-
course between nations than the commerce which
blesses him that buys and him that sells. It was
the pursuit of commerce alone that drew men from
afar to the Asiatic coasts, and the reciprocal desire
on the part of the natives which opened for the
strangers, be it ever so little, the gates of the
Chinese empire. The purely commercial relation left
little to be desired on the side of mutual good-
VOL. I. c
34 FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA. [chap. II.
will. The impression of it left on the mind of old
residents in Canton is thus recorded by Mr W. C.
Hunter, an American merchant, who lived there from
1824 : " From the facility of all dealings with the
Chinese who were assigned to transact business with
us, together with their proverbial honesty, combined
with a sense of perfect security to person and property,
scarcely a resident of any lengthened time — in short,
any ' Old Canton ' — but finally left them with regret."
Mr Hunter goes further and testifies to the " vigilant
care over the personal safety of strangers who came to
live in the midst of a population whose customs and
prejudices were so opposed to everything foreign."
Why, then, was it that on the ground - level of
common material interest, and under the sunshine of
the protection spontaneously accorded by authority,
the parties failed in two hundred years to evolve
between them a modus vivendif The solution of
this riddle can only be found in a patient survey
of events both before and after the war.
It would carry us far beyond our limits even to
summarise the history of foreign intercourse with
China. Nor is such a task necessary, since our con-
cern lies mainly with those later developments which
culminated in the war of 1839-42, a glance at which
seems essential to any fair appreciation of the sequel.
That there was no material cause of difference
between the Chinese Government and people on the
one hand and the foreign traders and their repre-
sentatives on the other was made manifest by the
persistence and continuous growth of their mutual
commerce. And their common appreciation of the
advantages of the trade is shown by the readiness
OFFICIAL INTERFERENCE WITH COMMERCE. 35
of each in turn to resort to the threat of stopping
business as a means of pressure on the other side.
It is not therefore the substance, but the accidents
and conditions, of the intercourse that generated the
friction which led through outrage to reprisals ; and
the two conditions most fruitful in conflict were the
necessary absence of law and the inevitable incom-
prehension of each other's status.
Left to themselves, the traders on either side, though
without law, would have been a law to themselves,
both parties having been habituated to a discipline of
custom more potent within its sphere than any code,
commercial or penal. But as no problem in life can
«ver be isolated, so in this case the twofold inter-
ference of the State and the populace constantly
obstructed the genial flow of commercial intercourse.
The interference of the Chinese bore no resemblance
to the restrictions imposed on trade by Western
Governments, for these, even when most oppressive,
are usually specific and calculable. There is a tarifl*
of duties, there are harbour and police regulations,
and there are tho laws of the land. The peculiarity
of the Chinese ofiicial supervision of foreign trade
was that it was incalculable and arbitrary, governed
by cupidities and jealousies, and subject to individual
caprice. Having barbarians to deal with, the Chinese
authorities followed the maxims of their ancient kings
and "ruled them by misrule, which is the true and
the only way of ruling them." And finding the
barbarians submissive, they grew accustomed to prac-
tise on them such indignities as a wanton schoolboy
might inflict on a captive animal, unrestrained by
any consideration save the risk of retaliation. The
36 FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA. [chap. ii.
Chinese had no conscience to be shocked by the
persecution of foreigners, for in relation to them
justice and injustice were meaningless terms. Such
arrogance was not so much the result of any formu-
lated belief as of a traditional feeling lying at the
bottom of their moral conceptions ; and just as the
Chinese people to-day speak of foreigners, without
consciousness of offence, as "devils," so did the best
educated officials in the days before the war sincerely
regard strangers as an inferior, if not a degraded,
race. As late as 1870 a British representative
writing to the Chinese Prime Minister complained
that " the educated class, both by speech and writ-
ing, lets the people see that it regards the foreigner
as a barbarian, a devil, or a brute." And there has
been no change since except what is enforced by
prudence. To the absence of law in their inter-
course was therefore superadded a special negation
of human rights, naturally accompanied by an over-
bearing demeanour on the side of the natives. The
strangers were in effect outlawed. The attempts
made from time to time to assert their independence
resembled the spasmodic kicking of the ox against
the goad which led rather to aggravation than amelior-
ation of the pain. The prevailing tone was that of
submission, inviting more and more aggression, until
the cup overflowed and war ensued.
If we ask how it could happen that Britons of any
class came to submit to such ignominy, the only answer
forthcoming is that they did it for the sake of gain.
And if, further, we try to press home the responsibility
to any particular quarter, there is very little doubt
that the principal blame must be laid at the door of the
HUMILITY OF EAST INDIA COMPANY. 37
East India Company, which ruled and monopolised the
English trade with China until the expiration of their
charter in 1834. The Board of Directors in Leadenhall
Street demanded remittances, and cared nothing for
the indignities which their distant agents might be
forced to undergo in order to supply these demands.
*' The interests at stake were too valuable to be put at
issue upon considerations of a personal nature, . . .
and the Court leave the vindication of the national
honour to the Crown." Such was their unchanging
attitude. The agents on their side, balancing the pros
and cons, concluded that at any cost they must retain
the favour of the omnipotent Board. By this course of
procedure the prestige which would have protected
British subjects from outrage was bartered away ; the
Chinese were induced by the subservience of the Com-
pany's officers to practise constantly increasing insol-
ence, and small blame to them. The demeanour of the
Company's representatives was that of men carrying
out instructions against their better judgment. Occa-
sionally, indeed, their judgment got the better of their
instructions, and they would attempt to make a stand
for their rights. A case occurred in 1831 when new
restrictions on the export of silver were imposed by the
Chinese authorities. Mr H. H. Lindsay, head of the
Company's committee, resented the proceeding, and
threatened to stop the trade. In the event, however,
the committee gave way, and in token of surrender
delivered the keys of their factory to a Chinese
mandarin.
The process which had been consecrated by time
naturally did not stop when the principal cause of it
was removed. It continued uninterrupted after the
38 FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA. [chap. il.
monopoly of the Company had ceased. Indeed the case
became much aggravated when the British agents, begin-
ning with Lord Napier, became representatives of the
Crown instead of the Company. And so little was the
position understood by the authorities in Great Britain
that, yielding to considerations of convenience, they
appointed some of the very men whom the Chinese had
been long accustomed to treat with contumely to be the
representatives of the King. But the Chinese had a
true presentiment of the nature of the changes which
this new departure threatened. They had learned from
Captain Weddell, Commodore Anson, and others what
were the pretensions of the commander of a King's ship;
and then justly inferred that a King's representative
would stand on a wholly different footing from a
Company's superintendent. They resolved, therefore,
to nip in the bud every effort to open international re-
lations, employing to that end all the weapons which
were familiar to them. The viceroy of Canton not only
declined communication with the British envoy, but
imprisoned him and intercepted his letters, so that a
naval force was required to release him from captivity.
Yet it was not malevolence but policy that guided the
hand of the Chinese authorities — the settled policy of
keeping foreigners at arm's-length at all costs.
The rule of conduct enjoined by the British Govern-
ment on the first representatives of the Crown in China
was emphatically conciliation, as in the time of the East
India Company and its superintendents. They were to
" cautiously abstain from all unnecessary use of menac-
ing language, or from making any appeal for protection
to our military or naval force (except in extreme cases),
or to do anything to irritate the feelings or revolt the
INSULTS TO LORD NAPIER. 39
opinions or prejudices of the Chinese people." That
article of the " Sign-manual Instructions to the Super-
intendents of Trade in China " was faithfully carried
out ; while the one ordering the envoy to " take up
your residence at the port of Canton " could not be
obeyed because the Chinese provincial authorities placed
their veto on it. The conciliatory demeanour of the
British representative was met by the refusal, accom-
panied by the grossest insults, of the Chinese to receive
or acknowledge him. And not by insults only, such as
perverting the phonetic rendering of his name by the
substitution of characters bearing odious meanings, and
by various indignities offered to his person, but by inter-
ference with his domestic servants, and even cutting off
his food-supply, did they coerce him into abandoning
his post at Canton. Their conduct evoked the opinion
from Lord Napier, in reporting the incidents to his
Government, that " the viceroy of Canton was guilty of
an outrage on the British Crown calling for redress,"
which drew from the Duke of Wellington (February 2,
1835) the chilling comment that "it is not by force and
violence that his Majesty intends to establish a com-
mercial intercourse between his subjects and China, but
by the other conciliatory measures so strongly incul-
cated in all the instructions which you have received."
Lord Napier's despatches prove that he understood the
situation perfectly. " What advantage or what point
did we ever gain," he wrote, " by negotiating or
humbling ourselves before these people, or rather before
their Government ? The records show nothing but
subsequent humiliation and disgrace. What advantage
or what point, again, have we ever lost that was just
and reasonable, by acting with promptitude and vigour ?
40 FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA. [chap. Ii.
The records again assure us that such measures have
been attended with complete success." And he recom-
mended his Government " to consult immediately on
the best plan to be adopted for commanding a com-
mercial treaty, or a treaty which shall secure the just
rights and embrace the interests, public and private,
of all Europeans, — not of British alone, but of all
civilised people coming to trade according to the
principles of international law.".
Driven to death by Chinese ofBcial barbarities, and
by the discouragement of his own Government, Lord
Napier was succeeded first by one then by another of
the East India Company's old staff, who could only
maintain themselves by sinking their character as
British national envoys and submitting to the indigni-
ties which the Chinese more than ever delighted in
imposing on them, increasing in virulence in proportion
as the resistance to them grew weaker.
The line of policy inculcated upon Lord Napier
was, in fact, scrupulously followed after his death,
notably by Captain Charles Elliot, the third in suc-
cession, who received the King's commission in 1836.
That officer indeed went far beyond his instruc-
tions in his efforts to conciliate the Chinese ; for
though repeatedly ordered by Lord Palmerston to
communicate with the authorities direct, and not
through the Hong merchants ; ^ and not to head his
communications with the word " petition " ; and not-
withstanding his own reiterated opinion in the same
sense. Captain Elliot entirely yielded to the Chinese
1 These were a syndicate appointed by the Chinese Government to con-
duct the foreign trade and be responsible to the Government for the pro-
ceedings of the foreign merchants.
CAPTAIN ELLIOTS DEFERENCE.
41
pretensions. He communicated through the Hong
merchants, and explicitly received the "commands"
of the authorities with "reverence." As was natural,
the more he conceded the more was exacted from
him, until conciliation reached the point of exhaus-
tion and there was nothing left to give up. Matters
had nearly reached this stage when the British
envoy could thus address the Governor of Canton
(through the Hong merchants) in 1837 : " The
undersigned respectfully assures his Excellency that
it is at once his duty and his anxious desire
to conform in all things to the imperial pleas-
ure." The result of this extreme humility was that
Captain Elliot was forced to strike his flag at Can-
ton and withdraw to the Portuguese settlement of
Macao, on the ground that he was unable to main-
tain intercourse with the authorities on the conditions
prescribed for him by her Majesty's Government.
42
CHAPTER III.
ANTECEDENTS OF THE WAR.
I. THE OPIUM TRADE.
Its iuciease caused alarm to Chinese Government by throwing the balance
of trade against China — English manufacturers deplored the same fact
— Drain of silver — Government opposition to the importation of opium
— Official participation in the trade — The reign of sham — Illustrated
by Mr Hunter — Captain Elliot volunteers to prevent smuggling —
Rebuffed by Canton authorities — The principal patrons of the opium
trade — Imperial Government and the opium traffic — Proposals to
legalise it — The Empress — Commissioner Lin appointed to suppress
trade — His uncompromising proceedings at Canton — Imprisonment of
the foreign merchants, and of the British envoy — Surrender of opium
by Captain Elliot.
Commerce itself had also for some time been a
source of disquietude, and it is an interesting cir-
cumstance that it was the same feature of it which
caused anxiety to both sides. The balance of trade
was against China, which in the year 1838 had to
provide bullion to the amount of upwards of
£2,000,000 sterling to pay for the excess of imports
over exports. English manufacturers deplored the fact
that the purchasing power of China was restricted
by the paucity of her commodities suitable for foreign
markets, while the Chinese authorities saw with
genuine alarm a yearly drain of what they deemed
INTERCOURSE WITHOUT LAW. 43
the life-blood of their national wealth ; for not only
was silver and gold bullion exported in what to
them were large amounts, but the vessels which
brought raw cotton and opium from India were fre-
quently ballasted for the return voyage with the
copper coinage of the country. Crude, arbitrary, and
quite ineffectual devices were resorted to by the
Chinese for the arrest or mitigation of the leakage
of the precious metal. Opium, being the commodity
which the people most imperatively demanded, was
always paid for in hard cash, while ordinary mer-
chandise might be bartered against Chinese produce.
It is not therefore difficult to understand how, with-
out prejudice to moral or political considerations, the
article opium should have become so conspicuous a
factor in the agony which preceded the war.
In characterising the relations then subsisting be-
tween the Chinese and foreigners as lawless, it is not
meant that China is a country governed without law,
although it is true that even in the purely domestic
administration of the State legality is systematically ^
travestied. But in connection with foreign relations,
and almost as a necessity of the case, every trace of
legality was obliterated in practice, and the merchants
were constantly entangled in a labyrinth of illusions
and pitfalls. No regulation was, or was ever intended
to be, carried out as promulgated ; it was generally
something quite different that was aimed at, and it is
literally true that the law was more honoured in the
breach than in the observance.
Many Chinese eagles swooped on the carcass of
foreign trade ; various authorities competed for the
spoil ; and the constantly changing orders were often
44 THE OPIUM TRADE. [chap. hi.
merely stratagems by which one set of officials sought
to steal an advantage over another. The rules of the
game were perfectly understood, and the loftiest pro-
fessions of public duty were the invariable concomitant
of the most corrupt practice.
The two principal trade authorities in Canton were
the viceroy of the two provinces, and the hoppo, who
held an independent commission from Peking as super-
intendent of the customs. Smuggling was of course
systematic. Though there were severe dormant laws
against it whereby unwary individuals might on occa-
sion be entrapped, yet the practice was openly carried
on in every department of traffic, its chief patrons being
the viceroy and the hopp>o. The importation of opium
was officially prohibited, but no branch of trade was so
effectually protected. The depot ships lay in what was
regarded as the outer waters of China — that is, the
archipelago in the estuary of the Canton river. But
the drug was brought to land in the viceroy's own
boats and to his profit. The traffic was conducted
under a fluctuating arrangement between the native
merchants and the authorities, the latter taking
frequent occasion to pick quarrels with the former in
order to have a pretext for extortion. The fees levied
upon the opium - dealers were divided among the
officials, but they could never trust each other to
deal fairly in the distribution of the takings. By way
of check on sharp practice a Chinese war-vessel was
in the habit of visiting the receiving ships, taking from
them an account of their deliveries, and at the same
time making a small levy for the commander's personal
behoof, for which a formal receipt was granted.
A new hoppo came to Canton in 1837, and, as had
OFFICIAL CONNECTION WITH OPIUM. 45
been the custom with his ^predecessors, he inaugurated
his commission by issuing drastic edicts, in concert
with the viceroy, against the sale of opium, even going
through the form of arresting some of the dealers.
This demonstration, like all that had gone before, was
merely intended to cover a heavier exaction than had
yet been levied. The dealers and boatmen refused
the terms, and by way of protest the latter burned
their boats. Whereupon the two high officers built
boats of their own, which, with the Government ones
already employed in the business, brought the whole
of the opium to Canton. In this manner was the trade
resumed after a temporary stoppage caused by the
strike of the dealers and boat -owners against the
extortions of the viceroy and liojypo. Nor was there
ever any secret in Peking respecting these proceedings.
Indeed the occasion of any high official travelling to
the capital was always marked by a great enhancement
of the market price of opium, of which the official or
his retinue invariably carried a large quantity for sale
there. This circumstance was published in the trade
circulars printed in Canton, without the least conceal-
ment of the name of the mandarin under whose pro-
tection the drug was transported. The lioppo was,
and still is, an imperial 'protege, and it was, and
is still, perfectly understood that he divides the
proceeds of his Canton harvest with his patrons.
It is for that purpose that he receives the appoint-
ment. And this was a trade proscribed under extreme
penalties by imperial edict ! It is needless to trace
the network of elusion in which the administrative
ingenuity of Chinese officialdom was exercised, and the
specimen given above may be taken as typical of the
46 THE OPIUM TRADE. [chap. III.
system. "Nevertheless, during the year 1838 very
serious and determined measures began to be adopted
by the Chinese authorities, directed generally against
the trade in opium ; and imperial edicts threatened
death as the punishment for both the dealers in and
smokers of the drug."
It is hardly possible outside of China to realise the
systematic make-believe under which public affairs are
carried on.
Life and business in Canton, says Mr Hunter,^ was a con-
undrum as insoluble as the Sphinx ; everything worked
smoothly by acting in direct opposition to what we were told
to do. Certainly we were told to " listen and obey," to
" tremble and not by obstinacy and irregularity to court the
wrath of the imperial will " ! We were reminded from time to
time that we were " sojourning in the land on sufferance." We
were threatened and re-threatened with the " direst penalties if
we sold foreign mud to the people ; truly forbearance could no
longer be exercised." Yet we continued to sell the drug as
usual. Our receiving ships at Lintin must no longer loiter
at that anchorage, but " forthwith either come into port or
return to their respective countries." The heart of the ruler
of all within the Four Seas was indeed full of compassion and
had been indulgent to the barbarians. But now no more delay
could be granted, " cruisers would be sent to open their irre-
sistible broadsides " upon the foreign ships. Yet in spite of
these terrors the ships never budged. We were " forbidden to
wander about except three times a-month, and that not without
a linguist," but we walked whenever we pleased, and the
linguist is the last person we ever saw.
And so on through a long catalogue of prohibitions to
the disregard of which the officials themselves were
always parties.
We get an exact description also of the mode in
which the opium trade was carried on from the pen
1 Bits of Old China. Kegan Paul.
MANNER OF CONDUCTING THE TRAFFIC. 47
of Mr Hunter, himself an actor as well as an eye-
witness. It furnishes a perfect illustration of the reign
of sham which prevails generally in China : —
We anchored on the inside of the island of Namoa close by
two EngHsh brigs, the Omega and Governor Findlay. Inshore
of us were riding at anchor two men-of-war junks, with much
bunting displayed ; one bore the flag of a foo-tscang or commo-
dore. Knowing the " formaUties " to be gone through with
the mandarins, we expected a visit from one, and until it was
made no Chinese boat would come alongside, nor would a junk,
not even a bumboat. We had no sooner furled sails and made
everything shipshape, when his " Excellency " approached in
his gig — a sort of scow as broad as she was long. . . . He was
received at the gangway by Captain Forster. His manner and
bearing were easy and dignified. When cheroots and a glass of
wine had been offered, the " commodore " inquired the cause of
our anchoring at Namoa. The shroff ga^wQ him to understand
that the vessel, being on her way from Singapore to Canton,
had been compelled, through contrary winds and currents, to
run for Namoa to replenish her wood and water. Having
listened attentively, the great man said that " any supplies
might be obtained, but when they were on board, not a moment
must be lost in sailing for Whampoa, as the Great Emperor did
not permit vessels from afar to visit any other port." He then
gravely pulled from his boot a long red document and handed
it to his secretary, that we might be informed of its purport.
It was as follows : —
An Imperial Edict,
As the port of Canton is the only one at which outside
barbarians are allowed to trade, on no account can they be
permitted to wander about to other places in the " Middle
Kingdom." The " Son of Heaven," however, whose compassion
is as boundless as the ocean, cannot deny to those who are in
distress from want of food, through adverse seas and currents,
the necessary means of continuing their voyage. When sup-
plied they must no longer loiter, but depart at once. Kespect
this.
Tao-kuano, nth year, 6th moon, ith sun.
48 THE OPIUM TRADE. [chap. hi.
This " imperial edict " having been replaced in its envelope
and slipped inside of his boot (for service on the chance of
another foreign vessel " in distress "), his Excellency arose from
his seat, which was a signal for all his attendants to return to
the boat, except his secretary. The two were then invited to
the cabin to refresh, which being done, we proceeded to busi-
ness. The mandarin opened by the direct questions, " How
many chests have you on board ? Are they all for Namoa ?
Do you go farther up the coast ? " Intimating at the same
time that there the officers were uncommonly strict, and were
obliged to carry out the will of the " Emperor of the Universe,"
&c. But our answers were equally as clear and prompt, that
the vessel was not going north of Namoa, that her cargo con-
sisted of about 200 chests. Then came the question of ciimsha,
and that was settled on the good old Chinese principle of " all
same custom." Everything being thus comfortably arranged,
wine drunk, and cheroots smoked, his Excellency said " Kaou-
tsze " (I announce my departure). . . . Chinese buyers came
on board freely the moment they saw the " official " visit had
been made. A day or two after, several merchant junks stood
out from the mainland for the anchorage. As they approached
we distinguished a private signal at their mastheads, a copy of
which had been furnished to us before leaving Capshuymun.
We hoisted ours, the junks anchored close to us, and in a
surprisingly short time received from the Eose in their own
boats the opium, which had been sold at Canton, and there
paid for, deliverable at this anchorage. It was a good illus-
tration of the entire confidence existing between the forei^ifn
seller in his factory at Canton and the Chinese buyers, and of
a transaction for a breach of any of the conditions of which
there existed no leojal redress on one side or the other.
From his asylum in Macao Captain Elliot thought
he saw an opportunity for making a fresh attempt to
ingratiate himself with the Chinese authorities. Dis-
regarding the fact that the only return for his
previous efforts at conciliation had been accumulated
insult and odious accusations against himself person-
ally, Captain Elliot resolved on trying once more.
14M|', ,.-,
CAPTAIN ELLIOTS OFFICIOUS MOVE. 49
So, when the opium agitation broke out in 1838-39,
he volunteered his assistance in suppressing smuggling
in the river. The viceroy, being the head and front
of the abuse, spurned the offer, saying, what was
perfectly true, that he could stop the traffic himself
by a stroke of the pen.
Ignoring the rebuff. Captain Elliot did nevertheless
issue an order that " all British-owned schooners, or
other vessels habitually or occasionally engaged in
the illicit opium traffic, ivithin the Bocca Tigris,
should remove before the expiration of three days,
and not again return within the Bocca Tigris, being
so engaged." And they were at the same time
distinctly warned, that if " any British subjects were
feloniously to cause the death of a Chinaman in con-
sequence of persisting in the trade within the Bocca
Tigris, he would be liable to capital punishment ;
that no owners of such vessels so engaged would
receive any assistance or interposition from the British
Government in case the Chinese Government should
seize any of them ; and that all British subjects
employed in these vessels would be held responsible
for any consequences which might arise from forcible
resistance offered to the Chinese Government, in the
same manner as if such resistance were offered to
their own or any other Government, in their own or
in any foreign country." This gratuitous assumption
of the functions of the Chinese executive plunged
Captain Elliot into still greater difficulties, and pre-
pared the way for the tragic events which were to
follow a year later. In vulgar parlance he " gave
himself away" to the Chinese, for in professing to be
able to stop opium traffic within the river he tacitly
VOL. I. D
50 THE OPIUM TRADE. [chap. III.
accepted the responsibility of stopping it also in the
estuary, where the British depot ships lay at anchor.
It was, in fact, the driving home of this responsibility
by the Chinese which was the apparent occasion of
the war. For it is certain that during his three
years of office as representative of the Crown of
England Captain Elliot had given no provocation to
the Chinese, nor had he in any way withstood their
aggression. ^
But a sudden change now came over the scene.
The opium question had been for some time debated
in the imperial counsels with considerable earnestness,
the issue turning on the alternatives of suppressing
or legalising the traffic. It seems likely that in
those deliberations the reigning emperor, Tao-kuang,
played a very secondary part ; indeed as an active
factor in the government of the country he appears
to have been of little more account than his successors
have been. He is described as an amiable but weak
man, sensible of the difficulties of his country, but
misinformed with regard to them by the favourites
around him. The most interesting personality about
the Imperial Court at that time appears to have
been the empress, who had raised herself to that
exalted position by her talents as well as by her
fascinations. Though her career was a very short
one, she exercised a potent influence on affairs
throughout the whole empire. She was credited
with a rare power of judging men and of selecting
them for offices of trust. She was a reformer of
abuses and a true patriot ; but what was most
remarkable, considering the order of ideas which
surrounded her, she held liberal views as to the ex-
COMMISSIONER LIN. 51
tension of foreign intercourse, and was at the head
of the party which was in favour of legalising the
opium traffic. A memorial addressed to her urging
this measure was submitted by the emperor to the
governor of Canton, Tang, who with his colleagues
reported on it favourably. The success of the
empress's policy enraged her enemies and stirred
them to the most strenuous efforts to compass her
fall. The emperor, it is said, remained neutral in
this strife. The opposition party prevailed, gaining
over the emperor to their side while he was smart-
ing from the grief caused by the death of his own
son from opium, an event which enlisted his personal
feelings against the drug.
So far, however, had the question been carried,
that the legalisation of the opium trade was fully
anticipated by Captain Elliot up to the very hour
that the storm burst.
The final decision of the Government was to put
an end to the trade, for which purpose they sent an
imperial commissioner to Canton, armed with full
authority to carry out the emperor's edicts. He
arrived at his post, March 10, 1839. Commissioner
Lin, the best known character, with the exception of
Captain Elliot himself, in connection with the war,
was a man of uncommon energy and resolution, and
was therefore in some respects well chosen for the
extraordinary task which was imposed upon him.
He was a native of Fukien province, an official of
high standing, having been Governor- General of the
Central Provinces, the Hu Kwang. He was now
appointed Governor-General of the Two Kwang and
Imperial Commissioner for dealing with the opium
52 THE OPIUM TRADE. [chap. hi.
question. As a Chinese administrator he had been
popular, and was no doubt possessed of many high
qualities.-^ It is possible that had he taken time to
study the foreign question with which he had to deal,
and had he not been betrayed by his too easy initial
successes, he might have been the means of placing
the foreign relations of his country on a footing of
mutual accommodation. A reasonable man would
have perceived the utter impossibility of preventing
the Chinese people from purchasing a commodity for
which they had an overmastering desire. CHe showed
great ignorance of human nature in proposing to
break his countrymen of opium - smoking within a
year, after which time offenders were to be be-
headed.^ \ This was but a sample of his violence
and of his incapacity to see two sides of a question.
It must be remembered, however, that he had under-
taken to carry out the emperor's instructions, and
it is difficult to pronounce what amount of latitude
he might have allowed himself in the interpretation
of them.
His proceedings were of an uncompromising character
most unusual with Chinese. Possessing full authority,
he exercised it to the utmost, terrorising all the local
officials into absolute subservience. The governor of
Canton, himself deeply implicated in the opium
^ When he visited Macao later in the year 1839 — after the events —
there were public demonstrations in his honour, whether prompted by
public respect for his despotic power or approval of the use he had just
made of it, or merely a recognition of his previously established reputa-
tion, may very well remain an open question.
2 Possibly, however, this was but a specimen of the hyperbolic diction
which is habitual with the Chinese. An official will threaten his servant
with instant decapitation for a trifling offence, meaning nothing whatever
thereby.
lin's uncompromising action. 53
traffic, a fact well known to the Imperial Commis-
sioner, was constrained to save himself by affecting
the utmost zeal in executing the commissioner's be-
hests. Having thus disposed of all the opposition
with which Chinese high officials have usually to
reckon from their subordinates, Lin gave the rein to
his headstrong temper, and instead of effecting reform,
plunged his country into a war which shattered the
imperial prestige.
Within three weeks of Lin's arrival in Canton the
drastic measures against foreigners, and particularly
against the opium trade, culminated in his imprisoning
the whole of the merchants within their factories at
Canton, menacing them with further outrages on their
person. At this crisis Captain Elliot, having left his
residence at Macao, made his way under difficulties
to Canton, that he might share the captivity of his
countrymen and act as their head and mouthpiece.
Having thus got the superintendent of trade into his
power. Commissioner Lin preferred most extravagant
demands upon him, including the delivery to the
Chinese of all opium owned by British merchants,
which amounted to 20,000 chests valued at upwards
of £2,000,000. The imprisoned merchants had no
choice but to yield to the demand made upon them
by the representative of the British Crown ; and as
the recent agitations had interfered greatly with the
course of trade, their assent to the terms was no doubt
soothed by the reflection that they were making a
clearance sale of their goods to a solvent purchaser,
her Majesty's Government. They issued their delivery
orders for the opium on the 27th March 1839. It is
to the credit of Commissioner Lin that in a memorial
54 THE OPIUM TRADE. [chap. ill.
to the throne he commended the loyalty of certam of
the British merchants.^
This grand concession to the demand of Commis-
sioner Lin was but the climax of all the antecedent
steps of British submission. There was no haggling,
but a prompt and unconditional surrender in the fol-
lowing terms : —
Elliot to the Imperial Commissioner.
Canton, March 27, 1839.
Elliot, &c., &c., has now the honour to receive for the first
time your Excellency's commands, bearing date the 26 th day of
March, issued by the pleasure of the Great Emperor, to deliver
over into the hands of honourable officers to be appointed by
your Excellency all the opium in the hands of British subjects.
Elliot must faithfully and completely fulfil these commands,
and he has now respectfully to request that your Excellency
will be pleased to indicate the point to which the ships of his
nation, having opium on board, are to proceed, so that the whole
may be delivered up.
The faithful account of the same shall be transmitted as soon
as it is ascertained.
Captain Elliot did not even give himself time to
verify the figures, and in his haste committed himself
to the delivery of more opium than was actually in
being. The consequence was that he could not de-
liver until fresh importations arrived, when he was
obliged to enter the market as an opium merchant
and purchase sufficient to enable him to fulfil his
engagement.
1 As in its commutation for the surrender of slave property, so now the
British Government inflicted serious injustice on the owners of the opium.
Captain Elliot's drafts on the Treasury were dishonoured, he having had no
authority to draw, and the merchants had to wait four years for a most
inadequate payment.
ENGLISH COMMUNITY MADE CLOSE PRISONERS. 55
II. THE SEQUEL TO THE SURRENDER OF OPIUM.
Captain Elliot complains of his lengthened imprisonment — The continued
cruelties of Commissioner Lin — Subservience of the Portuguese —
English merchants driven from their homes in Macao to seek refuge
on shipboard — Pursued by the vengeance of the Commissioner —
Chinese claim absolute jurisdiction over person and property — Demand
for an English seaman for execution.
The interesting question in all this is how the
Chinese authorities were impressed with the magnani-
mous sacrifice of over £2,000,000 sterling worth of
private property as a ransom for the liberties of British
subjects. They were certainly not impressed favour-
ably, for Captain Elliot, together with the whole com-
munity, was detained for many weeks after the delivery
of the opium close prisoners in Canton, and cut off from
all outside communication. A week after the surrender
Captain Elliot wrote to Lord Palmerston, " The block-
ade is increasing in closeness. . . . This is the first
time in our intercourse with this empire that its
Government has taken the unprovoked initiative in
aggressive measures against British life, property, and
liberty, and against the dignity of the British Crown."
On the same day the Imperial Commissioner threatened
to cut off the water-supply from the beleaguered mer-
chants. A week later Captain Elliot wrote, "The
blockade is not relaxed, . . . the reverse is the case ; "
and he was constrained, though with evident reluctance,
to characterise " the late measures as public robbery and
wanton violence." Commissioner Lin's " continuance
of the state of restraint, insult, and dark intimidation,
subsequently to the surrender, has classed the case
amongst the most shameless violences which one nation
56 SEQUEL TO THE SURRENDER OF OPIUM. [chap. III.
has yet dared to perpetrate against another." And
there is a forlorn pathos in his confession, a fortnight
later, of the futility of " remonstrances from a man in
my present situation to a high Chinese officer deter-
mined to be false and perfidious."
Nor did the Chinese appetite for cruelty cease to
grow by what it fed upon even after the crisis of the
Canton imprisonment was over. The British com-
munity, w^hen forced to seek safety on board of their
ships, were pursued from anchorage to anchorage by
the implacable vengeance of the Imperial Commis-
sioner. The natives were by proclamation ordered
to " intercept and wholly cut off all supplies " from
the English, some of whom " had gone to reside on
board the foreign ships at Hongkong, and it was to
be apprehended that in their extremity some may land
at the outer villages and hamlets along the coast to
purchase provisions," in which case the " people were
to drive them back, fire upon or make prisoners of
them." " Even when they land to take water from the
springs, stop their progress and let them not have it in
their power to drink." Another proclamation stated
that " poison had been put into this water ; let none
of our people take it to drink." During the summer
of 1839 many murderous outrages were perpetrated
by the Commissioner's orders on English small craft
wherever they were found isolated or defenceless.
It is not necessary to pursue these barbarities in
detail. Sufficient has been advanced to illustrate the
spirit in which the Chinese Government, in a time of
peace and without a vestige of provocation, drove the
retreating and absolutely submissive English to des-
peration. And their characteristic manner of recom-
CHINESE CLAIM LIFE-AND-DEATH JURISDICTION. 57
pensing servility was illustrated with cynical humour
in a long memorandum drawn up during the progress
of the war by Commissioner Lin, the author of the
savage proceedings just referred to. " Since," he says,
** the English are so eager for the recommencement of
their traffic, let us couple the grant with another stipu-
lation, that they present us with the head of Elliot, the
leader in every mischief, the disturber of the peace, and
the source of all this trouble " — the last statement con-
taining more truth than probably the writer himself
fully realised.
Under such conditions it was obviously impossible
to place the persons and property of British subjects
at the mercy of Chinese officials. Yet this is what
the authorities at Canton insisted upon, — " full sub-
mission to Chinese penal legislation, involving capital
punishment by Chinese forms of trial." This was no
new claim. The Chinese were simply following the
precedents. English, French, and Americans had each
in turn given up their men to be strangled on the
demand of the Chinese authorities, and though the
right had not been exercised for nearly twenty years,
Lin evidently thought the occasion favourable for
reviving it. He furnished a clear explanation of
what a Chinese trial would be by demanding of the
British representative the unconditional surrender for
execution of the alleged murderer of a Chinese. To
Captain Elliot's almost penitential protestations, that
he had been unable to discover the assumed murderer
among the numerous liberty men of ships of more
than one nationality who had been in the scuffle,
the Chinese authorities paid no regard whatever.
The Queen's representative was publicly denounced
58 SEQUEL TO THE SURRENDER OF OPIUM. [chap. hi.
in scurrilous language by Commissioner Lin for con-
cealing and failing to deliver up an offender, and for
criminal violation of the laws of China as " shown
by our reiterated proclamations and clear commands."
This truculent proclamation being followed by an
ultimatum giving ten days for the surrender of the
unknown murderer under threat of the extermination
of the British community, the latter had to escape in
a body from Canton to seek refuge in Macao, whence
they were expelled by the authorities of that settlement
at the behest of the Chinese commissioner. This act of
loyalty on the part of the Portuguese was duly acknow-
ledged by the Imperial Commissioner's reply, through
his subordinate officials, in the following terms : —
We have received from his Excellency the Imperial Com-
missioner a reply to our representation that the English
foreigners had, one and all, left Macao, and that the Portuguese
Governor and Procurador had ably and strenuously aided in
their expulsion, and faithfully repressed disorder. The reply is
to this effect : —
That the Portuguese Governor and Procurador having thus
ably obeyed the commands for their expulsion, evinces the
respectful sense of duty of those officers, and merits commenda-
tion. I, the High Commissioner, in company with the
Governor, will personally repair to Macao to soothe and
encourage. And you are required to pay instant obedience
hereto, by making this intention known to them.
Captain Elliot, in a despatch to the Portuguese
governor, characterised his act as a participation " in
measures of unprecedented inhospitality and enmity
against British subjects." ^
^ "By the treaty of 1703," wrote Sir Anders Ljunstedt, the last chief of
the Swedish Company's factory, " Portugal placed herself, as it were, under
the protection of Great Britain. This Power never failed to render her
ally the assistance she stood in need of either in Europe or her ultramarine
dominions." The English had defended Macao against the French in 1803.
WAR INEVITABLE. 59
Into the merits of the opium question itself, or of
that unique transaction, the surrender of £2,000,000
sterling worth of the commodity by a British agent on
the mere demand of a Chinese official, it would be im-
possible to enter within the limits of space assigned to
us. But it is obvious that such a demand, made within
two years of the time when the viceroy of Canton was
building a flotilla to carry the merchants' drug from
the receiving ships to his provincial capital, was some-
thing so extravagant that compliance with it must be
followed either by open war or by complete submission
and the abandonment of China as a trading field. It
is of course conceivable that had the ordinary Chinese
canon been applied to the case, and the proclamations
of Commissioner Lin been interpreted, like those that
had gone before, as the inaugural bombast of a new-
comer, the demands might have been evaded with im-
punity. The Portuguese, in fact, did evade them by
the simple expedient of sending their opium to sea for
a time and bringing it back again. There is some
ground for the surmise that the High Commissioner
himself reckoned -on evasion, and was even embarrassed
by his unexpected success in having such an enormous
amount of property frankly thrown on his hands. Our
collision with China may thus be said to have "been
brought about by a breach in the continuity of pre-
cedents on both sides, — we reckoning up to a certain
point, on the continuance of sham, and the Chinese on
the continuance of submission. Both were misled, and
there was no way of reconciliation but by the arbitra-
ment of force.
60
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST CHINA WAR, 1839-1842.
Captain Elliot despatches his only ship to India with a report of the situa-
tion— The helplessness of the British community and persecutions by
the Chinese during three months — Arrival of two ships — The Chinese
attack them and are defeated — Expedition from India and England
arrives — Canton river blockaded — Attempts to appeal to Central
Government rebuffed — Squadron sent to the Peiho — Kishen appointed
to treat — Expedition returns south — Negotiations opened near Canton
— Bogue forts destroyed by British ships — Illusory negotiations — River
blockaded, but commerce partially resumed — Extensive war prepara-
tions by Chinese — Captain Elliot's confidence in the Chinese — Hostili-
ties carried on — Canton commanded and ransomed — Triumph of the
populace — Operations extended to northern coasts — Agreement be-
tween Captain Elliot and Kishen repudiated by both sovereigns —
Arrival of Vice-Admiral Sir "William Parker — War vigorously prose-
cuted— Towns and forts taken — Nanking threatened — Commissioners
Ilipu and Kiying appointed to treat — Treaty concluded at Nanking,
August 29, 1842— The character of Ilipu.
Captain Elliot, after the severities to which he and
his countrymen had been subjected, despatched a vessel
to Calcutta with a report on the situation to the Gover-
nor-General of India, making a corresponding report at
the same time to London. The departure of this, the
only vessel at the disposal of the British agent, left him
and the mercantile community in a helpless predicament
during three critical months, and it was natural that
the Chinese should take advantage of so favourable an
opportunity to fill the cup of their cruelties fuller than
1839-42.] BLOCKADE OF CANTON RIVER. 61
ever. The only form of reprisal which was left to the
unfortunate Captain Elliot was his intimation to the
merchants that he had moved both the British and
Indian Governments to forbid the admission of tea and
other Chinese produce into their territories — an an-
nouncement which is said to have irritated Commis-
sioner Lin excessively. On September 11, 1839, how-
ever, her Majesty's ship Volage appeared on the scene.
Her commander. Captain Smith, considered that the
least he could do in defence of his countrymen was
to blockade the Canton river by way of retaliation
for " the stoppage of the supplies of food by order
of the Chinese Government, and for the Chinese
people having been ordered to fire upon and seize
her Majesty's subjects wherever they went ; and that
certain of them had been actually cut off."
This slight evidence of vitality on the part of the
English produced an immediate effect on the Chinese :
their violent proclamations against Elliot were with-
drawn ; provisions were no longer prohibited ; and
certain negotiations were inaugurated for the resump-
tion of trade outside the Barrier ; whereupon Captain
Smith promptly raised the blockade.
Before long, however, the Chinese resumed their
offensive attitude, endeavoured to compel British trad-
ing ships to enter within the Bogue, and renewed
their demands for the murderer of a Chinaman, failing
which the foreign ships were ordered to depart within
three days on pain of immediate destruction. They
accordingly withdrew to the anchorage of Tongku,
which became the rendezvous of all the ships of war.
Difficulties continued to increase on both sides, without
prospect of any solution, until the 29th of October,
62
THE FIRST CHINA WAR.
[chap. IV
when another British man-of-war, the Hyacinth, arrived
and joined the Yolage. These vessels proceeded to
Chuenpee, with Captain ElHot on board, for the pur-
pose of eUciting from the Commissioner some expHcit
II 'ai/:ir€rCo.:kereU SC.
MAP OF CANTON WATERS.
declaration of his intentions. They were at once
attacked by the Chinese admiral with a fleet of twenty-
nine war-junks, which they beat off; and thus occurred
the first hostile encounter between the armed forces of
the two nations.
1839-42.] BRITISH FORCES ASSEMBLED. 63
Of the operations which followed, extending over
nearly three years, full accounts were given at the
time, none better than the ' Narrative of the Voyages
and Services of the Nemesis from 1840-43,' by W. D.
Bernard, with which may be profitably compared Dr
Eitel's concise history,^ published forty years later,
with all the documents before him.
The British Government came to the conclusion that
the limits of forbearance had been overstepped. The
action of the Chinese authorities during 1839 forced on
it the choice of two alternatives, to abandon British
subjects and their interests or to exact reasonable
treatment for them from the Chinese. The latter was
selected, and it was resolved to demand a commercial
treaty under which foreign trade might be carried on
with security to person and property. In support of
this decision military and naval forces, equipped in
England and in India, assembled on the coast of China
during the spring of 1840. Among the novelties of this
equipment were a number of small light -draught iron
steamers, the most famous of which was the Nemesis,
built for the Honourable Company by Mr Laird of
Birkenhead, drawing only six feet laden. This exceed-
ingly mobile little craft, under her energetic com-
mander, W. H. Hall, performed almost incredible
services as the maid -of- all -work of the expedition.
The blockade of the Canton river, which had been
established and withdrawn several times, was finally
declared on the 28th of June 1840, as a first step in
the regular war programme, by Commodore Sir Gordon
Bremer. A few days later the command of the fleet
was assumed by Hear- Admiral the Hon. George Elliot^
* Europe in Asia. Luzac & Co.
64 THE FIRST CHINA WAR. [chap. iv.
who was also appointed joint-plenipotentiary with Cap-
tain Charles Elliot.
Before commencing a general war upon the Emperor
of China every resource was exhausted for opening
communications with the Imperial Government through
other channels than that of Canton. The frigate
Blonde was despatched for this purpose to the harbour
of Amoy, where the local officials not only refused to
receive a letter from the English admiral, but ordered
an attack upon the boat conveying it on shore. The
frigate retaliated for this insult by opening fire upon
the Chinese batteries and war-junks, after which she
returned to Hongkong to report, proceedings to the
admiral. About this time, early in July 1840, the
island of Chusan was taken and occupied. The attempt
to deliver a letter from Lord Palmerston addressed to
the Cabinet at Peking, by way of Ningpo, having been
frustrated by the authorities at that port, a blockade
was established of Hangchow Bay and the mouth of
the Yangtze. It had been Captain Elliot's favourite
device, as it came to be that of all his successors, to
apply pressure to the Court of Peking by means of a
blockade of this the main artery of the Chinese empire,
and it was by following up this scheme that the war
thus commenced in 1840 was actually brought to a
successful issue in 1842.
The attempts to gain access to the Court through
the southern seaports having failed, the venue was
shifted to the neighbourhood of the capital itself A
heavy squadron of ships accordingly anchored off the
mouth of the Peiho — a demonstration which was suf-
ficiently menacing to the capital to induce the Court to
appoint an official to parley with Captain Elliot, and
1839-42.] KISHEN APPOINTED : FUTILE NEGOTIATIONS. 65
also to receive the undelivered letter from Lord Pal-
merston. Kishen, a Manchu of high rank, was chosen
for this service by the emperor. The first, perhaps the
sole, object of Kishen's diplomacy was to relieve the
apprehensions of the Court by procuring the prompt
withdrawal of the foreign forces. This end was achieved
in one short conference with Captain Elliot, when
Tientsin was pronounced to be too near the emperor's
palace for negotiations, and it was decided that the
scene should be shifted back to Canton, a new com-
missioner being appointed to supersede Lin, the imprac-
ticable. The squadron thereupon, about the end of
September, withdrew to Chusan. It was generally
believed that an armistice had been arranged pending
negotiations, but it was soon discovered that the only
truce made applied exclusively to the island of Chusan,
where it had been declared. The two English pleni-
potentiaries repaired to Macao in November.
All this while extensive preparations for hostili-
ties were vigorously prosecuted in the neighbourhood
of Canton. Attempts to communicate under flag of
truce were repelled by force, and it was remarked
that the Chinese were sufficiently well versed in the
significance of the white flag to make free use of
it for their own protection, while disregarding its
employment by the other side. The Imperial Com-
missioner, Kishen, reached Canton at the end of
November, his arrival coinciding in point of time
with the invaliding of Admiral Elliot, the co-pleni-
potentiary, thus leaving the British negotiations once
more in the sole hands of Captain Elliot until such time
as Sir Gordon Bremer was appointed as his associate.
Of the two diplomatists who had now to confront
VOL. I. E
66 THE FIRST CHINA WAR. [chap. iv.
each other it would be difficult to say whether the
English or Chinese was the more anxious to avert
hostilities. To avoid precipitating a conflict negoti-
ations were not pressed home by either party, nor
were any steps taken to give eflect to the conference
which had been held between them at Tientsin.
The hostile demonstrations of the Chinese, and the
extraordinary exertions they were putting forth to
place themselves in a position to bar the entrance
to the river, compelled the British naval commander-
in - chief to assume the offensive by attacking the
outer defences at its mouth. The forts and guns
were destroyed as well as the Chinese fleet of war-
junks, native Indian troops and Royal Marines form-
ing an important part of the attacking force. There
remained extensive fortifications within the embouch-
ure, and every preparation was made on both sides
for resuming the contest on the following morning ;
but just as the British guns were about to open
fire a small sampan, with an old woman and a man
on board, was sent off by the Chinese admiral pro-
posing a cessation of hostilities. This unpromising
overture did actually eventuate in an armistice, hold-
ing out the prospect of a treaty of peace, but with
the details as usual carefully kept in the back-
ground. During the period of truce granted by Cap-
tain Elliot the Chinese continued as active as ever
in strengthening and extending their defences. This
necessitated continued precautions on the British side,
for it is to be noted throughout all the proceedings
that the naval and military commanders never shared
the illusions of Captain Elliot as regards the con-
ciliatory intentions of the Chinese. They formed their
1839-42.] ILLUSORY ARRANGEMENTS. 67
opinions upon what they saw with their eyes, and not
by what any Chinese official professed with his lips.
On January 20, thirteen days after the attack on
Chuenpee forts. Captain Elliot announced from Macao
that " prelimininary arrangements had been concluded.
Hongkong was to be ceded, and an indemnity of
§6,000,000 to be paid by the Chinese ; direct official
intercourse on terms of equality, and trade to be
resumed, within ten days." This good effect, he added,
was " due to the scrupulous good faith of every
eminent person with whom negotiations are still
pending." The British plenipotentiary did not lose
an hour in carrying out his part of the incomplete
compact, which was the substantial one of rendering-
back to the Chinese their captured forts. The cere-
mony of the rendition of the Chuenpee forts was
performed on the 21st, when the British flag was
formally struck and the Chinese hoisted in its place
under a salute from the flagship. On the other side
the occupation of Hongkong by the British forces
proceeded just as if the arrangements between the
plenipotentiaries had been definitive.
Serious conferences then ensued between the British
and Chinese plenipotentiaries within the river, at a
point known as the Second Bar. The blockade was
nevertheless maintained, so that a French corvette
which arrived to watch the course of events was
unable to enter the river. Captain Elliot, however,
invited her commander to accompany him and " assist "
at his interview with Kishen. In the meanwhile the
conciliatory attitude of the Chinese commissioner was
severely denounced from the throne, and while these
conferences were proceeding, messengers of war were
68 THE FIRST CHINA WAR. [chap. iv.
on their way from Peking charged with nothing less
than the extermination of the barbarians. Kishen
was degraded, and instead of peaceable negotiations,
a proclamation w^ placarded on the walls of Canton
offering $50,000 each for the heads of the British
plenipotentiary and the commodore.
After the expiration of this one - sided truce open
hostilities were re-entered upon. The Bogue forts had
to be once more captured, and the British flag re-
hoisted. That accomplished, the blockade of the river
was raised. This somewhat remarkable step was no
doubt due to the overmastering anxiety shown through-
out by Captain Elliot for the immediate resumption
of trade, he having learnt in the Company's school
to place the current season's business above every
other consideration. It appears certain that the quite
disproportionate value attached by him to this one
object obscured his perspective, if indeed it did not
vitiate his whole policy. Trading vessels were per-
mitted to proceed up-river, but under the peculiar
reservation that the stakes, chains, and barriers placed
by the Chinese to obstruct navigation should first be
removed. The fleet, nevertheless, had still to fight
its way up to Canton, Captain Elliot meanwhile never
ceasing to make overtures of peace to the Chinese.
There were truces and suspensions of hostilities, all
of the same nature, binding only on one side, and
such a medley of peace and war as seemed rather
to belong to the middle ages than to the nineteenth
century. Trade was pushed on all the more briskly
for the general fear that the duration of peace was
likely to be brief; and as both parties were alike
interested in getting the season's produce shipped.
1839-42.] CAPTAIN ELLIOT's CONFIDENCE IN CHINESE. 69
the Chinese authorities were not ill - pleased to see
commerce thus carried on while they employed the
interval in hurrying forward their grand preparations
for the crushing of the invading force. Hostilities
were suspended by an agreement on March 20, 1841,
and Captain Elliot, after residing some time in the
foreign factory, where he had opportunities of sound-
ing the disposition of the new commissioners, declared
himself perfectly satisfied with their " assurances of
good faith," which he repeated in the same public
manner a fortnight later — that is, a month after the
suspension of hostilities. On leaving the Canton fac-
tory Captain Elliot, strong in the faith he professed,
urged on the senior naval officer the propriety of
moving his ships away from the city in order to
show our peaceful disposition, the guard of marines
which had been stationed for the protection of the
factories to be at the same time withdrawn.
The mercantile community by no means participated
in the confidence of the plenipotentiary, nor, as we
have said, did the naval commanders. Indeed so
little satisfied were they with the turn of affairs,
that Sir Gordon Bremer left in a Company's steamer
for Calcutta to lay the situation before the Governor-
General of India. ^ This occurred in the middle of
April. In the beginning of May troops were seen
pouring into the forts near the city. An immense
number of fire-rafts in preparation to burn the fleet
^ Commodore Senhouse, who succeeded temporarily to the command, was
so mortified by the coui'se of diplomacy that his death at Hongkong in the
month of June 1841 was believed to have been hastened thereby. His
dying request was that his body should be taken to Macao, for burial, as he
feared that further conciliatory measures might result in Hongkong being
given back to the Chinese.
70 THE FIRST CHINA WAR. [chap. iv.
could not be concealed, while placards of a most
menacing character were posted about the city walls.
Captain Elliot, whether he was shaken in his belief
in the pacific assurances of the Chinese authorities
or not, returned to the scene, on board the Nemesis,
on the 10th of May, and it is said that, in order to
show the Chinese that he still believed in their
good faith, he was accompanied on this one occasion by
his wife, probably the first European woman who had
set foot in Canton.
Several weeks more elapsed before the British
plenipotentiary allowed himself to be finally dis-
illusioned. Then he issued a proclamation to the
merchants warning them to be prepared to leave
the factories at a moment's notice, while the inevit-
able Nemesis was moved close up for the protection
of the foreign community generally. The Chinese
had employed the greatest ingenuity in masking
their warlike preparations, and even at the last,
when they saw that concealment was no longer
possible, they attempted to allay the a23prehensions
of the foreigners by issuing an edict in order *' to
calm the feelings of the merchants and to tran-
quillise commercial business," — their object being, as it
was confidently alleged, to take the whole community
by surprise and completely annihilate them.
Although thus attempting to lull the foreigners,
the Chinese authorities had previously warned the
natives, through the elders, to remove their families
and effects from the neighbourhood of the river. On
the very day after the soothing proclamation. May
21, the signal for the renewal of the war was given
by the launching of a number of ingeniously con-
1839-42.] ATTACK BY FIRE-RAFTS. 71
trived fire-rafts, which were dropped down by the
tide upon the EngHsh vessels with the design of
burning them at their anchors. This scheme failed
in its object, partly from miscalculation, — only ten
or twelve out of about a hundred being ignited, —
and partly from the intrepidity of the British officers
and seamen in grappling with those they could reach
in their boats, and towing them out of their intended
course. Indeed the destructive effects of these elab-
orate engines were turned on the Chinese themselves,
some of the rafts taking the ground close to the city
and setting fire to the suburbs. This fiasco was
followed on the one side by an attack on the forts
and the destruction of a very large fleet of war-junks,
and on the other by the demolition and pillage of the
foreign factories, not however without some curious
discrimination.
The attack on Canton was now undertaken in
earnest. On the 26th May the heights in rear of
the city had been captured and were held in force,
so that the whole Chinese position was completely
commanded. Everything was ready for the assault,
which would have been a bloodless affair, an elevation
just within the wall affording a military vantage-
ground from which the whole city could have been
dominated without the least risk by a very small
force. At this critical moment Captain Elliot appeared
to stay the hand of Sir Hugh Gough and Commodore
Senhouse, the commanders of the military and naval
forces respectively. Captain Elliot had, in fact, granted
a truce in order to discuss, not the terms of peace
with China, but merely the conditions on which the
British forces should retire from Canton. The principal
72 THE FIRST CHINA WAR. [chap. iv.
of these were that the city should be evacuated by
all the Chinese and Manchu troops, estimated at
45,000, over whom the authorities proved that they
had perfect control ; and that the authorities should
pay the ransom of $6,000,000, in consideration of which
all the river forts were to be restored to the Chinese,
under the proviso that the forts below Whampoa
were not to be rearmed until the final conclusion of
peace. From first to last 1200 pieces of cannon had
been captured or destroyed in these river forts, which
would in any case have taken some time to replace.
The incident which closed this transaction having
an important bearing upon future events, it merits
particular attention. Two days after the agreement
was concluded the armed Braves of the city and
locality began to assemble in great numbers on the
heights threatening the British position, and they
even advanced to the attack. Fighting ensued, which
lasted two days, during which the Chinese force was
constantly augmenting, and, though more than once
dispersed by the British, it was only to reassemble
in greater numbers and renew the attack. Thus the
ransoming of the city seemed to be but the beginning
of strife. At length the British commander insisted
upon the prefect of Canton going out to the Braves
and causing them to disperse, after which the British
force re-embarked. The incident left on the minds
of the Cantonese the conviction that they were in-
vincible, for they took to themselves the whole credit
of expelling the barbarians.^ This belief was destined
to bear much bitter fruit in after-days.
^ In a proclamation issued in 1844 it was said, "Remember how our
people were persuaded not to fall upon and massacre your soldiers."
1839-42.] THE BEGINNINGS OF HONGKONG. 73
The emperor repudiated all these pacific arrange-
ments, and ordered that as soon as the English ships
had withdrawn new and stronger forts were to be
erected and armed. After the anomalous episode of
Canton the war was transferred to the northern coasts.
Hongkong, with its capacious and well-sheltered har-
bour and facilities for ingress and egress, was found
to be an admirable naval and military base, and the
island soon became a scene of intense activity afloat
and ashore. The Chinese were attracted to it in great
numbers. Tradesmen, mechanics, builders, carpenters,
servants, boatmen, market-people, and common labour-
ers flocked into the island, where one and all found
profitable employment both under the British Govern-
ment and in connection with the commercial establish-
ment which had already been set up there. It is
estimated that during the year 1841 not less than
15,000 natives from the mainland had taken up their
quarters in the new possession of Great Britain, and
were naturally of material assistance in the fitting out
of the great expedition which was about to invade the
eastern seaboard. One drawback, unfortunately, soon
showed itself in the sickness and mortality of the
troops, who were attacked by a fever attributed,
rightly or wrongly, to the breaking up of the soil,
which was composed of decomposed granite. Possibly,
however, the hardships of campaigning in the un-
healthy delta of the Canton river predisposed the
men, when the excitement was over, to attacks of
the diseases associated with the name of Hongkong.
This disastrous epidemic left to the colony an evil
reputation, which survived many years of hygienic
improvement.
74 THE FIRST CHINA WAR. [chap. iv.
The agreement concluded between Captain Elliot
and Kishen, repudiated by the emperor, was no less
emphatically disapproved of by the Government of
Great Britain. Captain Elliot was recalled, and
quitted China on August 24, Sir Henry Pottinger, the
new plenipotentiary, having arrived, in company with
Vice- Admiral Sir William Parker, on the 10th, to the
great joy of every one. The war was thereupon pur-
sued systematically and with vigour.
The twelve months over which these operations ex-
tended will not seem long if we consider that the coast
of China, with its marvellous archipelago, was then
scarcely known to navigators ; that the ships were
propelled by sails ; that they had to operate nearly
1000 miles from their base — and that a place of which
they held precarious possession ; and that the greatest
caution was required in moving a squadron of fifty
vessels, besides transports and store-ships. Indeed
the real matter for surprise — and it reflects the highest
credit on the officers concerned — is that in an expedi-
tion of such magnitude, including the advance of 200
miles up the Yangtze, a river till then quite unknown,
so few casualties occurred. It should also be remem-
bered that in this war against China precautions of
quite unusual stringency were observed for the pro-
tection of private property and the avoidance of injury
to the population.
The Chinese Government was allowed ample time
for reflection between each step in the hostile advance,
yet neither the capture of the coast forts and cities
nor the incursions which were made from convenient
points into the interior sufficed to bring the Court
of Peking to sue for terms. Amoy, Chinhae, Chapu,
1839-42.] SEIZURE OF THE STRATEGIC CENTRE.
75
Ningpo, Wusung, and Shanghai were taken in succes-
sion, and Chusan was reoccupied. The Chinese defence
of these various places was far from contemptible, ex-
cepting only as regarded the antiquity of its methods
and the inefficiency of its weapons. The fortifications
at the various ports were very extensive, and were
mounted with an immense number of guns. The
troops in most cases stood bravely the attack by su-
perior weapons and skill, in several cases waiting for
fVa/Jter 6- Coc/tertii ic.
YANGTZE AND GRAND CANAL.
the bayonet charge before abandoning their earth-
works. It was not until the fleet had made its way
up the Yangtze, secured the Grand Canal which
connects the rich rice -growing provinces with the
northern capital, and had taken its station in front
of Nanking, the southern capital, that the strategic
centre of the empire was reached.
At Nanking, therefore, commissioners were appointed
to treat with Sir Henry Pottinger, and as they had
76 THE FIRST CHINA WAR. [chap. iv.
nothing to do but acquiesce in his demands with the
best grace, while at the same time saving the face of
the Imperial Government as much as the circumstances
of such a surrender would allow, the long -desired
treaty of commerce was at last concluded on August
29, 1842.
The two Imperial Commissioners intrusted with the
negotiations were men of the highest distinction and
rank, Ilipu and Kiying. Of the latter it was said
that he was the first high officer who since the com-
mencement of the war had dared to tell the naked
truth to his imperial master. Their joint memorial to
the throne, on which the imperial instructions for sign-
ing the treaty were based, was remarkable for its clear-
ness, simplicity, and outspokenness, contrasting in
these respects strongly with the customary tone of
flattery, evasion, and bombast. Of Kiying we shall
hear further in the sequel.
Ilipu was already an old man and infirm. His name
is never mentioned by contemporary writers without
respect amounting almost to veneration. Governor-
general in Nanking, he had been appointed Imperial
Commissioner and ordered to Ningpo to get the de-
pendent island Chusan cleared of foreigners. He had
thus been brought into communication with the foreign
commanders in connection with the occupation of
Ningpo and the capture of Chapu, out of which a
correspondence ensued alike honourable to both sides.
A number of Chinese prisoners, after having their
wounds attended to and their wants provided for, with
a small present of money, were restored to liberty by
the British commander. This unexpected action
seemed to impress Ilipu, who in return sent down
1839-42.]
TREATY OF NANKING RATIFIED.
77
to Chapu a number of English prisoners, who had
been for some time incarcerated at Hangchow, treating
them handsomely, according to his lights. The de-
spatch of the prisoners was accompanied by a respect-
ful letter to Sir Hugh Gough and Sir William Parker,
probably the first communication deserving to be so
styled that ever passed between a high Chinese officer
and a foreigner. These circumstances augured well
for the success of future intercourse. Ilipu was sent
to Canton as High Commissioner to arrange details
as to the carrying out of the treaty. He died there,
and was succeeded by Kiying, who brought the rati-
fication of the treaty to Hongkong in June 1843.
_s?_
78
CHAPTER y.
THE TREATY OF 1842.
A one-sided bargain — Not deemed by Chinese obligatory — Condemned by
powerful parties — The Chinese conscience against it — Fulfilment there-
fore could not be voluntary — The Chinese and Manchus compared —
Repugnance to treaty common to them both — Much determination
needed to obtain fulfilment.
Out of such antecedents in peace and war it was a
moral impossibility that normal international relations
between Chinese and foreigners should follow the con-
clusion of peace.
The treaty signed at Nanking by Sir Henry Pottinger
in 1842, simple and explicit in its grammatical con-
struction, and fulfilling as far as words could do so all
the conditions of a charter of fair trade, was tainted
with the vices of a one-sided bargain. Undeed the
Chinese did not regard it in the light of a bargain
at all, but as a yoke temporarily imposed on them
which it was their business to shake off. Sir John
Davis has told us that " at Peking almost every
Chinese of rank and influence was opposed to the
fulfilment of the stipulations of the treaty. The
negotiators of it shared in the odium of the cowardly
generals who had deceived their sovereign by false
representations of their powers of defence." The
THE TREATY A TEMPORARY EXPEDIENT. 79
obligations of the treaty, in fact, sat so lightly on
their consciences, that only so far as they were held
rigorously to its provisions would they observe them.
The open-mouthed denunciation of the treaty in high
quarters was but the textual confirmation of what was
obvious in the nature of the case, that the Chinese
Government regarded the treaty of Nanking as a i^se
de guerre, a mere expedient for purchasing present
relief, *' a temporary arrangement in order to recover
from our losses."
The official animus and the political conscience were
thus entirely on the side of what we call bad faith,
a state of things which has come down unabated to
our own time, though prudence on the one side and
pressure on the other have generally toned down the
outward manifestation of it.
Fulfilment of the treaty under these circumstances
could only be hoped for by the actual employment of
the coercive agency which had secured its signature,
or by the conviction, firmly rooted in the minds of the
Chinese, that such agency was always ready to be
invoked. But as perpetual coercion on the part of
Great Britain was not to be thought of, the establish-
ment and maintenance of satisfactory working relations
demanded on the part of the British agents responsible
for the execution of the treaty a rare combination of
personal qualities. They had, in fact, to assume a
power which they did not possess, to trade upon the
prestige which their country had gained by the success
of its arms, trusting that their pretensions might be
tacitly acquiesced in. Had this attitude been con-
sistently maintained, in small as well as in great
things, from the very outset, there is no telling
80 THE TREATY OF 1842. [chap. v.
whether the observance of the treaty might not have
become a matter of Chinese routine, and in time ac-
quired the sacred authority of custom. But the con-
trary was the case, and it was not the observance but
the non-observance of the treaty that was allowed to
acquire the sanction of custom.
The conduct of the war offered conclusive evidence
that thouD^h certain individuals, from either better
knowledge or higher principle than their contempor-
aries, were inclined to meet their enemies fairly, yet
the conscience of the State, as authoritatively repre-
sented in the emperor's edicts, rejected as absurd
the notion of keeping any kind of faith with the
barbarians. Hence the barren result of all appeals
to the binding authority of the compact, unless when
backed by force ; hence also the efficacy of every
application of force in the dealings of foreign nations
with China whether before or after the treaty of
1842. This consideration is indeed of the essence of
our Chinese relations, though habitually ignored in
the conduct of our intercourse.
As reo;ards the attitude of the Chinese Government
towards foreigners in connection with the war and the
peace, an interesting and suggestive distinction has
been drawn by Sir John Davis between the two ele-
ments in the Government, the Chinese and the
Manchu, — a distinction which has been independently
made by other observers. It is therefore a point well
worthy of being kept in view both in the conduct
of official intercourse and in speculations as to the
future of the Chinese empire. Sir John Davis, who,
first as a Company's agent in China, then for a short
time as British envoy before the war, and eventually
MANCHU MODERATION. 81
chief superintendent of trade for some years after that
event, had much experience in dealing with officials
of the two races, is emphatic on the point that
moderation and humanity were always found on the
side of the Manchus, while implacable ferocity allied
with treachery distinguished the Chinese officials. The
war, he says, was solely the work of the latter, the
peace, of the former. " New Tajin was a thorough
Chinese, and, like the rest of his tribe, vociferous for
war while it was absent, but unable to sustain its
presence ; while the Tartars were generally advocates
for peace, though they did their duty in an emer-
gency." The antithetic character of the two races
shown collectively and individually has been a matter
of general remark by foreigners acquainted with both.
" Ilipu," says Davis, " a Manchu by birth, possessed
the un - Chinese quality of straightforwardness and
honesty of purpose. ... As an early adviser of the
sovereign, he had endeavoured to dissuade him from
risking a foreign quarrel in making the English a
party to the question of restricting the consumption
of opium among his own subjects."
The Manchu Kishen, who replaced Commissioner
Lin on the failure of the latter, was also a man of
good faith. He did his best first to avoid and then
to terminate the war, and in the middle of it concluded
a convention with Captain Elliot by which Hongkong
was ceded and six millions of dollars were to be paid
as ransom for Canton. Yet havinof been admonished
by the emperor " to arouse the patriotism of the nation
and send the heads of the rebellious barbarians to
Peking in baskets, for to treat them reasonably is out
of the question," he had to excuse himself by resort
VOL. I. F
82 THE TREATY OF 1842. [chap. v.
to a false pretence of treachery. The convention he
represented as a ruse, because " his reinforcements were
yet far off"; but he declared that, "bearing the bar-
barians many a grudge," he only abided his time " for
exterminating them whenever it can be done." In the
impeachment of that capable statesman one of the
charges was, " You gave to the barbarians Hongkong
as a dwelling-place, contrary to our law of indivisi-
bility," to which he was fain to answer, " I pretended
to do so, from the mere force of circumstances, to put
them off for a time, but had no such serious intention ;
... a mere feint to avert the further outrages of the
barbarians."
He took up similar ground in apologising for the
conduct of Admiral Kwan, a brave and respectable
officer, who had asked and obtained an armistice in
the Canton river : " He has agreed to a truce with the
barbarians merely to gain time and be in a state to
resist them."
The courtesy of the Manchus was no less conspicuous.
Lord Jocelyn, as quoted by Mr Hunter, remarked, after
a meeting with Kishen : " He rose at our entrance and
received the mission with great courtesy and civility.
Indeed the manners of these high mandarins would
have done honour to any courtier in the most polished
Court of Europe." A French envoy was similarly im-
pressed in an interview with Kiying : "I have visited
many European Courts," he said, " and have met and
known many of the most distinguished men belonging
to them, but for polished manners, dignity, and ease
I have never seen these Chinese surpassed."
While the noblest of the officials were thus driven to
assume a perfidy which was not really in their heart
CHINESE PERFIDY. 83
ill order to accommodate themselves to the prevailing
temper, the baser minds were clamouring open-mouthed
for meeting honour with dishonour. For it is instruc-
tive to recall that the most truculent officials — Com-
missioner Lin, for example — based their slippery
strategy on the known good faith of the barbarians,
'' which made their engagements sacred," as the Roman
generals took advantage of the Sabbatical prejudices
of the Jews. The Chinese could afford to play fast
and loose with their end of the rope, knowing the
other end to be secured to a pillar of good faith. The
commissioners who signed the treaty in their report to
the throne also testified that " the English had acted
with uniform sincerity."
The confiding spirit of the English tempted the
common run of Chinese officials to practise systematic
deception. Thus a disreputable Tartar, who was gover-
nor of Canton, reported that he had " resolved to get
rid of them by a sum of money, as by far the cheapest
way. . . . But once having got rid of them, and blocked
up all the passages leading to Canton, we may again
cut off their commerce, and place them in the worst
possible position," thus anticipating almost to the letter
what took place at the Taku forts in the second war
between 1858-59. A pamphlet, attributed to Com-
missioner Lin, whose wanton atrocities had provoked
the war, after testifying to the habitual good faith
of the barbarian, urged the Government ** never to
conclude a peace : an armistice, a temporary arrange-
ment for the present, in order to recover from our
losses, is all we desire."
The Manchu and Chinese races are the complement
of each other in the economy of the State. The
84 THE TREATY OF 1842. [cHAP. V.
Manchus, with their military heredity, were best fitted
for the imperial role, while the Chinese are by tradition
rather men of business than administrators. From
which it may be inferred that the material progress
of the country will rest more with the Chinese with
all their faults than with the Manchus with their
governing instincts. The Peking Court, indeed, has
been long under the numerically preponderant influ-
ence of the Chinese, and except in matters of dynastic
interest they are Chinese rather than Manchu ethics
which govern the acts of State. The counsels of such
men as Lin and the Chinese party generally prevailed,
as we have seen, over those of the distinguished
Manchus, some of them belonging to the imperial
family, who had to do with the foreign imbroglio,
and it was in full accord with Chinese sentiment that
the Emperor Tao-kuang was brought to declare that
such a nation as the English should not be allowed
to exist on the earth.
Much of the hostility to the treaty may no doubt be
fairly referable to the military humiliation of a Govern-
ment to whom war was rebellion and rebellion parri-
cide. Nor is the exasperation of the Chinese against
their conquerors to be measured by those chivalrous
standards which have been evolved from the tradi-
tions of nations accustomed, even in war, to meet as
equals. They were playing the game under a different
set of rules. But when every such allowance has been
made, the moral principle governing Chinese official
conduct cannot be designated by any word in Western
vocabularies but perfidy. Belligerency as understood
by Western nations did not enter into their conception,
and their war tactics of kidnapping, poisoning the
INHERENT DIFFICULTIES OF INTERCOURSE.
85
water, torturing and massacring prisoners, and so forth,
differed little from their procedure in time of peace,
being in either case based on the implicit negation of
human rights in connection with foreigners.
It may thus be seen what difficulties had to be
encountered, even under the treaty, in guiding the
intercourse between Chinese and foreigners into safe
and peaceable channels ; how much depended on the
tact and capacity of the newly appointed consuls, and
how little assistance they could hope for from the
department which commissioned them. For no matter
how perspicacious the Home Government might from
time to time be, they were as much in the hands of
their representatives after as they had been before
the war. The distance was too great and the com-
munication too slow for the most vigilant ministry
to do more than issue general instructions. " The
man on the spot" would act as his judgment or his
feelings or his power prompted as emergencies might
arise, and we have seen how even the clear intentions
of Lord Palmerston were thwarted by the idiosyncrasies
of some of his agents in China.
86
CHAPTEE VL
THE FRUITS OF THE WAR AND PROSPECTS OF PEACE.
Pretensions of British and Chinese irreconcilable — International equality
inconceivable by Chinese — British aims as set forth by merchants —
The inadequacy of their demands — Clearer insight of their Government
— Unsteadiness of British policy — Consistency of Chinese policy — Treaty
to be observed so far as needful to obviate another war — Canton irre-
concilable— Ransoming the city in 1841 the cause of much subsequent
trouble there.
The pretensions of the contending parties being absol-
utely irreconcilable, no spontaneous accommodation was
possible between them. The Chinese could never ac-
knowledge, or even comprehend, equality among nations,
the single relationship of victor and victim being the
beginning and the end of their international ethics. If,
therefore, they ever set before their minds the issue to
be decided by a war, it must have assumed the brutal
but simple oriental form, Whose foot is to be on the
other's neck ? The question, then, to be submitted to
the ordeal of battle between Great Britain and China
was. Which should be the uppermost ; which should
henceforth dictate to the other? In justice to the
Chinese, it must be admitted that they realised more
clearly than their adversary what the quarrel really
signified. What disconcerted them and led to chronic
misunderstanding in the sequel was the after-discovery
OBJECTS OF THE WAR. 87
that the victor was slack in claiming the fruits of his
victory. Whether they really expected success to
attend their arms may be an open question, for their
ingrained habit of boasting of their prowess may have
deceived even themselves. With this caveat the tem-
per in which the Chinese entered on hostilities may be
gathered from a proclamation of the High Commissioner
and the viceroy of Canton in September 1839: —
Let it be asked [they say], though the foreign soldiers be
numerous, can they amount to one tenth-thousandth part of
ours ? Though it be allowed that the foreign guns are
powerful and effective, can their ammunition be employed for
any long period and not be expended ? If they venture to
enter the port, there will be but a moment's blaze and they will
be turned to cinders. If they dare to go on shore, it is per-
mitted to all the people to seize and kill them. How can these
foreigners then remain unawed ?
From the British point of view the object of the
China expedition was set forth with conspicuous
moderation by the merchants of London and of the
great industrial centres. And here it seems not un-
fitting to remark upon the lively and intelligent in-
terest which the commercial community of that period
was wont to take in the affairs of China. The trade of
Great Britain and of British India with that country
had not reached the annual value of £12,000,000 ster-
ling including treasure, yet we find in the years 1839
and 1840 a series of ably drawn memorials to Govern-
ment bearing the signatures of all the important houses
in the kingdom, showing the most intimate acquaint-
ance with everything that was passing in China, even
though they failed to apprehend the full signification
thereof The signatories of these papers pointed out
88 THE FRUITS OF THE WAR. [chap. vi.
without circumlocution the measures necessary to be
taken in order to place the commercial interests of
her Majesty's subjects on a satisfactory footing. It
would appear, therefore, that it was from the inde-
pendent merchants and manufacturers of Great Britain
and British India that the true inspiration came to
Lord Palmerston, who was then Foreign Minister ; and
not the inspiration only, but the courage which was
needed to throw over the pusillanimous traditions of
the Honourable East India Company, and to apply
the maxims of common - sense to our relations with
the Chinese authorities.
Among the memorials addressed to, and by request
of, the Foreign Secretary, that from the East India
and China Association, representing the merchants of
London interested in the Far East, gives perhaps the
clearest exposition of the whole case from the com-
mercial point of view. After a succinct historical
resume of our successes and failures in China, each
traced to its cause, the memorialists state their opinion
that " submission will now only aggravate the evil,
and that an attempt should be made, supported by a
powerful force, to obtain such concessions from China
as would place the trade upon a secure and permanent
footing." And they conclude with an outline of the
commercial treaty which they think would conduce to
that result.
First. Admission not only to Canton, but to certain ports to
the northward — say Amoy, Fuh-cho-foo, Ningpo, and the
Yang-che-keang and Kwan-chou — situated between 29° and
32° north latitude, near the silk, nankin, and tea districts, and
it is on this coast that the chief demand for British woollens,
longells, and camlets exists.
VIEWvS OF BRITISH MERCHANTS. 89
Secoiid. Commercial relations to be maintained at these
places, or at Canton, generally with the Chinese natives; but
if the trade be limited to certain hongs, which we must strongly
deprecate, then the Government to be guarantees of the solvency
of such parties so chosen by it.
Third. That British subjects in China carrying on a legiti-
mate trade shall not be treated by the Government or its
officials as inferiors, but be left free in their social and domestic
relations to adopt European customs, to possess warehouses, and
to have their wives and families with them, and to be under the
protection of the Chinese laws from insult and oppression.
Fourth. That a tariff of duties, inwards and outwards, be
fixed and agreed upon by the British and Chinese Governments,
and no alteration be made but by mutual consent.
Fifth. That the Queen's representative, as superintendent
of the trade, be allowed direct communication with the Emperor
and his Ministers, as well as with the local authorities ; and
that he be permitted to reside at Peking, or at a given port,
for the protection of British subjects and the regulation of the
trade.
Sixth. That in the event of any infraction of the Chinese
laws, the punishment for the same shall be confined to the
offender; and British subjects shall not be considered
responsible for the acts of each other, but each man for his
own — the innocent not being confounded with the guilty.
Seventh. That supposing the Chinese to refuse opening their
ports generally, the cession by purchase, or otherwise, of
an island be obtained, upon which a British factory could be
established.
Upon terms such as these the British trade with China could,
we think, be carried on with credit and advantage to this
country ; and if force must be used to obtain them, we cannot
believe that the people of Great Britain and the European
community in general would offer any objection to its exercise ;
at least we humbly suggest that the adoption of this course is
worth the trial, for if it be not followed, the only alternative
seems to be the abandonment of this important and growing
commerce to smugglers and to piracy. — We have, &c.,
G. G. DE H. Larpknt.
John Abel Smith.
W. Crawford.
90 THE FRUITS OF THE WAR. [chap. vi.
These stipulations, and the hypothetical form in
which they were advanced, show how imperfect, after
all, was the grasp which the mercantile community had
as yet taken of the situation. While fully recognising
the necessity of force and urging its employment, they
yet seem to have clung to the hope that in some way
or another the expected treaty was to be the result of
amicable negotiation. They did not clearly realise that
as without force nothing could be obtained, so with
force everything could be.
And from what an abyss the status of British subjects
had come to be regarded when it could be deemed a
boon that they be placed under the protection of
Chinese law — instead of being kept for ever outside
the pale of law and of common human suffrages I For-
tunately the Government, profiting by past experience
and better versed in political science, held a more
consistent course than that marked out for it by the
merchants, and went far beyond them in the conces-
sions demanded of the Chinese Government. Instead
of trusting to Chinese law, protection for the persons
and property of British subjects was provided for under
the laws of Great Britain, a stipulation in the treaty
which has been the palladium of the liberties of all
nationalities in China for sixty years. The ambiguity
which characterised the public appreciation of the
China question, even when expressed through the most
authoritative channel, deserves to be noted here on
account of the influence it was destined to exercise on
the future conduct of affairs ; for though the British
Government was perspicacious in the conduct of the
war and in arranging terms of peace, yet, lacking the
sustained support of a well-instructed public opinion,
THE COURT AND THE TREATY. 91
its Chinese policy was subject to many backslidings.
During protracted intervals of inadvertence the per-
nicious influences which it was the purpose- of the war
to suppress were allowed to regain lost ground, with
the result that during the whole sixty years our
Chinese intercourse has been marred by the chronic
recrudescence of the old hostile temper which inspired
the outrages before the war.
On the part of the Chinese Court there was un-
doubtedly a desire for such substantial fulfilment of the
treaty as might obviate the risk of a renewal of the
war. The final instruction of the Emperor Tao-kuang
while the negotiations were proceeding w^as, " Be
careful to make such arrangements as shall cut off for
ever all cause of war, and do not leave anything incom-
plete or liable to doubt." And so long, at least, as the
material guarantee of Chusan was retained by Great
Britain — that is, until 1846-'— no open violation was to
be apprehended. The Chinese war party, however — as
distinguished from the more reasonable Manchus — were
furious in their denunciations of the treaty ; and it was
the opinion of Sir John Davis that the situation wa^
only saved by the financial exhaustion of the country:
"the ordinary taxes could not be collected." There
would in any circumstances have been a strong pre-
sumption of covert evasion being resorted to, a presump-
tion which was reduced to a certainty by the indulgence
extended to that ancient focus of mischief. Canton. By
one of those aberrations of judgment w^hich it is scarcely
unfair to call characteristic, Captain Elliot desired to
save Canton, of all places in the Chinese empire, from
the pressure of war, and in 1841, in the midst of
hostilities on the coast, he accepted ransom for the city,
92 THE FRUITS OF THE WAR. [chap. vi.
a transaction so inexplicable that her Majesty's Treasury,
at a loss what to do with the money, after much ex-
planatory correspondence declared itself unable to
appropriate the fund in the manner intended by her
Majesty's representative. The arrogance of the
Cantonese had been so immeasurably puffed up by this
misguided clemency that the peace left the populace of
the city and district absolutely convinced of their
invincibility. As the eradication of this dangerous
delusion was among the primary purposes of the war, so
the pandering to the pride of Canton proved, as was
inevitable, the malignant root of all subsequent
bitterness.^
^ It is impossible to review, however summarily, the events of that period
without free reference to the officer who was during the time charged with
the care of British interests in China. But no pretence is made in these
pages to pass a verdict on the public record of Captain Elliot. His acts
involved too many solecisms in finance, for one thing, to have escaped the
attention of Parliament ; but, like others who come before that tribunal, he
was neither attacked on his merits nor defended on his merits. None could
question the sincerity of the encomiums passed by the Duke of Wellington
and Lord Melbourne on his " courage, coolness, and self-devotion " ; to
which might well be added a quite exceptional fearlessness of responsibility.
But the first representatives of the British Crown in China were doomed to
failure by the nature of their commission. The terms of their instructions
were more than contradictory — they were mutually destructive. To con-
ciliate the Chinese while opening official relations with them was to mix
the ingredients of an explosive. A dilemma was, in fact, presented un-
wittingly by the British Government to their agents. Lord Napier impaled
himself on one horn — that of claiming a diplomatic status ; Captain Elliot
on the other — that of gaining over the Government by conciliation ; and no
earthly skill could have saved either of them.
93
CHAPTEE VII.
THE NEW INTERCOURSE I CANTON, 1842-1847.
The fundamental diflEiculty of giving eflfect to the treaty — Necessity for
thoroughness — Character of Kiying, Imperial Commissioner — His
amicable relations with British Superintendent of Trade — Turbulence
of Canton — Outrages on British merchants — Condoned by Chinese
Government, if not encouraged both by imperial and pro\^ncial
authorities — Sir John Davis's testimony — His passive treatment —
False policy of allowing Chinese Government to screen itself behind
the mob — Postponement of entry into city — Climax in affair — Evacua-
tion of Chusan — Increase of insults at Canton — Sir John Davis palliates
and then asks for redress — Sudden reaction in his policy consequent on
Lord Palmerston's becoming Foreign Secretary — His clear despatches
— Sir John Davis makes a raid on the river defences — Has the city at
his mercy — But makes an unsatisfactory agreement — Withdraws pro-
tection in spite of remonstrance of merchants — Massacre of six English-
men in 1847 — Redress — Whole question of British protection brought
up — Canton consul objects to ship of war at factories — Palmerston
orders one to be there — Agreement to defer entry into city till 1849 —
People intoxicated with their success — The potency of the people — Its
limitations — Interesting correspondence — Final agreement dictated by
people and signed by Sir John Davis and Kiying.
To carry out a treaty which was odious to Chinese
officials in general, most of all to the bureaucracy and
populace of the main centre of intercourse, Canton,
required an effort analogous to that of maintaining a
body of water at an artificial level — success in either
case depending on completeness. It is easier to keep
the reservoir intact than to compromise with leakages, as
in certain conditions of the human will total abstinence
94 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [chap. vii.
is less irksome than moderation. To carry out the treaty,
the whole treaty, and nothing but the treaty, would
seem, therefore, to have been the obvious course for
British agents to follow, a course suited equally to
strong and to weak characters. This was, no doubt,
understood by some, though not by all, of the British
staff, — fifty years ago, as in our own day ; but in
the distribution of the personnel it fell out that the
fundamental condition of success was least realised
just where it was most imperatively needed — to
wit, at that intermittent volcano. Canton. For even
the close proximity of the chief superintendent — only
120 miles distant — at Hongkong was insufficient to
keep the cistern of our Canton relations water-tight.
Sir John Davis, on the whole a competent official,
shared to some extent in the common human imper-
fection of knowing what was right without always
doing, or being able to do, it. He is indeed him-
self the most candid witness to the breakdown of
the patchwork policy which he permitted to grow
up in Canton, perhaps because he could not do
otherwise.
The first British plenipotentiaries under treaty were
exceptionally fortunate in their Chinese colleague, the
High Commissioner, Kiying. He being a near kins-
man of the emperor, and, with Ilipu, the principal
instrument in promoting the conclusion of peace, his
appointment must have been considered the best
recognition the Court could accord of the validity
of the treaty. " Kiying," says Sir J. Davis, " was
by far the most remarkable person with whom Euro-
peans have ever come in contact in that part of
the world ; the most elevated in rank as well as
KIYING, IMPERIAL COMMISSIONER. 95
the most estimable in character." Intercourse with
Kiying, therefore, was pleasant, and conducive to self-
respect.
Both officials were unfortunate in having to reckon
with an intractable peace-disturbing element in their
mutual relations. This is the name which, for want
of a more exact designation, must be given to the
people of Canton, " who, through every event since
1839, remained incorrigible in the real hatred and
affected contempt for foreigners."
It has always been, and still is, the practice of the
Chinese authorities to make use of the populace in
their aggressions on strangers. There is at all times
in China, as in most countries, an inexhaustible fund
of anti-foreign sentiment ready to be drawn upon by
agitators, whether within the Government circle or not,
and subject also to spontaneous explosion. By working
on these latent passions, and inflaming the popular
mind by the dissemination of odious calumnies, Govern-
ment could at any moment foment an anti-foreign raid.
It was a political engine in the use of which Chinese
officialdom had become thoroughly expert. It was
tempting by its cheapness, and it had, moreover, the
special fascination for them that in the event of being
called to account for outrage they could disavow the
excesses of the "poor ignorant people." Such a force,
however, is not without its drawbacks to those who
employ it. Like a fire, which is easy to kindle but
hard to control, the popular excitement was apt to
extend beyond the limits assigned by its instigators,
and many an engineer has thus been hoist by his own
petard. " Otho had not sufficient authority to prevent
crime, though he could command it," says Tacitus ; and
96 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [chap. vii.
the observation fits the case of successive generations
of Chinese rulers as if it had been written for each one
of them separately.
The rowdy population of Canton enjoyed special
immunity from official control. Not only had they
been habitually pampered for two hundred years, and
diligently taught to tyrannise over and despise for-
eigners, but during the war they were allowed to
organise themselves independently of the authorities,
and to claim the honour of driving the invaders off on
the occasion when the city was admitted to ransom.
On the mendacious reports of these transactions reach-
ing him, the emperor not only bestowed rewards on the
leaders but encouraged the populace to further hostile
measures against the foreigners. The liberal distribu-
tion of arms during the war proved afterwards a power-
ful incentive to crimes of violence, of which outrages on
foreigners were but one development.
The self-organised, self- trained bands of Canton were
by no means disposed to submit tamely to the new
order of things, in the settlement of which they had
had no voice. They had bettered their official instruc-
tion in the storing up and practising of hatred and
contempt for foreigners, and they did not choose sud-
denly to recant merely because their Government had
been coerced into making a treaty in a distant pro-
vince. Consequently, within three short months of its
signature notices were placarded inciting the people to
violence ; very soon an organised attack on the British
factories was made, and the buildings were burned
down.
So far from attempting to repress such outrages, the
governor of Canton, " while the ruins were still smok-
THE CANTONESE MOBS. 97
ing," reported to the throne that the people " in their
natural indignation had committed some excesses
against the grasping barbarians," and a very gracious
answer was vouchsafed to an offer of the people of
certain outlying villages to join the armed bands of the
city. The Imperial Government as well as the pro-
vincial government was thus identified with the
popular hostility to foreigners, and opposition to the
fulfilment of the treaty. " The excesses of the Canton
mob," writes Sir John Davis, " were perpetually and
annually resumed, up to the public decapitation of the
four murderers of the Englishmen in 1847, with the
subsequent punishment of eleven more."
But this is surely remarkable testimony from the
Minister of Great Britain who was charged with the
protection of his nationals ^ from wrong ? With British
garrisons in occupation of Kulangsu and Chusan, a
military and naval force in Hongkong, and a Chinese
commissioner professedly willing to afford protection
and redress to foreigners, the acquiescence of the British
authorities in these recurrent outrages seems to stand
in need of explanation. The native authorities, it was
clear, would not, even if they dared, coerce the Canton
populace. Kiying himself, though meaning to be just,
and ready to enforce redress against individual culprits,
recoiled before the mob. So it would appear did the
British representative, who, though vigilant in requiring
compliance with the treaty in minor respects, seemed to
be paralysed whenever the Cantonese were in question.
1 This convenient term, borrowed from the French, saves many peri-
phrases and sometimes an ambiguity. Neither "fellow-countrymen,"
"fellow-subjects," nor "fellow-citizens" fully expresses the relationship
between an official in an extra-territorialised country and those whom he
protects and governs.
VOL. T. G
98 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [cHAP. vii.
He had been too long accustomed to their practices not
to be aware of the cumulative quality of these outrages,
and he was too practical a philosopher not to know the
wisdom of arresting the virulent stream at its fountain-
head. Yet " the miserable policy of the Chinese
Government . . . had permitted the populace of
Canton ... to reach the culminating-point of organ-
ised misrule in 1846," British merchants being the
sufferers. Why was nothing done to protect them at
least from the consequences of this misrule ?
The intricacies of the relation between the criminal
rabble of Canton and the authorities there it would be
hopeless to unravel, just as it would be vain to make
such an attempt with regard to analogous cases which
are to this day of constant recurrence. But no special
penetration is needed to discover the falsity of a policy
of allowing an organised government to plead its
inability to control its own populace. Once admit
such a plea and the security of the stranger is gone,
for he has relinquished his hold on the Government
without being compensated by any alternative security.
Such was the state of things which had been allowed
to grow up in Canton, producing the only fruit possible
— outrage, ever increasing in violence and ending in
massacre.
The postponement of the right of entry into the city
conferred by treaty was a test case which gave the
Chinese the clue to the weakness of British policy.
The consequences would have been less pernicious had
the right been frankly surrendered from the first, for
to have it merely deferred from time to time on the
avowed ground of the populace not being ready to
acquiesce in it was to flatter the mob beyond measure
CLIMAX OF CHINESE HOSTILITY. 99
while feeding their passion for violence. It was in this
manner that the British Government had " given itself
away " to the lawless rowdies of Canton.
The " climax " referred to by Sir John Davis occurred
at an interesting juncture of time, for it was in 1846
that the last British soldier quitted Chinese soil, and
Sir John Davis testifies that the restoration of Chusan
had produced a change for the worse in the tone of the
Chinese authorities. Kiying himself forgot his ur-
banity and acted " with a degree of hrusquerie, not to
say insolence, never before exhibited by him."
A riotous attack on the foreign factories broke out in
July 1846, in which the merchants were compelled in a
body to defend themselves against an immense number
of assailants. For this outbreak Sir John Davis blamed
one of the English merchants, and got him irregularly
fined by the consul. A murderous assault was com-
mitted on two British seamen in the city of Canton in
October following. In the ordinary routine he reported
the occurrence to the Foreign Ofiice in a despatch of
seven lines. " Two English merchant seamen," he said,
" having strayed into the town, had been violently ill-
used by the populace" ; adding that he ** considered it
to be the duty of the consul to prevent seamen wander-
ing through Canton." He at the same time instructed
the consul to find some means of punishing the master
of the ship for allowing his men liberty, and proposed
placing greater power in the hands of the consul for the
restraint of British subjects generally. Above this level
the plenipotentiary seemed unable to rise.
In March 1847 an English party of six, including
Colonel Chesney, commanding the Royal Artillery in
Hongkong, narrowly escaped murder at the hands of a
100 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [chap. vii.
riotous mob during an excursion up the Canton river.
They strayed much farther than the two sailors had
done, and if they did not fare worse it was due to the
almost miraculous interposition of a Chinese officer with
his followers, he himself being roughly handled by the
mob. It would not do to apply to Colonel Chesney's
case the homoeopathic treatment which was thought
appropriate to the others, and Sir John Davis made
a formal demand on the Chinese authorities for the
punishment of the aggressors. The cup of Chinese
iniquity was deemed full, and the avenger was at last
let loose.
Whence, it is pertinent to ask, came this sudden
access of vigour in the British representative ?
The juncture of time above referred to was inter-
esting from another point of view, for coincidently
with the evacuation of Chusan and the renewed
arrogance of the Chinese, a political event took place
in the western hemisphere which had an important
bearing on the whole attitude of Great Britain.
There was a change of Government, Palmerston
succeeding Aberdeen at the Foreign Office. The
influence of Lord Palmerston on Chinese affairs dur-
ing his long public career was so remarkable, that
the ebb and flow of British prestige may be traced
as closely by his periods of office as the course of
the oceanic tide by the phases of the moon. Let
any patriotic Englishman ransack the records of the
sixty odd years of that statesman's full activity, and
he will find no despatch or speech on the subject of
China, even down to our own day, that will afford
him such genuine satisfaction as those emanating from
Lord Palmerston. They are so much the embodiment
LOBD PALMERSTON. 101
of common -sense that they might sometimes be con-
sidered commonplace ; practical, true, clear as a
bugle-note. He had been barely six months in
oiBce when one of his terse despatches to Sir John
Davis turned that cautious official for the time being
into a hero. The astonishment of Sir John may be
imagined when, in reply to his placid report of the
outrage on the two seamen, he received a curt com-
munication from the Foreign Office in which his
attention was directed to the punishment, not of the
victims, but of the perpetrators, of the outrage.
I have [wrote Lord Palmerston, January 12, 1847] to
instruct you to demand the punishment of the parties guilty
of this outrage ; and you will, moreover, inform the Chinese
authorities in plain and distinct terms that the British Govern-
ment will not tolerate that a Chinese mob shall with impunity
maltreat British subjects in China whenever they get them into
their power ; and that if the Chinese authorities will not by
the exercise of their own power punish and prevent such
outrages, the British Government will be obliged to take the
matter into their own hands.
Sir John Davis was the more ready to respond to
this stirring appeal that it reached him just as he
had entered on a correspondence with the Chinese
respecting the attack on Colonel Chesney's party.
The turn of the tide was marked with unusual dis-
tinctness in a single sentence of the plenipotentiary's
despatch dated March 27, 1847. "The records of
the Foreign Office," wrote Sir John, "will convince
your lordship that during the last three years I
have been rigidly tied down by my instructions to
the most forbearing policy. . . . The time has, in
my opinion, certainly arrived when decision becomes
102 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [chap. vii.
necessary and further forbearance impolitic." The
inspiration of these instructions may be inferred from
a speech of Lord Stanley's in 1845, in which he said,
speaking of China, " I believe, so far as our later ex-
perience has gone, that there is no nation which more
highly values public faith in others; and up to the
present moment I am bound to say there never was
a government or a nation which more strictly and
conscientiously adhered to the literal fulfilment of
the engagements into which it had entered." This
from a Minister of the Crown, after three years of
continuous outraores in Canton and of refusal to ful-
fil a specific article in the treaty, reflects either on
the superintendent of trade in China as having with-
held information from the Government, or on the
Government itself in arriving at conclusions dia-
metrically opposed to the tenor of their agents
despatches. If it be any justification of the Govern-
ment theory to say so, the sentiments expressed by
Lord Stanley were echoed by the newspapers of the
day. " The Chinese," said one of them, " have acted
with exemplary good faith, nor is there the least
probability of their failing in future to do so."
Under the new af&atus, and backed handsomely by
the naval and military commanders, Sir John Davis
proceeded to prick the bubble of mob lawlessness
and to reduce the Anglo- Chinese relations to working
order. This he did by a sudden raid on the Canton
river defences, without apparently any diplomatic
preliminaries. By a brilliant feat of arms General
D'Aguilar with a detachment from the Hongkong
garrison, conveyed by three small steamers of the
China squadron, swept the defences of the Canton
SIR JOHN DAVIS'S RAID. 103
river, blew up the magazines, spiked 827 pieces of
heavy cannon, and placed the city of Canton "en-
tirely at our mercy, ... all without the loss of one
British life." Under the intoxication of such a
triumph the plenipotentiary might be pardoned the
illusion that the Canton troubles were now at an
end. ''The Chinese yielded in five minutes what
had been delayed as many months." And yet it
proved to be a fool's paradise after all in which he
found shelter, for the old fatality of half-measures
that has marred so many British victories over-
shadowed Sir John Davis's first essay in diplomacy.
The agreement in seven articles concluded with Ki-
ying on April 6, 1847, contained such blemishes as
the British negotiator could perceive clearly enough
when the work of other officials was in question.
Having laid down broadly that the good faith of
the Chinese Government bore a direct relation to
the hostages they had given, yet the plenipotentiary,
when he came to business on his own account,
abandoned the securities which were actually in his
hands, and, either from misgivings of some sort, or
under the impulse of a sudden reconversion, he
threw himself unreservedly on the good faith of the
Chinese without any guarantee whatever.
With regard to the protection to be affi)rded to the
merchants and the prevention of attacks upon them.
Lord Palmerston wrote in December 1846 : " Wherever
British subjects are placed in danger, in a situation
which is accessible to a British ship of war, thither a
British ship of war ought to be, and will be ordered,
not only to go but to remain as long as its presence
may be required. I see no reason for cancelling the
104 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [chap. vii.
instructions given to you for the constant presence of
a ship of war within reach of the factories at Canton."
This promise of Lord Palmerston's was the sheet-
anchor of the merchants' security. The question of
having a ship of war close to the factories divided
the mercantile from the local official view, and as the
Home Government had so clearly adopted the former,
the merchants took courage to stand up for what they
deemed their rights. Learning that Sir John Davis,
in the plenitude of his military success, had resolved
to withdraw all her Majesty's forces from Canton, they
ventured to make a strong remonstrance against such
a step. Sir John, however, while consenting to the
retention of a portion of the force, never allowed him-
self to be convinced of the need of any such measure.
Writing to his Government in August 1847, he de-
clared that " the Canton factories were never less in
need of the presence of such a vessel than at present,"
— an opinion frequently reiterated until November 20,
when "for the first time since the peace it may be
confidently predicated that a steamer will not be re-
quired." This was within sixteen days of the most
cruel and revolting massacre of six young Englishmen
at Hwang-chu-ke, within three miles of the city. The
absence of a ship of war at that moment was deeply
deplored, because several of the victims were kept alive
long enough to have been rescued had there been any
British force at hand.
This massacre naturally produced a profound im-
pression on the Canton community, who felt that their
warnings and petitions had been cruelly disregarded.
The resident British merchants, in a memorial to Lord
Palmerston, quoted his lordship's own instruction as to
OFFICIAL V. MERCANTILE VIEWS. 105
the stationing of a British ship of war at Canton, and
said " it was with the utmost surprise and regret they
beheld that officer [Sir J. Davis] shutting his eyes to
the danger that menaced us, . . . and withholding
the protection he had been directed to afford." " The
heavy calamity which has befallen us," they add, ** is
the result of this infatuation."
So much for the protection of life and property
resulting from the armed expedition of 1847. The
value of the new agreement, purely local in its bear-
ing, which was the result of the successful invasion,
was esteemed but lightly by the merchants. In their
memorial, written in the month of August, they said :
" If it is not deemed expedient to carry out a general
measure in the manner contemplated by the 4th article
of the new agreement, it would be much better that
the merchants be again left to themselves " ; while
respecting the military raid and its consequences,
they represented that "the just alarm occasioned by
the expedition four months ago, and the excitement
kept up by these fruitless negotiations, have done in-
calculable injury. to the trade without bettering the
position of foreigners in the least."
Such diverse views of policy held by the principal
parties concerned are typical of the relations which
have subsisted between the protectors and the pro-
tected throughout a great part of the period which
has elapsed since the British Government established
relations with China in 1834.
These occurrences at Canton and the decided action
taken by the British Government brought up in a
definite form the whole question of the safety of
British interests in China, and the means by which
106 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [chap. vii.
it was to be secured. The conversion of Sir John
Davis, though much, was not everything. The aim
of Lord Palmerston's policy was still liable to be de-
flected by the perturbing influence of a minor planet in
the system. The consul in Canton gave him almost
as much trouble in his day as the famous Tiverton
butcher did afterwards in his ; and the patience with
which his lordship endeavoured to enlighten his agent
on the most elementary principles of human action
was admirable. It had been the practice of the
consul " to report to your Excellency another wanton
and unprovoked attack on the part of the populace
upon a party of Englishmen," and at the same time
to deprecate any measures of defence, whether by
organising volunteers among the residents or having
a British ship of war stationed where she could be
seen.
The consul's object in all this was to avoid exciting
suspicion in the minds of the Chinese populace. Sir
John Davis, who had all along agreed with the con-
sul, had now to tell his subordinate that ** Viscount
Palmerston was of opinion that we shall lose all ad-
vantages which we have gained by the war if we
take the low tone which has been adopted at Canton."
We must stop [continued his lordship] on the very threshold
any attempt on their part to treat us otherwise than as their
equals. . . . The Chinese must learn and be convinced that if
they attack our people and our factories they will be shot. . . .
So far from objecting (as the Consul had done) to the armed
association, I think it a wise security against the necessity of
using force. . . . Depend upon it that the best way of keeping
any men quiet is to let them see that you are able and deter-
mined to repel force by force, and the Chinese are not in the
least different in this respect from the rest of mankind.
I
ENTRY INTO CANTON POSTPONED. 107
In the light of the history of the subsequent fifty
years, one is tempted to say that Lord Pahnerston's
dictum puts the eternal China question in a nutshell.
But when we reflect on the consequences of a man
" of great experience " needing such lectures and yet
left for years undisturbed at a centre of turbulence like
Canton, can we greatly wonder at the periodical harvest
of atrocities which followed ?
The one important article in the April agreement was
that suspending for a definite period of two years the
operation of the article of the treaty of Nanking con- ,
ferring the right of entering the city of Canton and the
other ports of trade. Sir John Davis demanded either
permission to ''return your Excellency's visit in the
city, or that a time be specifically named after which
there shall be general free ingress for British subjects."
To which Kiying replied, " The intention of entering
the city to return my visit is excellent. The feelings
of the people, however, are not yet reconciled to it."
And Kiying easily had his way. Sir John thereupon
explicitly sanctioned a definite delay of two years in
the exercise of this treaty right, representing the
privilege in his report to Lord Palmers ton as of little
importance.
Such, however, was not the view either of the Chinese
or the British community of Canton. The throwing
open of the city was by the latter considered the
essential object of the recent expedition, and in their
memorial to Lord Palmerston the merchants stated
that the Braves having declared their determination
to oppose the English at all costs, the withdrawal of
our troops re infectd " intoxicated all ranks of the
people with an imaginary triumph." Exclusion from
108 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [chap. vii.
the city thus remained as a trophy in the hands of the
reactionaries, to become in 1856 the crux of a new
dispute and a new war.
It was no imaginary, but a very real, triumph for
*^ the people"; and even looking back on the trans-
action with the advantage of fifty years' experience, it
is difiicult to avoid the conclusion that it was an in-
version of judgment to have a city entirely at your
mercy and then yield to the city instead of making the
city yield to you. The least that could have been
expected was, that while the troops were on the spot
they should have vindicated the treaty of Nanking once
for all by opening the city gates and thus eliminating
the most pregnant source of future strife.
On one point Sir John Davis was in agreement with
the memorialists — namely, in " tracing back the con-
duct of the Canton populace to the operations of 1841,
on which occasion they were spared by our forces at the
rear of the city." But the merchants were pointing
out to Lord Palmerston that Sir John Davis was him-
self implicitly following that very precedent.
The China career of Sir John Davis was destined
to a tragic finale, for in the midst of a series of de-
cidedly optimistic despatches he was startled by the
news of the Hwang-chu-ke murders. Expiation was as
prompt as could have been reasonably expected, the
High Commissioner not daring to afford provocation for
a further punitive expedition which might not have
ended quite so easily as that of the previous April.
The Canton imbroglio of 1847 threw into strong
relief the potency of the Chinese demos and its relation
to the Central Government. The pretensions of the
populace and the stress of events drove the Imperial
CHINESE DEMOS AND CHINESE GOVERNMENT. 109
Government into a corner and forced it to show its
hand, with the result that the occult combination which
had been the despair of British officials for fourteen
years was resolved into its elements, and for a time
made amenable to treatment. It was demonstrated by
this experiment that though the Imperial Government
dared not, except in extremity, oppose any popular
movement, yet when necessity required the authorities
assumed an easy mastery. Sir John Davis wrote in
one of his latest despatches, " Kiying had clearly
proved his power over the people when he chooses to
exercise it." Coerced themselves, the authorities ap-
plied corresponding coercion to the people, even at the
behest of foreigners, " truckling" to whom was equally
disgraceful to both the Chinese parties. The inter-
action of the two Powers exemplified in a memorable
way the principle of all Chinese intercourse, that bold-
ness begets timidity and gentleness arrogance. When
the people asserted themselves the authorities yielded
and fell into line with them, and when the authorities
asserted themselves the people succumbed. Such were
the lessons of the Canton operations of 1847, lessons
since forgotten and relearned again and again at ever-
increasing cost.
But the relations between the Government and the
people bore also a quasi-diplomatic character. They
dealt with each other as if they were two Estates of
the realm having parallel or concurrent jurisdiction.
The most remarkable phase, however, of the popular
pretensions which was evolved under the unaccustomed
pressure of the British Minister was the attempt of the
populace to diplomatise direct with him. So curious
an incident may still be studied with profit. The new
110 THE NEW INTERCOURSE. [chap, vil
departure of the people was the more startling in that
they had been hitherto known only as a ferocious and
lawless mob addicted to outrage, whose hatred of
foreigners gained in bitterness by a long immunity
from reprisals. Now that they had felt the " mailed
fist " of a man of fact, and were almost in the act of
delivering up their own heroes for execution, they
sought to parley with the Power they had despised.
The elders of the murderous villages, in the midst of
his stern demands, sent a memorial to Sir John Davis
full of amity and goodwill. *' Come and let us reason
together" was the burden of this novel address. The
elders proposed a convention for the suppression of
outrages, somewhat on the lines of the Kilmainham
Treaty, to supersede the law of the land. " The former
treaty drawn up in Kiangnan was not well understood
by the common people " ; in other words, it was want-
ing in validity, for " the resolutions of Government are
in nowise to be compared to those self-imposed by the
people. . . . Were not this preferable to the fruitless
proclamations and manifestos of government ? " "It
has, therefore," they say, " been resolved to invite the
upright and influential gentry and literati of the whole
city to meet together, and, in concert with the wealthy
and important merchants of your honourable nation,
establish a compact of peace."
Though he could not receive such a communication
officially. Sir John Davis forwarded a copy to the
Foreign Office, to whom he imparted his belief that
the author was no other than Kiying himself — a sur-
mise which was soon confirmed. The paper was exten-
sively circulated ; its arguments and phraseology were
adopted by Kiying in his official correspondence with
STRUGGLE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. Ill
Sir John Davis. " The compact of peace " which closed
their negotiations amounted to no more, indeed, than
police protection for foreigners in their country walks,
which, however, was counterbalanced by a new re-
striction excluding them from the villages as they had
already been from the city. The interesting point is
that, such as it was, it was the proposal of the people
ratified by the two plenipotentiaries.
From this hurried sketch of affairs at Canton during
the first five years of the new intercourse we see that
the secular policy of China had undergone no change as
a result of the treaty. The settled determination of
the Government to exclude foreigners from the country
and keep them in strict subjection at the farthest mari-
time outpost of the empire had been overcome by
violence ; but the Chinese never abandoned the hope
of retrieving their position in whole or in part, nor did
they forego any opportunity of avenging their military
defeat. A frontal attack being out of the question, the
invader could be perpetually worried by guerilla tactics,
his sentries caught napping, his chiefs bamboozled :
what had been lost through force might thus be won
back by force and fraud judiciously blended, for craft is
the natural resource of the weak. The conditions of
the contest have varied with the international develop-
ments of fifty years, but time has worked no change in
the nature of the struggle East v. West.
112
CHAPTER YIIL
THE NEW TREATY PORTS — FOOCHOW, AMOY, NINGPO.
Visit of Chinese commissioners to Hongkong — A supplementary treaty
negotiated — Chinese thereby obtain control of junk trade of colony —
Vain efforts to recover the lost ground — New ports criticised — Amoy
— Alcock's temporary residence there, 1844 — Interpreter Parkes —
Foochow — Bad beginning — Insolence of mandarin and mob — Lost
ground recovered during Alcock's consulate — His family arrive — Little
trade — Difficulties of diverting the Bohea trade from old routes —
Alcock's commercial reports — Their grasp of salient points in a fresh
range of subjects.
It accorded with the fitness of things that the negoti-
ator of the treaty should remain to carry out its
provisions. Sir Henry Pottinger was appointed the
first Governor of Hongkong, Chief Superintendent
of Trade, and Minister Plenipotentiary for Great
Britain ; Kiying and two associates Imperial Com-
missioners for China. Intercourse between them was
of the most agreeable character. Though the wound
to the pride of China was deep and still fresh, the
Imperial Commissioners' acceptance of the new state
of things exceeded what the most stoical philosophy
could call for. They came in person, on invitation,
to the alienated island, there to exchange the rati-
fications of the Nanking treaty ; entered heartily into
the life of the community, showed great interest in
THE SUPPLEMENTARY TREATY. 113
their nascent institutions, and "returned to Canton
charmed with English civilisation." China then was
really converted, and Kiying the patron saint of
the young colony ! That adroit Manchu, however,
had a purpose to serve by his effusive bonhomie: it
was nothing less than to undermine the treaty of
Nanking.
So long as Sir Henry Pottinger was negotiating
under the guns of her Majesty's ships he was master
of the situation, but when pitted against the Chinese
in the open field the position was reversed, for they
had definite aims and knew how to gain them.
Arrangements were found necessary for the conduct of
trade at the five consular ports ; the relations be-
tween the colony of Hongkong and the empire of
China, as regards criminals, debtors, &c., required
definition ; and, more important still, the native ship-
ping frequenting its harbour had to be regulated.
The negotiations required for these purposes afforded
Kiying a favourable opportunity for giving effect
to the reactionary policy of the Chinese Government.
The supplementary treaty was negotiated at the
Bogue between Sir Henry Pottinger and Kiying in
October 1843. The Chinese version seems to have
been signed by the British agent without his hav-
ing before him a textual English translation : by its
provisions the Chinese authorities engaged to protect
the junk traffic in colonial waters. Sir Henry Pot-
tinger did not realise the kind of weapon he had
thus placed in the hands of his friends until its
damaging effects were demonstrated by experience.
Then what had been lost by diplomacy was sought
to be partially regained by persuasion. To this end
VOL. I. H
114 THE NEW TREATY PORTS. [chap. viii.
strenuous efforts were made by successive governors
of Hongkong to induce Kiying to forego some of
the powers which had been inadvertently conferred
on him, as their exercise was proving ruinous to the
trade of the island. But as this result was precisely
what had been intended by the Chinese, nothing short
of another war would have moved them to yield a
single point.
His hesitation to exercise the right of entry into
the city of Canton conferred by the treaty of Nan-
king, while allowing the Chinese the full advantage
of the concessions gained by them under the sup-
plementary treaty, must likewise be held as a blemish
on the policy of Sir Henry Pottinger. The best pal-
liation of these errors of the first treaty -maker is
perhaps to be found in the fact that his successors,
with many years of actual experience to guide them,
have fallen into the same errors of both omission
and commission.
In other respects Sir Henry Pottinger's arrange-
ments for giving effect to the treaty seem to have
been as practical as the untried circumstances would
allow.
The opening of the new ports, with the exception
of Shanghai, was unfavourably commented upon by
a section of the English press, not perhaps unwilling
to score a point against the '* Tory Government, which
was alone answerable for the treaty of Nanking."
They denounced the opening of so many ports on
the ground that it would only multiply points of
collision with the Chinese. Three years later the
'Times' pronounced "Amoy, Foochow, and Ningpo
as good for nothing as places of trade," while Hong-
SHANGHAI, NINGPO, AMOY, FOOCHOW. 115
kong itself was equally despised as a commercial
colony. Some of the journals resuscitated the idea
which had been freely discussed during the years
preceding the war, and advocated the acquisition in
sovereignty of islands as emporia instead of ports on
the mainland, and it is worthy of remark that the
same idea was again revived by Mr Cobden twenty
years later. *' Get two other small islands," he said
in 1864; "merely establish them as free ports" on
the model of Hongkong. And this with a view to
superseding the treaty ports on the coast, where trade
had been established for twenty years.
Three of the new ports — Shanghai, Ningpo, and
Amoy ^- were opened under Sir Henry Pottinger's
auspices in 1843; Foochow in 1844. These places,
distributed at approximately equal intervals along the
coast-line of 1000 miles between Shanghai and Canton,
were not chosen at random. They had all been at
one time or another entrepots of foreign commerce
with either Europe, Southern Asia, or Japan. Foo-
chow had been many years before strongly recom-
mended by one of the East India Company's tea-tasters
as most desirable for the shipment of tea. An ex-
pedition equipped by the Company under Mr Hamilton
Lindsay, who, like the other servants of the Company,
was versed in the Chinese language, visited the north-
ern coast in the chartered ship Amherst in 1832, and
gained the first authentic information concerning the
commercial capabilities of Shanghai. Mr GutzlafF,
who acted as secretary and coadjutor to Mr Lindsay's
mission, made several adventurous voyages, including
one in Chinese disguise, in a native junk, to Tientsin.
Though the coast had not yet been surveyed, and
116 THE NEW TREATY PORTS. [chap. viii.
navigation was in consequence somewhat dangerous,
a good deal of fairly accurate information, some of it
already obsolete, was by these means placed at the
disposal of those who made the selection of the treaty
ports. Ningpo was noted for its literary culture, for
the respectability and intelligence of its inhabitants,
and their friendly disposition towards foreigners. But
although it was the entrepot of a flourishing coasting
trade, the shallowness of its river, the want of anchor-
age at its embouchure, and its vicinity to Shanghai,
combined to preclude the growth of foreign commerce
at the port of Ningpo.
It was to Foochow that Mr Alcock was appointed
in 1844, by Mr Davis (as he then was), who had
recently succeeded Sir Henry Pottinger. The new
consul, however, made his actual debut at Amoy,
where he was detained for four months, from No-
vember 1844 to March 1845, acting for the titular
consul at that port. There he at once displayed
that energy and clear-sightedness which were to be-
come so conspicuous in his subsequent career. Two im-
portant matters had to be arranged within the period
named — the evacuation of the island of Kulangsu by
the British garrison and the future residence of the
consul. Trifling as this last may seem, it was a matter
of no small consideration in China, where, to paraphrase
Polonius, the dwelling oft proclaims the man. It was
one of the innumerable devices of the Chinese authori-
ties for degrading new-comers in the eyes of the popu-
lace to force them to live, as at Canton, within a con-
fined space or in squalid tenements. Mr Alcock knew
by instinct the importance of prestige, while his Benin-
CONSUL ALCOCK AT AMOY AND FOOCHOW. 117
sular training had taught him the value of sanitation.
Following these two guiding stars, he overbore the
obstruction of the officials, and not only obtained a
commodious site but had a house built to his own
specification during his temporary incumbency of the
office. That, and his general bearing towards the
authorities, stamped on the Amoy consulate the im-
press of dignity which has never been wholly effaced.
He was most fortunate, it must be allowed, in his in-
struments, chiefly in the interpreter whom he found at
Amoy, a man, or rather a boy — for he was only sixteen
— entirely after his own heart. That was Harry
Parkes, one of the bravest and best of our empire-
builders. It is indeed to the journals and letters of
Sir Harry Parkes, edited by Mr Stanley Lane-Poole,
and to notes supplied for that biography by Sir Puther-
ford Alcock himself in 1893, that we are chiefly in-
debted for the record of their joint proceedings at
Amoy, Foochow, and to some extent also Shanghai,
from 1844 to 1848. The consul made a favourable
first impression on the young interpreter, who described
him in a family letter as " tall but slimly made, stand-
ing about six feet in his boots ; . . . very gentle-
manly in his manners and address, and exceedingly
polite." It was not, however, till he reached his proper
post, Foochow, that the mettle of the new consul and
interpreter was seriously tested.
Foochow was of superior rank to the other two ports,
being, like Canton, at once a provincial capital and the
seat of a governor-general or viceroy of two provinces
— namely, Fukien and Chekiang — and possessing a
Manchu garrison. The Chinese Government was be-
lieved to have been most reluctant to open Foochow
118 THE NEW TREATY PORTS. [chap. viii.
as a trading port at all, which seemed reason enough
for the British negotiators insisting on its being opened.
Its trade was small, which perhaps rendered the port
the more suitable for the experimental purpose of test-
ing the principles which were to govern the new
intercourse.
As the leading occurrences there have been set forth
at some length by Mr Stanley Lane-Poole in the above-
mentioned work, there is the less reason for us to linger
over details. We find that on arrival at the end of
March 1845 Mr Alcock discovered that he had not to
maintain, but to regain, the prestige which had already
been lost at Foochow. Canton was, in fact, repeating
itself both as regards the arrogance of the Chinese and
the acquiescence of British officials. Exclusion from
the city and various other indignities had been imposed
on the consul, who, on his part, had followed the course
which had proved so fatal at Canton of currying favour
by submission. Living in a shed,^ where Mr Davis on
a flying visit was ashamed to receive return calls from
the native authorities, keeping up no great state, afraid
even to hoist his consular flag for fear of hurting the
feelings of the Chinese, the consul soon brought upon
himself and his nationals the inevitable consequences of
his humility. Mob violence and outrages, encouraged
at first by the authorities in order to cow the foreigners,
had attained dimensions which at last alarmed the
^ " Mr Lay, who has been officiating as consul for some weeks, has been
located in a miserable house built on piles on a mud flat, apart from the
city, and above the bridge, where the tide, as it ebbs and flows, daily sweeps
up to his door ; and all efi'orts to obtain even decent accommodation in the
city, where he is entitled to demand it, or in any but this pestilent
locality, have been in vain." — ' Times ' Correspondent, Hongkong, October
22, 1844.
RECOVERS PRESTIGE AT FOOCHOW. 119
authorities themselves, all within two years of the
opening of the port. Mr Alcock set himself sternly
to oppose this downward current, but a year elapsed
before the violence of the people and the studied rude-
ness of the officials were finally stamped out. For,
curiously enough, as Mr Lane-Poole has so well pointed
out, every outrage in Canton found its echo at Foochow,
showing clearly where lay the " centre of disturbance,"
as our meteorologists express it.
In the end, however, the ascendancy of the British
authority was completely achieved. The consul and
the interpreter between them succeeded in getting
proud Tartars put in the common pillory and lesser
ruffians severely flogged, while before they left Foochow
in 1846 they had extorted from the authorities sub-
stantial pecuniary compensation for injuries sustained
by British subjects. The credit of these vigorous
measures no doubt belonged in the first instance to
Sir John Davis, the chief superintendent, who had
been so struck with the deplorable condition of things
on his first official visit to the port in 1844 that he
empowered the new consul to find the remedy. The
effect of this resolute policy on the mandarins was as
prompt and natural as the effect of the submissive
policy had been, and it is instructive to read the testi-
mony of Sir John Davis that, after redress had been
exacted, " the consul was on the best terms with the
local authorities," which is the perpetual lesson taught
in all our dealings with the Chinese.
Foochow is distinguished among the coast ports of
China by the beauty and even grandeur of its scenery
and the comparative salubrity of its climate. The city
itself contains above half a million of people, covers an
120 THE NEW TREATY POETS. [chap. viii.
extensive area on the left bank of the river Min, and is
connected with the foreign quarter by a stone bridge of
forty-five *' arches," which are not arches but spaces
between the piers on which huge granite slabs are laid
horizontally, forming the roadway. The houses and
business premises of the merchants, the custom-house
and foreign consulates, are all now situated on Nantai,
an island of some twenty miles in circumference, which
divides the main stream of the Min from its tributary,
the Yungfu. In the early days the British consulate
was located within the walled city, in the grounds of a
Buddhist temple, three miles from the landing-place
and business quarter on Nantai, and approached
through narrow and exceedingly foul-smelling streets.
Mrs Alcock joined her husband as soon as tolerable
accommodation could be prepared for her, and being
the first foreign lady who had set foot in the city, her
entry excited no small curiosity among the people. A
year later Mrs and Miss Bacon, Mrs Alcock's mother
and sister, were added to the family party, and though
curiosity was still keen, they were safely escorted
through the surging crowd to their peaceful enclave
in the heart of the city. The situation was suggestive
of monastic life. Being on high ground the consulate
commanded a superb mountain view, with the two
rivers issuing from their recesses and the great city
lying below forming a picturesque foreground, while in
the middle distance the terraced rice-fields showed in
their season the tenderest of all greens. The circum-
stances were conducive to the idyllic life of which we
get a glimpse in the biography of Sir Harry Parkes,
who shared it. He speaks in the warmest terms of the
kindness he received from Mr and Mrs Alcock, who
THE NEW BRITISH CONSULATE. 121
tended him through a fever which, but for the medical
skill of the consul — no other professional aid being
available — must have ended fatally. They helped him
with books, enlarged his field of culture, and there is
no doubt that daily intercourse with this genial and
accomplished family did much to supply the want of
that liberal education from which the boy had been
untimely cut adrift. The value of such parental influ-
ence to a lad who had left school at thirteen can hardly
be over-estimated, and he did not exaggerate in writing,
** I can never repay the Alcocks the lasting obligations
I am under to them."
During the first few years there was practically
no foreign trade at Foochow except in opium, which
was conducted from a sea base beyond port limits,
a trade which was invisible alike to Chinese and
British authorities in the sense in which harlequin
is invisible to clown and pantaloon. The spasmodic
attempts which were made to open up a market for
British manufactures met with no encouragement, for
only one British merchant maintained a precarious
existence, and the question of abandoning the port
was mooted. The prospect of commercial develop-
ment at Foochow depended on its vicinity to that
classic centre of the tea cultivation, the famous
Bohea range, about 250 miles to the westward,
whose name, however, was used to cover many in-
ferior products. Ten years more elapsed before this
advantageous position was turned to practical account,
owing to the serious obstacles that stood in the way
of changing the established trade route to Canton
and the absence of aggressive energy sufiicient to
overcome them. Through the enterprise of an Amer-
122 THE NEW TREATY PORTS. [chap. VIII.
ican merchant in alliance with Chinese, Foochow began
to be a shipping port for tea about the year 1853,
growing year by year in importance until it rivalled
Canton and Shanghai. But as its prosperity has
always rested on the single article, the fortunes of
the port have necessarily fallen with the general
decay of the Chinese tea trade.
Apart from the task of putting the official inter-
course on a good working basis, of maintaining order
between the few foreigners, residents, and visitors,
and the native population, the consular duties at
a port like Foochow were necessarily of the lightest
description. But it was not in Mr Alcock's nature
to make a sinecure of his office. He was a stranger
to the country, about which he had everything to
learn. He was surrounded by problems all of great
interest, and some of them pressing urgently for
solution, and he had to make a success of his port
or " know the reason why." Among the fruits of
his labours during the latter part of his term at
Foochow are a series of commercial reports, partly
published by Government, which bear witness to
exhaustive research into every circumstance having
any bearing on the genesis of trade, and applying
to those local, and to him absolutely novel, conditions
the great root principles which are of universal validity.
Considering how alien to his previous experience was
the whole range of such subjects, his at once grappling
with them and firmly seizing their salient features
showed a mind of no common capacity. For there
was nothing perfunctory about those early treatises ;
on the contrary, they were at once more polished
and more profound than most things of the same
COMMERCIAL STUDIES.
123
kind which have appeared during the subsequent
half century. The principal generalisations of recent
commentators on the trade of China were in fact set
forth in the three Foochow consular reports of 1845-46,
while many supposed new lights which the discussions
of the last few years have shed on Chinese character
and methods had been already displayed, and in a
more perfect form, in the buried records of the super-
intendency of trade in China.
124
CHAPTER IX.
SHANGHAI.
Shanghai — Importance of its situation — Consul Balfour — Germ of municipal
institutions — The foreign settlements — Confidence and civility of the
natives — Alcock appointed consul, 1846 — Excursions into the country
— Their limitations — Responsibilities of consuls.
Of the four new ports, Shanghai, by far the most
important, had been fortunate in the selection of its
first consul. This was Captain George Balfour of
the Madras Artillery, who, like a wise master-builder,
laid the foundations of what is now one of the
greatest emporia in the world. Captain Balfour had
managed the beginnings of the settlement so judici-
ously that the merchants enjoyed the fullest facilities
for prosecuting their business, while the consul main-
tained good relations with the native authorities and
no hostile feeling existed between the foreign and
native communities. The circumstances of the place
were favourable to all this : the foreign residents
were not, as at Canton, confined to a narrow space ;
they had abundance of elbow-room and perfect free-
dom of movement in the surrounding district, which
was well provided with footpaths and an excellent
system of waterways. The people of that part of
the country are of a peaceable and rather timid dis-
position. Altogether, a healthy condition of things
''>€
'- ^1
%
GENESIS OF FOREIGN SETTLEMENT. 12 5
had grown up, there seemed to be no grievance felt
on either side, while the material prosperity of the
natives rapidly increased as a result of a great and
expanding foreign trade, to which they had never
been accustomed. The regulation of business accom-
modation and residence was very simple and worked
automatically. A certain area, ample for every pur-
pose that could be foreseen, was set apart by the
Chinese Government for the residence of foreigners,
the location having been indicated by Sir Henry
Pottinger on his way from Nanking after the signing
of the treaty. The rights of the native proprietors
were in no w^ay interfered with, the merchants and
others who desired to settle were at liberty to deal
with the natives for the purchase of building lots, and
as the prices paid were so much above the normal value
of the land there was no essential difficulty in effecting
purchases. But there being so many interested parties,
several years elapsed before the whole area had passed
into the possession of foreign occupants. The land
remained the property of the Crown, held under per-
petual lease, subject only to a small ground-rent, which
was collected through the consulates, as at this day.
Roads were gradually marked out and jetties for boats
were built on the river frontage, and what is now a
municipal council served by a large secretarial staff
and an imposing body of police, and handling a budget
amounting to £130,000, came into existence under
the modest title of a " Committee for Roads and
Jetties." In the beginning there seems to have been
an idea of forming separate reservations of land for the
subjects of the three treaty Powers — Great Britain,
France, and the United States ; but the exigencies of
126 SHANGHAI. [chap. ix.
business soon effaced the theoretical distinction as
between England and America, whose separate ideal
settlements were merged for all practical purposes
into one cosmopolitan colony, in which the Powers
coming later on the scene enjoyed the same rights
as the original pioneers.
To ground thus wisely prepared Mr Alcock succeeded
in the autumn of 1846. His four months at Amoy
and eighteen at Foochow were only preparatory for the
real work which lay before him in the consulate at
Shanghai, whither he carried in his train the interpreter
Parkes, with whom he had grown accustomed to work
so efficiently. Shanghai by this time was already
realising the position assigned to it by nature as
a great commercial port, and the resident community,
120 Europeans all told, was already forming itself into
that novel kind of republic which is so flourishing to-
day, while its commercial interests were such as to give
its members weight in the administration of their own
affairs as well as in matters of public policy.
The level country round Shanghai was, as we have
said, very favourable for excursions by land and
water, affording tourists and sportsmen congenial re-
creation. The district was in those days remarkably
well stocked with game. Pheasants of the "ring-
necked" variety, now so predominant in English pre-
serves, abounded close up to the city wall, and were
sometimes found in the gardens of the foreign resi-
dents. Snipe, quail, and wildfowl were plentiful in
their season, the last named in great variety. All
classes of the foreign community took advantage of
the freedom of locomotion which they enjoyed. Newly
arrived missionaries, no less than newly arrived sports-
'*■ .#, ,,
FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH NATIVES. 127
men, were encouraged by the ease and safety with
which they could prosecute their vocation in the towns
and villages accessible from Shanghai. Within the
radius authorised by treaty the foreigners soon be-
came familiar objects in a district which is reckoned
to support a population as dense as that of Belgium.
Not only did friendly relations exist, but a wonderful
degree of confidence was established between the
natives and foreign tourists. It was not the custom
in those days for foreigners to carry money, the only
coinage available being of a clumsy and non - port-
able character. They paid their way by " chits " or
orders upon their comprador, and it was not un-
common for them in those early days to pay for sup-
plies during their excursions into the interior by a
few hieroglyphics pencilled on a scrap of paper, which
the confiding peasant accepted in perfect good faith,
and with so little apprehension that sometimes a con-
siderable interval would elapse before presentation of
these primitive cheques — until, perhaps, the holder
had occasion to make a journey to Shanghai.
But although the foreigner in his proper costume
moved freely within the prescribed area, it was con-
sidered hazardous to venture beyond these limits. It
was also, of course, a nominal contravention of the
treaty, for the consequences of which the traveller
must take the whole risk. Those, therefore — and they
were exceedingly few — who could not repress the
desire to penetrate into the interior adopted as a
disguise the costume of the natives. It was thus that
Fortune made his explorations into the tea districts
of China. The notion that either difficulty or danger
attended these distant excursions gradually disap-
128 SHANGHAI. [chap. ix.
peared, and about the year 1855 sportsmen and
travellers began to explore the forbidden country
without any disguise at all, to the great amusement
of the populace, and to the profit of the priests of
the temples where they found accommodation.
The consular authorities occupied a peculiar and
highly responsible position in China. Their nationals
being exempt from native jurisdiction, and subject only
to the laws of their own country, promulgated, inter-
preted, and, when occasion arose, executed, by the
consul, that functionary was morally answerable to the
people and the Government of China for the good
behaviour of his countrymen. On the other hand, it
was his primary duty to defend them against all ag-
gression of the Chinese. Between these two opposite
duties the consul needed all the discretion, courage,
and good judgment that he could command ; and it
was but natural that individual temperament or the
pressure of local circumstances should cause diversity
in the mode in which the consuls interpreted their
instructions and balanced the different claims of their
public duty. As has been said before. Captain Balfour
had shown himself most judicious in all his arrange-
ments for the protection and advancement of his
countrymen in Shanghai. Foreseeing, notwithstand-
ing the peaceable disposition of the natives, that risks
might attend unfettered intercourse with the interior,
he had thought it prudent to restrict the rambles of
British subjects to the limits of a twenty-four hours'
journey from Shanghai, — a limit which coincided with
curious exactness with the " thirty -mile radius " of
defence against the rebels which was laid down by
Admiral Hope eighteen years later.
ATTACK ON THREE MISSIONARIES. 129
I. THE TSINGPU AFFAIR.
Attack on three missionaries — Redress extorted by Consul
Alcock — Its lasting eflfect.
Affairs in Shanghai had followed a placid and un-
eventful course until an incident occurred which
brought into sudden activity the latent forces of dis-
order. Within little more than a year after the arrival
of Mr Alcock at his new post an outrage was per-
petrated on the persons of three English missionaries,
which led to the first and the last important struggle
between the British and Chinese authorities in Shang-
hai. The assailants of Messrs Medhurst, Lockhart,
and Muirhead, the three missionaries concerned, were
not the peaceably disposed natives of the place, but
the discharged crews of the Government grain-junks,
who had been cast adrift by the officials and left to
shift for themselves after the manner of disbanded
soldiers. The attack took place at a small walled town
called Tsingpu, within the authorised radius, and the
three Englishmen came very near losing their lives.
Mr Alcock lost not a moment in demanding full redress
from the Chinese authorities, who instinctively shel-
tered themselves under the old evasive pleas which
had proved so effective at Canton. It happened that
the highest local official, the Taotai, had had ex-
perience of the southern port, and, entirely unaware
that he was confronted in Shanghai with a man of
very different calibre from any he had encountered
before, he brought out all the rusty weapons of the
Canton armoury, in sure and certain hope of reducing
VOL. I. I
130 THE TSINGPU AFFAIR. [chap. ix.
the consul's demands to nullity. Evasion being ex-
hausted, intimidation was tried, and the consul and his
interpreter were threatened with the vengeance of an
outraged people, quite in the Canton manner. But
intimidation was the very worst tactics to try on two
Englishmen of the stamp of Alcock and Parkes, and
when that card had been played the Chinese game
was up.
The situation was one of those critical ones that
test moral stamina, that discriminate crucially between
a man and a copying-machine. It was also one which
illuminated, as by an electric flash, the pivotal point
of all our relations with China then as now, for the
principle never grows old. It is therefore important
to set forth the part played by the responsible officer,
the support he obtained, the risks he ran, and the
effective results of his action. An absolutely unpro-
voked murderous outrage had been perpetrated on
three Englishmen ; the Chinese authorities refused
redress with insolence and evasion ; acquiescence in the
denial of justice would have been as fatal to future
good relations at Shanghai as it had been in the
previous decade in Canton. What was the official
charged with the protection of his countrymen to do ?
He had no instructions except to conciliate the
Chinese ; there was no telegraph to England ; com-
munication even with the chief superintendent of
trade at Hongkong, 850 miles off", was dependent
on chance sailing vessels. Delay was equivalent to
surrender. Now or never was the peremptory alter-
native presented to the consul, who, taking his official
life in his hands, had to decide and act on his own
personal responsibility. Had time allowed of an
VIGOROUS REPRISAL. 131
exchange of views with the plenipotentiary in Hong-
kong, we know for certain that nothing would have
been done, for the first announcement of Mr Alcock's
strong measures filled Mr Bonham (who had just suc-
ceeded Sir John Davis) with genuine alarm.
Considering the instructions [he wrote] with which you have
been furnished from the Foreign Office, dated December 18,
1846, and the limited power and duties of a consul, I cannot
but express my regret that you should have taken the steps
you have seen fit to do without previous reference to her
Majesty's plenipotentiary, as undoubtedly, under the peremptory
orders recently received from her Majesty's Government, I
should not have considered myself warranted in sanctioning,
&c., &c.
Fortunately for the consul and for the peaceful
development of British trade, one of Palmerston's
specific instructions had been obeyed in Shanghai.
There was a British ship of war in port, the 10-gun
brig Childers, and, what was of still more importance,
a real British man on board of her, Commander Pit-
man, who shared to the full the Consul's responsibility
for what was done.
The measures adopted by Consul Alcock — when
negotiation was exhausted — were to announce to the
Chinese authorities that, until satisfaction had been
obtained, no duties should be paid on cargo imported
or exported in British ships : furthermore, that the
great junk fleet of 1400 sail, laden and ready for sea
with the tribute rice for Peking, should not be allowed
to leave the port. The Childers, moored in the stream
below the junk anchorage, was in a position to make
this a most effective blockade. The rage of the Taotai
rose to fever heat, and it was then he threatened, and
132
THE TSINGPU AFFAIR.
[chap. IX.
no doubt attempted to inflame the populace and the
whole vagabond class. The Taotai ordered some of the
rice-laden junks to proceed ; but though there were
fifty war-junks to guard them, the masters dared not
Scale of Miles
o lo 20 3p
ll'alker <&• Cockerell sc.
MOUTH OF YANGTZE AND CHUSAN ARCHIPELAGO.
attempt to pass the ideal barrier thrown across the
river by the resolute Captain Pitman.
The outrage took place on the 8th of March. On
the 13th the consul presented an ultimatum to the
Taotai giving him forty-eight hours to produce the
PROMPT REDRESS. 133
criminals. This being disregarded, the measures above
referred to were enforced, with the full approval, it
may be mentioned, of the consuls of the two other
treaty Powers. At the same time Vice-Consul Robert-
son, with Parkes for interpreter, was despatched to
Nanking on board her Majesty's ship Espiegle to lay
the whole case before the viceroy of Kiangnan. The
matter was there promptly attended to, full redress
was ordered, and the culprits punished exactly three
weeks after the assault. The embargo on the rice-
junks was removed, and affairs resumed their normal
course.^ The effect of this lesson has never been
effaced, harmony having prevailed between British
and Chinese officials and people in Shanghai and the
province from that day to this.
The circumstances were of course very unusual
which placed such ready means of bloodless coercion
in the hands of the British consul. The fortuitous
coincidence of the time of the outrage with the period
of departure of the grain fleet placed a weapon in
the consul's hands which of itself would have event-
ually brought the Chinese to terms, should the
matter in the mean time not have been taken out
of the hands of the consul and dealt with from Hong-
kong by the plenipotentiary, whose views have been
given above. So soon as the detention of the grain
fleet became known to the Government of Peking,
orders of a very drastic nature would undoubtedly
have been despatched to the viceroy of the province,
and both he and his subordinate would have been
made answerable for their incompetence in imperilling
1 See this whole transaction described in his characteristic manner by Do
Quincey in his brochure on China, originally published in Titan, 1857.
134 THE TSINGPU AFFAIR. [chap. ix.
the supply of rice for the Government. But the
pressure was doubly intensified by the appearance
of a foreign ship of war under the walls of Nanking.
Six years had not elapsed since a similar demonstration
had brought the Government to its knees, and to
have allowed such an invasion a second time would
have drawn down the imperial wrath on the luck-
less provincial authorities. For Nanking differs from
the other provincial capitals, such as Canton and
Foochow, inasmuch as it is near the strategic centre
of the empire, commanding the main artery of com-
munication with the interior of the country, at the
point of intersection of the Yangtze river by the
famous Imperial Canal which connects the capital
with the richest region in the Yangtze valley. A
blockade of the sea-going grain fleet with a simul-
taneous blockade of these inland waters, so easily
effected, would have throttled China. The viceroy,
who sent a report on the transaction to the throne
by special express, explained away his own hasty
action by saying '' that the appearance of the bar-
barian chiefs at the provincial city may have caused
anxiety in the sacred breast."
The verdict of the Home Government on the
episode was substantially the same as that on Sir
John Davis's brilliant expedition on the Canton
river the year before : " Gratified with your success,
but don't do it again ; " in other words, " Do it at
your peril, leaving us to applaud or repudiate according
to the event." Perhaps it would be more just to say
that there were then, as always, conflicting views in
the British Cabinet, the apparent vacillations of the
Government depending a good deal on which of its
SOLE CONDITION OF FOREIGN SECURITY. 135
members happened, for the moment, to have the
parole, — whether the Foreign Secretary, the Colonial
Secretary, or other Minister indited the despatch.
Commenting some years later on the general question
of our relations with China, Mr Alcock wrote as
follows : "A salutary dread of the immediate con-
sequences of violence offered to British subjects,
certainty of its creating greater trouble and danger
to the native authorities personally than even the
most vigorous efforts to protect the foreigners and
seize their assailants will entail, seems to be the
best and only protection in this country for English-
men." Palmerston himself could not have laid down
the law and common-sense of the case with greater
precision.
II. REBELLION.
Taiping rebellion — Rebel occupation of Shanghai — Encroachment of invest-
ing force on foreign settlement — Driven off by Anglo-American forces
— The French quarrel with insurgents — Consequent enlargement of
French concession — The assumption of self-government by the Anglo-
American community — Exemplary conduct of Chinese authorities after
their defeat — French belligerency — Difficult question of neutrality —
Treatment of native refugees.
Affairs went smoothly and prosperously in Shanghai
for another five years, when the greatest calamity
that has visited China in modern times cast its
shadow on the province and on the city. The ap-
palling ravages of the Taiping rebellion, which,
originating in the southern province of Kwangsi,
followed the great trade-routes to the Yangtze-kiang
and down the course of that stream, leaving absolute
desolation in its wake, reached the southern capital,
136 REBELLION. [chap. ix.
Nanking, on March 8, 1853. The city was paralysed,
and surrendered on the 19th, apparently without a
struggle ; the whole Tartar garrison, numbering 20,000,
were put ruthlessly to the sword, not a soul being
spared. The whole country, officials and people alike,
was thrown into a state of abject fear. The ease
with which such Government forces as there were suc-
cumbed to the onslaught of the rebel hordes may very
well have prompted the rowdy element, which exists
more or less everywhere, to make raids on their
own account. Such a band, belonging as was supposed
to certain secret societies, but without any connection
with the main body of the Taipings, who were at
the time applying fire and sword to the populous
towns on the Yangtze, surprised and captured the
walled city of Shanghai. " The news," says an eye-
witness, " came like thunder from a clear sky ; " there
was no thought of the city being in danger either
from within or without. The people were panic-
stricken at first, but fear with them seemed near
akin to criminality, and the scene enacted was what
was repeated thousands of times and over a wide
area — one of general pillage and destruction. " Several
hundred of the usually innocent and simple country-
folk— who must have scented their prey as the eagle
does the carcass, for as yet it was early morning — fell
upon the custom-house, whence they carried off chairs,
tables, windows, doors, everything that was portable,
leaving the floor littered with books and papers, w^hich
were being kicked about and trodden on in a most
unceremonious way.
For a period of eighteen months, beginning in Sep-
tember 1853 and ending in February 1855, these rebels
COLLISION WITH CHINESE TROOPS. 137
held possession of the city. It took a little time before
the authorities were able to gather any force to expel
them. But they did commence a species of siege which
ultimately succeeded in its object. There would be
no interest in tracing its progress. What we have
to note is the effect which the interregnum produced
on the relations between the foreign officials and
community and the Chinese.
The first was of a very remarkable character, being-
nothing less than an armed collision between such
foreign forces as could be mustered and the im-
perialist troops who were investing the city. The
Chinese soldiers were in camp at a short distance
outside of the foreign settlement, which was exempt
from the operations of the war. But the discipline
of Chinese troops is never very efficient, and unruly
stragglers from the camps kept the foreigners in the
settlement in constant hot water. It became, in
fact, dangerous for them to take their recreation in
the open ground at the back of the settlement,
which was used as a racecourse. Immunity from
reprisals produced its invariable result, and the
aggressions of the soldiery became more persistent
and better organised. The foreigners were at last
driven to retaliate in their own defence. After a
formidable inroad of the Chinese troops, the three
treaty consuls met hastily and decided on sending
a demand to the Chinese general for the withdrawal
of all his soldiers from the vicinity of the settle-
ment, failing which, his position would be attacked
at four o'clock the same afternoon by all the avail-
able foreign forces. These were, marines and blue-
jackets from her Britannic Majesty's ships Encounter
138 REBELLION. [chap. ix.
and Grecian, marines and sailors from the United
States ship Plymouth, some sailors from the merchant
ships in port, and about 200 of the residents as
infantry volunteers. The English force was com-
manded by Captain O'Callaghan, who was accom-
panied by Consul Alcock ; the Americans were led
by Captain Kelley, who was accompanied by Consul
Murphy ; while the volunteers were commanded by
Vice-Consul Wade, subsequently her Majesty's Min-
ister to China. The attack on the Chinese position
was completely successful ; indeed there was appar-
ently very little resistance, a circumstance which was
attributed by Mr Wetmore, who was in the action from
beginning to end, to the uncovenanted co-operation
of the rebels within the city. It was, nevertheless,
according to him, writing nearly forty years after, " a
hazardous, if not a reckless, undertaking."
Her Majesty's Government, in a despatch from the
Foreign Office dated June 16, "entirely approved of
Mr Alcock's proceedings, and they considered that he
displayed great courage and judgment in circum-
stances of no ordinary difficulty " ; while the British
community unanimously conveyed their warmest thanks
to Consul Alcock, Vice-Consul Wade, and the naval
officers concerned, for " saving their lives and property
from the most imminent jeopardy." And they add
that " any symptoms of hesitation and timid policy
would inevitably have led to serious consequences
and far greater loss of life."
It is to be remarked that the French took no
part in this common defence of the settlement, in
explanation of which it must be noted that they
had never fallen kindly into the cosmopolitan system,
FRENCH BOMBARDMENT OF SHANGHAI. 139
but as years went on kept themselves more and
more apart, expanding what was a mere consular
residence until it covered two populous suburbs
embracing half of the circuit of the walled city, and
what began as a settlement came to be spoken of
as a " concession."
In this situation it was not difficult for them to
pick a quarrel on their own account with the rebels,
which led to an ineifectual bombardment of the city
by French ships of war moored close under the walls.
Guns were then landed in the suburb, which was
thereafter embraced within the limits of the French
concession, the houses being demolished to give play
to the artillery. A cannonade lasting many days
resulted in a practical breach in the city wall, which
was followed up by a combined assault by the French
and the imperialist troops, with whom they had
allied themselves. The attack was repulsed with
severe loss to the assailants.
Among the results of these operations and of the
lapse of organised government during eighteen months
the most direct was perhaps the establishment of the
French on the ground where their batteries had been
placed. For reasons military or otherwise, a tabula
rasa was made of an immense populous suburb, the
ground then admitting of easy occupation and the
laying out of streets and roads. The area thus occu-
pied by the French is separated from the cosmopolitan
settlement of Shanghai by a tidal creek.
Results less showy, but more important in the in-
terests of humanity and international commerce, were
very soon apparent in the cosmopolitan settlement.
The first of these was the assumption by the foreign
140 KEBELLIOX. [chap. ix.
community of the function of self-government and
self-protection, and the foundation of that important
municipality, which has established as fine a record of
public service as any such body has ever done. The
inroads of vagabondage and crime would, without the
protective measures extemporised for the occasion, have
swamped the foreign quarter and reduced it to the
desolate condition of the native city. And this neces-
sity of relying on their own strength has no doubt
given to the community of Shanghai that tone of
self - confidence which has characterised successive
generations of them.
The effect of the collision on the relations between
the foreign and Chinese authorities can hardly be under-
stood without some explanatory words. In countries
where the soldier, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeks
the bubble reputation in the cannon's mouth, there is
a psychological figment called military honour, which
may be symbolised in various ways, as, for example, by
a rag at the end of a stick for which brave men will
cheerfully die. The warlike traditions which have
evolved European codes of honour have no existence in
China. Revanche, therefore, did not enter into the
heads of the defeated Chinese commanders, who con-
tented themselves with posting placards about their
camps stating that " the barbarians were about to be
annihilated, but that they had ransomed themselves for
300,000 taels, and that an additional 300,000 would be
required." Their conduct, however, was quite exem-
plary during the remainder of the siege, their chief
solicitude being to avoid encroaching on the foreign
quarter. Whatever be the explanation, the fact is that
the Chinese were on better terms with the foreign
BRITISH NEUTRALITY. 141
officials after than they had been before the battle of
"Muddy Flat," fought on the 4th of April 1854.
Within ten days they were amicably settling in concert
the ground for a new camp, which would not hamper
the military operations of the besiegers nor yet com-
promise the sanctity of the foreign settlement.
Thus there was no obstacle whatever in the way of
concerting with the nearest representatives of the
Government of China all those measures which were
demanded by the position of neutrality assumed by the
British Government between the insurgents and im-
perialist forces, and also for the regulation and control
of the Chinese refugees, who poured into the foreign
settlement to escape the rapine of savage war. The
neutrality of the British representative was difficult to
maintain : by force of circumstances it took a benevo-
lent form towards the beleaguered rebels, who w^ere
dependent for their continued existence upon supplies
received from and through the foreign settlement. The
situation was complicated by the action of the French,
who, having quarrelled with the insurgents, entered on
the stage as a third belligerent. Thereupon the French
authorities made a grievance of " the scandal of supplies
being furnished to the declared enemies of the French
in the sight and under the protection of our English
guard," France being at the time allied with Great
Britain in prosecuting the war in the Crimea. Consul
Alcock, whose sense of propriety had already been con-
siderably shocked by the facilities which the position
of the cosmopolitan settlement affiDrded for conveying
supplies into the city, treated the appeal of his French
colleague with respect, and made it the text of a rep-
resentation to the senior naval officer, urging him, if
142 REBELLION. [chap. ix.
possible, to devise means in conjunction with the mea-
sures which were already being adopted in the settle-
ment for enforcing British neutrality, so that " we may
be able to give an honest answer to all three bel-
ligerents— imperialists, insurgents, and French." This
policy was at the same time proclaimed by a unanimous
resolution of the largest meeting of residents ever, up
to that time, assembled in Shanghai.
The question of the influx of refugees seems not to
have met with such a prompt solution, but that was
due rather to the British plenipotentiary's caution than
to the obstruction of the Chinese. In a despatch to Sir
John Bowring, dated June 5, 1854, the consul thus
describes the evil in question : —
As regards the strange and altogether unsatisfactory position
in which we are placed by the pouring in of a large Chinese
population, who have squatted down within our limits contrary
to the standing edicts of their own authorities, and run up
whole streets of wooden and brick tenements, giving cover to
every species of vice and filth, I have only to remark that a
walk through the settlement [the governor was expected on a
visit] will, I am convinced, satisfy your Excellency that the
evil is already too great and increasing at too rapid a rate to
be overlooked. The health of foreign residents, the security of
their property, and the very tenability of the place as a foreign
location, alike render it imperative that a jurisdiction of some
kind should be promptly and energetically asserted.
The important negotiations which, within three
months, issued in the birth of the Foreign Maritime
Customs, must be regarded as by far the most im-
portant outcome of the rebel episode of 1854-55.
THE SMUGGLING EVIL. 143
III. THE CHINESE MAEITIME CUSTOMS.
Extent and audacity of smuggling — Alcock's determination to suppress it —
His report on the position — Corruption of the Chinese customs service
— Efforts of the British Government to co-operate in collecting dues —
Nullified by treaties with other Powers — Consequent injury to all
foreign trade — Unexpected solution of the difficulty during the inter-
regnum— Impetus given to trade by the Taiping rebellion — Alcock
with French and American consuls takes over the customs and collects
all dues in trust for the Chinese Government — Promissory notes em-
ployed— Conditions which made it impossible to enforce payment —
Notes ultimately cancelled.
Certain crying evils in foreign intercourse having
arrested the attention of Consul Alcock from the day
of his arrival in China, he bent himself strenuously to
the task of overcoming or mitigating them. They
formed the subject-matter of many anxious reports to
his superiors, for Mr Alcock always took both a serious
and a comprehensive view of his duties. For many
years there seemed little hope of a successful issue to
these labours ; but at last a rift in the clouds opened
up the prospect of coping with at least one of them,,
and that was smuggling. So universal was this prac-
tice that it seemed a necessary and natural feature of
all commercial dealings in China. As its roots lay deep
in the Chinese character and civilisation, no stigma
attached to the venality of the officials charged with
the collection of the maritime revenues. Although the
practice was in extent universal, it was by no means
wholesale in degree, and where the facilities for evad-
ing duties were so tempting, merchants must often
have been astonished at their own moderation.
Among the legends of the coast, it is true, there were
certain tou7^s de force in the way of smuggling which
144 THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS. [chap. ix.
made good topics for walnuts-and-wine conversation
among a community which was rather lacking in sub-
jects of general interest, — as of an apocryphal ship
clearing from China in ballast or with coal which would
mysteriously land in England a full cargo of tea, which
had been taken on board without being passed through
the custom-house. Conversely, a shipload of manufac-
tured goods taken on board in England would melt on
the passage to China like a cargo of ice, so far as the
records in the Chinese custom-house would show. One
special feat was kept alive, post-prandially, for many
years as the acme of audacious smuggling. British
goods were entered at the custom-house " for re-expor-
tation," and no duty paid. The merchant packed the
empty cases with silk, which was thus shipped under
the original English marks, and was described as cali-
•coes, on which a "drawback" was claimed of import
duties w^hich had never been paid at all. Such racy
anecdotes belongfed to the order of Rabelaisian humour
which inspired the boast of a certain Lancashire manu-
facturer at the time when, owing to the scarcity and
high price of cotton, the "filling" of shirtings with
plaster of Paris and other substances to make up the
required weight of the piece was raised to almost the
dignity of a fine art. Complaints being made by the
consumer that the cloth so compounded would not
wash, this genial Lancastrian declared that for his part
he would never rest satisfied until he could turn out his
calicoes without any cotton in them at all.
' Shanghai, of course, was the great centre of the
smuggling trade. What smuggling was done at
Canton, being the only other important entrepot, was on
a system which was regulated by the customs authori-
EFFORTS TO ABOLISH SMUGGLING. 145
ties themselves, and the testimony of Mr Alexander
Matheson before the House of Commons Committee
was to the effect that their tariff was so light that it
was not worth the merchant's while to smuggle. Such,
however, was not the view taken by Mr Consul Alcock,
who regarded the smuggling system as a very serious
evil, against which he waged a relentless war. He not
only compelled, as far as lay in his power, the British
merchants to comply with the letter of the treaty in
their dealings with the customs, but he further con-
sidered himself bound to enforce on the Chinese officials
themselves the proper discharge of their duty. In
these efforts to abolish irregular practices, which all
deplored, many of the British merchants were only too
willing to co-operate with the consul's efforts, and the
Foreign Office was repeatedly moved to take some
action in the reform of these abuses. The difficulties
and anomalies of the situation were fully set forth by
Mr Alcock in many reports made to his superior, the
chief superintendent of trade, as the following extract,
written in 1851, will exemplify: —
How the commercial and custom-house system of the West
and the very opposite principles and practice of the East might
be combined so that both should work together with the least
possible friction and prejudice, was a difficult problem, no doubt,
for those who had the framing of existing treaties. How even
the trading operations of foreign merchants, based upon good
faith and honesty, could be in any way associated with the
corrupt and inept administration of the Chinese custom-house,
so that the revenue of the latter alone should be liable to
suffer and not the foreign trade, though apparently a simpler
task, seems to have presented to the negotiators insuperable
difficulties. For one or other of these problems, nevertheless,
it was essential they should find some adequate solution, or
whatever treaties might be signed their real mission was un-
VOL. I. K
146 THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS. [chap. ix.
fulfilled, and the basis of all future trading relations left
unstable and unsatisfactory.
We cannot suppose this important fact was overlooked by
the British Government, which, on the contrary, appears to
have sought earnestly to meet the difficulty by undertaking in
good faith to co-operate with the Chinese authorities in col-
lecting the duties on British trade. I^either is it clear that
failure would have attended such a course had not a dis-
turbing element been speedily introduced from without for
which adequate provision does not seem to have been made.
We allude to the ratification of treaties with other Govern-
ments which should repudiate all obligation on this point to
contribute to the protection of the Chinese revenue. It might
have been supposed that the Chinese Government, having
obtained so great and unquestionable an advantage from the
Power they had most to fear, would scarcely have been so
foolish as to throw it away upon the first occasion, yet such
proved to be the fact, and some credit was taken by the United
States commissioner for the omission of all co-operative clauses.
Two treaties in consequence came into operation, founded upon
different principles — the one subversive of the other in a very
essential point. So much was this the case that no fair trial
could be given to the provisions of the British treaty respecting
the payment of duties, and any attempt to act upon the system
contemplated in it became altogether unpracticable so soon as
the alteration of our navigation laws opened our ports to
foreign shipping.
We found that to secure the essential objects of these
treaties as they now stand there is one thing plainly wanting
and yet essential, an honest and efficient custom-house, and
who does not see that this is unattainable in China ? Too
much or too little has been done, therefore. We should either
have refused to concede a right to levy maritime duties, or
obtained as the condition some better guarantee for its im-
partial exercise. It should have been remembered that al-
though a foreign Power might give this right to the Emperor
of China, it could not so easily give him honest and faithful
servants, without which custom-house duties cannot be fairly
levied. The very attempt to profit by such a right partially,
and with manifestly imperfect means, could not fail to prove
injurious to the trade it was the great object of the treaties to
SMUGGLING INJURIOUS TO TRADE. 147
develop and protect. It is superfluous now to say that against
this evil no sufficient provision was made, and the result has
been perpetual and irreconcilable antagonism. From the first
day the American treaty came into operation the contracting
parties, Chinese and foreign, have been placed in a false position
in regard to each other and to the permanent interests of both.
The emperor had obtained a right he could not unaided duly
exercise, and the foreign merchant was laid under a legal obliga-
tion which under such circumstances tended to make his trading
privileges nugatory. The former was daily exposed to the loss
of the whole or a part of a revenue to which he was by treaty
legally entitled, as the price of commercial privileges to the
foreigner ; and the latter, in so far as he recognised his obliga-
tion to pay to such revenue, was debarred from trading with
advantage or profit.
Loss to the custom-house is palpably only one of the mis-
chiefs resulting, and injury to foreign trade is the direct con-
sequence in a far more important degree. There may be some dis-
posed to question this, but when no man can calculate on entering
into an operation within 15 or 20 per cent of the prime cost of
his merchandise before it shall leave his hands, and his next-
door neighbour may gain advantage over him to this amount,
while the ordinary margin of profit seldom exceeds that range,
it is difficult to arrive at any other conclusion. And when we
consider that the natural tendency of partial smuggling is to
raise the price in the buying and to lower it in the selling
market, its disastrous influence on the general prosperity of the
trade must be too plain to admit of contradiction. However it
may temporarily enrich a few, it must eventually impoverish
many.
The British plenipotentiary may have thought that smug-
gling, so far as the interests of trade were concerned, would
affect only the Chinese revenue : the American commissioner
clearly must have concluded so, and on this supposition acted.
But experience has abundantly proved such a conclusion erron-
eous, and based upon a partial view of the whole case.
The solution of all these difficulties, and the end of
the apparently hopeless struggle to set things right,
came about in a way that must have been totally unex-
148 THE CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS. [chap. IX.
pected by all parties. It was through the capture of
Shanghai by the rebel band in 1853.
The day the city fell the functions of the custom-
house ceased, but trade continued without interruption ;
indeed the export trade was naturally stimulated by
the eagerness of the natives to convert their produce
into money, and by the desire of the foreign merchants
to get their purchases safely on board ship. But there
was no one in a position to collect the dues. Mr
Alcock, never timid when he had a case for action
which satisfied his own mind, proposed to his French
and American colleagues, who also never seemed to
hesitate to follow his lead, a method of bridging over
the interregnum of the Chinese authority and at the
same time establishing for the first time the precedent
of collecting full duties. The plan was that the consuls
should themselves perform the functions which the
Chinese officials had never performed — take a rigid
account of the goods landed and shipped, and receive
the amount of the duty on them, to be held in trust for
the Chinese Government when it should once more be
resuscitated in Shanghai. Not in coin, however, but in
promissory notes payable on conditions which were
complicated by the necessity of maintaining equality of
treatment between the various nationalities concerned.
The contingencies were, in fact, such that it would
never have been possible to enforce payment of the
notes, and in the end they were all cancelled and
returned to the merchants, so that during the ten
months between September 1853 and July 1854 there
were no duties collected at all at the port of
Shanghai.
UNFAIR COMPETITION. 149
IV. CREATION OF THE FOREIGN CUSTOMS.
The provisional system — British and American ships pay full dues — Other
nations enter and clear free — Americans follow the same course —
Alcock's strict views of neutrality — Danger of infringing it by estab-
lishment of Government officials within the foreign colony — Breakdown
of the provisional system — Alcock calls upon the Imperial Government
— Custom-house re-established by the Taotai Wu — Reappearance of all
abuses — Alcock's remonstrances — Antecedents of Wu — He makes
private arrangements and admits vessels free of dues — Alcock allows
British ships to do likewise — Shanghai thus becomes a free port — Al-
cock's efforts to meet the difficulty — First idea of the foreign customs —
Conditions of success — Conference with the Taotai — Delegates appointed
— New custom-house inaugurated July 12, 1854 — Mr H. N. Lay ap-
pointed Inspector-General — Conditions and essential features which
caused immediate and permanent success of the foreign customs.
The " provisional system," as it was called, worked
smoothly for four months, but not equally, for while
British and American ships paid full duties (in con-
ditional promissory notes), those of other nationalities,
having mercantile consuls, were entered and cleared
exempt from all duty. One Prussian, one Hamburg,
two Siamese, one Austrian, three Danish, and two
Spanish — in all ten vessels — were so cleared between
September and January, which was, of course, a serious
injustice to the competing merchants on whose ventures
full duties were levied. In vain might the British
consul argue that the cargoes of these defaulting ships
bore no larger a proportion to the whole trade than in
normal conditions the smugglers would bear to the
honest traders. The American consul, sympathising
with the latter, notified on January 20, 1854, his seces-
sion from the provisional compact, to which decision he
gave immediate effect by allowing two vessels, the
Oneida and Science, to depart without payment or
150 CREATION OF THE FOREIGN CUSTOMS. [chap. ix.
security of any kind. It was impossible after this for
the British authorities to continue to lay a burden on
their nationals from which competitors were thus
freeing themselves, the more especially as on broader
considerations their collecting duties at all for the
Chinese had been, three years previously, pronounced
inexpedient by the British Government. However
commendable, therefore, on political and moral grounds,
and however convenient as a stop-gap, the provisional
system was doomed. The next move was by some
means or other to procure the re- establishment of a
legal Chinese custom-house.
This would have been done at an earlier period but
for the strict views held by Mr Alcock on the question
of neutrality between the belligerents. The soil of the
foreign settlement had been declared sacred and neutral.
To permit any Chinese authority to use it even for
fiscal purposes seemed a violation of its neutrality.
Besides, native officials exercising their functions there
would have had either to protect themselves by mili-
tary force, however small, or to be protected by the
foreigners, in either case compromising the neutrality of
the settlement. When the Chinese officials pro230sed
as an alternative to discharge customs functions afloat
in the river, the same objections presented themselves.
The foreiofners must in that case also have defended
the revenue collectors from attack by the rebels. The
customs authority therefore remained dormant.
But on the breakdown of the provisional system
whereby the three treaty consuls acted as trustees for
the Chinese Government, there was no alternative left
between making Shanghai absolutely a free port and
setting up some sort of native custom-house. As the
NATIVE CUSTOMS ABUSES. 151
lesser evil — to say no more — Mr Alcock chose the latter,
and within three weeks of the lapse of the provisional
system he had " called upon the imperial authorities to
re-establish a custom-house in some convenient locality,"
offering at the same time to afford them the necessary
facilities for working it. The custom-house was, in
fact, re-established by the Taotai Wu on February 9,
when the provisional system of collecting duties, a
system never favoured by the British Government, was
finally and officially terminated.
The reinstatement of the custom - house under the
superintendency of the Taotai Wu was the signal for
the prompt reappearance of all the worst irregularities
in an exaggerated form.
The admonitions that official received from Mr Alcock
on his treaty rights and on the necessity for strictness
and impartial accuracy were completely thrown away.
The Taotai had been formerly a merchant in Canton,
under the name Samqua ; and whether it was the
passion for a " deal " inspired by early training, or
the corruption of good manners by subsequent associ-
ation with official life, or, as is most likely, a double
dose of both, without the checks appropriate to either,
he, the superintendent of customs, fell at once to mak-
ing private bargains with individual merchants. By
arrangement with him a Bremen ship, the Aristides,
was allowed to enter and clear without complying with
a single customs or port regulation or the payment of
any dues, save what may have been paid to Wu himself
by way of douceur. Two American ships and one
British were dealt with in similar fashion. These facts
being brought to the notice of Mr Alcock, he called the
Taotai to account, and on receiving only subterfuges
152 CREATION OF THE FOREIGN CUSTOMS. [chap. ix.
instead of explanation, he thenceforth allowed openly to
British ships the same privileges that the Chinese
authorities had voluntarily, though secretly, conferred
on those who chose to make corrupt bargains with them.
That is to say, Shanghai became now — from April 1854
— absolutely a free port.
At last, then, there was a real tabula rasa inviting a
fresh experiment ; and Mr Alcock immediately applied
his mind to devising some new expedient to meet the
difficulty. The Chinese superintendent, however willing
to compound to his own advantage for the customs'
dues, was as little pleased with its complete abolition as
the foreign authorities themselves, and he had made
sundry alternative proposals, based on his experience at
Canton, for the effective collection of duties. It seemed,
however, that in the hands of such a facile official, or
any one likely to succeed him, his remedies against
smuggling were worse than the disease, and the
necessity of a new departure began seriously to occupy
the minds of the treaty consuls. The outcome was a
novel scheme, which was mooted in a despatch to Sir
John Bowring, dated May 1, 1854, in which Consul
Alcock, while recognising that " the attempt will not be
unaccompanied by serious difficulties," declared that he
" did not relinquish all hope of success if the collection
of duties can in any way he brought under the effective
cont7^ol of the three treaty Powers as to the executive of
the custom-house administration ^
" On any other basis," he added, " I believe every
effort to benefit the Chinese revenue and at the same
time protect the honest merchant must in the nature of
things prove nugatory." The idea took further shape
in a memorandum of suggestions drawn up by Mr
THE GENESIS OF THE FOREIGN CUSTOMS. 153
Alcock on 15th June, when he stated that *' the sole
issue out of the difficulties by which the whole subject
is beset under existing treaties is to be sought in
the combination of a foreign element of lorohity and
vigilance with Chinese authority T
He adds as the first condition of success the " free
concurrence of the Chinese authorities " in any scheme
which may be concocted, and then proposes " the
association with the Chinese executive of a responsible
and trustworthy foreign inspector of customs as the
delegate of the three treaty Powers, to be appointed by
the consuls and Taotai conjointly at a liberal salary."
This is put down at $6000 per annum, the whole
foreign staff to cost §12,000, and various details of
administration follow.
It argues well for the absence of international
jealousy in those days that Mr Alcock proposed that a
French gentleman of the name of Smith, in the French
consular service, should be the inspector whom he
and the American consul agreed to recommend to the
Taotai. In a despatch to M. Edan on the 27 th of
June 1854 he solicited his official sanction to the
appointment.
The next step was a conference where the three
treaty consuls — Alcock, Murphy, and Edan — received
the Taotai, who discussed with them and then adopted
substantially, though with some modifications, the
"suggestions" above quoted.
Instead of one delegate from the three consuls, it was
decided that each was to appoint one, the three dele-
gates then forming a " board of inspectors with a
single and united action." As many questions of
national and international jurisdiction were likely to
154 CREATION OF THE FOREIGX CUSTOMS. [chap. IX.
arise out of the executive functions of the inspectors,
provision was made for dealing with them, and as far as
human ingenuity could foresee without any experience
to guide, every contingency, down to the minutiae of
internal administration, was considered in the instruc-
tions given to the inspectors. The announcement of the
newly-constituted Customs Board was formally made
by the consuls on July 6, and the new custom-house was
inaugurated on the 12th, the three inspectors being Mr
T. F. Wade, British ; Mr Lewis Carr, American ; and
M. Smith, French.
The new custom-house was an immediate success :
it fulfilled every purpose for which it was created,
yielding its full revenue to the Chinese Government,
and putting an end to the temptations of traders to
seek illicit advantages over each other. It says much
for the soundness of the principles on which it was
established that not only has the custom-house of 1854
survived the shock of rebellion and war, of extended
treaties, of the multiplication of trading-ports from five
to thirty and of treaty Powers from three to thirteen,
but its roots have struck deep and its branches have
spread wide over every portion of the empire, and that
in spite of the opposition of powerful provincial officials,
whose revenues it curtailed by diverting them into the
imperial channel. The triumvirate Board under which
the institution was launched was little more than
nominal, the direction of the customs being a one-man
power from the outset, one only of the three inspectors
possessing either the knowledge, capacity, or zeal
needed to infuse life into the new department.
The first English inspector, who was only lent for a
time to start the new enterprise, was replaced in a few
ITS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 155
months by Mr H. N. Lay, interpreter to the consulate,
who definitively retired from the British in order to
enter the Chinese service, while Mr Wade returned to
his vice-consular duties. The functions of the Board
of Inspectors were soon consolidated in the office of
Inspector- General, which was conferred upon Mr Lay,
and held by him until 1863, when he was obliged to
resign the service of the Chinese Government in con-
sequence of their failure to ratify his engagements in
connection with the Osborn flotilla.
It only remains to mention in this place that coin-
cident with the establishment of the maritime customs
in Shanghai came the instructions from her Majesty's
Government to cancel the promissory notes, amounting
to a million of dollars, which had been given by the
British merchants for duties during the interregnum,
the conditions attached rendering them legally invalid.
Although the organisation of the foreign customs
was an expedient to meet an emergency never likely
to recur, the transaction, nevertheless, forms a brief
epitome of the ideal foreign relations with China, and
it is useful therefore to note what were its essential
features and the conditions of its creation.
First. The Chinese Government w^ere reduced to
helplessness and were amenable to advice.
Second. Corruption and laxity were inherent in their
nature and ineradicable except by external force.
Third. The external force, to be savingly applied,
must not be subversive of Chinese authority, but must
supply the element in administration in which the
natives are absolutely wanting, and which is so tersely
summarised by Mr Alcock as " vigilance and probity."
Fourth, This combination of Chinese authority with
156 ALCOCK's departure from shanghai. [chap. IX.
foreign vigilance and probity, which has rendered the
Chinese customs service a kind of miracle of reform,
was capable of renovating the whole Chinese adminis-
tration. Why it has not been extended into the other
departments of state is only another form of lament
over lost opportunities.
Fifth. That the system was established on the
broadest cosmopolitan basis.
V. MR ALCOCK'S DEPARTURE FROM SHANGHAI.
Promoted to Canton — Impression he had made upon the European colony
of Shanghai — Their confidence in his integrity and ability — His
domestic life — First literary work — Condition of affairs at Canton —
Difficulties and obstructions — Alcock leaves for home before the out-
break of 1856.
With these distino^uished services Mr Alcock's career
in Shanghai was brought to a close. He was promoted
to the senior consulate at Canton, but he remained
long enough in his northern post to see the city of
Shanghai once more in possession of the constituted
authorities and the restoration of peace in the vicinity
of the port. Being practically starved out, the insur-
gents set fire to the city and made the best escape
they could during the night, which happened to be the
last night of the Chinese year, 17th February 1855.
Some may have escaped, but the greater part fell into
the hands of their enemies, and for weeks afterwards
many a ghastly trophy in the neighbourhood attested
the ruthless treatment which the fugitives received,
recalling the realistic picture in a certain epitaph of
Villon.
TESTIMONIAL TO MR ALCOCK. 157
On his departure from Shanghai in April of that
year Mr Alcock received a flattering testimonial from
the British residents, who were cordially joined by both
French and Americans. This compliment had the
special value of being practically unanimous, while yet
by no means undiscriminating. As a curious character-
istic of the social relations of the community at that
time, it may be mentioned that the document was
presented in two parts, substantially the same, but
differently worded. The explanation of the dual pre-
sentation is to be found in the etiquette which was
commonly observed between the Montagues and the
Capulets of the period, it being considered a point of
honour that neither should follow the signature of the
other ; hence the two leading members of the commun-
ity had each to head a separate list.
It was impossible for an officer of such strict views
and such' an uncompromising character to live for eight
years in the midst of an independent population whom
he had to treat as his subjects without provoking oc-
casional resentment, and creating friction in carrying
out the details of his administration. Moreover, his
public acts were of too decisive a quality to commend
themselves to universal approval. Yet, frankly recog-
nising all this, the memorialists state, " In whatever
degree as individuals we may have approved or dissented
from any of your acts of public policy, we are all ready
to do justice to the singleness of purpose and sense
of public duty under which you have uniformly acted.
We believe that you have throughout held in view
your conscientious convictions of what was right and
just, and that no undue external influence has at any
time operated to divert you from them." In fact, the
158 ALCOCK's departure from shanghai. [chap. IX.
Shanghai community — quorum pars fui — were proud
of their consul, and looked up to him as soldiers do
to a commander in whom they have absolute confi-
dence. They felt themselves ennobled by contact with
a character sans peur et sans i^eproche. Above all, he
represented before the Chinese authorities the dignity
of his country in a manner which has rarely been
equalled, and gratitude for that patriotic service would
of itself have covered a multitude of sins. The feeling
of respect so generated reconciled the residents to that
which in another man might have been held to savour of
coldness, for in social life he was reserved, if not some-
what haughty in his bearing, — partly no doubt from
temperament, but chiefly from absorption in the duties
and responsibilities of his office, in researches into all
the matters which concerned his work, and in the study
of subjects which were congenial to his mind. It may
also be said, without reflection on either I3arty, that
those robust recreations which engrossed the leisure
of younger men — and the community was very young
— were not of a kind with which the consul had much
personal sympathy. His own distractions were more
of a literary and reflective order. He did not unbend
to gain popularity.
His domestic life left him nothing to desire in the way
of society. To his wife he was most devoted, and to
her he addressed, in half soliloquy, a series of thoughts
on religious subjects which reveal more than anything
the deep earnestness of his nature. When this loving
helpmeet was snatched from his side in March 1858,
the calm exterior was little disturbed ; but having to
face that immense gap in his life, he was thrown more
than ever on his mental resources. His isolation was
LITERARY RECREATION. 159
the more keenly felt when he was relieved from the
heavy demand which the affairs of Shanghai had made
on his energies, and it was in the comparative leisure
of Canton that he composed his first serious political
contribution to periodical literature, an outlet for his
thoughts which proved such an attraction to him to
the end of his life. His first essay was an article in
the ' Bombay Quarterly Review ' on " The Chinese
Empire and its Destinies," published in October 1855.
It was soon followed by a second, entitled " The Chinese
Empire and its Foreign Relations," a paper which fills
no less than seventy-eight pages of the 'Review.' The
two together form an able disquisition on the state
of China which has not become obsolete by lapse of
time.
It was during the same period also that he composed
that series of short essays which were published anony-
mously under the title of ' Life's Problems.' Instead of
attempting any appreciation of that little volume, we
prefer to quote the impression it made on one reader
many years afterwards. In a letter of Dora Green well,
published in her Memoirs, she says : ''I have met with
a friend, a book that seems to take my whole rational
nature along with it. I have seen no such book now
or at any former time ; and it is a book I have often
longed for, yet never hoped for — a book contemplating
life as it is in a Christian spirit, yet from the natural
standpoint."
The consulate in Canton during the year that Mr
Alcock occupied the post presented nothing of sensa-
tional interest. There was a superficial lull there, the
lull before the storm which burst in October 1856,
after Mr Alcock had left for home on his first well-
160 ALCOCK's departure from SHANGHAI. [chap. ix.
earned furlough. The chronic obstruction to business
and the old difficulties in communicating with the
Chinese authorities formed the burden of his reports
to his chief, Sir John Bowring. The question of direct
intercourse and of access to the city, which had been
put off from time to time, was still unsettled. The
definitive postponement of the treaty right of entry
till 1849 had not rendered the solution of it one whit
easier. On the contrary, the concession had only
served to confirm the Chinese officials and people in
their determination to resist the claim for ever. On
the accession of Lord Palmerston to the Premiership
in 1855 the dormant claim was revived, and Sir John
Bowring was instructed by the Government to obtain
unrestricted intercourse with the native authorities and
the full exercise of the right of admission to all the
cities which were opened to trade. Canton included.
To repeated applications of this tenor the Viceroy Yeh
replied by the traditional evasions, thus laying the
train for the explosion which soon followed.
Mr Alcock being personally severed from the chain
of events which led to the outbreak of hostilities in
the autumn of 1856, it will be convenient here to
suspend the narrative and glance at some of those
general questions which form the subject - matter of
our relations with China.
161
CHAPTEH X.
CONSUL ALCOCK's VIEWS ON GENERAL POLICY.
Essays on international relations — Foresight — Its connection with succeed-
ing events — The Canton city question resuscitated.
Among serious students of the international problems
arising out of the forced intercourse of the Western
nations with China, Sir Rutherford Alcock occupies
the first rank. In the long roll of consular and diplo-
matic agents employed by the British Government
since 1833 he stands alone in the effort to evolve
a reasonable working scheme out of the chaos of
blunders and misunderstandings which marked the
opening of China to foreign trade. Mr Taylor
Meadows, another consular officer, though equally
far-sighted, was perhaps too philosophical for the
exigencies of current business. Consul Alcock's
political philosophy, on the other hand, grew en-
tirely out of the facts with which he had to deal
from day to day, and was therefore essentially
practical.
It might seem that fifty-year-old disquisitions on
what we now call the " China question " must have
too much of the musty odour of ancient history
about them to afford profitable reading to a gener-
VOL. I. L
162 ALCOCk's views on general policy. [chap. X.
ation which has only been aroused by the thunder
of events to take an interest — and that as yet per-
functory— in the affairs of the Far East. But as
Mr Alcock had the faculty of getting to the heart
of things, of seizing the principles which do not
change, his early studies have lost neither validity
nor value through the lapse of years. On these
well - digested observations, accordingly, modern in-
quirers may confidently rely as on a corner - stone
of Anglo- Chinese politics well and truly laid. And
the lapse of time, so far from detracting from the
utility of these opinions, enhances their value. For
by extending the base of observation over a long
period, errors due to personal equation, change of
circumstance, and other temporary causes, are elim-
inated from the survey, and the seeker after truth
is thus furnished with a trustworthy criterion by
which he may verify his conclusions. The forecast of
1849, realised in the developments of 1900, affords
strong proof that the earlier generalisations were not
the result of ingenious speculation.
It seems reasonable, therefore, here to introduce
some of the reflections of Consul Alcock while he
was as yet comparatively new to China. These occur
in various forms, as in confidential despatches, in
private memoranda, and notes for literary articles
apparently never extended. One of these notes,
dated January 19, 1849, summing up the results of
six years' working of the treaty of Nanking, may
well serve as a landmark in the record of foreign
intercourse with China.
Some extracts from this and other papers are printed
for the convenience of the reader in an Appendix to the
DANGER OF EXTORTING CONCESSIONS. 163
present volume.^ Though bearing directly on the policy
of the 'time when they were written, they are no less
applicable to present circumstances. They show that
nothing had changed then, as nothing has changed
since, in the attitude of the Chinese to foreign nations.
" The same arrogant and hostile spirit exists, and their
policy is still to degrade foreigners in the eyes of the
people. . . . Without the power [on our part] of com-
manding attention to any just demands, there is every
reason to believe the Chinese rulers would still be the
most impracticable of Orientals. . . . We cannot hope
that any effort of ours or of the emperor would suffice
to change at once the character and habits of the
people or even the population of a city."
While advocating a resolute policy in maintaining all
British rights granted by treaty, the far-sighted consul
uttered a timely caution against pushing demands for
concessions too far. In this he was in accord with the
policy, often enunciated by the British Government, of
not imperilling what we already possessed by striving
after more. Mr Alcock indicates clearly the danger
which threatened British interests from the pros-
pective influx of Western Powers pressing through
the doors which Great Britain might be constrained
to open : —
Powers who, having no such great interests to jeopardise, are
without this beneficial and most needful check, and may there-
fore be induced to repeat at a semi-barbarian Court the in-
trigues and counter-projects for the destruction of our influence
and the injury of our trade in the East which are at work in
our own times in every capital in Europe, as formerly in India
and the Eastern Archipelago.
1 See Appendix I.
164 ALCOCK's views on general policy. [chap. X.
Nor could a much more accurate description of the
state of affairs now existing be given than the picture
of the future drawn by Consul Alcock : —
Russia, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and America, with
their several jealousies and united rivalry with England, their
missionary enterprises or commercial and political schemes
clashing in their aim and development, are all capable of
creating such turmoil, strife, and disturbance throughout the
empire, if free access to the Court and the provinces were
insisted upon by Great Britain, as could only end in the ejection
of Europeans from China as formerly from Japan, or an intestine
war in which European force would probably be involved on
opposite sides, and to their mutual destruction as States with
commercial interests in the country. These, again, might lead
to attempts at territorial possession, suggested in the first in-
stance, as in India, in self-defence, and afterwards continued
from necessity. With Russia spreading her gigantic arms to
the north and east. Great Britain on the south and west, Spain,
Holland, and Portugal with their colonies in the Chinese and
Indian seas, a struggle for superiority on the soil of China for
exclusive advantages or predominant influence might be centred
in Peking and embroil the whole of Europe in hostile relations.
An interesting feature in the prognostications of
both Mr Alcock and Mr Meadows in those early
days was the ignoring of the Power which is now
assuming such an active part in the rearrangement
of the Far East. Germany was not even thought of
as a world Power, but her entry on the stage has
only added confirmation to the soundness of all these
predictions.
The more immediate significance, however, of the
elaborate exposition of the Anglo - Chinese situation
which we are now considering, lay in its connection
with the chain of events which followed within a few
years, and its coincidence with the progress in the
ENTRY INTO CANTON PEREMPTORILY DENIED. 165
views of the British Government, which might almost
be traced back to the date of the paper. The year
1849 was one of the critical epochs in foreign inter-
course with China, for it was then that the last
promissory note as to the opening of Canton became
due, and was dishonoured. The years of grace suc-
cessively granted to the Chinese authorities to enable
them to prepare for the execution of the treaty
stipulation had been used by them, or at any rate
by the populace, to render its execution permanently
impossible. Mr Bonham, who proceeded up the river
to apply for the fulfilment of the agreement of
1847, which promised admission to the city within
two years, was received, not with the suave evasion
of Kiying but with the coarse rebuff of Governor-
General Seu, who amid popular enthusiasm caused a
memorial arch to be erected to commemorate the
third repulse of the barbarians. The turning-point
of affairs had been now reached ; the scales fell
from the eyes of the British Government. Reluct-
antly they were driven to the conclusion that they
had for seven years been trifled with, that their
agents, one after another, had been duped ; that
while they deluded themselves by imagining that by
their concessions they were pouring oil on water,
they were, in fact, throwing that inflammable sub-
stance on fire. Such systematic blunders could not
be made with impunity. It began, in short, to be
perceived that the ground so weakly surrendered at
Canton could not be recovered without, in the pro-
phetic words of Lord Palmerston, "coming to blows"
once more with the Chinese.
The attention of the British Government being thus
166 ALCOCK's views on general policy. [chap. X.
seriously directed to China, they entered into cor-
respondence with their plenipotentiary, the governor
of Hongkong, as to the best means of arresting the
decline of British prestige and of placing the in-
terests of trade and residence on a satisfactory
footing. The plenipotentiary had no resource but
one for obtaining either information or advice on
such large questions, and that was always Consul
Alcock at Shanghai, a thousand miles from the seat
of trouble, who had not then even seen Canton.
Mr Alcock was alert to respond to the invitation of
his chief, copiously, fearlessly, and with masterly
lucidity as well as comprehensiveness. In a despatch
to Sir George Bonham dated January 13, 1852, the
development of the new policy may be traced.^ And
the whole situation is fully laid bare in a further
despatch of June 17, 1852.2
This confidential official correspondence,^ carried on
for a number of years, constitutes a natural introduc-
tion to the chapter of history which was about to
open. In the transactions which led to a second
rupture with China Consul Alcock had personally no
part, for he was on leave in England, but there also
his voice was heard in the discussion of the causes
and objects of the war.
In a series of letters to the press, during 1857-58,
commenting on the progress of events, Mr Alcock
endeavoured to keep the British public informed of
what was transpiring in China, the reasons for it, and
the probable consequences. These letters were repub-
lished in pamphlet form, of course anonymously.
1 See Appendix II. - See Appendix III.
3 See Appendices I., II., and III.
167
CHAPTER XL
TRADE UNDER THE TREATY OF NANKING.
Trade the sole motive in all British and American dealings with China —
Simplicity of this trade — Chief staple imports and exports — Data for
any review of Chinese trade — Mutual alarm caused by excess of im-
ports— Peculiar conditions of British trade — Entailing a loss of over
30 per cent, yet steadily maintained — System of barter — Consequent
impossibility of clear accounts — And ignorance of position at any given
moment — Trade also hampered by traditions of the East India Com-
pany— Such as that of keeping large stores on hand — Gradual improve-
ment on these methods — Advantages of landed investment in China
— Perceived and acted on by the Jesuits — And later by foreign mer-
chants— The American trade — Similarity of currency — Excess of
Chinese exports met by shipments of specie — And later by credits on
London banks.
Whatever may be said of that of other nations, the
intercourse of Great Britain and the United States
with China, from the earHest period to the latest,
whether in peace or war, has had no other object than
trade between the nations, and therefore all the steps
in that intercourse must be judged in their relation to
the promotion of international commerce. War and
diplomacy, geographical exploration and reforms, even
literary researches and mutual instruction, being all
ancillary to the main purpose, it seems fitting to con-
sider as briefly as may be what manner of thing it was
which set, and still keeps, all these auxiliary forces in
motion.
168 TRADE UNDER TREATY OF NANKING. [cHAP. XI.
From its first introduction till now one feature has
characterised the Chinese foreign trade, and that is its
simplicity. Both on the export and the import side a
few staple commodities have made up its whole volume,
and in this respect the statistics of to-day differ but
little from those of fifty years ago. The leading
Chinese imports at the conclusion of the first war
were : From India, opium and raw cotton, to which has
been added, since the development of steam factories,
cotton yarn. From England, plain bleached and un-
bleached cotton goods, cotton yarn, some descriptions
of woollens, iron and lead, account for nearly the whole
value. The trade from the United States and the
continent of Europe in those days did not greatly affect
the general aggregate. The exports of Chinese prod-
uce were at the period in question almost confined to
the one article — tea. Subseqently silk grew into im-
portance, and soon exceeded in value the great speci-
ality of China. Rhubarb was a commodity on which,
next to tea, the Chinese affected to lay much stress, on
the ground that foreigners were dependent upon it for
the preservation of their health, and that stopping the
supply might offer an easy means of coercing them.
But the article never assumed any important com-
mercial value. Sugar, camphor, and matting were also
among the exports, the last named being much in
demand in the United States. It is only of recent
years, however, that anything like assorted cargoes
of produce have been sent away from the Chinese
ports. The trade has passed through many vicissitudes,
has had its periodical ebb and flow, but has on the
whole been prosaically progressive. And this has been
RESULTS OF TRADING. 169
especially the case with the imports of British and other
Western produce.
It would be instructive to review the circumstances
of the Chinese trade at successive stages of its progress,
and to note the grievances of merchants and manufac-
turers at different epochs and the obstacles to com-
mercial development as they were felt from time to
time. It would be more interesting to do this were it
possible to discriminate between permanent causes and
temporary accidents. But it is not always what is of
the most lasting importance that makes the strongest
impression upon those who are actively engaged in the
struggle for life. The trader does not greatly differ
from the world at large in his love of a whipping-boy —
that is to say, in the common tendency to attribute
mischances to objective rather than to subjective causes.
Prosperity, like good health, is, to those who enjoy it,
its own sufficient explanation, the normal reward of the
merit each one takes to himself as a matter of course.
Adversity, on the other hand, is assigned to demonic
origin, its victims being martyrs to the powers of nature
or the hostile combinations of men. For these reasons
it would be as difficult to gather from their own
accounts what were the real helps and what the real
hindrances to the traders' progress, as to draw general
conclusions on the state of agriculture from conversa-
tions with working farmers. The commercial circular
is a familiar product of the modern era of open trade.
It undertakes to record the actual state of markets and
to give the reasons why they are not otherwise. If
one were to circumnavigate the globe and compare the
ordinary run of these reports issuing from the great
170 TRADE UNDER TREATY OF NANKING. [chap. XI.
emporia, one feature would be found common to them
all — it is the bogy. Everything would be for the best
— but for certain adverse influences. It may be the
vagaries of some Finance Minister or Tarifi" Commission,
the restraint of princes, war, pestilence, or famine —
inundations here and droughts there ; but a something
there must always be to explain away the moral ac-
countability of the individual traders, manufacturers,
or planters. China and Japan have seldom been with-
out such fatalistic obstacles to commerce. For many
years the rebellion was the hete noire of merchants, then
the mandarins, and smaller rebellions ; the scarcity
of specie at one period, at another the superabundance
of cheap silver. In Burma the King of Ava stood for
long as the root of all commercial evil. In Japan the
Daimios and the currency served their turn. India
is never without calamities sufficient to account for
perhaps more than ever happens there. All such draw-
backs, however, though real enough as far as they go,
are never exhaustive, and seldom even reach to the core
of the problem. They are as atmospheric phenomena,
to be observed, taken advantage of, or provided against,
and are extremely interesting to the individuals imme-
diately affected by them. But as regards the general
course of trade, such incidents are but as storms on the
surface of the deep oceanic currents : it is the onward
sweep of the great volume of traffic that alone possesses
public interest. Of the circumstances which influence
the course and direction of that beneficent current a
collation of the utterances of traders would yield but a
refracted account. So that in order to appreciate the
progress of commerce we have to fall back on the un-
adorned columns of statistical tables, which themselves
OBSTACLES TO EXPANSION. 17 1
leave something to be desired on the score of com-
pleteness.^
With regard to certain periods of the China trade
we have rather full data, as, for instance, in the decade
following the war, when the working of the trade
exercised the minds both of British merchants and of
their Government in a degree which has scarcely been
equalled since. The same may be predicated of the
Chinese Government also, and, as has been observed in
a previous chapter, it was an interesting coincidence
that during that critical period it was the self-same
grievance that pressed on both sides — namely, the
insufficiency of the Chinese exported produce to pay
for the goods imported. The effect of this on the
Chinese Government was to excite unfeigned alarm at
the steady drain of silver required to pay for the excess
of their imports. On the British side the grievance
came home to the manufacturers in the form of the
incapacity of the Chinese to take off an adequate quan-
tity of the products of English looms. The remedy
proposed from the two sides was thoroughly character-
istic of their respective traditions. On the Chinese side
it was negative, obstructive, prohibitory, and absolutely
vain. On the British side the proposal was positive,
expansive, and in accord with the spirit of modern com-
merce. The Chinese remedy was to forbid the export
of silver and the import of opium, which, being the
article in most urgent demand, was usually paid for in
bullion or in coined dollars. The English remedy was
to stimulate the export of Chinese produce. But here
a paradox stands in the way of a clear perception of the
1 The annual value of the whole foreign trade with China, imports and
exports, is now about £70,000,000.
172 TRADE UNDER TREATY OF NANKING. [cHAP. XI.
position. The British trade was being carried on at a
loss, which some of the merchants estimated at 33 per
cent on the round venture. That is to say, manufac-
tured o^oods were sold in China at a loss of 15 to 20
per cent, and the proceeds, being invested in Chinese
produce, realised a further loss on sale in England of
17 or 20 per cent.
To account for this unremunerative trade being
carried on voluntarily year after year, it is necessary
to remember the great distance of the two markets in
the days before the introduction of steam and the
shortening of the voyage by the piercing of the Suez
Canal. We have to allow also for the gambling or
speculative element which animates all commerce,
and the " hope-on-hope-ever " spirit without which no
distant adventure would ever be undertaken. The
rationale of the phenomenon was reduced to a very
simple expression by Mr Gregson, who, when asked by
the Committee of the House of Commons if he could
explain " the singular proceeding of continuing the
trade for a series of years with perpetual losses on
it," replied : " The manufacturers reason that as the
losses have been considerable the exports will fall
off, and therefore they may export again. They are
generally deceived, because their neighbours taking
the same view, the exports are kept up and the loss
continues."
The case thus bluntly stated by Mr Gregson was not
such a temporary phase as might naturally have been
concluded. The same remarkable features continued for
many years afterwards more or less characteristic of
the China trade, so that had another commission been
appointed to consider the subject they would have been
UNSATISFACTORY RESULTS OF CHINA TRADE. 173
surprised to find the old riddle still awaiting solution,
Why so regular and simple a trade should be carried on
apparently without profit ? The data of supply and
demand being well ascertained, prices remunerative to
the merchant might have been expected to arrange
themselves automatically. Further explanations seem,
in fact, required to supplement Mr Gregson's, and some
of these must appear somewhat whimsical and far-
fetched to the general reader. The peculiar method in
vogue of stating accounts was not perhaps without its
influence in obscuring the merchants' perceptions of the
merits of their current operations. The trade being
virtually conducted by barter, the sale of a particular
parcel of goods did not necessarily close the venture.
A nominal price was agreed upon between buyer and
seller for the convenience of account-keeping, but this
almost always had reference to the return investment
in tea or other produce. So that British goods were
regarded as a means of laying down funds in China for
the purchase of tea, while tea was regarded as a return
remittance for the proceeds of manufactured goods, and
as a means of laying down funds in England for further
investments in the same commodity for shipment to
China. The trade thus revolving in an eternal circle,
having neither beginning nor end, it was impossible to
pronounce definitely at what particular point of the
revolution the profit or loss occurred. A bad out-turn
of goods exported would, it was hoped, be compensated
for by the favourable result of the produce imported,
and vice versa, ad infinitum. Thus no transaction stood
on its own merits or received the unbiassed attention of
the merchants. Their accounts did not show the actual
amount of loss or gain on a particular invoice, the
174 TRADE UNDER TREATY OF NANKING. [chap. XI.
formula simply recording the price at which the venture,
as an operation in exchange, "laid down the dollar."
The par value of that coin being taken at 4s. 4d., the
out-turn of a sterling invoice which yielded the dollar at
any price below that was of course a gain, or anything
above it a loss. But the gain or loss so registered was
merely provisional. The dollar as such was never
realised : it was but a fiction of the accountant, which
acquired its substantial value only when reinvested in
Chinese produce. The final criterion, therefore, was
how much the dollar invoices of Chinese produce would
yield back in sterling money when sold in London, and
how that yield compared with the " laid-down " cost of
the dollar in China. But even that finality was only
provisional so long as the circuit of reinvestment was
uninterrupted.
Merchants were not called upon to face their losses as
they were made, nor could they realise their profits as
they were earned. Long before one years account
could be closed, the venture of one or two subsequent
years had been launched beyond recall, and the figures
of the newest balance-sheet related to transactions
which, having already become ancient history, were but
a dry study compared with the new enterprises bearing
the promise of the future and absorbing the whole
interest of the merchant. Business was thus carried on
very much in the dark, the eyes of the trader being
constantly directed forward, while past experience was
not allowed its legitimate influence in forming the
judgment. A blind reliance on the equalising effect
of averages was perhaps the safest principle on which
such a commerce could be carried on. The merchants
themselves were wont to say that after drawing the
HAMPERED BY TRADITIONS. l75
clearest inferences from experience, and making the
most careful estimates of probabilities, the wisest
man was he who could act contrary to the obvious
deductions therefrom. Business thus became a kind
of concrete fatalism.
The China trade was, moreover, much hampered by-
certain traditions of the East India Company which
long clung to its skirts. One of these relics of con-
servatism, transmitted from the days of the maritime
wars, was the principle of storing up merchandise at
both termini. It was an understood thing that the
Company should never keep less than two years' supply
of tea in the London warehouses, and long after the
Company ceased to trade stocks of that commodity
often amounted to nearly twelve months' consumption.
Similarly, manufactured goods were accumulated,
whether of set purpose or from the mere force of
habit, in the China depots. The merchant seemed to
have inherited the principle of holding merchandise
for some ideal price, locking up his own or his con-
stituents' capital, incurring cumulative charges on
commodities which were all the while deterioratinof
in value, and eventually perhaps selling under some
financial or other pressure. A certain satisfaction
seems to have been derived from the contemplation
of a full " go -down," as if the merchandise there
stored had been realised wealth instead of a block
to such realisation.
That primitive state of affairs is now a thing of the
past, since the progress of the world during the last
thirty years has revolutionised not the foreign trade of
China, but the peculiar system on which it was car-
ried on. The distribution of capital and the services of
176 TRADE UNDER TREATY OF NANKING. [chap. XI.
Exchange banks exploded many conservative doctrines.
The first merchants who, perceiving the necessity of
reforming the habits of the trade, boldly resolved to
" sell and repent " on the arrival of their merchandise,
were pitied by their more antiquated neighbours, and
thought to be likely to stand much in need of repent-
ance. But in their case wisdom has been justified of
her children.
This bald sketch of the trade customs inherited from
the East India Company, though typical, is by no
means exhaustive. There were, both before and after
the treaty of Nanking, many byways and specialities
and exceptions by which the vicious circle was broken
with happy results to the individuals. Indeed at all
points there have been collateral avenues to fortune,
contributory enterprises more profitable than those
which were purely commercial. The various ways of
taxing commerce, as by insurance, freightage, storage,
lighterage, packing, financing, &c., have afibrded, on
the whole, safe and good returns on capital. In
countries where family improvidence is prevalent, and
where capital is scarce and dear, as is the case gen-
erally in the Far East, both the opportunity and the
inducement to invest in real estate are afibrded to
those who are in a position to take advantage of
them, — for the same conditions which bring property
into the market provide the tenants for the new
proprietors. By following with that singleness of
purpose which distinguishes all their proceedings
the line of financial policy so obviously suggested by
this state of things, the Jesuits, Lazarists, and other
religious orders have gradually accumulated in every
locality where they have settled a very large amount of
AMERICAN TRADE. 177
house property in and around populous centres. By
this means they have laid whole communities of natives,
and even foreigners, under permanent tribute to the
Church, and have thereby rendered their missions
independent of subventions from Christian countries.
Many of the foreign merchants, following this worldly-
wise example, have in like manner rendered themselves
independent of mercantile business.
The American trade was for the most part exempt
from the drawbacks as well as the advantages of
the circuit system. The similarity of currency helped
to simplify American commerce with China, and
though from an early period the United States ex-
ported manufactures to that country, these went but a
little way in payment for the products which they
imported from China. Hence large shipments of specie
had to be made to purchase their cargoes. No
statistics exist, but Mr Hunter incidentally mentions
one ship carrying amongst other cargo 8350,000, and
three other vessels carrying between them 81,100,000,
which may be taken as typical of the course of trade
prior to the abolition of the East India Company's
monopoly. This mode of paying for produce was
succeeded in after-years by credits on London banks,
drafts under which supplied the most convenient
medium of remittance to shippers of opium and other
produce from India. The circuit was trilateral, and
to a considerable extent remains so.
VOL. I. M
178 TEA. [chap. XI.
I. TEA.
Causes of bad state of trade — Failure of hopes built on " free " trade —
Efforts for improvement — Select Committee of 1847 — Excessive dutie§
in England — Irregularities in valuation — Annual consumption at this
time — Revenue from the duties — Beginnings of the India tea trade —
Mr Robert Fortune — Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General, in-
troduces tea culture, 1834 — Assam Company founded 1839 — Fortune's
missions to China — Tea-plant indigenous in India — Progress of scien-
tific culture — Vicissitudes of the trade — Ultimate success of the India
and Ceylon trade — An example of Western as against Eastern methods
— Tea-planting introduced in Ceylon — Rapid increase there — Why
China has been supplanted in the market — Ingenuity and enterprise
of the Indian planters — A victory of race and progress — Obstructive
measures of the Chinese Government.
There was an apparent inconsistency in the outcry
for larger quantities of Chinese produce to balance the
trade, while the small quantity that did come forward
could only be sold at a loss. The explanation may
partly be found in the " boom " which naturally ensued
on the emancipation of the China trade from the
oppressive monopoly of the East India Company, and in
the disappointment which, no less naturally, succeeded
the boom. To some extent also the onerous imposts
laid upon the principal article of export — tea — by the
British Exchequer might be held responsible for the
anomaly ; for the English duties were a mechanical
dead-weight on the trade, impeding the free play of
the other economic factors. There was a practically
unlimited supply of tea in China, and a growing de-
mand for it in England, and yet some £2,000,000 in
specie was annually sent away from China as the
balance of trade. How to commute that amount of
silver into tea for the benefit of both countries might
HEAVY DUTIES. 179
be said to be the problem before the merchants and
their Governments.
The only means which appeared to them feasible
to effect this object was to lower the British import
duty. Among many interesting particulars concern-
ing the actual state of the Chinese trade at that
time, we get from the report of the Select Committee
of the House of Commons on " Commercial Relations
with China," of 1847, an insight into the difficulties,
such as in our day can scarcely be imagined, which
stood in the way of any reduction of the tea duties.
On the opening of what was called free trade with
China — " free," that is to say, of the East India Com-
pany's monopoly — the duty was 96 per cent ad valorem
on all teas sold at or under 2s. a pound, or 100 per cent
on all above that price. These ad valorem duties
worked iniquitously for both the Government and the
merchants, the Customs levying the higher rate when
the lower was appropriate, and the merchants redress-
ing the injustice in their own fashion when occasion
served. An attempt was made to remedy this re-
grettable situation by the reduction of tea to three
classifications, and the conversion of the ad valorem
duties into specific duties ranging from Is. 6d. to 3s.
per pound on these classifications. The arrangement
was still found unworkable, and the most glaring
irregularities were common. The same parcel of tea,
absolutely uniform in quality, divided between London
and Liverpool, would be assessed in one port on the
lower, and in the other on the higher, scale of duties,
and the Customs would grant no redress, though the
overcharge might be ruinous to the trader.
This impossible state of things was remedied in 1836,
180 TEA. [chap. XI.
when the duties were converted to one uniform rate of
2s. per pound on all teas. Subsequently 5 per cent was
added to this, so that the duty in 1847 was 2s. 2Jd.
The object to which the Government inquiry was
primarily directed was to gauge the effect on the con-
sumption of tea of the raising or lowering of the duties,
on which depended the ultimate retail price. The ad-
mission of competition in the Chinese trade in 1834
had the immediate effect of reducing the "laid-down"
cost of tea, which promptly reacted upon the consump-
tion of the article in England. But as the import duty
remained unaltered, while the prime cost of the tea was
much lowered, the Exchequer derived the whole benefit
from the increased consumption.
The annual consumption at that time in Great Britain
was 1 lb. 10 oz. per head, or 46,000,000 lb. in total, and
it was shown that in every instance where the duty was
lower the consumption was proportionately greater. In
the Isle of Man, where the duty was Is. per pound, the
consumption quickly rose, when the restriction on the
quantity allowed to be imported there was removed, to
2 lb. 10 oz. per head. In the Channel Islands it was
4 lb. 4 oz. per head. " In Newfoundland, Australia,
and other colonies the consumption is very much larger
per head than it is in this country." The Australian
colonies have maintained to the present day their pre-
eminence as tea-drinkers, their consumption averaging
no less than 10 lb. per head. Consumption in Bussia
and the United States is estimated at a little over 1 lb.
per head of the population.
The colonists have always been the most intelligent
consumers of the article. Forty years ago they substi-
tuted good black teas for the pungent green which had
TASTES IN TEA. 181
supplied the wants of the mining camps and primitive
sheep stations, and within the last few years they have
shown their appreciation of the flavoury Ceylon leaf by
taking every year a larger quantity in relative displace-
ment of the rougher qualities which come from India. '
The " geographical distribution " of the taste for tea
presents some rather curious facts. In the United
Kingdom, for example, dealers find that Irish con-
sumers demand the best quality of tea. The United
States remained faithful to their green tea long after
that description was discarded in Australia ; and even
when black tea came to be in part substituted, it was
not the Ceylon or Chinese Congou, but the astringent
Oolong kinds, such as are so largely supplied from
Japan, which met the taste of American consumers.
The cost price of tea had been so much reduced by
the abolition of the East India Company's monopoly
that the fixed rate of duty, instead of being equivalent,
as it had been when originally fixed, to 100 per cent
on the value, was estimated to average 165 per cent
on Congou tea, which was much beyond what the
Legislature intended when the tariff was decided ;
for while they reckoned on getting a revenue of
£3,600,000, the increase in the quantity had been so
considerable that the yield of the duty had risen
to £5,000,000. The arguments and the evidence in
favour of reducing the duties were unanswerable from
every point of view. Yet the utmost which the advo-
cates in 1847 seem to have hoped for was that it might
be reduced to Is. per pound, which they considered
would entail a temporary loss to the revenue. But
we see in our day that the Government draws nearly
£4,000,000 from the article on a tariff rate of 4d.
182 TEA. [chap. XI.
per pound, while the consumption per head of popu-
lation has risen to 6 lb., or a total of 235,000,000 lb.
per annum.
While the mercantile community were thus strain-
ing after means of developing the tea trade from
China there were causes at work, of which they
seemed to have no suspicion, which have completely
revolutionised that trade, reducing China to a quite
secondary position as an exporter. Among the wit-
nesses examined before the Committee of 1847 there
was one who may almost be said to have held the
fate of the Chinese tea trade in his hands, though
probably he himself was unaware of it. This was
Mr Robert Fortune, curator of the Physic Gardens
at Chelsea, who had travelled in some of the tea
districts of China as agent of the Horticultural
Society of London, being also commissioned by the
East India Company to investigate the processes of
the growth and manufacture of tea in China, and to
bring to India seeds and plants as well as skilled
workmen to manipulate the leaves. The idea of
cultivating tea in India had long been entertained
by the Company. The plant itself had been found
indigenous in Upper Assam twenty years before
Fortune's day, but no practical notice was taken of
the discovery until 1834, when the Government of
India resolved to attempt the culture of the leaf
The scheme received its first embodiment in a Minute
of Lord William Bentinck, the first Governor-General
of India,^ in 1834. The plan he laid down was to
" select an intelligent agent, who should go to Penang
and Singapore and in conjunction with authorities
1 His predecessors had been governors of Fort William in Bengal.
fortune's researches. 183
and the most intelligent of Chinese agents should
concert measures for obtaining the genuine plant, and
actual cultivators." The state of affairs in China at
the time did not favour the prosecution of such an
enterprise. The native resources of India, however,
began at once to be utilised. The Assam Company,
the pioneer of tea-culture, was established in 1839,
and continues its operations to our own day. After
the treaty of peace and the successful establishment
of trade at the new ports in China, Lord William
Bentinck's ideas were realised in the two missions
of Fortune, who succeeded in conveying to India
nearly 20,000 plants from both the black and green
tea countries of Central China. Although, judging
from subsequent experience, India might by her un-
aided efforts have developed this great industry, yet
it can hardly be doubted that the enterprise of
the practical Scottish gardener applied the effective
stimulus which raised tea-growing to the rank of a
serious national interest. Hybridisation between the
imported Chinese plants and those of indigenous
growth proceeded actively, no less than one hundred
varieties being thus produced. Planters now con-
sider that the native plant would have served all
their purposes without any intermixture, but probably
nothing short of practical experience would have
persuaded them of this.
The vicissitudes of tea-growing in India have been
so sharp that they would form of themselves an in-
teresting episode of industrial history. Mania and
panic alternated during the experimental stages of
the enterprise, with the inevitable result of whole-
sale transfers of property, so that of the early
184 TEA. [chap. XI.
pioneers comparatively few were destined to enjoy
the ultimate reward of their sacrifices. Difficulties of
many kinds dogged the steps of the planters, among
these being the unsatisfactory land tenure and the
supply of labour. The mortality among the imported
coolies was for many years so heavy that the Govern-
ment was eventually obliged to interfere with severe
regulations, which were imposed in 1863. These and
other difficulties being successfully grappled with, the
prosperity of the industry flowed as smoothly' as the
Niagara river below the Falls,.. ^until the supply of
tea from India and Ceylon had completely swamped
that from the original home of the trade.
The supplanting of Chinese by Indian tea in the
markets of the world — for even Russia is now an
importer of the latter — is an interesting example of
the encroachment of Western enterprise on the
ancient province of Eastern habits. These are of
course only general terms, for from all such com-
parisons Japan must be either excluded or classed
rather among the foremost of the progressive nations
than among her nearest geographical neighbours.
When tea - cultivation was once shown to be " pay-
able" in British Indian territory the energy of the
Western people was quickly brought to bear on the
industry, and through several cycles of success and
failure, and over the dead bodies, so to sj)eak, of
many pioneers, the production available for and dis-
tributed in the English market has steadily grown
from nothing up to 154,000,000 lb. per annum.
The cultivation of tea was introduced at a much later
period into Ceylon, where it most opportunely took the
place of coflee, which had been ruined by disease, and
PLANTING IN INDIA AND CEYLON. 185
already the deliveries of tea from that island press
hard on that from India itself, having reached
90,000,000 lb., or more than half of the Indian supply.
The rate of progress in Ceylon has been most remark-
able. In 1883 the most experienced residents in the
island considered themselves sanguine in predicting that
the export of tea would eventually reach the total of
20,000,000 lb.— it being at that time under 1,000,000 lb.
While the products of India and Ceylon have thus been
advancing by leaps and bounds, the import from China
has dwindled down to 29,000,000 lb., — about one-tenth
part of a trade of which forty years ago she held an
easy monopoly.
How has such a gigantic displacement been brought
about ? Primarily, no doubt, from the vigorous follow-
ing up of the discovery that tea could be profitably
grown in India. But beyond that it is a victory of
race over race, of progress over stagnation, of the spirit
of innovation and experiment over that of conservative
contentment. The Indian planters have made a per-
sonal study of all the conditions of tea-culture, have
selected their plants, invented machinery to do all that
the Chinese have done for centuries by manipulation,
have put ample capital into the enterprise, and used the
utmost skill in adapting their product to the taste of
their customers. Moreover, they have by dint of adver-
tising all over the world, attending exhibitions, and
many other devices, forced their commodity into
markets which would never have come to them. There
was, on the other hand, no one interested in the success
of Chinese tea-growers, whose plantations are in the
interior of the country, subdivided into garden-plots,
with no cohesion among their owners for aggressive
186 TEA. [chap. XI.
purposes. For though the Chinese can and do combine,
it is usually in a negative sense, to obstruct and not to
promote action, whereas the tea-growers of India have
shown examples of intelligent co - operation of the
aggressive and productive kind, not wasting power in
seeking to impede rivals, but devoting their whole
energies to the prosecution of their own business.
And they have their reward.
The short - sightedness of the Government has no
doubt contributed to the decline of the Chinese tea
trade, through the excessive duties of one kind and an-
other which they have continued to levy on the article
from the place of growth to the port of shipment.
It is fair to remember, however, that their exactions
bear most heavily on the low grades, which, notwith-
standing, continue to be shipped in quite as large
quantities as is desirable in the interest of consumers ;
while the superior qualities, which are quite able to
bear the taxes, have almost ceased to be imported
into Great Britain, the whole supply finding its way
to Kussia. That country has long been celebrated,
and justly so, for the excellence of its tea, for which
fantastical reasons are wont to be given. The true
reason is very simple. Russian merchants purchase
the fine Chinese teas for which no market can now be
found in England, the public taste having run so ex-
clusively on the product of India and Ceylon that a
cup of good Chinese tea has become a luxury reserved
for those who have facilities for obtaininof the article
outside the ordinary channels of trade.
ORIGIN OF SILK. 187
II. SILK.
Balance of trade adjusted by Shanghai silk trade — China the original silk
country — Silk chiefly exported from Canton — Advantages of the new
port of Shanghai — Disease attacks the silkworm in Europe — Shanghai
supplies the deficit — Efforts in Italy and France to obtain healthy seed
from China and Japan — Disease overcome by M. Pasteur — Renewed
prosperity of the European producers shared by the Chinese.
Within six years of the time when the merchants
of England were earnestly seeking a remedy for the
crying evil of the balance of trade against China, the
whole difficulty had disappeared through the operation
of natural causes. The great factor in bringing about
the change was the rapid growth of the trade of
Shanghai, and more particularly the large exportation
of raw silk from that port. " The noble article," as
the Italians fondly call it, already in 1853 represented
a larger value than the tea exported ; the turn of the
tide had come ; the balance of trade had shifted ; and
in a very few years silver flowed into the country more
copiously than it had ever flowed out.
Of all the materials of commerce silk is perhaps the
most classical. A fibre so lustrous, so pure, and so
durable, has been the desire of all nations ancient
and modern, and the peculiar interest excited by its
humble origin enveloped the subject in myths and
legends during the earlier intercourse between Europe
and Asia. China was known to the ancients as the
cradle of sericulture, deriving, in fact, from its most
famous product the name Serica, by which it was
known to the Greeks and Eomans. There is not a
silk-producing country in the world which is not
188 SILK. [chap. XI.
directly or indirectly indebted to China for the seed
of the insect, if not also for the introduction of the
white mulberry -tree, upon the leaves of which the
caterpillar is fed. Though rivals have sprung up in
many countries both in Europe and in Asia, China
has not lost its reputation, or even its pre-eminence,
as a producer of the article.
The vicissitudes of the silk trade and cultivation
would afford more varied interest than the com-
paratively simple annals of the displacement of tea.
Though the subject falls outside the scope of the pres-
ent work, the changes that have taken place in Chinese
commerce cannot be intelligently followed without some
reference to the animated competition which has been
going on for more than forty years among the great
silk -producing countries. The first in rank among
these was Italy, France following at a considerable
distance. The wants of Europe had been mainly sup-
plied during centuries by the product of these countries,
India and the Levant and some others contributing
also their share. Japan had been growing silk for her
own use during all the time that intercourse with the
rest of the world was prohibited by severe laws, and
she came later into the field as an exporter.
The quantity obtained from China previous to the
opening of the five ports was all derived from the
southern provinces, and was exported from Canton.
In nothing was the pre-eminence of the new port of
Shanghai over its older rival destined to be more
marked than in the development of the silk trade.
Its position within an easy canal journey of the richest
silk-growing districts in the whole empire gave to the
northern port advantages which were promptly turned
LARGE EXPORTS FROM SHANGHAI. 189
to account in co-operation between the foreign and
the native merchants, resulting before many years in
the growth of a healthy and most satisfactory trade.
The supply of the article having up to that time been
regulated by the home demand, the entry of an outside
customer had a very stimulating effect upon the Chinese
growers. Some years elapsed before the product of
the newly opened districts could be fully tested and
appreciated by the manufacturers in Europe. This
time was well employed by the Chinese cultivators
and traders in maturing their arrangements for bring-
ing larger supplies to the foreign market, suited to
the requirements of the new purchasers, as far as they
were understood. The supply and demand had pro-
gressed evenly, admitting of good profits to both sides,
until a stage was reached when the trade and cultiva-
tion were both ready to respond to a new stimulus, and
just then the new stimulus was applied.
Disease began to attack the silkworms in Europe ;
the production of Italian and other silk became pre-
carious, and inadequate to the demands of the manu-
facturing trade. Into the vacuum thus created sup-
plies from China were ready to pour in, and highly
remunerative prices awaited them. The export from
Shanghai for the year 1856 was very large, and the
result encouraged growers and native and foreign mer-
chants to put forth still greater efforts in the following
year, when the shipments from that port reached
90,000 bales, worth probably £10,000,000 sterling.
These shipments, thrown on the market during the
money panic of 1857, resulted disastrously, but the
impetus given to the trade continued to be felt during
many subsequent years.
190 SILK. [chap. XI.
The Italians in the meanwhile, driven to their
wits' end to save so valuable an industry, tried first
to obtain healthy seed from China and Japan. The
first experiments being unsuccessful, the eggs having
hatched during the voyage, steamers were specially
chartered and carefully fitted up with conveniences for
preserving the precious commodity. Experiment was
also made of sending the seed by the caravan route
through Siberia to save the risk of premature in-
cubation. In fact, Jason's quest of the Golden Fleece
was scarcely characterised by more varied adventures
than that of the Italians — the French also joining to
a certain extent — after a healthy breed of silkworm.
After many years of anxious and almost desperate
efforts, some success was obtained in introducing
Chinese and Japanese seed into Europe ; but the prod-
uce of the exotic seed also in time became liable to
attacks of the parasite, and it was not till science came
to the aid of the cultivators that the true remedy was
finally applied, and an important item in the national
wealth of Southern Europe was saved. It was M.
Pasteur who eventually furnished the means of de-
tecting in the egg the germ of the destructive parasite ;
so that by sorting out the infected eggs and destroying
them the race was purified. Thus the way was opened
for the restoration of European culture to more than
its pristine prosperity ; for the many valuable lessons
which the cultivators learnt in the school of their
adversity have stood them in good stead now that
fortune has again smiled upon them.
Notwithstanding the revival of European silk-culture,
the silks of China and Japan and other Eastern
countries still hold their own in the Western markets,
DISPLACEMENT OF SILK INDUSTRY. 191
and continue to form an important constituent of the
export trade of the Far East.^ The European markets
to which they are consigned are no longer indeed Eng-
lish, but French, German, American, and others, the
last forty years having witnessed a revolution in the
silk industries of Great Britain, and a virtual transfer-
ence of the old industries of Spitalfields, Norwich,
Macclesfield, and other districts to her manufacturing
rivals.
III. OPIUM.
The largest and most interesting Chinese import — Peculiarities of the trade
— Nominally contraband — But openly dealt in — Ships anchored in the
Canton river — Or near the trading-ports — Wusung — Opium cargoes
discharged into old hulks before entering Shanghai port — Importance
of the opium traffic as a factor in foreign intercourse — The opium
clippers — The opium market liable to much variation — Piracy — The
clippers were armed — Occasionally attacked — Anomalous position —
Alcock's aversion to the opium traffic — His reasons — Experience at
Shanghai modifies his opinion — The trade being bound up with our
Indian and Chinese commerce — No attempt to stop it could do other
than aggravate the mischief — Still wishes to see the trade modified or
abolished — Despatch to Sir J. Bowring — His desire to devise some
scheme — His last proposal of 1870 — Ambiguous attitude of the British
Government — Inheritors of the East India Company's traditions —
These forbad the carrying of opium in their ships — Question of legalis-
ing the traffic — 1885 Chinese Government trebles the import duty and
asks the help of the Hongkong Government for its collection.
The most interesting constituent of trade in China
has always been opium, especially since the product of
British India was so much improved and stimulated by
the Government as practically to supersede in the China
market the demand for the production of other countries.
^ Eastern countries send to Europe half of the whole consumption of the
West — China yielding 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the entire supply, Japan
12 per cent.
192 OPIUM. [chap. XI.
The value of the opium imported exceeded that of all
other articles, the figures being returned at $23,000,000
and $20,000,000 respectively for the year 1845. As
the exports of Chinese produce were at that time
estimated at $37,000,000, it is evident that opium
played a most important part in the adjustment of the
balance of trade ; and as it came from India and the
returns from it had to go thither, opium and raw cotton,
which also came from India, formed the pivot of ex-
change. As the opium was paid for in silver and not
by the barter of produce, it was natural to charge it
with the loss of the silver which was annually shipped
away from China, and which was assumed to reach the
amount of £2,000,000 sterling, though that seems to be
an exaggeration.
The trade in this commodity differs from all ordinary
commerce in the conditions under which it has been
carried on, and in the sentiments which have grown up
concerning it. Until the treaty made by Lord Elgin
in 1858 the importation of opium had been for many
years nominally contraband, while yet the trade in
it was as open as that in any other commodity and
was as little interfered with by the Government.
Laxity and connivance being the characteristics of
Chinese officialdom, there would be nothing extra-
ordinary even in the official patronage of a traffic
which was forbidden by the State, so that it would
not be safe to infer from the outward show what the
real mind of the responsible Government was on
that or any other subject. The necessity of saving
appearances, an object always so dear to the Chinese
heart, necessitated a special machinery for conducting
the trade in opium. Before the war, as has been
COURSE OF TRADE. 193
already said, the ships carrying the drug anchored at
certain rendezvous in the estuary of the Canton river,
where they delivered their goods on the order of the
merchants who were located in Canton or Macao. The
vessels also made excursions up the coast, where they
had direct dealings with the Chinese, the master acting
as agent for the owners. And when the northern ports
were opened, after the treaty of Nanking, the opium
depot ships were stationed at convenient points on the
coast in the vicinity of the trading-ports. The most
important of these stations was at Wusung, on the
Hwangpu river, nine miles by road from Shanghai.
There were sometimes a dozen, and never less than
half-a-dozen, hulks moored there, dismantled, housed-
in, and unfit for sea. The supply was kept up in the
earlier days by fast schooners and latterly by steamers,
which in the period before the treaty of 1858 dis-
charged their opium into these hulks without surveil-
lance of any kind, and then proceeded up the river to
Shanghai with the rest of their cargo, which, though
often consisting of but a few odd packages, was taken
charge of by the custom - house with the utmost
punctilio, while the valuable cargo of opium was
ignored as if it did not exist.
The opium trade was a ruling factor in the general
scheme of foreign intercourse and residence in China.
The postal communication, for example, on the coast
and between India and China was practically de-
pendent on it ; for, being a precious commodity, it
could afford to pay very high charges for freight, and
the opium clippers could be run regardless of expense,
as will be more fully described in the Chapter on
" Shipping."
VOL. I. N
194 OPIUM. [chap. XI.
The high value of the article influenced the con-
duct of the trade in a variety of ways, one in par-
ticular being that the vessels carrying it had to go
heavily armed. The coast of China before the war
and after swarmed with pirates, to whom so portable
an article as opium offered an irresistible temptation.
The clippers on the coast were usually small schooners
from 100 to 200 tons burthen, and though with their
superior sailing powers they could always take care
of themselves in a breeze, they would have been
helpless in a calm unless prepared to stand to their
guns. It was sometimes alleged by those opposed
to the traflic that these vessels were little better
than pirates themselves, inasmuch as they were
forcing a trade prohibited by the laws of the empire,
and were armed to resist the authorities. The opium-
carriers were not un frequently attacked by pirates,
sometimes captured and destroyed by them ; but
there never seems to have been any interference
or complaint on the part of the Government, even
when prompted thereto by British consuls. Never-
theless it was an anomalous state of things, though
one far from unusual in the first third of the century,
that European vessels should ply their trade armed
like privateers.
The attitude of Consul Alcock towards the opium
trade was, from the earliest days of his consulship in
Foochow until his final departure from China in
1870, one of consistent aversion, so decided, indeed,
that in some of the arguments adduced in his
Foochow reports against the trade the conclusion
somewhat outran the premisses, as he in after years
CONSUL ALCOCK's EARLIER REPORTS. 195
acknowledged by marginal notes on those earlier
despatches : —
A trade prohibited and denounced alike as illegal and in-
jurious by the Chinese authority constitutes a very anom-
alous position both for British subjects and British authorities,
giving to the latter an appearance of collusion or connivance at
the infraction of the laws of China, which must be held to
reflect upon their integrity and good faith by the Chinese.
No small portion of the odium attaching to the illicit traffic
in China falls upon the consular authorities under whose juris-
diction the sales take place, and upon the whole nation whose
subjects are engaged in the trade ; and the foundations of the
largest smuggling trade in the world are largely extended,
carrying with them a habit of violating the laws of another
country.
The opium is of necessity inimical and opposed to the en-
largement of our manufacturing trade.
That which has been said of war may with still greater force
apply to the illicit traffic in opium, " It is the loss of the many
that is the gain of the few."
Whichever way we turn, evil of some kind connected with
this monstrous trade and monopoly of large houses meets our
eye.
In order to do justice to the agents in the traffic,
he adds in the same report on the trade for 1845 —
While the cultivation and sale of opium are sanctioned and
encouraged for the purposes of revenue in India, and those who
purchase the drug deriving wealth and importance from the
disposal of it in China are free from blame, it is vain to
attempt to throw exclusive opprobrium upon the last agents in
the transaction.
These were the impressions of a fresh and presum-
ably unprejudiced mind taking its first survey of
the state of our commercial intercourse with China.
They were reflections necessarily of a somewhat ab-
196 OPIUM. [chap. XL
stract character, formed on a very limited acquain-
tance with the actualities of a trade which did not
yet exist in Foochow. A few years' experience at
the great commercial mart of Shanghai widened the
views of the consul materially, and showed him that
there was more in this opium question than meets
the eye of the mere philosopher. A confidential re-
port on the subject made in 1852 treats the matter
from a more statesman-like as well as a more business-
like point of view. In that paper he does more than
deplore the evil, and while seeking earnestly for a
remedy, fully recognises the practical difficulties and
the danger of curing that which is bad by something
which is worse.
The opium trade [he observes in a despatch to Sir John
Bo wring] is not simply a question of commerce but first and
chiefly one of revenue — or, in other words, of finance, of
national government and taxation — in which a ninth of the
whole income of Great Britain and a seventh of that of British
India is engaged.
The trade of Great Britain with India in the year 1850
showed by the official returns an export of manufactures to the
value of £8,000,000, leaving a large balance of trade against
that country. A portion of the revenue of India has also to be
annually remitted to England in addition, for payment of the
dividends on Indian stock and a portion of the Government
expenses. These remittances are now profitably made vid
China, by means of the opium sold there ; and failing this,
serious charges would have to be incurred which must curtail
both the trade and the resources of the Indian Exchequer.
In China, again, scarcely a million and a half of manu-
factured goods can find a market ; yet we buy of tea and silk
for shipment to Great Britain not less than five millions, and
the difference is paid by opium.
A trade of £10,000,000 in British manufactures is there-
fore at stake, and a revenue of £9,000,000 — six to the British
and three to the Indian Treasury.
HIS LATER REPORTS. 197
Which of these is the more important in a national point of
view, — the commerce, or the revenue derived from it ? Both
are, however, so essential to our interests, imperial and com-
mercial, that any risk to either has long been regarded with
distrust and alarm, and tends to give a character of timidity to
our policy and measures for the maintenance of our relations
with China — the more disastrous in its results, that to the
oriental mind it is a sure indication of weakness, and to the
weak the Chinese are both inexorable and faithless.
That the opium trade, illegal as it is, forms an essential
element, interference with which would derange the whole
circle of operations, must be too apparent to require further
demonstration.
Eeference to the practical details of the colossal trade in
which it plays so prominent a part shows that it is inextricably
mixed up with every trading operation between the three
countries, and that to recognise the one and ignore the other is
about as difficult in any practical sense as to accept the ac-
quaintance of one of the Siamese twins and deny all knowledge
of his brother.
No attempt of the British Government to stop or materially
diminish the consumption could possibly avail, or be otherwise
than productive of aggravated mischief to India, to China, and
to the whole world, by giving a motive for its forced production
where it is now unknown, and throwing the trade into hands
less scrupulous, and relieved of all those checks which under
the British flag prevent the trade from taking the worst
characters of smuggling, and being confounded with other acts
of a lawless and piratical nature affecting life and property, to
the destruction of all friendly or commercial relations between
the two races. It is also sufficient to bear in mind that it is a
traffic, as has been shown, which vitalises the whole of our
commerce in the East ; that without such means of laying
down funds the whole trade would languish, and its present
proportions, colossal as they are, soon shrink into other and
insignificant dimensions ; that the two branches of trade are
otherwise so inextricably interwoven, that no means could be
devised (were they less essential to each other) of separating
them. And finally, although Great Britain has much to lose,
China in such a quixotic enterprise has little or nothing to
gain.
198 OPIUM.
CHAP. XL
Notwithstanding all these weighty considerations,
Mr Alcock never swerved in his desire to see " the
opium trade, with all its train of contradictions,
anomalies, and falsifying conditions," modified, if not
done away with. In a careful despatch to Sir John
Bowring dated May 6, 1854, reviewing our whole
position in China, he thus expresses himself: —
Any modification for the better in our relations must, I
believe, begin here. We must either find means of inducing
the Chinese Government to diminish the evil by legalising the
trade, or enter the field of discussion . . . with a stone wall
before us. . . . The legalisation would go far to diminish the
obstacle such an outrider to our treaty creates ; but far better
would it be, and more profitable in the end in view of what
China might become commercially to Europe, America, and to
Great Britian specially, if the Indian Government abandoned
their three million sterling revenue from the cultivation of
opium, and our merchants submitted to the temporary prejudice
or inconvenience of importing silver for the balance of trade.
Nearly twenty years afterwards we find Mr Alcock
still engaged on the problem how to diminish the
trade in opium without dislocating both the trade
and finance of India, his last act on retiring from
China in 1870 having been to propose a fiscal scheme
of rearrangement by which the opium trade might
undergo a process of slow and painless extinction.^
The attitude of the British Government towards the
opium trade has always been ambiguous. Succeeding
to the inheritance of the East India Company as the
great growers of opium, they had to carry on its
^ It is worth notice that this consistent opponent of the opium trade
during fifty active years should have come under the ban of the Anti-
Opium Society in England when the discussion of this important question
degenerated into a mere polemic.
LEGALISING THE TRAFFIC. 199
traditions. These had led the Company in its trading
days into some striking inconsistencies, for though they
cultivated the poppy expressly for the China market,
employing all the intelligence at their command to
adapt their product to the special tastes of the Chinese,
they yet refused to carry a single chest of it in their
own ships which traded to China. By this policy they
thought they could exonerate themselves in face of the
Chinese authorities from participation in a trade which
was under the ban of that Government. The im-
portation of the drug was thus thrown upon private
adventurers, and whenever the subject was agitated
in Canton and Macao, none were so warm in their
denunciations of the trade as the servants of the
East India Company. This was notably the case
with Captain Elliot, who, after leaving the Company's
service and becoming representative of the Crown,
never wearied in his strictures on the opium traffic.
The question of legalising the traffic had frequently
before been considered by the Chinese Government,^
and it was fully expected that this was the policy
which would prevail in Peking in 1837. The pen-
dulum swung to the opposite side, namely, that of
prohibition, and legalisation was not adopted until
1858. But once adopted, the idea made such progress
that in 1885 the Chinese Government made a suc-
cessful appeal to the British Government to be allowed
to treble the import duty authorised in 1858, and that
the Colonial Government of Hongkong should render
them special assistance in collecting it.
* Import duty had been regularly levied on opium for a hundred years,
the prohibition of importation having been decreed after 1796 (Eitel).
200 CHINESE EXPORTS. [chap. xi.
IV. CHINESE EXPORTS.
Efforts of the consuls to stimulate trade — Alcock's work at Foochow — His
despatches — Exhibition of 1851 — Exhibits of Chinese produce sent by
Alcock.
The continuous efforts made by the consuls in the
first decade after the treaty to stimulate the action
of foreign merchants in laying hold of all the oppor-
tunities offered to them for extending their connec-
tions with the Chinese trade ought not to be passed
over without notice. It was the burden of Consul
Alcock's labours while in Foochow to gather informa-
tion from every source, to digest it as well as he
was able, and to lay it before his countrymen ; and
if he, in his despatches to the plenipotentiary, some-
times reflected on what seemed to him the apathy
and want of enterprise of the merchants, that must
be set down to a laudable zeal to make his office
fruitful of benefit to his country. The same spirit
animated his proceedings in Shanghai. The demand
made for exhibits for the Great Exhibition of 1851
found Mr Alcock and his lieutenant Parkes eager to
supply samples of Chinese products of every kind
likely to be of commercial interest. On applying to
the mercantile community of Shanghai for their co-
operation in collecting materials, he found them not
over-sanguine as to the results of such an effort, and
in his despatch of December 1850 to the plenipo-
tentiary he remarks that " the British and foreign
residents in Shanghai appeared to feel that the impos-
sibility of gaining access to the great seats of manu-
CHINA AND THE EXHIBITION OF 1851. 201
facture or the producing districts for raw material
placed them in too disadvantageous a position to do
justice either to themselves or the resources of the
empire, which could only be very inadequately repre-
sented, and in a way more calculated to mislead than
instruct." " The conclusion," he goes on to say, " at
which the mercantile community has arrived has gone
far to paralyse all exertion on my part." Neverthe-
less, with the restricted means at his disposal, he set
to work to collect specimens of Chinese produce and
industry and to transmit them to the Board of Trade
for the use of the Commissioners. Of objects of art
he sent a great variety in bronze, inlaid wood,
porcelain, soapstone, and enamels, and the fancy
articles which have since acquired such great repu-
tation in the world that dealers in European and
American capitals send out commissions every year
to make extensive purchases. Colours used by the
Chinese for dyeing purposes in twenty shades of blue,
silk brocades, and many valuable products of the
Chinese looms, were well represented, and the com-
moner utensils, such as scissors, needles, and razors,
some of which were within the last few years specially
recommended in consular reports to the notice of
English manufacturers, as if the suggestion were
made for the first time. Of raw material, samples
were sent of hemp, indigo, and many other natural
products ; and when it is considered how eager the
British mercantile community appeared to be to in-
crease their importation of Chinese produce — be it
tea, silk, or any other commodity — in order to balance
the export trade, it is interesting to observe that in
those early days a number of articles of export were
202 CHINESE EXPORTS. [chap. xi.
described and classified, with an account of the districts
of their origin, which have only taken their place in
the list of exports from China within the last twenty-
years or so. These were sheep's wool of six different
descriptions, and camels' hair, which are now so ex-
tensively dealt in at the northern ports of China.
Perhaps these articles were not seen in bulk by
foreigners "until after the opening of the new^ ports
in 1861, and it is worthy of remark that even after
this discovery, and sundry experimental shipments,
many years elapsed before the special products of
Northern China became recognised articles of foreign
trade. These now include straw plait, sheep's wool,
goats' wools, goats' skins, dogs' skins, camels' hair,
horses' tails, pigs' bristles, and a number of other
articles of export which might perfectly well have
been brought to the foreign market of Shanghai even
before the opening of the northern ports. What was
wanted was the knowledge that such products were
procurable and the organisation of a market for their
disposal in China, in Europe, and the United States.
To stimulate inquiry into these matters was an object
of the consular reports of the early days, and the
fact that the seed then sown seemed to have been
buried in sterile soil for thirty years affords a reason-
able prospect that from the more advantageous basis
on which commercial men now stand still larger de-
velopments of international commerce may be reserved
to future adventurers.
SMALL VOLUME OF BRITISH EXPORTS. 203
V. BRITISH EXPORTS.
Slow increase — Turn of the scale by the Shanghai silk trade — Consequent
inflow of silver to China — Alcock's conament on the Report of Select
Committee — His grasp of the true state of affairs.
This department of trade presents little else but a
record of very slow improvement, with some rather
violent fluctuations due to obvious and temporary
causes. In the first year after the treaty of Nanking
the value of shipments to China from the United King-
dom was £1,500,000; in 1852, £2,500,000; in 1861,
£4,500,000, decreasing in 1862 to £2,300,000, and
rising in 1863 to £3,000,000; after which period it
steadily increased to £7,000,000, at which it has prac-
tically remained, with the exception of two or three
years between 1885 and 1891, when it rose to
£9,000,000.
The theory of the merchants who gave evidence
before the Committee of 1847, that an increase in the
exports from China was all that was needed to enable
the Chinese to purchase larger quantities of manufac-
tured goods, has by no means been borne out by
the subsequent course of trade. For although the
Chinese exports have been greatly extended since
then, that of silk alone having more than sufiiced
to pay for the whole of the imports from abroad,
there has been no corresponding increase in the
volume of these importations. What happened was
merely this, that the drain of silver from China,
which was deplored on all sides up till about 1853,
was converted into a steady annual inflow of silver
204 BRITISH EXPORTS. [chap. xi.
to China. ^ Consul Alcock, having been requested by
her Majesty's chief superintendent of trade to make
his comments on the Report of the Select Committee,
dealt comprehensively with the whole question of the
trade between Europe, India, and China, and evinced
a wider grasp of the true state of the case than the
London merchants had done. In a despatch dated
March 23, 1848, the following passages occur : —
Nearly the whole of the evidence furnished by the
witnesses on our trade is calculated to mislead those imper-
fectly acquainted with the details. The existence of this
relation [the importation of opium and raw cotton from India]
is kept out of sight, and conclusions are suggested which could
only be maintained if the Indian imports into China did not
form a part of our commerce, and did not come in direct com-
petition with the import of staple manufactures.
To counteract as far as may be in my power the erroneous
tendency of the partial evidence which the Blue-Book contains
on this part of the subject, I have ventured for the information
of her Majesty's Government to bring forward such facts and
inferences as seem to me to place in the strongest light the
fallacy of the argument mainly insisted upon before the Com-
mittee— viz., that we have only our own consumption of tea to
look to as indicating the extent to which we can exchange our
manufactures — that this is the only limit of our imports into
China. But imports of what ? Xot certainly of cotton and
woollen goods, for we already export of tea and silk from China
to the value of some four millions sterling, and cannot find a
profitable market for manufactured goods to the amount of two
millions ; and a somewhat similar proportion, or disproportion
rather, may be traced during the monopoly of the East India
Company, during the free-trade period prior to the commence-
ment of hostilities, and since the treaty. Say that from a
1 During the last two decades important factors — such as foreign loans,
armaments, and the like — have so influenced the movements of gold and
silver that they bear no such simple relation to the " balance of trade "
properly so called as was formerly the case.
CONSUL ALCOCK's COMMENTS. 205
reduction of the tea duties or any other cause we double our
exports from China as we have already done since 1833, from
what data are we to infer that in this same proportion the
export into China of British manufactures will increase ; or in
other words, that for every additional million of tea there will
be an equivalent value expended upon our cotton fabrics ?
The anticipated result is contradicted by all past experience
in China, and a moment's reflection must show that the
essential elements have been overlooked. 1st, That there is a
balance of trade against the Chinese of some $10,000,000,
which must adjust itself before any increase of our exclusively
British imports into China can be safely or reasonably expected,
for which an additional export of 20,000,000 lb. of tea and
10,000 bales of silk is required. 2ndly, That if such increase
of our exports hence restored the balance of trade to-morrow,
the proportion in which an increased import of our goods would
take place must depend upon the result of a competition of
cotton goods against opium and raw cotton — all three objects in
demand among the Chinese ; and the proportion of each that
may be taken under the assumed improvement depends upon
the relative degree of preference exhibited by our customers for
the different articles. The two latter have proved formidable
rivals to our manufactures, nor is there any reason to anticipate
beneficial change in that respect.
The argument, therefore, that the only limit to our imports
into China is the consumption of tea and silk in Great Britain,
if meant to be applied, as it appears to be in the evidence,
exclusively to British imports — that is, to cotton and woollens
— is fallacious, and can only be sustained by dropping the most
important features of the import trade, by treating opium and
raw cotton as though they had neither existence nor influence
upon our British staple trade.
The influence of this mode of reasoning is calculated to be
the more mischievous that it comes from gentlemen of practical
mercantile information, and purports to suggest a remedy for
an evil which is, in truth, of our own creating, and must recur
as often and as certainly as the same causes are in operation.
The trade in China during the last three years has been a
losing, and in many instances a ruinous, trade, not because the
English do not drink more tea, or the Chinese do not find it
convenient to wear more cotton of our manufacture, but simply
206 BRITISH EXPORTS. [chap. xi.
because in such market the supply has not been carefully
regulated by an accurate estimate of the probable demand.
Our merchants at home have unfortunately been led by such
reasoning as I have quoted to assume that in proportion as we
purchase more tea the Chinese would lay out more money in
cotton goods, and that the one might be taken as a true
estimate of the other. Hence came shipments after the treaty
so disproportioned to the actual wants or state of demand in
the Chinese market that an immediate glut, with the conse-
quent and necessary depreciation in price, followed. Nor did
the evil end here : a return was of necessity to be made for
this enormous over-supply of goods, hence more tea was shipped
than the legitimate demand of the English markets would have
suggested or justified, and at the other end of the chain the
same depreciation and ruinous loss was experienced. . . .
I have submitted in this and the preceding Keports my strong
conviction that other conditions than a mere increase in our
exports hence are essential. Of these I have endeavoured to
show the principal and most important are access to the first
markets, the removal of or efficient control over all fiscal
pretexts for restricting the free circulation of our goods in the
interior and the transit of Chinese produce thence to the
ports, and, finally, the abolition of all humiliating travelling
limits in the interior, which more than anything else tends to
give the Chinese rulers a power of keeping up a hostile and
arrogant spirit against foreigners, and of fettering our commerce
by exactions and delays of the most injurious character.
The conditions of the trade were, in fact, simpler
than the merchants had imagined. The Chinese
entered into no nice estimates of the balance of imports
and exports, but purchased the goods which were
offered to them so far as they were adapted to their
requirements — and there is no other rule for the guid-
ance of foreign manufacturers in catering for the great
Chinese market.
THE RESERVOIR OF FOREIGN TRADE. 207
VI. NATIVE TRADE.
Inter-provincial trade — Advantages of the employment of foreign ship-
ping — China exports surplus of tea and silk — Coasting - trade —
Salt.
The great reservoir of all foreign commerce in China
is the old-established local inter-provincial trade of the
country itself, which lies for the most part outside of
the sphere of foreign interest excepting so far as it has
come within the last forty years to supply the cargoes
for an ever-increasing fleet of coasting sailing-ships and
steamers. This great development of Chinese com-
merce carried on in foreign bottoms was thus fore-
shadowed by Mr Alcock as early as 1848 : —
The disadvantages under which the native trade is now
carried on have become so burdensome as manifestly to curtail
it, greatly to the loss and injury of the Chinese population,
enhancing the price of all the common articles of consumption :
any measures calculated, therefore, to exempt their commerce
from the danger, delay, and loss attending the transport of
valuable produce by junks must ultimately prove a great boon
of permanent value, though at first it may seem the reverse.
In a political point of view the transfer of the more valuable
portion of their junk trade to foreign bottoms is highly desir-
able, as tending more than any measures of Government to
improve our position by impressing the Chinese people and
rulers with a sense of dependence upon the nations of the West
for great and material advantages, and thus rebuking effectually
the pride and arrogance which lie at the root of all their
hostility to foreigners.
In a commercial sense the direct advantage would consist in
the profitable employment of foreign shipping to a greater
extent : it would also assist the development of the resources of
the five ports — more especially those which hitherto have done
208 NATIVE TRADE. [chap. xi.
little foreign trade. I have entered into some details to show
how the carrying trade may work such results, particularly in
reference to sugar, which promises to pave the way at this port
to large shipments in this and other articles for the Chinese.
A more effective blow will be given to piracy on the coast
by a partial transfer of the more valuable freights to foreign
vessels than by any measures of repression which either
Government can carry out, for piracy will, in fact, cease to be
profitable. . . .
A further extension of the trade between our Australian
settlements and China, and our colonies in the Straits with
both, may follow as a natural result of any successful efforts in
this direction, — the addition of a large bulky article of regular
consumption like sugar alone sufficing to remove a great
difficulty in the way of a Straits trade. . . .
If this can be counted upon, I think it may safely be predi-
cated that at no distant period a large and profitable employ-
ment for foreign shipping will be found here totally exclu-
sive of the trade with Europe.
It has been said with regard to tea that the quantity
sold for export is but the overflow of what is produced
for native consumption, and to silk the same observa-
tion would apply. Essentially a consuming country, it
is the surplus of these two articles that China has been
able to afford which has constituted the staple of export
trade from first to last. It is an interesting question
whether there may not be surpluses of some other
Chinese products to be similarly drawn upon. If the
foreign trade has been distinguished by its simplicity,
being confined to a very few standard commodities,
such cannot be predicated of the native trade, which is
of a most miscellaneous character. It is impossible to
give any statistical account of the coast and inland
traffic of China. Any estimate of it would be scarcely
more satisfactory than those which are so loosely made
of the population. In the early days, when the ports
PARKES OV SEA-BORNE TRADE. 209
opened by the treaty of 1842 were still new ports,
great pains were taken by the consuls to collect all the
information they could respecting purely Chinese com-
merce, which they not unnaturally regarded as the
source whence the material of an expanded foreign
trade might in future be drawn. Especially was this
the case at Foochow under the consulship of Mr Alcock
and the assistantship of his energetic interpreter,
Parkes. We find, for instance, among the returns
compiled by that industrious officer of three months'
trading in 1846, the quantities and valuations of over
fifty articles of import and as many of export given in
great detail : imports in 592 junks of 55,000 tons, and of
exports in 238 junks of 22,000 tons. Of the sea-going
junks he gives an interesting summary, distinguishing
the ports with which they traded and their tonnage,
with short abstracts of the cargoes carried. These
amounted for the year to 1678 arrivals from twenty
difierent places, and 1310 departures for twenty-four
places ; and this at a port of which the consul wrote in
1847, " No prospect of a British or other foreign trade
at this port is apparent in the very remotest degree."
Every traveller in every part of China is astonished
at the quantity and variety of the merchandise which
is constantly on the move. It is this that inspires
confidence in the boundless potentialities of Chinese
commerce, which seems only waiting for the link of
connection between the resources of the empire and
the enterprise of the Western world.
Besides the sea-borne trade of which it was possible
to make these approximate estimates, there is always
in China an immense inland trade ; and at the time
when piracy was rampant on the coast, and before the
VOL. I. O
210 NATIVE TRADE. [chap. xi.
aid of foreign ships and steamers was obtained, all the
goods whose value enabled them to pay the cost of
carriage were conveyed by the inland routes, often
indeed from one seaport to another, as, for instance,
between Canton and Foochow, Ningpo, Shanghai, &c. ;
and it is still by the interior channels that much of the
trade is done between Shanghai and the provinces to
the north of it, which would appear, geographically
speaking, to be more accessible from their own seaports.
The relation of the Government to the inter -pro-
vincial trade is, in general terms, that of a capricious
tax-gatherer, laying such burdens on merchandise as it
is found able and willing to bear. The arbitrary im-
positions of the officials are, however, tempered by the
genius of evasion on the part of the Chinese merchant,
and by mutual concession a modus vivendi is easily
maintained between them.
The item of trade in which Government comes into
most direct relation with the trader is the article salt,
which is produced all along the sea-coast, and is likewise
obtained from wells in the western provinces. Like many
other Governments, the Chinese have long treated salt
as a Government monopoly. As the manner in which
this is carried out illustrates in several points the ideas
that lie at the root of Chinese administration, some
notes on the subject made by Parkes at Foochow in
1846, and printed in an appendix to this volume,
may still be of interest.^
^ See Appendix IV.
211
CHAPTER XII.
SHIPPING.
The East Indiaman — Opium clippers — Coasting craft — Trading explora-
tions— Yangtze — Japan — Ocean trade — American shipping — Gold in
California — Eepeal of British Navigation Laws — Gold in Australia —
Ocean rivalry — Tonnage for China — Regular traders — Silk — British
and American competition — The China clipper — Steam — The Suez
Canal — Native shipping — Lorchas.
Next in importance to the merchandise carried was
the shipping which carried it. That stately argosy,
the East Indiaman, was already invested with the
halo of the past. Her leisurely voyages, once in two
years, regulated by the monsoons, landing the "new"
tea in London nearly a year old, and her comfortable
habits generally, were matters of legend at the time
of which we write. But a parting glance at the old
is the best way of appreciating the new. The East
Indiaman was the very apotheosis of monopoly. The
command was reserved as a short road to fortune for
the proteges of the omnipotent Directors in Leaden-
hall Street, and as with Chinese governors, the tenure
of the post was in practice limited to a very few
years, for the Directors were many and their cog-
nates prolific. So many, indeed, were their privi-
leges, perquisites, and "indulgences" that a captain
was expected to have realised an ample independence
212 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
in four or five voyages ; the officers and petty-
officers having similar opportunities, proportionate to
their rank. They were allowed tonnage space, the
captain's share being 56 tons, which they could either
fill with their own merchandise or let out to third
parties. The value of this, including the inter-
mediate " port - to - port " voyage in India, may be
judged from the figures given by one captain, who
from actual data estimated the freight for the round
voyage at £43 per ton. The captains enjoyed also
the passage-money, valued by the same authority at
£1500 per voyage. There were other "indulgences,"
scarcely intelligible in our days, which yet yielded
fabulous results. These figures are taken from a
statement submitted to the Honourable Company by
Captain Innes, who claimed, on behalf of himself and
comrades, compensation for the loss they sustained
through the cessation of the monopoly. The captain
showed that he made, on the average of his three
last voyages, £6100 per voyage — of which £180 was
pay! — without counting ''profits on investments," for
the loss of which he rather handsomely waived com-
pensation. £8000 to £10,000 per voyage was reckoned
a not extravagant estimate of a captain's emoluments.
The Company employed chartered ships to supplement
its own, and the command of one of them was in
practice put up to the highest bidder, the usual
premium being about £3000 for the privilege of the
command, which was of course severely restricted to
qualified and selected men.
That such incredible privileges should be abused,
to the detriment of the too indulgent Company, was
only natural. The captains, in fact, carried on a
SMUGGLING IN ENGLAND. 213
systematic smuggling trade with Continental ports
as well as with ports in the United Kingdom
where they had no business to be at all, though
they found pretexts, a la Cliinoise, such as stress of
weather or want of water, if ever called to account.
The Channel Islands, the Scilly Islands, and the Isle
of Wight supplied the greatest facilities for the illicit
traffic, and their populations were much alarmed when
measures were threatened to suppress it. The inspect-
ing commander reported officially from St Mary's, in
1828, "that these islands were never known with so
little smuggling as this year, and the greatest part
of the inhabitants are reduced to great distress in
consequence, for hitherto it used to be their principal
employment." ^ The ships w^ere also met by accom-
plices on the high seas which relieved them of
smuggled goods. What is so difficult to understand
about such proceedings is that the Court of Directors,
though not conniving, seemed helpless to check these
irregularities. Their fulminations, resolutions, elaborate
advertisements, and measures prescribed for getting
evidence against offenders, bore a curious resemblance
to those futile efforts which are from time to time put
forth by the Chinese Government, which is equally
impotent to suppress illicit practices in its adminis-
tration. One cause of this impotence was also very
Chinese in character. The smugglers had friends in
office, who supplied them with the most confidential
information.
The East India Company, nevertheless, in one im-
^ For interesting details of the smuggling organisation which lasted up
to the middle of the present century, see ' Smuggling Days and Smuggling
Ways,' by the Hon. Henry N. Shore, R.N.
214 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
portant respect received value for its money — in the
competence of its officers. The greatest pains were
taken to secure the efficiency of the service, for the
ships were more than mere carriers or passenger-
boats. They were maintained on a war-footing, and
were manned by thoroughly disciplined crews. Many
gallant actions at sea, even against regular men-of-
war, stand to the credit of the Indiamen.
But what conceivable freight -money or profits on
merchandise could support a trade carried on under
such luxurious conditions 1 It was magnificent, in-
deed, but it was not business, and no surprise need
be felt that the East India Company, while furnish-
ing its employees with the means of fortune, made
very little for its shareholders by either its shipown-
ing or mercantile operations. The Company was a
standing example of that not uncommon phenomenon,
the progressionist become obstructionist, blocking the
door which it opened. For many years it had played
the part of dog - in - the - manger, keeping individual
traders out while itself deriving little if any benefit
from its monopoly. Whenever independent merchants
succeeded — under great difficulties, of course — in gain-
ing a footing, they invariably proved the superiority
of their business methods ; and it is to them, and not
to the Company, that the development of trade in
the Far East is due. English shipowners had con-
stantly agitated for a share in the traffic round the
Cape, and there were many Indian-owned ships en-
gaged in the China trade, the Company's ostenta-
tious abstention from carrying the opium which it
grew afibrding this favourable opening for private
adventurers.
CESSATION OF EAST INDIA COMPANY'S MONOPOLY. 215
It is somewhat surprising that the seafaring nations
of the world, who were free from the restrictions which
so cramped the British shipowners, should have suffered
to endure so long a monopoly so baseless as that of
the East India Company. The fact seems to prove
the general depression of maritime energy in the
early part of the century. But succeeding to such a
patriarchal regime, it is little wonder that the common
merchantmen, reduced to reasonable economical con-
ditions, should have reaped a bountiful harvest. The
Company's terms left a very handsome margin for
shrinkage in the freight tariff, while still leaving a
remunerative return to the shipowner. The expiration
of the Company's charter, therefore, gave an immense
stimulus to the common carriers of the ocean ; though,
starting from such an elevated plateau of profits,
the inducements to improvements in the build and
management of ships were not very urgent.
The size of the ships and their capacity for cargo
underwent slow development in the first half of
the century. The East Indiamen averaged about
1000 tons, some ships being as large as 1300, while
those chartered by the Company seem to have run
about 500 tons. All were bad carriers, their cargo
capacity not exceeding their registered tonnage. In
the ordinary merchant service which succeeded large
ships were deemed unsuited to the China trade, 300
tons being considered a handy size, until the expansion
of trade and necessity for speed combined with eco-
nomical working forced on shipowners a larger type
of vessel.
Of quite another class were the opium clippers, which
also in a certain sense represented monopoly in its long
216 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
struggle with open trade — the monopoly of capital,
vested interests, and enterprise. The clippers, first
sailing craft and then steamers, were able by means
of the advantages they possessed to prolong the con-
test into the 'Sixties ; indeed the echo of it had scarcely
died away when the Suez Canal and the telegraph
cable revolutionised the whole Eastern trade at a
single stroke. The precious cargoes they carried, and
scarcely less valuable intelligence, supplied the means of
maintaining the opium- carriers in the highest efficiency.
Every voyage was a race, the rivalry being none the
less animated for the smallness of the competing field.
Indeed, when reduced to a duel, the struggle became
the keenest. It was only towards the close of the
period that the opium - clipper system attained its
highest organisation. The great China houses of
Jardine, Matheson, & Co., and Dent & Co., then ran
powerful steamers — the former firm chiefly between
Calcutta and Hongkong — their time of departure from
the Indian port being regulated so as to enable them to
intercept the English mail-steamers on their arrival in
Singapore, where they received on board their owners'
despatches, with which they proceeded at once to
Hongkong before the mail-steamer had taken in her
coal. They had speed enough to give the P. and O.
steamer two days on the run of 1400 miles ; and making
the land in daylight, they would slip into one of the
snug bays at the back of the island at dusk and send
their private mail-bag to the merchant-prince to digest
with his port, and either lie hidden under the cliffs
or put to sea again for a day or two with perhaps a
number of impatient passengers on board.
The rival house of Dent & Co. devoted their ener-
OPIUM CLIPPERS. 217
gies more especially to the China coast. Their fast
steamers would start from Hongkong an hour after
the arrival of the Indian and English mail, landing
owners' despatches at the mouth of the Yangtze,
whence they were run across country to Shanghai.
To gain exclusive possession of a market or of a
budget of news for ever so brief a period was the spur
continuously applied to owners, officers, and men.
How the public regarded these operations may be
inferred from a note in Admiral KeppeFs diary of
1843: "Anonymous opium - clipper arrived from Bom-
bay with only owners' despatches. Beast."
All this of course presupposed a common ownership
of ship and cargo, or great liberties, if not risks, taken
with the property of other people. In the years before
the war this common management of ship and cargo
was a simple necessity, for opium had to be stored
afloat and kept ready for sailing orders. The 20,000
chests surrendered in 1839 might have been all sent
away to Manila or elsewhere had that course of pro-
cedure been determined on. Captain John Thacker,
examined before the Parliamentary Committee of 1840,
being asked what he would have done in case the
Chinese had ordered away the opium, answered, " I
would have sent mine away to the Malay Islands, to
exchange it for betel-nut and pepper. ... I had a
ship at Canton that I could not get freighted with tea,
and I intended to send her away with the opium." A
kind of solidarity between ship and cargo was thus an
essential of the trade at that time, and what originated
in necessity was continued as a habit for many years
after its economical justification had ceased.
The ambition of owning or controlling ships became
218 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
a feature- of the China trade, the smaller houses emu-
lating the greater. It seemed as if the repute of
a merchant lacked something of completeness until
he had got one or more ships under his orders, and
the first use the possession was put to was usually
the attempt to enforce against all comers a quasi-
monopoly either in merchandise or in news. To be
able to despatch a vessel on some special mission, like
Captain Thacker, had a fascination for the more enter-
prising of the merchants, which may perhaps be re-
ferred back to the circumstance that they were men
still in the prime of life.
The passion was kept alive by the inducements
offered by a series of events which crowded on each
other between the years 1858 and 1861. Before that
time the spread of rebellion, the prevalence of piracy,
and the general state of unrest and distrust which pre-
vailed among the Chinese commercial classes, threw
them on the protection of foreign flags, and the de-
mand for handy coasting craft was generously re-
sponded to by all maritime nations, but chiefly by
the shipowners of Northern Europe. Such a mosquito
fleet was perhaps never before seen as that which flew
the flags of the Hanse Towns and of Scandinavia on
the China coast between 1850 and 1860; and many a
frugal family on the Elbe, the Weser, and the Baltic
lived and throve out of the earnings of these admirably
managed and well-equipped vessels. The vessels were
mostly run on time-charters, which were exceedingly
remunerative ; for the standard of hire was adopted
from a period of English extravagance, while the ships
were run on a scale of economy — and efliciency —
scarcely then dreamed of in England. A schooner of
RECONNOITRING EXPEDITIONS. 219
150 tons register earning $1500 per month, which was
a not uncommon rate, must have paid for herself in a
year, for the dollar was then worth 5s. Yet the
Chinese also made so much money by subletting their
chartered tonnage that foreigners were tempted into
the same business, without the same knowledge or
assurance of loyal co-operation at the various ports
traded with.
The habit of handling ships in this way, whether
profitably or not, had the effect of facilitating the
despatch of reconnoitring expeditions when openings
occurred, and they did occur on a considerable scale
within the period above mentioned. The year 1858
was an epoch in itself It was the year of the treaty
of Tientsin, which threw open three additional trading-
ports on the coast, three within the Gulf of Pechili, and
three on the Yangtze. Of the three northern ports,
excepting Tientsin, very little was known to the
mercantile community, and the selection of Teng-chow
and Newchwang by the British plenipotentiary shows
what a change has in the interval come over the
relative intelligence of the Government and the
merchants ; for in those days, it would appear, the
Government was as far in advance of the merchants in
information about China as the merchants of a later
period have been in advance of the Government.
These unknown, almost unheard-of, ports excited much
interest during the year that elapsed between the
signing of the treaty and its ratification. Information
about them from Chinese sources was therefore diligently
sought after.
Within a couple of miles of the foreign settlement of
Shanghai — and it was the same thing in the Ningpo
220 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
river — compact tiers of large sea -going junks lay-
moored head and stern, side to side, forming a con-
tinuous platform, so that one could walk across their
decks out into the middle of the river. Their masts,
without yards or rigging, loomed like a dense thicket
on the horizon. Of their numbers some idea may be
formed when we remember that 1400 of them were
found loaded at one time in 1848 with tribute rice. Of
this enormous fleet of ships and their trade the foreign
mercantile community of Shanghai was content to
remain in virtual ignorance. They traded to the north,
and were vaguely spoken of as "Shantung junks"
— Shantung then standing for everything that was
unknown north of the thirty - second parallel. The
map of China conveyed about as much to the mercantile
communities on the coast in those days as it did to the
British public generally before the discussions of 1898.
These junks carried large quantities of foreign manu-
factured goods and opium to the unknown regions at
the back of the north wind, of which some of the doors
were now being opened. How was one to take advan-
tage of the opening, and be first in the field? Time
must be taken by the forelock, and a certain amount of
commercial exploration entered into in order to obtain
data on which to base ulterior operations. Accordingly
in the spring of 1859, a few months before the period
fixed for the exchange of ratifications of the treaty,
several mercantile firms equipped, with the utmost
secrecy, trading expeditions to the Gulf of Pechili.
Their first object was to discover what seaport would
serve as the entrepot of Tengchow, since that city,
though near enough to salt water to have been bom-
barded for a frolic by the Japanese navy in 1894,
CRUISE IX GULF OF PECHILI. 221
possessed no anchorage. The several sets of argo-
nauts, among whom was the writer of this book,
seeking for such an anchorage, found themselves, in the
month of April, all together in the harbour of Yentai,
which they misnamed Chefoo, a name that has become
stereotyped. Obviously, then, that would be the new
port, especially as the bay and the town showed all the
signs of a considerable existing traffic. It was full
forty miles from Tengchow, but there was no nearer
anchorage. The foreign visitors began at once to
cultivate relations with the native merchants, tenta-
tively, like Nicodemus, making their real business by
night, while the magnificent daylight was employed in
various local explorations. These were full of fresh
interest, the Shantung coast being the antithesis of the
Yangtze delta ; for there were found donkeys instead of
boats, stony roads instead of canals, bare and barren
mountains instead of soft green paddy- or cotton-fields,
stone buildings, and a blue air that sparkled like
champagne.
Our own particular movable base of operations was
one smart English schooner, loaded with mixed mer-
chandise, and commanded by a sea - dog who left a
trail of vernacular in his wake. Soon, however, we
were able to transfer our flag to a commodious house-
boat, of a hybrid type suited to the sheltered and
shallow waters of the Lower Yangtze, but not, strictly
speaking, seaworthy. Next, a Hamburg barque came
and acted as store-ship, releasing the English schooner
for more active service. The master of that craft was
also a character, full of intelligence, but rough, and the
trail of tobacco juice was over all, with strange pungent
odours in the cuddy.
222 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
Having thus inserted the thin end of the wedge,
pegged out mentally the site of the future settlement,
and trifles of that sort, the pioneers of commerce waited
for the official announcement of the port being opened.
Meantime there was the unknown Newchwang to be
discovered, at the extreme north-east corner of the
Gulf of Liaotung, and for this purpose the boat afore-
said presented a very tempting facility. The trip was
accomplished, not without anxiety and detention on
the way by stress of weather, and the British flag was
shown in the Liao river, to the best of our knowledge,
for the first time in May 1859. Many other ports and
harbours in the gulf were visited during the summer
and autumn. Weihai-wei became very familiar, not as
a place of trade, which it never was, but as a convenient
anchorage better sheltered than Chefoo. How blind
were the pioneers to the destinies of these gulf ports
and the gulf itself ! How little did they dream of the
scenes that peaceful harbour was to witness, the
fortifications which were to follow, the Chinese navy
making its last desperate stand there like rats caught
in a trap ; and finally, the British flag flying over the
heights !
The treaty of course was not ratified, though the
news of the repulse of the British plenipotentiary at
Taku only reached the pioneers in the form of
tenebrous Chinese rumours with an ominous thread of
consistency running through their various contradic-
tions. The most conclusive evidence, however, of the
turn affairs had taken was the interference of the
officials with the native merchants and people at
Chefoo, whom they forbade intercourse with the
foreigners, and made responsible for the presence of
NEW PORTS ON THE YANGTZE. 223
the foreign ships. The ships, therefore, had to move
out of sight, and it was in this predicament that
the harbour of Weihai - wei offered such a welcome
refuge.
To put an end to the intolerable suspense in Chefoo
the Hamburger .was got under weigh and sailed to the
westward. On approaching the mouth of the Peiho
the situation at once revealed itself : not one English
ship visible, but the Russian despatch-boat America,
and one United States ship, with which news was
exchanged, and from which the details of the Taku
disaster were ascertained. This news, of course,
knocked all the commercial adventures which had been
set on foot in the gulf into " pie." Nothing remained
but to wind them up with as little sacrifice as possible,
— a process which was not completed till towards
Christmas.
The three ports to be opened on the Yangtze
stood on quite a different footing. They had not been
named, and their opening was somewhat contingent on
the position of the hostile forces then occupying the
river-banks. The navigation, moreover, was absolutely
unknown above Nanking, and it was left to Captain
Sherard Osborn to explore the channel and to Lord
Elgin to make a political reconnaissance at the same
time in H.M.S. Furious, of which cruise Laurence
Oliphant has left us such a delightful description. It
was not, however, till 1861 that the great river was
formally opened by Admiral Sir James Hope. Trade
then at once burst upon the desolate scene like the
blossoms of spring. On the admiral's voyage up to
Hankow, on the 600 miles of stream scarcely a rag of
sail was to be seen. Within three months the surface
224 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
of the river was alive with Chinese craft of all sorts
and sizes. The interior of China had for years been
dammed up like a reservoir by the Taipings, so that
when once tapped the stream of commerce gushed out,
much beyond the capacity of any existing transport.
The demand for steamers was therefore sudden, and
everything that was able to burn coal was enlisted in
the service. The freight on light goods from Hankow
to Shanghai commenced at 20 taels, or £6, per ton for
a voyage of three days. The pioneer inland steamer
was the Fire Dart, which had been built to the order
of an American house for service in the Canton river.
She was soon followed by others built expressly for the
Yangtze, and before long regular trade was carried on.
Again the tradition asserted itself of every mercantile
house owning its own river steamer, some more than
one. Steamers proved a mine of wealth for a certain
time. Merchants were thereby enticed into a technical
business for which they had neither training nor
aptitude, and the natural consequences were not very
long delayed.
While on the subject of river steamers, it is interest-
ing to recall that in the beginning English merchants
sent their orders for the Yangtze to the United States.
The vessels were light, roomy, and luxurious, admir-
ably adapted to their work. In the course of a few
years, however, the tables were turned, and the Ameri-
cans themselves came to the Clyde builders with their
specifications, and had their river steamers built of
iron. Many economies and great improvements have
been made in the construction and management of
these vessels since 1861, but we need not pursue the
matter into further detail here.
THE OPENING OF JAPAN. 225
The opening of the Yangtze made a revolution in
the tea trade, for the product of Central China, which
formerly was carried on men's backs over the Meiling
Pass to Canton, could now be brought by water cheaply
and quickly to Hankow, which in the very year of its
opening became a subsidiary shipping port — subsidiary,
that is, to Shanghai, where the ocean voyage began.
Before long, however, this great central mart became
an entrepot for ocean traffic. To the steamer Scotland,
owned by Messrs W. S. Lindsay & Co. and commanded
by Captain A. D. Dundas, R.N., belongs the honour
of being the first ocean steamer to ascend the river
to Hankow, and thereby opening the interior of
China to direct trade with foreign countries. And
within two years a sailing vessel was towed up the
river and loaded a cargo of the new season's tea for
London.
But the most interesting item in the budget of that
annus mirahilis 1858 was the opening of Japan to
foreign intercourse. To contemporaries it was the dis-
covery of a new world of activity, intelligence, beauty
— an elaborate civilisation built on strange foundations.
Could the veil of the future have been withdrawn for
the men of that day, how their imaginations would
have been staggered before the unrolling of an epic
transcending in human interest all the creations of
fiction ! But before all things there was trade to be
done with awakening Japan, nobody knew what or
how ; while the seductive novelties of the life, the art,
the scenery, and the laws contested the supremacy of
the claims of mundane commerce. Here was an ideal
opening for the commercial pioneer. What kind of
merchandise would the Japanese buy, and what had
VOL. I. p
226 SHIPPING. [chap. xii.
they to sell, were naturally the first objects of inquiry.
For this purpose ships with trial cargoes had to be
sent hither and thither to explore, and there was work
here for the kind of handy craft that had had such a
run on the China coast. By their means was the
foreign trade of the Japanese ports opened to the
world. The clipper ship Mirage, laden with Manchester
goods in which the late Sir John Pender was inter-
ested,^ lay several days in Shanghai waiting orders to
proceed on an experimental trip to Japan as early as
1858, but the owners wisely concluded that the venture
would be premature.
So far we have dealt only with what may be consid-
ered as the outriders of the host, and the subject
would be very incomplete without giving some account
of the main body, the common carriers of the inter-
national trade, filling by far the most important place in
the economical system of the countries of their origin.
While endeavouring to confine our attention as much
as possible within the limits of the field embraced
by the China, developing later into the Far Eastern,
trade, the progress of the merchant shipping employed
therein cannot be fully understood except from a stand-
point more cosmopolitan. For the history of the East-
ern shipping is intimately bound up with events which
were taking place in other and widely-separated quar-
ters of the globe in the middle of this century. With-
in the space of three to four years events happened of
a world-moving character, forming the basis of the
commercial revolution that has set its mark on the
second half of the century. The catholicity of com-
merce and its unfailing inventiveness in supplying
human wants were wonderfully illustrated at this time.
GOLD DISCOVERIES. 227
Events so different in their nature as the potato blight
in one hemisphere, the production of gold in another,
and the abrogation of the Navigation Laws in England,
combined within these few years to revolutionise the
world's shipping trade.
In the year 1847 the world was first startled by the
definitive announcement of gold discoveries in Cali-
fornia, and four years later a similar phenomenon
appeared in Australia. Coincidently with these events
the first Universal Exhibition of the industries of all
nations was held in Hyde Park, and whatever we
may think of the relative influence of that and of
the gold discoveries, there can be but one opinion
as to the splendid advertisement which the Expo-
sition lent to the golden promise of the Antipodes
and the East Pacific. Thenceforth the whole world,
industrial, commercial, and financial, beat with one
pulse, a fact which has received constantly accumulat-
ing illustrations until the present day. It was as if
the sectional divisions of the globe had been united in
one great pool, forced to maintain a common level,
subject only to disturbances of the nature of rising and
falling waves. The new supplies of gold, by making
money plentiful, inflated the price of all commodities
and stimulated production in every department of
agriculture and manufacture ; but the time-worn yet
ever - new passion for wealth, disseminated afresh
throughout the civilised world, probably acted more
powerfully on the material progress of mankind than
the actual possession of the new riches. The rapid
peopling of desert places created a demand for the
necessaries of life — food, clothing, housing, tools, and
appliances of every description. In a word, the tide
228 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
of humanity, rushing to America for food and to the
goldfields for the means of buying it, made such calls
on the carrying powers of the world as could not be
satisfied without a stupendous effort.
Of all nations the most responsive to the stimulus
was beyond doubt the United States : it was there
that shipbuilding had been making the most gigantic
advances. The total tonnage afloat under the Ameri-
can flag bade fair at one time to rival that of Great
Britain. The attention of the American shipping in-
terest had been particularly directed towards China,
where excellent employment rewarded the enterprise,
not only in the ocean voyage out and home, but also
in the coasting trade, which included the portable and
very paying item of opium. English merchants and
shipowners did not, of course, resign their share in the
China trade without a struggle ; but they were fight-
ing on the defensive, and under the disadvantages
incidental to that condition of warfare. Every im-
provement they introduced in the efficiency of their
ships in order to cope with the advances of their rivals
was promptly followed by a counter-move which gave
the wide - awake Americans again the lead. About
1845 an important step forward was taken in the
despatch of a new type of vessel from the United
States to China which surpassed in speed the newest
and best English ships. The British reply to this was
the building of clippers, initiated in 1846 by Messrs
Hall of Aberdeen. The first of these, a small vessel,
having proved successful in competing for the coast-
ing trade of China, larger ships of the clipper type
were constructed, and so the seesaw went on.
Then emigration to the United States, chiefly from
AMERICAN CLIPPERS. 229
Ireland, made demands on the available tonnage which
was indifferently met by vessels unfit for the work,
and the American builders were not slow to see the
advantage of placing a superior class of vessel on this
important Atlantic service.
Following close on this salutary competition — East
and West — came one of the epoch-making events just
alluded to, the gold-mining in California, which more
decisively than ever threw the advantage in the ship-
ping contest on the side of the United States. The
ocean was the true route to California for emigrants
and material ; but the voyage was long, and impatience
of intervening space being the ruling temper of gold-
seekers, the shortening of the time of transit became
a crying want for the living cargoes, and scarcely less
for the perishable provisions which the new ships were
designed to carry. Speed, comfort, and capacity had
therefore to be combined in a way which had never
before been attempted. The result was the historical
American clipper of the middle of the century, beauti-
ful to look on with her cloud of white cotton canvas,
covering every ocean highway. These were vessels of
large capacity, carrying one - half more dead - weight
than their registered tonnage ; ^ built and rigged like
yachts, and attaining a speed never before reached on
the high seas. The pioneer of this fine fleet made the
voyage from New York to San Francisco, a '* coasting
voyage" from which foreign flags were excluded, and
returned direct in ballast, the owners realising a
handsome profit on the outward passage alone. The
Americans not only had the Californian trade practi-
^ The modern ship carries 70 to 75 per cent of dead-weight over her
registered tonnage, and of weight and measurement combined about double.
230 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
cally in their own hands, but were prompt to turn
the advantage which that gave them to profitable
account in the competition for the trade of China.
The ships, when empty, sailed across the Pacific, load-
ing, at Canton or Shanghai, tea and other produce for
London or New York, the three - cornered voyage
occupying little more time than the direct route to
China and back to which English ships were then con-
fined. As the American clippers earned on the round
about a third more freight than English ships could
obtain on their out-and-home voyage, competition bore
very hard on the latter. Larger and finer ships were
constantly being added to the American fleet until
they almost monopolised the trade not only between
New York and San Francisco, but also between China
and Great Britain. British shipping was, in fact,
reduced to the greatest depression, the falling off in
the supply of new tonnage being almost commen-
surate with the increase of that of the United States.
A phenomenal advance was recorded also in the entries
of foreign ships into British ports to the displacement
of British-owned tonnage.
It was at this most critical juncture that the heroic
remedy of repeal of the Navigation Laws in 1850 con-
signed British shipowners to absolute despair ; for if
they could not hold their own while protected by these
laws, how were they to survive the removal of the
last barrier from the competition of the whole world ?
But the darkest hour was, as often happens, that
before the dawn. The withdrawal of protective legis-
lation proved the turning-point in the fortunes of the
British shipowner. . In part it was an efficient cause,
inasmuch as it threw the shipowner entirely on his
BRITISH COMPETITION. 231
own resources for his existence. He had to look to
improvements in the efficiency and economy of his
ships, for which it must be admitted there was con-
siderable room. There were many conservative pre-
judices to be got rid of — that one, for example, which
held it dangerous to have less than one foot in breadth
to four in length, the adherence to which rendered
British ships oval tubs compared with the American,
which had for many years been proving the superiority
of five and even six to one. The English axiom, which
had so long resisted plain reason, had at last to yield
to necessity. And so with many other antiquated
conditions, including the quality and qualifications of
masters, officers, and seamen.
The exertions made in Great Britain to improve
merchant shipping were at once stimulated and im-
measurably assisted by the gold discoveries in Aus-
tralia, an island in the South Pacific more absolutely
dependent on sea communication than San Francisco
on the American continent had been. It was, more-
over, in British territory, where no exclusive privi-
leges could be enjoyed, and where competition was
entirely unfettered. Of course the clipper fleet of
the United States was prepared to do for Australia
what it had done so well for California ; but the
prospect of the carrying trade between Great Britain
and her colonies falling into alien hands aroused
the spirit of the English to make a supreme effort
to at least hold their own, if not to recover lost
ground.
The seven seas soon became alive with rival clipper
ships of great size and power, and the newspapers
chronicled the runs they made to Australia and Cali-
232 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
fornia in days, as they now record the hours con-
sumed on steamer voyages across the Atlantic.
Ancient barriers seemed to be submerged, and fusion
of the ocean traffic of the world into one great
whole opened the way to a new dispensation in the
history of merchant shipping. Tonnage was tonnage
all the world over, and became subject to the
comprehensive control in which the gold and silver
produced in distant countries was held by the great
financial centres. But the ocean telegraph was not
yet, and for twenty years more many gaps were
left in the system of ocean communications, whence
resulted seasons of plethora alternating with scarcity
in particular lines of traffic.
There was probably no trade in which the over-
flow of the new output of tonnage was more quickly
felt than in that of China. It became a common
custom for vessels of moderate size which had carried
goods and emigrants to Australia and California,
whence no return cargoes were at that period to be
had, to proceed to India or China in ballast —
" seeking." This was a source of tonnage supply
which the merchants resident in those countries had
no means of reckoning upon, though such a far-
reaching calculation might not be beyond the powers
of a clear head posted at one of the foci of the
commercial world. An example may be quoted illus-
trative of the local tonnage famine which occasionally
prevailed during that transition period. An English
ship arrived in ballast at Hongkong from Sydney
in 1854. The owner's local agent, or "consignee,"
recommended the captain to proceed at once north
to Shanghai, where, according to latest advices, he
TONNAGE FAMINE. 233
would be sure to obtain a lading at a high rate
of freight. The cautious skipper demurred to taking
such a risk, and refused to move unless the agent
would guarantee him £6, 10s. per ton for a full
cargo for London. This was agreed. The ship
reached the loading port at a moment when there
was no tonnage available and much produce waiting
shipment, and she was immediately filled up at about
£7 or £8 per ton. It fell to the lot of this par-
ticular vessel, by the way, to carry a mail from
Hongkong to Shanghai, the P. and O. Company's ser-
vice being then only monthly, and no other steamer
being on the line. It was just after the outbreak
of the war with Russia. About a couple of days
after the departure of the Akbar — for that was her
name — when it was considered quite safe to do so,
a resident American merchant, unable to contain him-
self, boasted of having sent by this English vessel
the despatches of the Russian admiral under sealed
cover to a sure hand in Shanghai. The recipient of
this confidence, like a good patriot, reported the cir-
cumstance promptly to the governor of the colony,
and he to the senior naval officer, who with no less
promptitude ordered a steam sloop, the Rattler, to
proceed in chase of the ship. The pursuit Avas suc-
cessful ; the Russian despatches were taken out and
brought back to Hongkong, where they were sub-
mitted to the polyglot governor. Sir John Bowring.
Another incident of the same period will show
how it w^as possible for a bold operator to exploit
the tonnage of the world on a considerable scale
without the aid of the telegraph, or even of rapid
communication by letter. One such operator in Lon-
234 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
don, reckoning up the prospective supply and de-
mand of tonnage throughout the world, foresaw this
very scarcity in China of which we have just given
an illustration. He thereupon proceeded to charter
ships under various flags and engaged in distant
voyages to proceed in ballast to the China ports,
there to load cargoes for Europe. The wisdom of
the operation was far from clear to the charterer's
agents in China when they heard of ships coming
to them from the four quarters of the world at a
time when freights were low, with but little pros-
pect of improvement, so far as they could see ; but
their outlook was circumscribed. Though as the ships
began to arrive the difiiculty of providing profitable
freightage seemed to presage the ruin of the ven-
ture, yet subsequent arrivals justified the prevision
of its author by earning for him highly remunerative
freights. The tide had really risen as it had been fore-
seen ; but it soon receded, and before the last charter
had been fulfilled the time-factor, which is fatal to
so many well-laid schemes, interposed, and probably
caused the early profits to be swallowed up in the
final losses.
The bulk of the China traffic, however, was carried
not by these erratic outsiders but by the regular traders,
which loaded in London, Liverpool, or New York with
manufactured goods, coal, and metals, and returned
from China with tea, silk, and other produce. It must
have been a profitable business, for the average freight
homeward in the 'Forties and 'Fifties seems to have
been about £5 per ton ; and if we allow even one-
third of that for the outward voyage, it would give
the shipowner somewhere about £7 for the round
SILK FREIGHTS. 235
voyage, which was accomplished with ease within the
twelve months. It must be remembered, how^ever,
that the expenses of running were proportionately
high on the small vessels which were then in the trade.
In the course of time, when speed and facilities of
despatch at home and abroad had been further im-
proved, the clippers from London took in Australia
in the outward voyage by way of filling up the time
until the tea crop was brought to market.
"When the great increase in the export of silk took
place a special rate was paid on it to favourite ships on
account of its high value. But though this precious
article could afford, when necessary, extreme rates of
freight, its total bulk was too small — about one-tenth
of that of tea — to affect seriously the general carrying
trade of China. A certain quantity was regularly
shipped by the " overland route " — that is, by P. and
O. Company's steamers to Suez, and thence by rail to
Alexandria, to be there reshipped for its ultimate des-
tination, Marseilles or Southampton. But the capacity
of the steamers was so small that only a pro rata allot-
ment of space was made to applicants, and the freight
charged for it was at the rate of £25 per ton. Under
exceptional conditions one sailing ship in the year 1856
carried a silk cargo of 6000 bales, valued at £750,000
sterling, which was said to be the largest amount ever
ventured, up to that time, in any merchant vessel. It
was so unexpectedly large that the shippers were unable
fully to cover their risk by insurance. A singular fatality
attended the outset of this voyage, showing the falli-
bility of human judgment even under the most favour-
able circumstances. The commander of this ship had
been perhaps the most successful in the China trade,
236 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
and it was the extraordinary confidence that was placed
in his judgment that induced the merchants to intrust to
his care merchandise of such enormous value. Thouo:h
much impressed with the sense of personal responsi-
bility for its safety, he was yet tempted by a fine starlit
night to break ground from the anchorage at Shanghai
and drop down the river to Wusung, where he touched
on the well-known bar, and was passed by the outward-
bound mail-steamer the following morning. The ship
was of course reported " on shore," and so the letters
ordering insurance which the mail-steamer carried were
rendered useless. The master, though the ship had
lain but a few hours on soft mud, dared not proceed to
sea with such a valuable cargo without examining the
ship's bottom. To do this he had to be towed back to
Shanghai, fourteen miles by river, discharge, strip off
the copper, replace it, reload the cargo, and recommence
the voyage. It proved much the longest she had ever
made, and there was great anxiety among the mer-
chants, especially among those of them who were only
partially insured. But as fate would have it, while
the ship was on the high seas her cargo was growing in
value, the silk famine in Europe having in the mean
time clearly declared itself; so that what with the delay
of a month or two at the start and several weeks more
on the passage, a time was gained for sufficient profit to
accrue on the silk to lay the foundation of several
respectable fortunes, and the commander, to whose
error of judgment the result was due, was received in
London with acclamation and with substantial gratu-
ities from some of the fortunate owners of his cargo.
The lucky craft was the Challenger, Captain Killick,
which had distinguished herself in racing against the
THE CHALLENGER. 237
American clipper Nightingale in 1852 and 1863, and
was the first sailing-vessel to load tea at Hankow in
1863, — a historic ship.
During the time of the deepest gloom in shipping
circles, consequent on the repeal of the Navigation
Laws, at a meeting where the ruin of the industry was
proclaimed in chorus by the shipowners present, one
man had the courage to rise up and stem the current of
depression. ^' The British shipowners have at last sat
down to play a fair and open game with the Americans,
and, by Jove ! we will trump them," were the words of
Mr Richard Green, the eminent shipbuilder of Black-
wall, as quoted by Mr W. S. Lindsay in his ' History of
Merchant Shipping.' Mr Lindsay adds that Mr Green
was as good as his word, for shortly after he built, to
the order of Mr Hamilton Lindsay, a China merchant,
the ship Challenger, of 600 or 700 tons, expressly to
match the American Challenge, more than double her
size, and thought to be the fastest ship then afloat.
Though the two never met, the performances of the
English, whether for speed or for dry carrying, quite
eclipsed the American ship. It was with another com-
petitor that the pioneer Blackwall clipper tried con-
clusions, and the circumstance suggests a somewhat
whimsical association of the evolution of the China
clipper with the Great Exhibition. A ship of exquisite
model and finish had been built in America for the
purpose of conveying visitors to that great gathering.
She was put into the China trade, for which by her size
she was well suited. Whether by prearrangement or
not, she met the Challenger in 1852 in Shanghai, where
they were both laden with tea simultaneously. Im-
mense excitement was aroused, which took the usual
238 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
form of heavy wagers between the respective partisans
on the issue of the race to London. It was a close
thing, as sportsmen say, the British ship coming in two
days ahead of her rival. Dissatisfied, as the owner of
a yacht or of a racehorse is apt to be with his defeat,
certain changes were made by the owners of the Night-
ingale in her equipment for the next year s voyage.
The race was again run from the same port, on the
same conditions — and with the same result, only still
more in favour of the English ship.
A general excitement about such a trivial matter as
the relative speed of two ships was only to be accounted
for by the awakening consciousness of the significance
of the English shipping revival which was then be-
ginning. The interest extended much beyond the circle
of those directly concerned. The deck of a mail
steamer, to take an instance, became suddenly animated
as the signals of a sailing-vessel were read out. Speak-
ing a ship at sea was no such unusual occurrence, but
when the name of Challenger was passed round, pass-
engers and crew rushed to the side, gazing intently on
the shapely black hull and white sails reflecting the
morning sun. She was in the Straits of Malacca, on
her way back to China to run her second heat. A
young man among the passengers betraying ignorance
of the cause of the commotion felt as small as if unable
to name the last Derby winner. The world at that
time seemed to have grown young. Imagination was
directed to a dawn gilded with promise which the
sequel has surely not belied !
Thus the China Sea became a principal battle-ground
whereon the struggle for ascendancy between the ships
of Great Britain and the United States was most
BRITISH SHIPPING REVIVAL. 239
strenuously fought out. It was, as Mr Green said, a
fair and open contest, alike creditable to both sides,
and an unmixed benefit to the world at large. The
energy of the English shipping interest was thoroughly
aroused, and the shipowners and shipbuilders of Scot-
land came speedily to the front. In a few years after
the issue was joined between the United States and
Great Britain, the shipbuilders of the latter country
found a potent auxiliary in iron, which began to be
used for sailing-ships.^ The vessel that led the way in
this innovation, combining great speed with the other
conditions of success, was the Lord of the Isles, Captain
Maxton, of Greenock, which distinguished herself by
beating two of the fastest American clippers of twice
her size in the run from Foochow to London in 1856.
The gradual introduction of steam on long voyages,
which followed the free use of iron, was also to the
advantage of the British competitors ; and thus from
a combination of favouring circumstances and dogged
efforts to turn them to account, the ascendancy of
British shipping was finally established.
In sketching the performances of these vessels we
have somewhat anticipated the advent of that famous
fleet of tea clippers which commanded the traflic of the
Far East for something like fifteen years. For the
beginnings of that struggle we have to go back to the
* The American and British clippers were originally built of wood
sheathed with metal. After that came trial of iron ships coated with
tallow, but finally at the climax of the sailing clippers' notable races they
were all of composite construction — i.e., iron frames planked with wood
and sheathed with yellow metal. This type of vessel (now out of date)
was the essential feature of the fastest sailing China clippers. Thereupon
followed the iron and steel steamship as the permanent carrier, and the
white-winged argosies were no more !
240 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
year 1851, when the Leith clipper Ganges raced two
Americans, the Flying Cloud and Bald Eagle, from
China to London, finishing up with an interesting
tack -and -tack contest up Channel from Weymouth,
the English ship passing Dungeness six hours ahead.
At that period the odds in mere numbers were so over-
whelming against the English vessels that such occa-
sional victories as the above were calculated to inspire
the builders with courage to persevere. The Aberdeen
clippers, Stornoway, Chrysolite, and Cairngorm, worthily
followed the London-built Challenger in disputing the
prize of speed with the best of their American contem-
poraries ; and after the race of 1856, won, as has
been mentioned, by the iron ship Lord of the Isles of
Greenock, the American flag was practically eliminated
from the annual contest. Competition, however, by no
means slackened on that account, but rather increased
in intensity. Past achievements opened the eyes of
those interested to the possibilities of indefinite im-
provement in the build, rig, and equipment of ships, so
that the idea took root and became a passion. Each
year brought forth something new, giving birth in the
following year to something still newer, until a type of
ship was evolved which seemed to be the acme of design
and execution. British clippers raced against each
other for the blue ribbon of the ocean with as great
zest as they had ever done when other flags were in the
field.
The competition for speed received a great stimulus
from the opening of Foochow as a regular tea-shipping
port in 1856. The port had been hindered by official
restrictions from enjoying its natural advantages at an
earlier period, and it was mainly due to the enterprise
NEW ERA IN THE TEA TRADE. 241
of the leading American house that these obstacles were
at last removed and the produce of the Bohea hills
diverted to its proper outlet. The event marked an
epoch in the tea trade ; for Foochow being so much
closer to the plantations than the other two ports, it
became possible to put on board there the first growth
of the season with a prospect of landing the new teas in
London a couple of months earlier than the trade had
been accustomed to. It may be mentioned as one of
the curiosities of conservatism that this very circum-
stance was used to the commercial prejudice of ship-
ments from the new port. It was revolutionising the
established routine of the trade, would interfere with
the summer holidays, and it was gravely argued that
October was the very earliest time when the London
buyers could be induced to attend to the tea-market.
But the fragrance of the new tea was irresistible in
dispersing such cobwebs. So far from its coming too
early to market, the best shipbuilders in the world
were soon engaged in constructing ships that would
accelerate the arrival of the new tea by as much as
a couple of days. And so hungry was the trade that
special arrangements were made to facilitate the brokers
obtaining samples to sell by before the vessel passed
Gravesend, and he would be an obscure grocer who was
not able to display in his shop window a tea-chest
bearing the name of the clipper on the day following
her arrival in the dock. The annual tea-race from
Foochow thus became one of the events of the year.
Premiums were paid to the winner, and sliding scales
of freight were in course of time introduced, graduated
by the number of days on passage.
No better proof could be adduced of the high excel-
VOL. I. Q
242 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
lence of the ships as well as of the good seamanship
of their commanders than the exceeding closeness of the
running on that long ocean voyage of twelve thousand
miles. Several times it happened that vessels starting
together would see nothing of each other during the
hundred days' passage until the fog lifting in the Downs
would reveal them close together, from which point the
winning of the race depended on the pilot or the tug.
Of the great race of 1866 Mr W. S. Lindsay, from
whose valuable work on Merchant Shipping we have
drawn freely for these details, says : " This race excited
extraordinary interest among all persons engaged in
maritime affairs. Five ships started — the Ariel, Tae-
ping, Serica, Fiery Cross, and Taitsing. The three first
left Foochow on the same day, but lost sight of each
other for the whole voyage until they reached the
English Channel, where they again met, arriving in
the Thames within a few hours of each other." Very
fast passages continued to be made after that time.
The Ariel and Spindrift raced in 1868, and the Titania
made a quick run in 1871 ; but Mr Lindsay awards
the palm to the Sir Lancelot and Thermopylae as
** the two fastest sailing-ships that ever traversed the
ocean." The former vessel, 886 tons register, made
the run from Foochow to London in ninety days
in 1868, and an interesting fact is recorded by the
owners of that fine ship bearing on the propelling
power of sails. Many experienced navigators had
during the clipper-racing entertained misgivings as to
the value of the excessive amount of sail and the
heavy rig which were deemed necessary to the equip-
ment of a clipper. The ships, they said, " buried
themselves under the press of canvas." Writing seven
THE END OF THE CHINA CLIPPER. 243
years after the performance just mentioned, the owner
of the Sir Lancelot said : '* After the mania for
China clipper-sailing I had 8 feet cut off from all the
lower masts, and reduced the masts aloft and the
yards in proportion. Yet with that (and no doubt
a proportionately reduced crew) she maintained her
speed undiminished." This was not an uncommon
experience.^
It is not to be supposed that the produce of China
or the imports into the country were all carried by
clipper ships. Theirs was a special service reserved
for the most valuable produce and for the first few
weeks of the season. After that fitful fever the trade
of the year settled down to what may be called daily-
bread conditions, when ships with moderate speed,
large capacity, and frugally sailed, made steady and
substantial profits for their owners. It is a commonly
accepted maxim that the race — for profits, at all events
— is not always to the swift. It was a saying of Mr
Green, whose firm owned a large fleet of ships in the
Australian and Indian trade, that in his balance-sheet
for the year he found that his slow ships had paid
for his fast ones. Nor did this economic rule lose its
validity when steam came to supersede sail.
The clippers proper had not had a clear run of
fifteen years when steamers began to trespass on
their preserves. The possibility of a successful steam
* Mr James MacCunn of Greenock says that all these racing clippers,
which were practically the same size, carried double crews, numbering
about thirty-three all told, equal to that of a 2500-tons merchantman of
to-day. The Sir Lancelot, besides the shingle ballast below the tea, carried
100 tons titted kentledge in the limbers stowed between skin and ceiling,
whereby great " stiffness " was ensured — a factor of much value in beating
down the China Sea against the monsoon, and at other times in "carrying
on " under a heavy press of canvas.
244 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
voyage round the Cape began to be proved in 1864,
and was demonstrated in 1866, when Mr Alfred Holt
of Liverpool first established his " blue-funnel " line,
beginning with the Ajax, Achilles, and Agamemnon.
But though sailing clippers were displaced, the sport-
ing element in the China trade was not extinguished.
The opening of the Yangtze revived the interest in
early arrivals of tea by bringing the ** black leafs" of
Hunan and Hupeh to the sea nearly as soon as the
" red leafs," whose outlet was Foochow. The produce
of the central provinces up till 1861 was conveyed by
a slow and expensive route, a considerable portion of
it on the backs of porters, to Canton. Hankow when
opened became at once the entrepot for these teas,
and sea-going ships began to load their cargoes in the
very heart of the Chinese empire. For some years
there had been two sets of races — one from Foochow
and one from Hankow — which took the wind out of
each other's sails, and the sport became somewhat
stale.
It was the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and
the consequent improvements in the construction of
steamships, that gave its full value to the Yangtze
as a trade route. For then ocean steamers loaded at
Hankow with all the advantages of the short route
and convenient coaling-stations, and the old excitement
of the Foochow racing was revived under a still higher
pressure. Every year witnessed some new design for
combining the maximum cargo and coal stowage with
the maximum speed, so that new tea, which but a
few years before was landed in November, now came
to market early in July. The last great race occurred
in 1883 between the Glenogle and Stirling Castle. By
SUEZ CANAL TRANSFORMS EASTERN SHIPPING. 245
that time Indian tea was rapidly gaining the ascendant
in the great consuming marts, displacing the Chinese
article, which could no longer afford the prestige of
being carried by steamers built and run regardless of
expense. Thenceforth all Far Eastern produce found
an everyday level ; merchandise was carried to and
fro by regular lines, with measured intervals of sailing,
all the year round, freights were fixed by common
agreement, and the trade assumed a character of an
omnibus traffic on a large scale.
The Suez Canal produced an immense lateral exten-
sion of trade with China by bringing the Black Sea,
Mediterranean, and North Sea ports into direct com-
munication with the ports of the Far East. The
Russian volunteer fleet, composed of very large and
swift steamers, each capable of conveying 2000 troops,
carried tea direct from Hankow to Odessa. Trade
with Marseilles and Genoa was developed by British
and German enterprise as well as by the Messageries
Maritimes of France. Antwerp, Bremen, and Ham-
burg became the terminal ports for important lines
of steamers. The mercantile navy of Japan had not
risen into general notice during the earlier time with
which we are principally concerned, and it would de-
serve a treatise by itself
By a process of natural selection native shipping in
China and Japan has been extensively superseded by
foreign, and an immense dislocation of capital has in
consequence taken place. The effect of this has been
severely felt on the China coast, especially in such
large shipping ports as Taku, Shanghai, and Ningpo,
where there were in former days large and prosperous
246 SHIPPING. [chap. XII.
shipowning communities. The disturbance has prob-
ably been much less marked in Japan, owing to the
greater agility of the people in adapting themselves to
inevitable changes. Certain it is that in both countries
there is still a large junk fleet employed in the coasting
trade, being protected against foreign as well as steam
competition by their light draught and their privilege
of trading at ports not opened to foreign trade.
The temptation to evade the prohibition of foreign
flags led in former days to sundry bizarre effects on the
coast of China. The natives, finding it to their* advan-
tage to employ foreign vessels, exercised their ingenuity
in making them look like Chinese craft. This would at
first sight appear no easy matter, seeing that the
Chinese junks carried no yards and their hulls were of
a construction as different from that of a modern ship
as was possible for two things to be which were in-
tended for the same purpose. The junks possessed
certain qualities conducive to buoyancy and safety,
such as water-tight bulkheads, which at once strength-
ened the hull and minimised the danger of sinking.
But their sailing properties, except with the wind
** free," were beneath contempt. Their weatherly and
seaworthy qualities commended vessels of foreign con-
struction to the Chinese traders, while the talisman of
the flag was deemed by them a protection against
pirates, and perhaps also, on occasion, against official
inquisition. Probably what on the whole the native
owner or charterer would have preferred was that his
ship should pass for foreign at sea and for native in
port. To this end in some cases resort was had to
hermaphrodite rigging, and very generally to two
projecting boards, one on each side of the figurehead.
NATIVE SHIPPING.
247
bearing the staring Chinese eye, such as the junks
south of the Yangtze carry. The open eye on the
ship's bow was to enable the Chinese port officials to
close theirs to the unauthorised presence of strangers,
and thus everything was arranged in the manner so
dear to the Chinese character.
In the south of China the advantage of the flag was
sought without the foreign appearance of the vessel.
The foreign flag was hoisted on native-built small craft,
a large fleet of which hailed from Macao under Portu-
guese colours, and were from time to time guilty of
great irregularities on the coast. The Chinese of
Hongkong, British subjects born and bred, registered
their vessels and received colonial sailing letters, renew-
able at frequent intervals, as a check on bad behaviour.
With these papers short trips were made along the
south coast, and a local trade was carried on in the
estuary of the Canton river. These vessels of about 100
or 200 tons burthen were called "lorchas,'' of which
we shall hear more in subsequent chapters.
248
CHAPTEE XIII.
THE TRADERS.
I. FOREIGN.
Their relations to their official representatives — And to the trading in-
terests of their own countries — Their unity — High character — Liber-
ality— Breadth of view.
In the preceding portions of this narrative it has been
shown how much the character of the principal officials
on both sides influenced the progress of events. There
was, however, yet another factor which contributed in
a lesser degree and in a different manner to the general
result which ought not to be entirely omitted from
consideration, and that was the personal qualities and
traditional characteristics of the two trading communi-
ties, foreign and Chinese. It was they who created
the subject-matter of all foreign relations, and stood
in the breach in all the struggles between foreign and
native officials. It was their persons and their fortunes
which were ever at stake ; it was they who first felt
the shock of disturbance, and were the first to reap
the fruits of peace.
The relation of the foreign mercantile community
to their official representatives was not always free
from friction, because the same high authority which en-
THEIR RELATIONS WITH OFFICIALS. 249
joined on the officials the protection of the persons and
the promotion of the interests of the lay community
empowered them also to rule over these their proteges,
and to apply to them an arbitrary discipline in accord-
ance with what they conceived to be the exigencies of
the time. Duty in such circumstances must often have
assumed a divided aspect, and rules of action must fre-
quently have been put to a severe strain ; nor is it
surprising that, owing to these peculiar relationships,
the resident communities should not have been able
on all occasions to see eye to eye with the agents of
their Governments.
In their national and representative character the
China merchants were wont at different crises to have
moral burdens laid on them which did not properly fit
their shoulders. They were little affected by the shallow
moralism of the pulpit, which, taken literally, would
have counselled general liquidation and the distribution
of the proceeds among the poor, leaving the common
creditor out of account ; but official sermons also were
on certain occasions preached to, or at, the merchants,
implying some obligation on their part to sacrifice indi-
vidual advantage to the greater good of the greater
number. Were there no other answer to such altruistic
monitions, it would be sufficient to plead that under
such theories of duty commerce could not exist, and its
political accessories would become superfluous. No
road to commercial prosperity has been discovered
which could dispense with the prime motive for the
exertion which makes for progress — to wit, individual
ambition, cupidity, or by whatever term we choose to
designate the driving power of the complex machine of
civilised life. Mammon is, after all, a divinity whose
250 THE TRADERS — FOREIGN. [chap. xiii.
worship is as universal as that of Eros, and is scarcely-
less essential to the preservation of the race. Nor is it
by collective, but by strictly individual, offerings that
these deities are propitiated, and the high purposes of
humanity subserved. It is no reproach, therefore, to
the China merchants that they should have seized
every opportunity for gain, totally irrespective of the
general policy of their country. It was not for them
to construe portents, but to improve the shining hour.
And if it should at any time happen that the action
of private persons, impelled by the passion for gain,
embarrassed a diplomatist in his efforts to bring about
some grand international combination, the fault was
clearly his who omitted to take account of the ruling
factor in all economic problems. The trade was not
made for Government policy, but the policy for the
trade, whose life-blood was absolute liberty of action
and a free course for individual initiative. The success
of British trade as a whole could only be the aggregate
of the separate successes not otherwise attainable than
by each member of the mercantile fraternity performing
his own part with singleness of purpose. Nothing
certainly could ever justify any trader in foregoing a
chance of gain for the sake of an ideal benefit to the
community, even if it were likely to be realised. A
distinction must be drawn between the tradesman and
the statesman. Though their functions may sometimes
overlap, their respective duties to the State are of a
different though complementary character.
To the charge which from time to time has been
levelled at the China merchants, that they were too
narrow and too selfish, it may be plausibly replied
that, on the contrary, they were if anything too
PUBLIC SPIRIT OF THE MERCHANTS. 251
broad ; for their individual interests were not so
bound up with general progress as are the interests
of colonists in a new country, where co-operation is
essential. Progress meant, to the China merchants,
the admitting of the flood of competition, which they
were in no condition to meet. The general interests
of the country required the opening of new markets ;
in a lesser degree the interests of the manufacturing
section required the same thing ; but the interests of
the merchants, albeit they appeared to represent their
country and its industries, were in fact opposed to
expansion. Yet so strong in them was the race in-
stinct for progress that their private advantage has
oftentimes actually given way to it, so that we have
seen throughout the developments of foreign inter-
course with China the resident merchants placing
themselves in the van in helping to let loose the
avalanche which overwhelmed them and brought fresh
adventurers to occupy the ground.
Nor has the relation of the merchants, even to the
operations in which they were engaged, been always
clearly understood. Although they personified their
national trade in the eyes of the world, the merchants
were never anything more than the vehicles for its
distribution, having no interest in its general exten-
sion, though a powerful interest in the increase of
their individual share. The productions which pro-
vided the livelihood of many thousands of people in
China, and perhaps of a still larger number in Great
Britain and other manufacturing countries, did not
concern them. A percentage by way of toll on mer-
chandise passing through their warehouses was the
limit of their ambition. A clear distinction should
252 THE TRADERS — FOREIGN. [chap. xiii.
therefore be drawn between the merchant and the
producer or manufacturer ; on which point some obser-
vations of Wingrove Cooke ^ are worth quoting : —
" The calculations of the merchants do not extend
beyond their own business. Why should they ?
Fortunately for himself, the merchant's optics are
those of the lynx rather than those of the eagle.
An extremely far-sighted commercial man must always
run risks of bankruptcy, for the most absolutely
certain sequences are often the most uncertain in
point of time." The same writer, however, comments
on the ignorance and narrowness of both British
traders and manufacturers, and their failure to avail
themselves of the opportunities offered to them of
exploiting the trading resources of the Chinese.
" There is no spirit of inquiry abroad," he says, " no
energy at work, no notion of distracting the eye for
a moment from watching those eternal shirtings, no
thought whether you cannot make better shift with
some other class of goods. Manchester made a great
blind effort when the ports were opened, and that
effort failed. Since then she has fallen into an
apathy, and trusts to the chapter of accidents." As
for the merchants on whom manufacturers relied to
push the sale of their wares, " they come out here,"
he says, " to make fortunes in from five to seven
years, not to force English calicoes up into remote
places. Their work is to buy Chinese produce, but,"
he goes on, " if the English manufacturer wants
extraordinary exertion, carefully collected information,
and persevering up-country enterprise — and this is
what he does want — he must do it himself The
1 China in 1857-58. Routledge.
EMANCIPATION FROM MONOPOLY. 253
British export trade will not maintain mercantile
houses, but it would pay for travelling agents acting
in immediate connection with the home manufacturers,
who should keep their principals at home well in-
formed, and who should work their operations through
the established houses here. The evil is that British
goods are not brought under the eyes of the China-
man of the interior cities."
The inaccuracies of some of these comments need
not obscure the shrewd and prophetic character of
the general advice tendered to the British manufac-
turers. After an interval of forty years they have
begun to act upon it, and though their progress has
as yet been slow, they are taking to heart another
portion of Mr Cooke's advice, that "all dealing with
the interior of China is impossible unless your agents
speak the language of the people."
A certain divergence between the official and non-
official view of affairs had begun to show itself in the
period before the war. Before the close of the East
India Company's monopoly the independent merchants
perceived that their interests, as well as those of the
Company itself, were prejudiced by the truckling tactics
of its agents, and though few in number, the mercan-
tile community began to give utterance to their griev-
ances and to show they had a mind of their own on
public commercial policy. As the whole position of
foreigners in China rested on premisses which were
essentially false, disappointment, irritation, and alarm
were chronic. Every one concerned, official and un-
official, was aggrieved thereby, while no one was dis-
posed to accept blame for the grievance. A tendency
to recrimination was the natural consequence. When
254 THE TRADERS — FOREIGN. [chap. xiii.
their representatives failed to protect them against the
aggressions of the Chinese the merchants complained,
while the officials in their turn were not indisposed
to retort by alleging provocative or injudicious conduct
on the part of the merchants themselves as contrib-
utory to the ever-recurrent difficulties. Through the
retrospective vista of two generations it is easy now to
see where both parties were at fault — the merchants
in making too little account of the difficulties under
which their representatives were labouring, and the
officials in failing to perceive that the causes of their
disagreements with the Chinese lay altogether deeper
than the casual imprudence of any private individual,
even if that could be established. The despatches of
the earlier " superintendents," notably those of Sir
George Robinson, betray a certain jealousy of the
political influence supposed to be wielded by the mer-
cantile community of Canton working through their
associations in England, and the superintendents
seemed therefore concerned to cast discredit on mer-
cantile opinion. It would have been strange enough,
had it been true, that an isolated community of a
hundred individuals should be torn by faction, yet it
is a fact that on their assumed disagreements an argu-
ment was based for invalidating the representations
which they occasionally made to the Home Govern-
ment. Their views were disparaged, their motives
impugned, and their short-sighted selfishness deplored.
The note struck in 1835 has been maintained with
variations down almost to our own day, — a circum-
stance which has to be borne in mind by those who
aim at a fair appreciation of British relations with
China during the last sixty years.
THE OLD CANTON COMMUNITY. 255
Far, however, from being a disunited flock, the
mercantile body in China generally have on the
whole been singularly unanimous in their views of the
political transactions with which their interests were
bound up ; while as to the old community of Canton,
no epithet could be less appropriate than one which
would imply discord. Concord was the enforced effect
of their circumstances. Imprisoned within a narrow
space, surrounded by a hostile people, exposed to a
constant common peril, the foreign residents in Canton
were bound to each other by the mere instinct of self-
preservation. They became, in fact, what Nelson called
his captains, a '^band of brothers." The exclusion of
females up till 1842, and the deterrent conditions of
married life there even under the treaty, made it
essentially a bachelor community, living almost like
one family, or as comrades in a campaign. Of the
disinterested hospitality and good-fellowship which
continue to this day, even in the maturity of their
domestic development, to characterise the foreign
communities in China, the germ is doubtless to be
discovered in that primitive society which oscillated
between Canton and Macao during the thirty years
which ended in 1856, in which year their factories
were for the last time destroyed, and the old life
finally broken up.
But there is something more to be credited to these
early residents than the mutual loyalty prescribed for
them by the peculiar conditions of their life. They
exemplified in a special degree the true temper and
feelings of gentlemen, — a moral product with which
local conditions had also, no doubt, something to do.
They lived in glass houses, with open doors ; they
256 THE TRADERS — FOREIGN. [chap. xiii.
could by no means get away from one another, or
evade a mutual observation which was constant and
searching. Whatever standards, therefore, were rec-
ognised by the community, the individual members
were constrained to live up to them in a society where
words and deeds lay open to the collective criticism.
And the standard was really a high one. Truth,
honour, courage, generosity, nobility, were qualities
common to the whole body ; and those who were not
so endowed by birthright could not help assuming the
virtue they did not possess, and, through practice,
making it eventually their own. Black sheep there
were, no doubt, but being never whitewashed, they
did not infect the flock, as happens in more advanced
communities.
These intimate conditions favouring the formation
of character were powerfully reinforced by the one
feature of European life in China which was external
to the residents, their contact with the surrounding
mass of Chinese. The eflect of intercourse with so-
called inferior races is a question of much complexity,
and large generalisations on such subjects are unsafe,
each case being best considered on its proper merits.
In their intercourse with the Chinese, certain points
stood out like pillars of adamant to fix the principles
by which the foreign residents were obliged to regu-
late their bearing towards the natives. In the first
place, the strangers formed units hemmed in and
pressed upon by thousands ; therefore they must
magnify themselves by maintaining an invincible
prestige, they must in the eyes of that alien world
always be heroes, and they must present a united
front. Extending the same principles from the
A BODY OF PICKED MEN. 257
material to the moral sphere, the foreigners must
maintain the reputation of their caste for probity,
liberality, and trustworthiness. Their word must
be as good as their bond ; they must on no account
demean themselves before the heathen, nor tolerate
any temptation from a Chinese source to take unfair
advantage of their own kind, the Caucasian or
Christian, or by whatever term we may indicate
the white man. Whatever their private differences,
no white man must permit himself to acquiesce in
the disparagement of his own people in the view
of the people of the country. They must be, one
and all, above suspicion. Such were some of the
considerations which were effective in maintaining
the character of Europeans in China. Although
association with a race so alien as the Chinese, with
such different moral standards, must have had the
usual deteriorating effects of such contact, yet the
positive gain in the formation of character from
the practice of such maxims of conduct as those
above indicated probably left a balance of advan-
tage with the China merchants.
The case would be imperfectly stated were mention
not made of the process of natural selection which
constituted the merchants a body of picked men.
China was a remote country. It offered neither
the facility of access nor the scope for adventure
which in more recent times have attracted such
streams of emigration to distant parts of the world.
The mercantile body was a close corporation, automati-
cally protected by barriers very difficult to surmount.
The voyage itself occupied six months. Letters were
rarely answered within a year. Hence all the ma-
VOL. I. R
258 THE TRADEES — FOREIGN. [chap. xiii.
chinery of business had to be arranged with a large
prescience. Even after the opening of the overland
route to Suez communication with China was main-
tained by sailing-ships up till 1845, when the Lady
Mary Wood, the first steamer of the P. and O.
Company, reached Hongkong, with no accommodation
for more than a few passengers, and carrying no more
cargo than a good - sized lighter. And later still,
when steamers carried the mails fortnightly to China,
the expense of the trip was so great that only a
chosen few could afford it. It took £150 to £170
to land a single man in Hongkong, and in those
days when extensive outfits were thought necessary,
probably as much more had to be laid out in that
way. The merchants who established themselves
in China after the opening of the trade were either
themselves men of large means, or they were the
confidential representatives of English and American
houses of great position. There were no local banks,
operations extended over one or two years, an immense
outlay of capital was required, and credit had to be
maintained at an exceedingly high level, not only
as between the merchants in China and their corres-
pondents in London, Liverpool, New York, and Boston,
but between both and the financial centre of the
world. Through such a winnowing - machine only
good grain could pass. It was a natural result that
the English and American merchants both in China
and India should have been superior as a class to
the average of other commercial communities. And
what was true of partners and heads of houses was
no less so of their " assistants." There were no
" clerks," as the term is commonly used in England,
SELECTION OF RECRUITS. 259
except Portuguese hailing from the neighbouring
settlement of Macao. The young men sent from
England were selected with as much care as it was
possible to bestow, for they were precious. Not only
were they costly, but it might take a year to
make good casualties. Besides, in countries situated
as China was then, where contingencies of health
were never out of mind, it was not worth while to
send out one who was a clerk and nothing more.
There must be potential capacity as well, since it
could never be foreseen how soon emergencies might
arise which would require him to assume the most
responsible duties. Hence every new hand engaged
must enjoy the fullest confidence both of his immediate
employers and of the home firm to which they were
affiliated.
As might be expected under such circumstances,
family connections played a large part in the selection,
and the tendency of the whole system was to mini-
mise the gulf which in advanced societies separates
the master from the man. In education and culture
they were equals, as a consequence of which the reins
of discipline might be held lightly, all service being
willingly and intelligently rendered. The system of
devolution was so fully developed that the assistant
was practically master in his own department, for
the success of which he was as zealous as the head.
The " mess " regime under which in most houses the
whole staff, employers and employees, sat at one table,
tended strongly in the direction of a common social
level.
What still further contributed much to raise the
position of assistants was the tradition which the
260 THE TRADERS — FOREIGN. [chap. xiii.
merchants both in India and China inherited from
the East India Company of what may be called
pampering their employees. They were permitted
to carry on trade on their own account, in the same
commodities and with the same buyers and sellers, in
which they possessed advantages over their employers
in having all the firm's information at command
with the privilege of using its machinery free of cost.
The abuses to which such a system was liable are
too obvious to be dwelt upon ; but to be himself a
merchant, sometimes more successful than his prin-
cipal, though without his responsibilities, certainly did
not detract from the social status of the assistant.
Sixty years ago the China community was com-
posed of men in the prime of life. The average age was
probably not over thirty — a man of forty was a grey-
beard. In this respect an evolutionary change has
come over the scene, and the averaw ao^e of the adult
residents must have risen by at least ten years. But
the China community in all its stages of development
has maintained the colonial characteristic of buoyancy
and hopefulness. Reverses of fortune never appalled
its members. Having been early accustomed to the
alternations of fat years and lean, a disastrous season
was to them but the presage of a bountiful one to
follow ; while a succession of bad years made the re-
action only the more certain. This wellspring of
hope has often helped the China merchants to carry
the freshness of spring even into the snows of winter.
The nature of their pursuits, moreover, fostered a com-
prehensive spirit. Trained in the school of wholesale
dealing, and habituated to work on large curves, the
China merchants have all through felt the blood of the
MODERN CHANGES. 261
merchant princes in their veins, and it has even been
alleged to their disadvantage that, like the scions of
decayed families the world over, the pomp and circum-
stance were maintained after the material basis had in
the natural course of affairs vanished. Nay, more,
that the grandiose ideas appropriate to the heirs of a
protected system have disqualified them for the contest
in small things which the latter days have brought
upon them.
Of that restricted, protected, quasi-aristocratic, half-
socialistic society some of the traditions and spirit
remain ; but the structure itself could not possibly
withstand the aggression of modern progress, and it
has been swept away. New elements have entered
into the composition of the mercantile and general
society of the Far East, its basis has been widened and
its relations with the great world multiplied. In in-
numerable ways there has been improvement, not the
least being the development of family life and the more
enduring attachment to the soil which is the result of
prolonged residence. Living, if less luxurious, is vastly
more comfortable, more refined, and more civilised, and
men and women without serious sacrifices make their
home in a country which in the earlier days was but a
scene of temporary exile. Charities abound which were
not before needed ; the channels of humanity have
broadened, though it cannot be said at the cost of
depth, for whatever else may have changed, the
generosity of the foreign communities remains as
princely as in the good old days.
Yet is it permissible to regret some of the robuster
virtues of the generation that is past. The European
solidarity vis-a-vis the Chinese world, which continued
262 THE TRADERS — FOREIGN. [chap. xiii.
practically unbroken into the eighth decade of the
century, a tower of moral strength to foreigners and an
object of respect to the Chinese, has now been thrown
down. Not only in private adventures have foreigners
in their heat of competition let themselves down to the
level of Chinese tactics, but great financial syndicates
have immersed themselves in intrigues which either
did not tempt the men of the previous generation or
tempted them in vain ; and even the Great Powers
themselves have descended into the inglorious arena,
where decency is discarded like the superfluous
garments of the gladiator, and where falsity, ultra-
Chinese in quality, masquerades in Christian garb.
The moral ascendancy of Christendom has been in a
hundred ways shamelessly prostituted, leaving little
visible distinction between the West and the East but
superior energy and military force.
Take them for all in all, the China merchants have
been in their day and generation no unworthy repre-
sentatives of their country's interests and policy, its
manhood and character. Their patriotism has not been
toned down but expanded and rationalised by cosmo-
politan associations, and by contact with a type of
national life differing diametrically from their own.
Breadth and moderation have resulted from these
conditions, and a habit of tempering the exigencies of
the day by the larger consideration of international
problems has been characteristic of the mercantile
bodies in China from first to last. And though
statesmanship lies outside the range of busy men of
commerce, it must be said in justice to the merchants
of China that they have been consistently loyal to an
ideal policy, higher in its aims and more practical in
CHINESE COMMERCIAL INSTINCT. 263
its operation than that which any line of Western
statesmen, save those of Russia, has been able to
follow. It had been better if the continuous prog-
nostications of such a compact body of opinion had
been more heeded.
11. CHINESE.
Business aptitude — High standard of commercial ethics — Circumstances
hindering great accumulations.
As it requires two to make a bargain, it would be an
imperfect account of the China trade which omitted
such an important element as the efficiency of the
native trader. To him is due the fact that the foreign
commerce of his country, when uninterfered with by
the officials of his Government, has been made so easy
for the various parties concerned in it. Of all the
accomplishments the Chinese nation has acquired
during the long millenniums of its history, there is
none in which it has attained to such perfect mastery
as in the science of buying and selling. The Chinese
possess the Jews* passion for exchange. All classes,
from the peasant to the prince, think in money, and
the instinct of appraisement supplies to them the
place of a ready reckoner, continuously converting
objects and opportunities into cash. Thus surveying
mankind and all its achievements with the eye of
an auctioneer, invisible note -book in hand, external
impressions translate themselves automatically into
the language of the market - place, so that it comes
as natural to the Chinaman as to the modern Ameri-
can, or to any other commercial people, to reduce all
264 THE TRADERS — CHINESE. [oHAP. xiii.
forms of appreciation to the common measure of the
dollar. A people imbued with such habits of mind are
traders by intuition. If they have much to learn from
foreigners, they have also much to teach them ; and
the fact that at no spot within the vast empire of
China would one fail to find ready-made and eager men
of business is a happy augury for the extended inter-
course which may be developed in the future, while at
the same time it affords the clearest indication of the
true avenue to sympathetic relations with the Chinese.
In every detail of handling and moving commodities,
from the moment they leave the hands of the producer
in his garden-patch to the time when they reach the
ultimate consumer perhaps a thousand miles away, the
Chinese trader is an expert. Times and seasons have
been elaborately mapped out, the clue laid unerringly
through labyrinthine currencies, weights, and measures
which to the stranger seem a hopeless tangle, and elab-
orate trade customs evolved appropriate to the re-
quirements of a myriad - sided commerce, until the
simplest operation has been invested with a kind of
ritual observance, the effect of the whole being to cause
the complex wheels to run both swiftly and smoothly.
To crown all, there is to be noted, as the highest
condition of successful trade, the evolution of commer-
cial probity, which, though no monopoly of the Chinese
merchants, is one of their distinguishing characteristics.
It is that element which, in the generations before the
treaties, enabled so large a commerce to be carried on
with foreigners without anxiety, without friction, and
almost without precaution. It has also led to the
happiest personal relations between foreigners and the
native trader.
LARGE-HEARTED. 265
When the business of the season was over [says Mr Hunter] ^
contracts were made with the Hong merchants for the next
season. They consisted of teas of certain qualities and kinds,
sometimes at fixed prices, sometimes at the prices which should
be current at the time of the arrival of the teas. No other
record of these contracts was ever made than by each party
booking them, no written agreements were drawn up, nothing
was sealed or attested. A wilful breach of contract never took
place, and as regards quality and quantity the Hong merchants
fulfilled their part with scrupulous honesty and care.
The Chinese merchant, moreover, has been always
noted for what he himself graphically calls his large-
heartedness, which is exemplified by liberality in all his
dealings, tenacity as to all that is material with com-
parative disregard of trifles, never letting a transaction
fall through on account of punctilio, yielding to the
prejudices of others wherever it can be done without
substantial disadvantage, a " sweet reasonableness," if
the phrase may be borrowed for such a purpose, which
obviates disputation, and the manliness which does not
repine at the consequences of an unfortunate contract.
Judicial procedure being an abomination to respectable
Chinese, their security in commercial dealings is based
as much upon reason, good faith, and non-repudiation
as that of the Western nations is upon verbal finesse
in the construction of covenants.
Two systems so diametrically opposed can hardly
admit of real amalgamation without sacrifice of the
saving principle of both. And if, in the period imme-
diately succeeding the retirement of the East India
Company, perfect harmony prevailed between the
Chinese and the foreign merchant, the result was
apparently attained by the foreigners practically falling
^ The Fankwae at Canton.
266 THE TRADERS — CHINESE. [chap. xiii.
in with the principles and the commercial ethics of the
Chinese, to which nothing has yet been found superior.
The Chinese aptitude for business, indeed, exerted a
peculiar influence over their foreign colleagues. The
efficiency and alacrity of the native merchants and
their staff were such that the foreigners fell into the
way of leaving to them the principal share in managing
the details of the business. When the venerable, but
unnatural, Co-hong system of Old Canton was super-
seded by the compradoric, the connection between the
foreign firm and their native staff became so intimate
that it was scarcely possible to distinguish between the
two, and misunderstandings have not unfrequently
arisen through third parties mistaking the principal
for the agent and the agent for the principal.
Such a relationship could not but foster in some
cases a certain lordly abstraction on the part of the
foreign merchant, to which climatic conditions power-
fully contributed. The factotum, in short, became a
minister of luxury, everywhere a demoralising influ-
ence, and thus there was a constant tendency for
the Chinese to gain the upper hand, — to be the
master in effect though the servant in name. The
comprador was always consulted, and if the employer
ventured to omit this formality the resulting trans-
action would almost certainly come to grief through
inexplicable causes. Seldom, however, was his ad-
vice rejected, while many of the largest operations
were of his initiation. Unlimited confidence was the
rule on both sides, which often took the concrete
form of considerable indebtedness, now on the one side
now on the other, and was regularly shown in
the despatch of large amounts of specie into the
CONFIDENTIAL RELATIONS WITH FOREIGNERS. 267
far interior of the country for the purchase of tea
and silk in the districts of their growth. For many
years the old practice was followed of contracting for
produce as soon as marketable, and sometimes even
before. During three or four months, in the case of
tea, large funds belonging to foreign merchants were
in the hands of native agents far beyond the reach
of the owners, who could exercise no sort of super-
vision over the proceedings of their agents. The
funds were in every case safely returned in the form
of produce purchased, which was entered to the
foreign merchant at a price arbitrarily fixed by the
comprador to cover all expenses. Under such a
regime it would have needed no great perspicacity,
one would imagine, to foretell in which pocket the
profits of trading would eventually lodge. As a
matter of fact, the comprador generally grew rich at
the expense of his employer. All the while the sin-
cerest friendship existed between them, often de-
scending to the second or third generation.^
It would be natural to suppose that in such an
extensive commercial field as the empire of China,
exploited by such competent traders, large accumu-
lations of wealth would be the result. Yet after
making due allowance for inducements to conceal-
ment, the wealth even of the richest families prob-
ably falls far short of that which is not uncommon
in Western countries. Several reasons might be ad-
duced for the limitation, chiefly the family system,
which necessitates constant redistribution, and which
^ Apart from their liberality in the conduct of business, the generosity of
the Chinese mercantile class, their gratitude for past favours, are so re-
markable as to be incomprehensible to the Western mind. An account
of them would read like a " fairy tale."
268 THE TRADERS — CHINESE. [chap. xiii.
subjects every successful man to the attentions of a
swarm of parasites, who, besides devouring his sub-
stance with riotous living, have the further oppor-
tunity of ruining his enterprises by their malfeasance.
Yet although individual wealth may, from these and
other causes, be confined within very moderate limits,
the control of capital for legitimate business is ample.
Owing to the co-operative system under which the
financiers of the country support and guarantee each
other, credit stands very high, enabling the widely
ramified commerce of the empire to be carried on
upon a very small nucleus of cash capital. The bank-
ing organisation of China is wonderfully complete,
bills of exchange being currently negotiable between
the most distant points of the empire, the circula-
tion of merchandise maintaining the equilibrium with
comparatively little assistance from the precious
metals.
The true characteristics of a people probably stand
out in a clearer light when they are segregated from
the conventionalities of their home and forced to ac-
commodate themselves to unaccustomed conditions.
Following the Chinese to the various commercial
colonies which they have done so much to develop,
it will be found that they have carried with them
into their voluntary exile the best elements of their
commercial success in their mother country. The
great emporium of Maimaichen, on the Siberian
frontier near Kiachta, is an old commercial settle-
ment mostly composed of natives of the province of
Shansi, occupying positions of the highest respect
both financially and socially. The streets of the
town are regular, wide, and moderately clean. The
THE CHINESE ABROAD. 269
houses are solid, tidy, and tasteful, with pretty little
courtyards, ornamental door - screens, and so forth,
the style of the whole being described as superior to
what is seen in the large cities within China proper.
The very conditions of exile seem favourable to a
higher scale of living, free alike from the incubus of
thriftless relations and from the malign espionage of
Government officials.
In the Philippine Islands and in Java the Chinese
emigrants from the southern provinces have been the
life and soul of the trade and industry of these
places. So also in the British dominions, as at
Singapore and Penang, which are practically Chinese
Colonies under the British flag. Hongkong and the
Burmese ports are of course no exceptions.
The description given by Mr Thomson ^ of the Chinese
in Penang would apply equally to every part of the
world in which the Chinese have been permitted to
settle : —
Should you, my reader, ever settle in Penang, you will be
there introduced to a Chinese contractor who will sign a
document to do anything. His costume will tell you that
he is a man of inexpensive yet cleanly habits. He will build
you a house after any design you choose, and within so many
days, subject to a fine should he exceed the stipulated time.
He will furnish you with a minute specification, in which
everything, to the last nail, will be included. He has a
brother who will contract to make every article of furniture
you require, either from drawings or from models. He has
another brother who will fit you and your good lady with all
sorts of clothing, and yet a third relative who will find
servants, and contract to supply you with all the native and
European delicacies in the market upon condition that his
monthly bills are regularly honoured.
^ The Straits of Malacca, &c. By J. Thomson.
270 THE TRADERS — CHINESE. [chap. xiii.
It is, indeed, to Chinamen that the foreign resident is in-
debted for almost all his comforts, and for the profusion of
luxuries which surround his wonderfully European -looking
home on this distant island.
The Chinese are everywhere found enterprising and
trustworthy men of business. Europeans, worried by the
exhaustless refinements of the Marwarree or Bengali,
find business with the Chinese in the Straits Settle-
ments a positive luxury. Nor have the persecutions
of the race in the United States and in self-o^overn-
ing British colonies wholly extinguished the spark of
honour which the Chinese carry with them into dis-
tant lands. An old " 'Forty - niner," since deceased,
related to the writer some striking experiences of his
own during a long commercial career in San Francisco.
A Chinese with whom he had dealings disappeared
from the scene, leaving a debt to Mr Forbes of several
thousand dollars. The account became an eyesore in
the books, and the amount was formally " written
off" and forgotten. Some years after, Mr Forbes
was surprised by a visit from a weather - beaten
Chinese, who revealed himself as the delinquent Ah
Sin and asked for his account. Demurring to the
trouble of exhuming old ledgers, Mr Forbes asked
Ah Sin incredulously if he was going to pay. *' Why,
certainly," said the debtor. The account was there-
upon rendered to him with interest, and after a care-
ful examination and making some corrections, Ah Sin
undid his belt and tabled the money to the last cent,
thereupon vanishing into space whence he had come.
271
CHAPTER XIV.
HONGKONG.
Two British landmarks — Chinese customs and Hongkong — Choice of the
island — Vitality of colony — Asylum for malefactors — Chinese official
hostility — Commanding commercial position — Crown Colony govern-
ment— Management of Chinese population — Their improvement —
English education — Material progress — Industrial institutions — Acces-
sion of territory.
The past sixty years of war and peace in China have
left two landmarks as concrete embodiments of British
policy — the Chinese maritime customs and the colony
of Hongkong. These are documents which testify in
indelible characters both to the motives and to the
methods of British expansion throughout the world.
For good and for evil their record cannot be explained
away. Both institutions are typically English, inas-
much as they are not the fulfilment of a dream or
the working out of preconcerted schemes, but growths
spontaneously generated out of the local conditions,
much like that of the British empire itself, and with
scarcely more conscious foresight on the part of those
f^ho helped to rear the edifice.
The relation of the British empire to the world,
which defies definition, is only revealed in scattered
object-lessons. India throws some light upon it — the
colonies much more ; and though in some respects
272 HONGKONG. [chap. xiv.
unique in its character, Hongkong in its degree stands
before the world as a realisation of the British ideal,
with its faults and blunders as well as with its excel-
lences and successes.
The want of a British station on the China coast had
long been felt, and during the ten years which pre-
ceded the cession innumerable proposals were thrown
out, some of which distinctly indicated Hongkong
itself as supplying the desideratum. But as to the
status of the new port the various suggestions made
neutralised each other, until the course of events
removed the question out of the region of discussion
and placed it in the lap of destiny.
The earliest English visitors to the island described
it as inhabited by a few weather-beaten fishermen, who
were seen spreading their nets and drying their catch
on the rocks. Cultivation was restricted to small
patches of rice, sweet-potatoes, and buckwheat. The
abundance of fern gave it in places an appearance of
verdure, but it was on the whole a treeless, rugged,
barren block of granite. The gentlemen of Lord Am-
herst's suite in 1816, who have left this record, made
another significant observation. The precipitous island,
twelve miles long, with its deep-water inlets, formed
one side of a land-locked harbour, which they called
Hongkong Sound, capable of sheltering any number
of ships of the largest size. Into this commodious
haven the English fugitives, driven first from Canton
and then from Macao, by the drastic decree of the^
Chinese authorities in 1839, found a refuge for their
ships, and afterwards a footing on shore for themselves.
Stern necessity and not their wills sent them thither.
The same necessity ordained that the little band, once
HONGKONG OR CHUSAN ? 273
lodged there, should take root, and growth followed as
the natural result of the inherent vitality of the organ-
ism. As Dr Eitel well points out, this small social
body did not originate in Hongkong : it had had a
long preparatory history in Macao, and in the Canton
factories, and may be considered, therefore, in the light
of a healthy swarm from the older hives.
During the first few years of the occupation the
selection of the station was the subject of a good
deal of cheap criticism in the press. A commer-
cial disappointment and a political failure, it was
suggested by some that the place should be abandoned.
It was contrasted unfavourably with the island of
Chusan, which had been receded to China under the
same treaty which had ceded Hongkong to Great
Britain; and even as late as 1858 Lord Elgin ex-
claimed, " How anybody in their senses could have
preferred Hongkong to Chusan seems incredible."
But, in point of fact, there had been little or no
conscious choice in the matter. The position may be
said to have chosen itself, since no alternative was
left to the first British settlers. As for Chusan, it
had been occupied and abandoned several times. The
East India Company had an establishment there in
the beginning of the eighteenth century, and if that
station was finally given up either on its merits or
in favour of Hongkong, it was certainly not without
experience of the value of the more northerly position.
Whatever hypothetical advantages, commercial or other-
wise, might have accrued from the retention of Chusan,
the actual position attained by Hongkong as an em-
porium of trade, a centre of industry, and one of the
great shipping ports in the world, furnishes an un-
VOL. I. s
274 HONGKONG. [chap. xiv.
answerable defence both of the choice of the site and
the poUtical structure which has been erected on it.
Canton being at once the centre of foreign trade and
the focus of Chinese hostihty, vicinity to that city
w^as an indispensable condition of the location of the
British entrepot, and the place of arms from which
commerce could be defended. And it would be hard
even now to point to any spot on the Chinese coast
which fulfilled the conditions so well as Hongkong.
The course of its development did not run smooth. It
was not to be expected. The experiment of planting
a British station in contact w4th the most energetic
as well as the most turbulent section of the population
of China was not likely to be carried out without mis-
takes, and many have been committed. Indeed, from
the day of its birth down to the present time domestic
dissensions and recriminations respecting the manage-
ment of its affairs have never ceased.
This was inevitable in a political microcosm having
neither diversity of interest nor atmospheric space to
soften the perspective. The entire interests of the
colony were comprised within the focal distance of
myopic vision. Molehills thus became mountains, and
the mote in each brother's eye assumed the dimensions
of animalcula seen through a microscope. The bitter
feuds between the heads of the several departments of
the lilliputian Government which prevailed during the
first twenty years must have been fatal to any young
colony if its progress had depended on the wisdom of
its rulers. Happily a higher law governs all these
things.
Freedom carried with it the necessary consequences,
and for many years the new colony was a tempting
AN ALSATIA. 275
Alsatia for Chinese malefactors, an asylum for pirates,
who put on and off that character with wonderful
facility, and could hatch their plots there fearless
of surveillance. When the Taiping rebellion was at
its height, piracy became so mixed with insurrection
that the two were not distinguishable, and it required
both firmness and vigilance on the part of the authori-
ties to prevent the harbour of Hongkong becoming
the scene of naval engagements between the bellig-
erents. During the hostilities of 1857-58 a species
of dacoity was practised with impunity by Chinese,
who were tempted by rewards for the heads of English-
men offered by the authorities of Canton.
It cannot, therefore, be denied that the immigrants
from the mainland in the first and even the second
decade of its existence were leavened with an undesir-
able element, causing anxiety to the responsible rulers.
The Chinese authorities, as was natural, waged re-
lentless war on the colony from its birth. Though
compelled formally to admit that the island and its
dependencies were a British possession, they still
maintained a secret authority over the Chinese who
settled there, and even attempted to levy taxes. As
they could not lay hands on its trade, except the
valuable portion of it which was carried on by native
craft, they left no stone unturned to destroy that.
By skilful diplomacy, for which they are entitled to
the highest credit, they obtained control over the
merchant junks trading to Hongkong, and imposed
restrictions on them calculated to render their traffic
impossible. By the same treaty they obtained the
appointment of a British officer as Chinese revenue
agent in Hongkong — a concession, however, disallowed
276 HONGKONG. [chap. xiv.
by the good sense of the British Government. But
the Chinese were very tenacious of the idea of making
Hongkong a customs station, never relaxing their
efforts for forty years, until the convention of 1886
at last rewarded their perseverance by a partial
fulfilment of their hopes.
For reasons which, if not very lofty, are yet very
human, the diplomatic and consular agents of Great
Britain have never looked sympathetically on the
colony — indeed have often sided with the Chinese in
their attempts to curtail its rights.
Nor has the Home Government itself always treated
the small colony with parental consideration. Before
it was out of swaddling-clothes the Treasury ogre
began to open his mouth and, like the East India
Company, demand remittances. A military establish-
ment was maintained on the island, not for the
benefit of the residents, but for the security of a
strategical position in the imperial system. The col-
onists were mulcted in a substantial share of the
cost, which the governor was instructed to wring
out of them. The defences themselves, however, were
neglected, and allowed to grow obsolete and useless,
and, if we mistake not, it was the civil community,
and not the Government, that insisted on their being
modernised. The compromise eventually arrived at
was, that the colonists provided the guns and the
imperial Government the forts. An interesting paral-
lel to this was the case of Gibraltar, which pos-
sessed no dock until the civil community by sheer
persistence, extending over many years, at length
overcame the reluctance of the British Government
to provide so essential an adjunct to its naval estab-
PROSPERITY. 277
lishment. The colony had suffered much from the
war with China, but the Home Government refused
it any participation in the indemnity extorted from
the Chinese.
But these and other drawbacks were counter-
balanced, and eventually remedied, by the advantages
offered by a free port and a safe harbour. Stand-
ing in the fair way of all Eastern commerce, which
pays willing tribute to the colony, Hongkong at-
tracted trade from all quarters in a steadily increas-
ing volume, and became the pivot for the whole
ocean traffic of the Far East. ^ The tide of pros-
perity could not be stayed — it invaded every section
of the community. The character of the Chinese
population was continuously raised. The best of
them accumulated wealth : the poorest found remun-
erative employment for their labour. Crime, with
which the colony had been tainted, diminished as
much through the expulsive power of material pros-
perity as from the judicious measures of the ex-
ecutive Government, for the credit must not be
denied to successive administrators for the improve-
ment in the condition of the colony. Among those
none was more deserving of praise than Sir Richard
MacDonnell (1865-72), who on catching sight, as he
entered the harbour, of an enormous building, which
he was told was the jail, remarked, " I will not fill
that, but stop the crime ; " and he was nearly as
good as his word, — a terror to evil-doers.
A Crown colony is the form of government which
challenges the most pungent criticism. The elected
1 The tonnage entered and cleared for the year 1898 amounted to
17,265,780, of which one-half was under the British flag.
278 HONGKONG. [chap. xiv.
members of its legislature, being a minority, can
only in the last resort acquiesce in the decisions of
the official majority who constitute the executive
Government. Such a minority, however, is by no
means wanting in influence, for it is, after all, pub-
licity which is the safeguard of popular liberty.
The freedom of speech enjoyed by an Opposition
which has no fear of the responsibility of office be-
fore its eyes widens the scope of its criticisms, and
imparts a refreshing vigour to the invective of those
of its members who possess the courage of their
convictions. It reaches the popular ear, and the
apprehension of an adverse public opinion so stimu-
lated can never fail to have its effect on the acts
of the Administration. Under such a regime it
seems natural that, other things being equal, each
governor in turn should be esteemed the worst who
has borne rule in the colony, and in any case
his merits are never likely to be fairly gauged
by any local contemporary estimate. King Stork,
though fair and far-seeing, may be more obnoxious
to criticism than King Log, who makes things
pleasant during his official term.
Hongkong being established as a free port, the
functions of Government were practically limited to
internal administration, and the question of greatest
importance was the control of the Chinese popula-
tion which poured in. This was a new problem.
Chinese communities had, indeed, settled under for-
eign rule before, as in the Straits Settlements, in
Java, and in Manila, but at such distances from
their home as rendered the settlers amenable to any
local regulations which might be imposed on them.
PROGRESSIVE IMPROVEMENT. 279
Distance even acted as a strainer, keeping back the
dregs. But Hongkong was nearer to China than
the Isle of Wight is to Hampshire. Evil - doers
could come and go at will. It could be overrun
in the night and evacuated in the morning. Spies
were as uncontrollable as house-flies, and whenever
it suited the Chinese Government to be hostile,
they proved their power to establish such a reign
of terror in the colony that it was dangerous to
stray beyond the beat of the armed policeman.
Clearly it was of primary importance to come to
terms with the native community, to reduce them
to discipline, to encourage the good and discourage
the bad among the Chinese settlers. As their num-
bers increased the public health demanded a yet
stricter supervision of their habits. Sanitary science
had scarcely dawned when the colony was founded,
and its teachings had to be applied, as they came
to light, to conditions of life which had been al-
lowed to grow up in independence of its require-
ments. To tolerate native customs, domestic habits,
and manner of living, while providing for the gen-
eral wellbeing of a community in a climate which
at its best is debilitating, taxed the resources of
the British executive, and of course gave rise to
perpetual recrimination. But the thing has been
accomplished. Successive conflagrations have co-oper-
ated with the march of sanitary reform and the
advance in their worldly circumstances in so im-
proving the dwellings of the population, that their
housing now compares not unfavourably with that
of the native cities of India. The Southern Chinese
are naturally cleanly, and appreciative of good order
280 HONGKONG. [chap. xiv.
when it is judiciously introduced among them, even
from a foreign source.
A more complex question was that of bringing an
alien population such as the Chinese within the moral
pale of English law, for law is vain unless it ap-
peals to the public conscience. The imposition of
foreign statutes on a race nursed on oral tradition
and restrained from misdoing by bonds invisible to
their masters was not an undertaking for which
success could be safely foretold. The effect of a
similar proceeding on the subtle natives of India
has been described as "substituting for a recognised
morality a mere game of skill, at which the natives
can give us long odds and beat us." " The mercan-
tile and money-lending classes in India," says Mr S.
S. Thorburn, " delight in the intricacy and surprises
of a good case in court." With the Chinese it has
been otherwise. The population of Hongkong have
80 far assimilated the foreign law that, whether or
not it satisfies their innate sense of right, it at least
governs their external conduct, and crime has been
reduced very low : as for litigation, it is compara-
tively rare ; it is disreputable, and has no place in
the Chinese commercial economy.
The best proofs of their acceptance of colonial rule is
the constantly increasing numbers of the Chinese resi-
dents ; the concentration of their trading capital there ;
their investments in real estate and in local industries ;
their identification with the general interests of the
colony, and their adopting it as a home instead of a
place of temporary exile. The means employed to con-
ciliate the Chinese must be deemed on the whole to
have been successful. There was first police super-
NATIVE ADMINISTRATION. 281
vision, then official protection under a succession of
qualified officers, then representation in the Colonial
Legislature and on the commission of the peace. The
colonial executive has wisely left to the Chinese a
large measure of a kind of self-government which is far
more effisctive than anything that could find its expres-
sion in votes of the Legislature. The administration of
purely Chinese affairs by native committees, with a
firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to fulfil
every purpose of government. The aim has been
throughout to ascertain and to gratify, when prac-
ticable, the reasonable wants of the Chinese, who have
responded to these advances by an exhibition of public
spirit which no society could excel. It is doubtful
whether in the wide dominion of the Queen there are
250,000 souls more appreciative of orderly government
than the denizens of the whilom nest of pirates and
cut-throats — Hongkong.
As an educational centre Hongkong fulfils a function
whose value is difficult to estimate. From the founda-
tion of the colony the subject engaged the attention of
the executive Government, €is well as of different sec-
tions of the civil community. The missionary bodies
were naturally very early in the field, and there was
for a good many years frank co - operation between
them and the mercantile community in promoting
schools both for natives and Europeans. In time,
however, either their aims were found to diverge or
else their estimate of achievement differed, and many
of the missionary teaching establishments were left
without support.
After an interval of languor, however, new life was
infused into the educational schemes of the colony.
282 HONGKONG. [chap. xiv.
The emulation of religious sects and the common desire
to bring the lambs of the flock into their respective
folds inspired the efforts of the propagandists, their zeal
reacting on the colonial Government itself with the
most gratifying results, so far at least as the extension
of the field of their common efforts was concerned.
The Chinese had imported their own school systems,
while taking full advantage of the educational facilities
provided by the Government and the Christian bodies.
Being an intellectual race, they are well able to as-
similate the best that Christendom has to offer them.
But the colonial system contents itself with a sound
practical commercial education, which has equipped
vast numbers of Chinese for the work of clerks, in-
terpreters, and so forth, and has thus been the means
of spreading the knowledge of the English language
over the coast of China, and of providing a medium
of communication between the native and European
mind.
The material progress of Hongkong speaks volumes
for the energy of its community. The precipitous
character of the island left scarcely a foothold for
business or residential settlement. The strip which
formed the strand front of the city of Victoria afforded
room for but one street, forcing extensions up the
rugged face of the hill which soon was laid out in zig-
zag terraces : foundations for the houses are scarped
out of the rock, giving them the appearance of citadels.
The locality being subject to torrential rains, streets
and roads had to be made with a finished solidity which
is perhaps unmatched. Bridges, culverts, and gutters
all being constructed of hewn granite and fitted with
impervious cement, the storm-waters are carried off as
ADVERSE CONDITIONS OVERCOME. 283
clean as from a ship's deck. These municipal works
were not achieved without great expense and skilfully-
directed labour, of which an unlimited supply can
always be depended on. And the credit of their
achievement must be equally divided between the
Government and the civil community.
The island is badly situated as regards its water-
supply, which has necessitated the excavation of
immense reservoirs on the side farthest from the town,
the aqueduct being tunnelled for over a mile through a
solid granite mass. These and other engineering works
have rendered Hongkong the envy of the older colonies
in the Far East. No less so the palatial architecture in
which the one natural product of the island has been
turned to the most effective account. The quarrying
of granite blocks, in which the Chinese are as great
adepts as they are in dressing the stones for building,
has been so extensive as visibly to alter the profile of
the island.
A great deficiency of the island as a commercial site
being the absence of level ground, the enterprise of the
colonists has been incessantly directed towards supply-
ing the want. Successive reclamations on the sea-front,
costing of course large sums of money, have so enlarged
the building area that the great thoroughfare called
Queen's Road now runs along the back instead of the
front of a new city, the finest buildings of all being the
most recent, standing upon the newly reclaimed land.
It is characteristic of such improvements, that, while in
course of execution, they should be deemed senseless
extravagance, due to the ambition of some speculator
or the caprice of some idealist, thus perpetually illus-
trating the truth of the Scottish saying, " Fules and
284 HONGKONG. [chap. xiv.
bairns should never see a thing half done." Hongkong
has been no exception to so universal a rule.
The industrial enterprise of the colony has fully
kept pace with its progress in other respects. The
Chinese quarter resembles nothing so much as a colony
of busy ants, where every kind of handicraft is plied
with such diligence, day in and day out, as the Chinese
alone seem capable of The more imposing works con-
ducted by foreigners occupy a prominent place in the
whole economy of the Far East. Engineering and
shipbuilding have always been carried on in the
colony. Graving - docks capable of accommodating
modern battleships, and of executing any repairs or
renewals required by them as efficiently as could be
done in any part of the world, constitute Hongkong
a rendezvous for the navies of all nations. Manu-
factures of various kinds flourish on the island.
Besides cotton - mills, some of the largest sugar-
refineries in the world, fitted with the most modern
improvements, work up the raw material from
Southern China, Formosa, the Philippines, and other
sugar-growing countries in the Eastern Archipelago,
thus furnishing a substantial item of export to the
Australian colonies and other parts of the world.
The colony has thereby created for itself a commerce
of its own, while its strategical situation has enabled
it to retain the character of a pivot on which all Far
Eastern commerce turns.
This pivotal position alone, and not the local
resources of the place, enabled the colony to found one
of the most successful financial organisations of the
modern world. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank
has had a history not dissimilar from that of the
HONGKONG AND SHANGHAI BANK. 285
colony as a whole, one of success followed by periods
of alternate depression and elation. Now in the
trouofh of the wave and now on its crest, the bank
has worked its way by inherent vitality through all
vicissitudes of good or bad fortune, until it has gone
near to monopolising the exchange business of the Far
East, and has become the recognised medium between
the money-market of London and the financial needs of
the Imperial Chinese administration.
It should not be overlooked as a condition of its
success that the great Hongkong Bank, like all other
successful joint -stock enterprises, whether in Hong-
kong or in China, has from its origin borne a broad
international character. Though legally domiciled in a
British possession, representative men of all nation-
alities sit on its board and take their turn in the
chairmanship as it comes round. The international
character, indeed, may be cited as one of the ele-
ments of the success of the colony itself. No dis-
ability of any kind attaches to alien settlers, not
even exclusion from the jury panel. They are free to
acquire property, to carry on business, to indulge their
whims, and to avail themselves of all the resources of
the colony, and enjoy the full protection of person and
property which natural-born British subjects possess.
They come and go at their pleasure, no questions
asked, no luggage examined, no permits required for
any purpose whatever coming within the scope of
ordinary life. Nor are they even asked whether they
appreciate these advantages or not ; in fact they are
as free to criticise the institutions under which they
live as if they had borne their part in creating them,
which, in fact, they have done, and this it is which
286 HONGKONG. [chap. xiv.
marks the vitality of the British system, whether in
the mother country or in its distant dependencies.
The exceedingly cramped conditions of life on the
island having proved such an obstacle to its develop-
ment, the acquisition of a portion of the mainland
forming one side of the harbour was at an early period
spoken of as a desideratum for the colony. The idea
took no practical shape, however, until the occupation
of Canton by the Allied forces under the administration
of Consul Parkes ; and it is one of the most noteworthy
achievements of that indefatigable man that, during the
time when Great Britain was in fact at war with the
Government of China, he should have succeeded, on his
own initiative, in obtaining from the governor of the
city a lease of a portion of land at Kowloon, which was
subsequently confirmed by the convention of Peking in
1860. The improvement of artillery and other means
of attack on sea-forts left the island very vulnerable,
and the measures taken by the various European
Powers to establish naval stations on the Chinese
coast, together with the efforts which the country
itself was making to become a modern military Power,
rendered it a matter of absolute necessity, for the
preservation of the island, that a sufficient area of
the adjacent territory should be included within its
defences. Following the example set by Germany
and Russia, the British Government concluded an ar-
rangement with the Government of China by which
the needed extension was secured to Great Britain
under a ninety - nine years lease. A convention em-
bodying this agreement was signed at Peking in
June 1898.
287
CHAPTER XY.
MACAO.
Contrast with Hongkong — An interesting survival — Trading facilities —
Eelations with Chinese Government — Creditable to both parties —
Successful resistance to the Dutch — Portuguese expulsion from Japan
— English trading competitors enjoy hospitality of Macao — Trade with
Canton — Hongkong becomes a rival — Macao eclipsed — Gambling,
Coolie trade, Piracy — Population — Cradle of many improvements —
Distinguished names.
The three hours' transit from Hongkong to Macao
carries one into another world. The incessant scream
of steam - launches which plough the harbour in all
directions night and day gives place to the drowsy
chime of church bells, and instead of the throng of
busy men, one meets a solitary black mantilla walking
demurely in the middle of a crooked and silent street.
Perhaps nowhere is the modern world with its clamour
thrown into such immediate contrast with that which
belongs to the past.
The settlement of Macao is a monument of Chinese
toleration and of Portuguese tenacity. The Portuguese
learnt at an early stage of their intercourse the use
of the master-key to good relations with the Chinese
authorities. It was to minister freely to their cupidity,
which the Portuguese could well afford to do out of the
profits of their trading. To '* maintain ourselves in
288 MACAO. [chap. XV.
this place we must spend much with the Chinese
heathen," as they themselves said in 1593 in a letter
to Philip I. Macao is, besides, an interesting relic of
that heroic age when a new heaven and a new earth
became the dream of European adventurers. The spot
was excellently well suited for the purposes, commercial
and propagandist, which it was destined to serve ; for
in spite of the crimes and cruelties of the sixteenth
century argonauts, the religious element was strongly
represented in all their enterprises.^ Situated outside
the river proper, though w^ithin its wide estuary, and
open to the sea, the settlement yet communicates by
an inner passage or branch of the Pearl river with the
city of Canton. It possesses two sheltered harbours
adequate to the nautical requirements of the Middle
Ages.
The small peninsula of Macao combined business
conveniences with salubrity of climate in a degree ab-
solutely unrivalled in the torrid zone. Its picturesque
scenery was always found refreshing to the eye wearied
by long contemplation of brick walls, malarious swamps,
or the monotonous glare of the melancholy ocean. From
the Chinese point of view, also, it was an ideal loca-
tion for strangers, since they could be thus kept out of
sight, isolated like a ship in quarantine, and put under
1 Nomenclature alone sufficiently attests this fact — whether of the ships
that carried them or of the lands they christened, as Natal, Trinidad, &c.
The gigantic cross carved in the granite face of Table Mountain (it is said)
by Vasco da Gama proclaimed to the wide ocean the sanctity of his mission.
English adventurers were strongly imbued with the same pious spirit.
Down to our own day marine policies open with the words, " In the name
of God, Amen " ; while the bill of lading, which within the past generation
has become packed with clauses like a composite Act of Parliament — all
tending to absolve the owner from responsibility as carrier — formerly began
with the words, " Shipped by the grace of God," and ended with the prayer
that " God would send the good ship to her desired port in safety."
EARLY PORTUGUESE SETTLERS. 289
effective restraint. The situation lent itself to the
traditional Chinese tactics of controlling barbarians by
stopping their food-supply, a form of discipline of which
the efficacy had been proved at an early period in the
history of the colony. The Chinese adopted all the
measures they could think of to confine traders to
Macao, where certain indulgences were held out to
them, subject to good behaviour.
The Portuguese adventurers of the early sixteenth
century, to whom the modern world owes so much,
did well in pitching on this "gem of the orient earth
and open sea" as a link in their chain of trading
stations, which extended from the coasts of Africa to
the Japanese islands. To trade as such the Chinese
Government never seem to have had any objection,
nor, would it appear, to foreigners as such. So long
as there was nought to fear from their presence, the
ancient maxim of cherishing men from afar could be
followed without reserve, for the Chinese are by nature
not an unkindly people. Tradition, indeed, claims for
the settlement of foreigners in the Cantonese archi-
pelago a purely hospitable origin, a storm-beaten vessel
having in the year 1517 received permission from the
local authorities to repair damages and dry her cargo
there. The Portuguese frequented several harbours
before they settled at Macao, their principal station
being the island of Sanchuan, where Xavier was buried.
About the middle of the sixteenth century, the city of
Canton being besieged by a large piratical force whose
base of operations was Macao, the high provincial
authorities in their extremity sought the aid of the
Portuguese, who came promptly to the rescue of the
city, defeated the pirates, and captured their strong-
VOL. I. T
290 MACAO. [chap. XV.
hold. Moved by mixed feelings of gratitude and policy,
the Canton authorities thereupon sanctioned the Portu-
guese occupation of Macao, not ill-pleased to set up at
that strategic point so effective a counterpoise to the
native* pirates.
It said as much for the tact of the Portuguese
as for the forbearance of the Chinese authorities that
such an isolated position as that of Macao should
have been held without force, and only on the prestige
of past achievements, on terms of mutual amity, for
nearly four hundred years. The Portuguese squatters
paid to the Chinese Government a ground - rent of
about £150 per annum, in consideration of which
they enjoyed practical independence. " The mer-
chants, fully aware that their settlement at Macao
was due neither to any conquest, nor as a return for
services by co-operating in destruction of pirates, bore
in mind two principles — to be on good terms with the
provincial authorities, and to improve as much as
possible their exclusive trade with China." The forms
of administrative authority were indeed maintained
by the Chinese, their permission being required to
reside and to build houses and so forth — regulations
which were more vexatious, perhaps, in theory than
in fact. The exercise of Chinese jurisdiction over
the person was asserted with moderation as regards
the Portuguese, though full authority was maintained
over the native population. The Portuguese, how-
ever, became dissatisfied with the relationship which
had worked smoothly for three hundred years, and
when the treaty - making era arrived they sought
means to improve their status. By persistent efforts
they gradually freed themselves from the overlord-
VICISSITUDES. 291
ship of China, this object being finally attained by
good diplomacy in 1887, when the Imperial Govern-
ment ceded to Portugal sovereign rights over Macao
in consideration of assistance rendered by the colony
in the collection of the Chinese opium revenue.
Macao did not escape the fortunes of the long war
of commercial supremacy which was waged between
Holland and Portugal, but the colony successfully
resisted two attempts to reduce it in 1622 and 1627.
Its resources at that period enabled the diminutive
settlement even to play some part in the game of
empire in China itself, for we are told that a force of
400 men from India, under the command of two Portu-
guese officers, proceeded by land to Peking to support
the last Ming emperor in his struggle with the invad-
ing Manchus. These auxiliaries returned whence they
came without seeing active service.
Although the Dutch failed to take military pos-
session of Macao, they took other trading colonies,
and succeeded eventually in wresting from the Portu-
guese their Asiatic commerce. They supplanted them
entirely in Japan, whose "gold and spoils" had greatly
enriched the colony. Being expelled, not without
reason, in 1662, the Portuguese fugitives from Japan
retired to Macao.
Other competitors also began to appear and to
assert their right to participate in the trade of the
Far East, and Macao became the hostelry for mer-
chants of all nations, who carried on business with
the great Chinese emporium. Canton. Chief among
these guests were the Dutch and English East India
Companies, both of which maintained establishments
at Macao for some two hundred years.
292 MACAO. [chap. XV.
The English Company had made use of the Macao
anchorage first under a treaty with the viceroy of
Goa, and subsequently under Cromwell's treaty with
the Portuguese Government in 1654, which permitted
English ships to enter all the ports in the Portuguese
Indies. Before the close of the seventeenth century
ships were despatched direct from England to Macao.
The English adventurers were not satisfied with the
privilege of anchoring so far from the great emporium,
but direct trade with Canton had yet to be fought
for. The energetic Captain Weddell, commanding the
ship London, in 1655 met the obstructive tactics of
the Cantonese authorities by bombarding the Bogue
forts and forcing his way up the river, after which
he was received in friendly audience by the viceroy,
and was granted full participation in the Canton trade,
much to the chagrin, it is said, of the jealous Macao
merchants.
The loss of its own direct commerce was thus com-
pensated for by the tribute which the Portuguese
colony was able to levy upon the general trade of
China, by whomsoever carried on. Massive houses,
with immense verandahs running all round them,
and spacious and cool interior recesses, attest to
this day the ancient glory of Macao. Though
now neglected, and perhaps converted to baser uses,
they afibrd a glimpse of the easy life led by the
Company's agents and the merchants in the days
before the treaty. During the business season, which
was in the cool months, the whole mercantile com-
munity repaired to the factories at Canton while the
ships lay at the deep-water anchorage of Whampoa,
and between these two points the work of the year
A REFRESHING RETREAT. 293
was done — arduous enough, no doubt, while it lasted.
In spite of some contemporary testimony to the con-
trary, one can hardly conceive the quasi- imprisonment
within the Canton factories as a kind of life to be en-
joyed, but only as one to be endured for an object. At
any rate, when the last cargo of tea had been shipped
off the scene was like the break-up of a school. The
merchants and their whole establishment betook them-
selves to their sumptuous river barges, and glided
down the stream to Macao, where the luxury of a
long holiday awaited them. Once at least in every
year the foreigners were in full accord with the
Chinese authorities, who sternly forbade loitering,
and kept up the form of peremptorily sending the
merchants away as soon as their business had been
done. Nevertheless, those who desired to remain
found no difficulty.
The Portuguese colony, whether or not under com-
pulsion, played an ungracious part in the troubles
which preceded the outbreak of war between Great
Britain and China. To evict from their houses a
company of helpless people and drive them to sea,
even at the bidding of an oriental tyrant, was a
proceeding little in keeping with the traditions
of Lusitanian chivalry. But Englishmen may very
well forgive the Portuguese this act of inhumanity,
since it compelled the fugitives to seek a home of
their own in the Canton waters, destined to eclipse
the fading glories of "la cidade do nome de Deos da
Macao."
The treaty of 1842, which enabled British merchants
to set up house for themselves, deprived Macao of a
large portion of its revenue ; but even under this eclipse
294 MACAO. [chap. XV.
the era of its prosperity did not then come quite to
an end.
The occupation of Hongkong supplied to British
traders all the wants which Macao had previously
furnished, accompanied by a security which the
Portuguese Administration was unable to confer. Its
harbour was incomparably superior, fulfilling all the
requirements of a modern seaport. These advantages
were irresistible ; nevertheless, the merchants vacated
with evident reluctance the roomy mansions in which
the pleasantest part of their lives had been spent.
Several of them retained possession of their Macao
homes, using them for purposes of recreation. " Dent's
comfortable quarters at Macao " afforded an agreeable
retreat for Admiral Keppel, and no doubt many others
of the nautical brotherhood before and after his time ;
for the sea-breezes of Macao were almost as great a
relief to the denizens of Queen's Road as to the
community which, after the treaty, was permanently
quartered in the Canton factories. To this day Macao,
well served by fast and commodious steamers, remains
a favoured resort for week-end tourist parties, picnics,
honeymoons, and the like.
The population of Macao is estimated at 75,000
Chinese and under 4000 Portuguese, of whom the
percentage of pure blood is not large. The so-called
Portuguese of the Chinese coast differ from those of Goa
as the Chinese differ from the Indian natives. They
supply a want in the general economy : in China, as
clerks, for whose work they have, like the indispensable
babu, a natural aptitude ; in India, as domestic and
personal servants. With the increase of typewriting
and the practice of dictation in mercantile establish-
THE COOLIE TRADE. 295
merits the clerical services of the Macaese are likely
to assume less importance. They are good Catholics,
smoke cigarettes, and are harmless.
Though for many years Macao suffered depression
from the loss of its foreign trade, its natural advantages
in course of time attracted to it new branches of
industry, which to some extent revived its drooping
prosperity. Foreign and native merchants found it
convenient to conduct a certain portion of their trade
in tea and silk and other articles in the quiet old city,
where burdens were light and labour abundant. Traffic
of a less desirable character found also its natural
domicile in the colony. It became the headquarters
of the lucrative coolie trade, which there for many
years found an asylum where it feared no law, human
or divine. To the credit of the Portuguese Govern-
ment, however, this traffic was abolished in 1874.
Opium and gambling licences now provide the chief
contributions to a colonial revenue, the surplus of
which over expenditure furnishes a respectable annual
tribute to the needy mother country.
There is yet another species of enterprise historically
associated with the colony which cannot be altogether
omitted, though it should be mentioned with the ex-
tenuating circumstances. Piracy, as we have seen,
was rampant on the coasts of Asia, as it was also
in Europe, before Yasco da Gama doubled the Cape ;
and it was not to be expected in an age when
successful buccaneers in the Atlantic were earning
distinction by harassing the common enemy Spain,
that an isolated colony in remote Asia, detached
from Europe a century and a half earlier, should
have anticipated the ethical refinements of the
296 MACAO. [chap. XV.
awakening conscience of Christendom. Slavery it-
self was tolerated among the most enlightened races
until the middle of the present century, and if the
Macaese did feel a sneaking toleration for mitigated
forms of it, as well as for other species of criminality
which flourished all round them, it must be admitted
the temptation lay very near to their hand. They had
been brought up for centuries in close familiarity with
the practices of the sea-rover. Though it cannot be
said that piracy ever took rank as a domestic institution
in patriarchal Macao, yet the openings for young men
were much restricted by family custom, and instances
have been reported of improvident sons laying unfilial
hands on their fathers* junks on the coast with a view
to rectifying the balance of the family finance.
Whether or not such modes of redress were ever
actually carried into effect, the fact that legends of
this character should have woven themselves into the
tissue of local gossip within comparatively recent
times, and in connection with well - known names,
indicates a state of feeling which should be allowed
for in considering the relation of Macao to Chinese
piracy.
The influence of Macao on the history of foreign
relations with China extended much beyond the sphere
of mere commercial interests. For three hundred years
it was for foreigners the gate of the Chinese empire,
and all influences, good and bad, which came from
without were infiltrated through that narrow opening,
which also served as the medium through which China
was revealed to the Western world. It was in Macao
that the first lighthouse was erected, a symbol of the
illuminating mission of foreigners in China. It was
ITS EARLY CELEBRITIES. 297
there also that the first printing-press was set up,
employing movable type instead of the stereotype
wooden blocks used by the Chinese. From that press
was issued Morrison's famous Dictionary, and for a long
series of years the Chinese Repository, a perfect store-
house of authentic information concerning the Chinese
empire, conducted chiefly by English and American
missionaries. The first foreign hospital in China was
opened at Macao, and there vaccination was first prac-
tised. It was from Macao that the father of China
missions, Matteo Ricci, started on his adventurous
journey through the interior of the country in the
sixteenth century, ultimately reaching the capital,
where he established an influence over the Imperial
Court scarcely less than miraculous, thus laying the
foundation-stone of the Catholic propaganda in China.
The little Portuguese settlement has therefore played
no mean part in the changes which have taken place
in the great empire of China.
Of the personages associated with its history, the
most brilliant, or at least the best known, was St
Francis Xavier, the apostle of the Indies, — a man of so
magnetic a character that he was credited with the
miraculous gift of tongues, while as a matter of fact he
seems not to have been even an ordinarily good linguist,
speaking to the natives of the Far East only through
an interpreter. Xavier died and was buried in the
neighbouring island of Sanchuan, whence his remains
were transferred first to Macao itself and afterwards to
Goa. The names of Xavier and Ricci cast a halo over
the first century of the existence of Macao. Another
of the earlier residents of world-wide fame was the
poet Camoens, who in a grotto formed of granite blocks
298 MACAO. [chap. XV.
tumbled together by nature, almost washed by the
sea, sat and wrote the Portuguese epic ' The Lusiad,'
celebrating the adventures of the great navigator Yasco
da Gama. Of names belonging to the present century,
or the English period, two only need be mentioned
here. One was Robert Morrison, the father of English
sinology, who was sent to China by the London
Missionary Society in 1807. This remarkable man
had mastered the initial difficulties of the Chinese
language before leaving England. This he accom-
plished by the aid of a young Cantonese, and by
diligent study of MSS. in the British Museum, and of
a MS. Latin-Chinese dictionary lent to him by the
Royal Society. His teacher accompanied him on the
long voyage to China, during which Morrison laboured
" from morning to midnight." In Canton a Pekingese
teacher, a Catholic convert, was obtained, and the
study of Chinese was carried on assiduously. The
most enduring monument of these labours was the
Chinese-English dictionary, which was printed by the
East India Company at a cost of £15,000. This
standard work has been the fountain from which all
students of Chinese have drawn since his time.
Art has had but one representative, an Irish gentle-
man named George Chinnery, who resided in Macao
from 1825 till his death in 1852. Of Mr Chinnery s
drawings and paintings there are many scattered collec-
tions, on some of which we have been able to draw for
the illustrations in these volumes.
GEORGE CHINNERY.
{From an oil-painting by himself.')
299
CHAPTEK XYI.
PIRACY.
Association with Hongkong and Macao — Activity of British navy in sup-
pressing piracy — Its historic importance — Government relations with
pirates — The convoy system — Gross abuse — Hongkong legislation
— Progress of steam navigation — Fatal to piracy.
A FACTOR which has done so much to shape commer-
cial intercourse with China as piracy cannot be properly-
ignored in a survey like the present. The settlements
of Hongkong and Macao were forced into contact
with this time-honoured institution, for these places are
situated as near to the piratical centre as they are to
that of the typhoon zone. From the time of the first
war down to quite recent years the British squadron
on the China station was almost engrossed in the two
duties of surveying the coast and rivers, and of re-
pressing piracy, — services which were not interrupted
even during the progress of a war with the Imperial
Government. Both proceedings were anomalous, being
a usurpation of the sovereign functions of the Chinese
Government. That Government, however, never
evinced more than a languid interest in operations
against its piratical subjects. Piracy, as such, seems
indeed to have enjoyed that fatalistic toleration which
the Chinese Government and people are wont to ex-
300 PIRACY. [chap. XVI.
tend to every species of abuse, on the principle that
what cannot be cured must be endured. Nor is China
the only country where banditti have established with
their future victims a conventional relation like that of
certain predatory animals which are said to live on easy
terms with the creatures destined to become their prey.
Successful leaders, whether of brigands or of sea-rovers,
have from time to time attained high political status in
the empire. Wingrove Cooke says : —
Whenever anything occurs of historic importance we always
find that some bandit has had a hand in it. The land was
always full of them. When the Tartars possessed themselves
of China, one of these bandit chiefs had just possessed himself
of Peking, and the last of the Ming race had just hanged him-
self. It was a pirate who drove the Dutch out of Formosa ;
the son of a " celebrated pirate " who helped the Cantonese to
defend their city against the Tartars ; and it was a pirate who
the other day destroyed the Portuguese piratical fleet at Ningpo.
In all ages and at all times China has been coasted by pirates
and traversed by bands of robbers.
In the ' Peking Gazette,' which he quotes, the Im-
perial Government itself thus describes the rule of
the robbers : —
They carry off persons in order to extort ransoms for them ;
they falsely assume the characters of police officers ; they build
fast boats professedly to guard the grain-fields, and into these
they put from ten to twenty men, who cruise along the rivers,
violently plundering the boats of travellers, or forcibly carrying
off the wives and daughters of the tanka boat people. The
inhabitants of the villages and hamlets fear these robbers as
they would tigers, and do not offer them any resistance. The
husbandman must pay these robbers a charge, else as soon as
his crop is ripe it is plundered, and the whole field laid bare.
In the precincts of the metropolis they set tire to places during
the night, that, under pretence of saving and defending, they
may plunder and carry off.
GOVERNMENT RELATIONS WITH PIRATES. 301
When it suits the Government to enlist rebels or
robbers in its service it condones their misdeeds, and
confers on them rank and honour. The chief of the
Black Flags, who kept up a guerilla war against
the French in Tongking, was a recent case in point,
as was also, if report speaks truly, the late gallant
Admiral Ting, who perished in the Chinese forlorn-hope
at Weihai-wei in 1895. The relationship between
the authorities and the freebooters is often of so
equivocal a character, that foreign naval officers in
their crusade against pirates may have failed at times
to make the proper discrimination. Vessels seized as
pirates occasionally escaped the fate which should
have awaited them by proving themselves revenue
protectors. But if the Government ever suffered from
cases of mistaken identity, the balance was hand-
somely redressed ; for piracy and smuggling being
ingeniously blended, the forces of the British colony
might in their turn be induced, by information sup-
plied by the Chinese authorities, to act as revenue
cruisers, under the belief that they were being led
against pirates. The hard fights resulting in the
destruction of piratical fleets bearing all the evidences
of criminality were, however, too frequent to permit
any doubt as to the general character of the craft
so treated.
But the anti-piratical agency was not confined to
the commissioned officers of her Majesty's navy.
Foreigners of all nations were drawn into the coast-
ing traffic, in various capacities, as an antidote to
piracy, with benefit, no doubt, to legitimate trade,
yet not without some serious drawbacks. Dr Eitel
tells us that during the first decade after the war
302 PIRACY. [chap. XVI.
the waters of Hongkong swarmed with pirates, that
the whole coast-line was under the control of a black-
mailing confederacy, and that the peaceful trading
junk was obliged to be heavily armed, so that ex-
ternally there was nothing to distinguish a trader
from a pirate. During this period European seamen
took service with the native pirates who made Hong-
kong their headquarters, whence they drew their
supplies, and where they kept themselves informed
as to the movements of valuable merchandise and of
war -vessels. Foreigners were enlisted also in the
service of the honest trader ; Chinese merchants be-
gan to charter small European sailing - vessels for
coasting voyages, whereby they gained the protection
of a European flag, the prestige of a European crew,
and the better sea - going qualities of a European
vessel. Steamers also began to be employed to con-
voy the native junks.
The extension of the convoy system brought in its
train the most terrible abuses, the class of foreigners
so employed being as ready to sell their services to
the pirates as to the merchants, and to turn from pro-
tector to oppressor of the honest trader with as much
facility as Chinese fishermen and pirates interchange
their respective parts. Many tragedies were enacted
along the coast and rivers of China — many more, no
doubt, than ever became known to the foreign public.
Mr Medhurst, consul at Shanghai, said that the
foreigners employed by the Chinese to protect their
property on the water were guilty of atrocities of
all kinds in the inner waters, which the Chinese
authorities and people were unable to prevent. And
Mr Adkins, consul at Chinkiang on the Yangtze,
FOREIGN DESPERADOES. 303
reported in the same year, 1862, a series of brutal
murders committed by foreigners on the river, with
which the native authorities declined to interfere.
The criminals, not being amenable to any jurisdiction
but their own, were thus left free to commit their
outrages, unless some representative of their own
country happened to be on the spot. The Taiping
rebellion attracted desperate characters from all
quarters, to whom it was a matter of indifference
under what flag they served — pillage being their
sole inducement. The only conspicuous case of trial
of a foreigner for piracy was that of a young
American, Eli Boggs, who was condemned in the
Supreme Court of Hongkong in 1857, and sentenced
to transportation for life. From such experiences it
is to be apprehended that should any part of the
Chinese empire become disorganised, lawless foreigners
will be a more terrible scourge to the inhabitants
than even the native pirates and bandits.
Of the abuses developed by the convoy system, and
of the character of the foreigners concerned therein,
a graphic yet matter-of-fact account is given by
Wingrove Cooke. As the state of rampant lawless-
ness which prevailed at the time on the China coast,
and the traditional attitude of the Government to-
wards freebooters, are so perfectly illustrated in his
concise narrative of the destruction of a Portuguese
convoy, no apology is needed for quoting a passage
or two from Mr Cooke's letter dated Ningpo, August
24, 1857 :—
The fishing-boats which ply off the mouth of the river Yung
pay convoy duties to the extent of 50,000 dollars a-year ; and
the wood-junks that ply between Ningpo and Foochow, and the
304 PIRACY. [chap. XVI.
other native craft, raise the annual payment for protection to
200,000 dollars (£70,000) annually. These figures are start-
ling, but I have taken pains to ascertain their correctness.
The vessels employed in this convoy service were Portuguese
lorchas. These vessels were well armed and equipped. There
were no mandarin junks and no Portuguese ships of war to
cope with them or control them, and they became masters -of
this part of the coast. It is in the nature of things that these
privateers should abuse their power. They are accused of the
most frightful atrocities. It is alleged that they made descents
upon villages, carried off the women, murdered the men, and
burnt the habitations. They became infinitely greater scourges
than the pirates they were paid to repel. It is alleged, also,
that complaints to the Portuguese consul were vain ; that Por-
tuguese sailors taken red-handed and handed over to this consul
were suffered to escape from the consular prison. Kightly or
wrongly, the Chinese thought that the consul was in complicity
with the ruffians who were acting both as convoy and as pirates.
. . . The leader of the pirate fleet was — I am going back now
to a time three years ago — a Cantonese named A'Pak. The
authorities at Ningpo, in their weakness, determined to make
terms with him rather than submit to the tyranny of the
Portuguese.
A'Pak was made a mandarin of the third class ; and his
fleet — not altogether taken into Government pay, for that the
Chinese could not afford — was nominally made over to A'Pak's
brother. . . . After a few of these very sanguinary provoca-
tions, A'Pak — not, it is believed, without the concurrence of
the Taotai of Ningpo — determined to destroy this Portuguese
convoy fleet.
For this purpose A'Pak's brother collected his snake-boats
and convoy junks from along the whole coast, and assembled
about twenty of them, and perhaps 500 men. The Portuguese
were not long in hearing of these preparations, but they seem
to have been struck with panic. Some of their vessels went
south, some were taken at the mouth of the river. Seven
lorchas took refuge up the river, opposite the Portuguese
consulate. The sailors on board these lorchas landed some
of their big guns, and put the consulate in a state of defence,
and perhaps hoped that the neighbourhood of the European
houses and the character of the consulate would prevent an
Hongkong's measures against piracy. 305
attack. Not so. On the day I have above mentioned the
Canton fleet came up the river. The Portuguese consul immed-
iately fled. The lorchas fired one broadside at them as they
approached, and then the crews deserted their vessels and
made for the shore. About 200 Cantonese, accompanied by
a few Europeans, followed these 140 Portuguese and Manila-
men ashore. A fight took place in the streets. It was of
very short duration, for the Portuguese behaved in the most
dastardly manner. The Manila-men showed some spirit, but
the Portuguese could not even persuade themselves to fight
for their lives behind the walls of their consulate. The forti-
fied house was taken and sacked by these Chinamen, the
Portuguese were pursued among the tombs, where they sought
refuge, and forty of them were shot down, or hunted and
butchered with spears. . . .
Merciless as this massacre was, and little as is the choice
between the two sets of combatants, it must be owned that
the Cantonese acted with purpose and discipline. Three trad-
ing Portuguese lorchas which lay in the river with their flags
flying were not molested ; and no European, not a Portuguese,
was even insulted by the infuriated butchers. The stories
current of Souero and his Portuguese followers rivalled the
worst of the tales of the buccaneers, and public opinion in
Ningpo and the foreign settlement was strongly in favour of
the Cantonese.
But if Hongkong was the centre of piratical
organisation, it was also the centre of effort to put
it down. The exploits of her Majesty's ships, de-
stroying many thousands of heavily-armed piratical
junks, were loyally supplemented by the legislation
and the police of the Colonial Government, which
were continuously directed towards the extermination
of piracy. These measures, however, did not appear
to make any material impression on the pest. As
part of his general policy of suppressing crime, the
most drastic steps were taken by Sir Richard Mac-
Donnell against pirates. He struck at the root of
VOL. I. u
306 PIRACY. [chap. XVI.
the evil within the colony itself by penalising the
receivers of stolen goods, and by a stricter surveil-
lance over all Chinese vessels frequenting the har-
bour. He also endeavoured to secure the co - oper-
ation of the Chinese Government, without which no
permanent success could be hoped for. This was not,
indeed, the first time that Chinese co-operation had
been invoked. In one of the hardest fought actions
against a piratical stronghold — that of Sheipu Bay,
near Ningpo, in 1856 — her Majesty's brig Bittern
was towed into action throuo^h the bottle - neck of
the bay by a Chinese-owned steamer. But the as-
sistance rendered to the Government of Hongkong
by the steam-cruisers of the Chinese customs service
was of too ambiguous a character to be of real
use, smugglers rather than pirates being the object
of the Chinese pursuit — smugglers of whom the high
Chinese officials had good reason to be jealous.
The result of the police activity and of regula-
tions for the coast traffic was a great diminution
in the number of piracy cases brought before colonial
magistrates. This, however, by itself was not con-
clusive as to the actual decrease of the crime, for
it may only have indicated a change of strategy
forced on the pirates by the vigorous action of the
Colonial Government. Foreign vessels were by no
means exempt from the attentions of the piratical
fleets, though they seldom fell a prey to open as-
sault at sea. A different form of tactics was re-
sorted to where foreigners were the object of attack :
it was to embark as passengers a number of the
gang with arms secreted, who rose at a signal and
massacred the ship's officers. Even after steam ves-
STEAMERS CAUSE PIRACY TO LANGUISH. 307
sels had virtually superseded sailers on the coast
this device was too often successful through want
of care on the part of the master. These attacks
were carried out with great skill and daring, some-
times on the short passage of forty miles between
Hongkong and Macao, and in several instances almost
within the harbour limits of Hongkong itself
While awarding full credit to the indefatigable
exertions of the British squadron in China — the
only one that ever troubled itself in such matters
— and to the unremitting efforts of the colony of
Hongkong, the reduction, if not the extinction, of
armed piracy on the coast of China must be attrib-
uted largely to the commercial development, in
which the extension of the use of steam has played
the principal part. Organised by foreigners, and em-
ployed by Chinese, lines of powerful steamers have
gradually monopolised the valuable traffic, thus render-
ing the calling of the buccaneer obsolete and profitless.
Foreign traders, however, do well not to forget the
debt they owe to the institution which they have
superseded. But for the pirates, and the scarcely
less piratical exactions of officials, the Chinese would
not have sought the assistance and the protection
of foreign men, foreign ships, or foreign steamers.
Piracy has thus not only worked towards its own
cure, but has helped to inaugurate an era of pros-
perous trade, based on the consolidation of the
interests of Chinese and foreigners, such as may
foreshadow further developments in which the same
elements of success may continue in fruitful com-
bination.
308
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ARROW WAR, 1856-1860.
Lorchas — Outrage on the Arrow — Question of access to city — Tone of
British Foreign Office — Firm tone of British Government — Destruc-
tion of Canton factories and flight of foreign residents — Operations in
From the earliest days of the British occupation it
had been the aim of the Canton authorities to de-
stroy the "junk" trade of Hongkong by obstructive
regulations, for which the supplementary treaty of
1843 afforded them a certain warrant. But as the
Chinese began to settle in large numbers on the
island the claims of free commerce asserted them-
selves, and gradually made headway against the re-
strictive schemes of the mandarins. The Govern-
ment fostered the legitimate commercial ambition
of the Chinese colonists by passing ordinances w^here-
by they were enabled to register vessels of their
own, sail them under the British flag, and trade to
such ports as were open to British shipping. Certif-
icates of registry were granted only to men of sub-
stance and respectability who were lessees of Crown
land in the colony. The class of vessel for which
colonial registers were granted was of native build and
rig, more or less modified, of good sea-going qualities.
1856-60.] SEIZURE OF CREW OF BRITISH VESSEL. 309
known by the local name of lorcha. Naturally the
Canton authorities looked askance at any measure
aimed at the liberation of trade, and so truculent an
imperial commissioner as Yeh was not likely to miss
an opportunity of wreaking vengeance on the " native-
born" who dared to exercise privileges derived from
residence in the hateful colony.
One of these reo:istered vessels was the Arrow, com-
manded by an Englishman and manned by Chinese.
This vessel was in the course of her traffic boarded at
Canton at midday on October 8, 1856, by order of
the Chinese authorities, with marked official osten-
tation, her crew forcibly carried off on a charge,
according to a Chinese version, " of being in collu-
sion with barbarians," and her ensign hauled down.
How this outrage on the British flag was perpe-
trated, how resisted, and what came of it, have been
so often set forth that there is no need to dwell
upon the details here. The traditional insolence of
the Chinese was reasserted in all its virulence, as in
the days of Commissioner Lin, and once more the
British agents were confronted with the dilemma of
aggravating past griefs by submission or of putting
their foot down and ending them. A single-minded
and courageous man was in charge of British interests
in Canton, and, left with a free hand, there could be no
doubting the line Mr Parkes would take. The decision,
however, lay with Sir John Bo wring, governor of
Hongkong, her Majesty's plenipotentiary and super-
intendent of trade, and with the naval commander-in-
chief, Sir Michael Seymour.
We have seen that the likelihood of sooner or later
having to clear accounts with the authorities of Canton
310 THE ARROW WAR. [chap. xvii.
had not been absent from the mind of her Majesty's
Government for some years previously, though by no
initial act of their own would they have brought the
question to a crisis. If the governor entertained
doubts whether the Arrow insult furnished adequate
provocation, his decision was materially helped by
the deadlock in relations which followed. A simple
amende for the indignity offered to the flag was asked
for, such as the Chinese were adepts in devising
without "losing face" ; but all discussion was refused;
the viceroy would not admit any foreign official to a
personal conference. The small Arrow question thus
became merged in the larger one of access to the city,
and to the provincial authorities, which had on various
pretexts been denied to the British representatives in
contravention of the treaty of 1842.
It happened that the question had lately assumed
a somewhat definite place in the agenda of the British
plenipotentiary. Lord Clarendon had in 1854 in-
structed Sir John Bowring to take any opportunity
of bringing the "city question" to a solution, and Sir
John addressed a long despatch to Commissioner Yeh
on the subject in April of that year. It had no effect,
and was followed up a few months later by an effort in
another direction. The turbulent character of the Can-
tonese people and the impracticable arrogance of the
imperial officers who successively held office there had
often prompted an appeal to Caesar, and more than
one attempt had been made in times gone by to sub-
mit the Canton grievances to the judgment of the
Imperial Court. These attempts w^ere inspired by a
total misconception of the relations between the pro-
vinces and the capital. In the year 1854, however.
1856-60.] ATTEMPTS TO SETTLE "CITY QUESTION. 311
it was decided to renew the effort to open direct com-
munications with the Imperial Government. And
circumstances seemed to promise a more favourable
issue to the mission than had attended preceding ones.
The time had come when a revision of the tariff and
commercial articles of the treaties might be claimed,
and besides the standing grievance at Canton there
were sundry matters in connection with the fulfil-
ment of the treaties which together constituted a
justifying pretext for an unarmed expedition to the
Peiho. The chances of a favourable reception were
thought to be strengthened by the combination of the
Treaty Powers. Sir John Bowring and the American
Minister, Mr McLane, accordingly went together, with
a competent staff of interpreters, to Tientsin, where
they were soon followed by the French secretary of
Legation.
High officials were appointed to treat with them,
because it was feared that if some courtesy were not
shown them the barbarians would return south and
join the rebels, who were then threatening the
southern provinces. But the net result of the mission
was that it was allowed to depart in peace. Lord
Elgin, commenting on the proceedings, sums up the
instructions to the Chinese officials, gathered from the
secret reports afterwards discovered, as, " Get rid of
the barbarians," which would be an equally exhaustive
rendering of all the instructions ever given to Chinese
plenipotentiaries. On the occasion of this visit to the
Peiho the foreign plenipotentiaries resorted, as had
been done on sundry previous occasions, to the oriental
custom of approaching a great man gift in hand. In
the depleted condition of the imperial treasury they
312 THE ARROW WAR. [cHAP. XVII.
calculated that the recovery of the duties unpaid dur-
ing the recent interregnum at Shanghai would be a
tempting bait to the Peking Government. The offer,
however, could not, it would appear, be intelligibly
conveyed to the minds of the northern functionaries :
unacquainted with commercial affairs, and misconstru-
ing the proposal as a plea for the forgiveness of arrears,
they at once conceded the sop to Cerberus, pleased to
have such a convenient way of closing the mouths of
the barbarians.
In December following a favourable opportunity
seemed to present itself for renewing the attack on
the exclusiveness of Canton. The Taiping rebels had
blockaded the river, and in a " pitched battle " defeated
the imperialist fleet and were actually threatening the
city. In this emergency Yeh implored the aid of the
English forces. Sir John Bowring thereupon pro-
ceeded to Canton with a naval force of five ships to
protect the foreign factories, the presence of the
squadron having at the same time the desired deter-
rent effect on the rebels, who withdrew their forces.
Now at last the governor felt confident that the bar-
rier to intercourse was removed, and he applied to
the viceroy for an interview ; but Yeh remained
obdurate, refused audience as before, and with all
the old contumely. Precisely the same thing had
happened in the north in 1853, when the governor of
Kiangsu applied through Consul Alcock to the super-
intendent of trade. Sir George Bonham, for the assist-
ance of one of her Majesty's ships in defending Nan-
king against the expected attack of the Taipings.
Divers communications of like tenor had, during several
months, led up to this definite application. The appeal
1856-60.] ASSUMPTION OF SUPERIOR STATUS. 313
was most urgent, and yet in the title given to her
Majesty's plenipotentiary the two important characters
had been omitted, indicating that his power emanated
from the ruler of an *' independent sovereign state."
"Such an omission," remarked Mr Alcock, ** is char-
acteristic of the race we have to deal with, for even
in a time of danger to the national existence they
cannot suppress their arrogance and contempt for bar-
barians." Arrogant and contemptuous of course they
were, and yet it may perhaps be questioned whether
such terms fully explain the mutilation of the pleni-
potentiary's official titles. Although they had been
compelled by mechanical force to accord titles implying
equality to foreign officials, yet in the innermost
conviction of the Chinese an independent sovereign
State was at that time almost unthinkable, and could
only be expressed by a solecism. If, therefore, we ask
how an imperial commissioner could demean himself
by soliciting protection from the barbarians to whom
he was denying the scantiest courtesy, we have to
consider the point of view from which China had from
time immemorial and without challenge regarded all
the outer States. For it is the point of view that is
paradoxical. To Yeh, considering barbarians merely
as refractory subjects, there was no inconsistence in
commanding their aid, while denying their requests.
The position is analogous to that of Ultramontanes,
who claim tolerance for themselves in heretical com-
munities by a divine right which excludes the idea of
reciprocity. This key to the history of foreign inter-
course with China is too often forgfotten.
Nothing daunted, Sir John returned to the charge
in June 1855, on the occasion of the appointment of
314 THE ARROW WAR. [chap. xvii.
the new consul, Mr Alcock, whom he asked permission
to introduce to the Imperial Commissioner. His letter
was not even acknowledged for a month, and then
in the usual contemptuous terms.
So far, indeed, from Yeh's being mollified by the as-
sistance indirectly accorded to him in defending the
city from rebel attack, or by the succession of respect-
ful appeals made to him by Sir John Bowring, a new
campaign of aggression was inaugurated against the
lives and liberties of the foreio^n residents in Canton.
This followed the traditional course. Inflammatory
placards denouncing foreigners, and holding them up
to the odium of the populace, were extensively posted
about the city and suburbs in the summer of 1856.
These, as usual, were followed by personal attacks on
isolated Englishmen found defenceless, and, follow-
ing the precedents of ten years before, the outbreaks
of anti - foreign feeling in Canton found their echo
also in Foochow, where an American gentleman met
his death in a riot which was got up there in July.
So serious was the situation becoming that Mr Consul
Parkes, who had succeeded Mr Alcock in June, sol-
emnly warned the Imperial Commissioner that such
acts, if not promptly discountenanced by the authori-
ties (who of course were well known to be the
instigators), must inevitably lead to deplorable con-
sequences. The Chinese reply to this remonstrance
was the outrage on the lorcha Arrow. To isolate that
incident, therefore, would be wholly to miss the sig-
nificance of it : it would be to mistake the match
for the mine.
Those who were on the spot and familiar with
antecedent events could have no doubt whatever that.
1856-60.] INFLUENCE OF MERCANTILE COMMUNITY. 315
in condoning the present insults, the British au-
thorities would have invited greater and always
greater, as in the days of Lin. The tone of recent
despatches from the Foreign Office fortified the gov-
ernor in taking a strong resolution ; the clearness
of Consul Parkes' view made also a deep impression
on him ; and yet another factor should not be al-
together overlooked which contributed its share in
bringing the two responsible officials to a definite
decision. It was not an unknown phenomenon in
public life that two functionaries whose co-operation
was essential should mistrust each other. This was
distinctly the case with Sir John Bowring and Sir
Michael Seymour. They needed some connecting
medium to make them mutually intelligible, and it
was found in the influence of local public opinion.
The mercantile community, which for twenty years,
or as long as they had had utterance, had never
wavered in the conviction that in strength alone
lay their safety, were to a man for vigorous meas-
ures at Canton. And it happened that, scarcely per-
ceived either by themselves or by the other parties con-
cerned, they possessed a special channel for bringing
the force of their views to bear on the two responsible
men. Sir John Bowring had himself deplored "the
enormous influence wielded by the great and opulent
commercial houses" when adverse to his projects.
He was now to experience that influence in another
sense, without perhaps recognising it, for when the
wind is fair it makes slight impression on those whose
sails it fills.
Among the business houses in China two stood
pre-eminent. One had a son of the plenipotentiary
316 THE ARROW WAR. [chap. xvii.
for partner ; both were noted for their princely hos-
pitaUty, especially to officers of the navy. " Those
princely merchants, Dent & Co., as well as Matheson,"
writes Admiral Keppel in his Diary, " kept open
house. They lived in palaces." One of the two
buildings occupied by the former firm, " Kiying
House," which some twenty years later became the
Hongkong Hotel, was as good as a naval club for
all ranks, while admirals and post-captains found snug
anchorage within the adjoining domain of the seniors
of the firm. The two great houses did not always
pull together, but on this occasion their separate
action, converging on a single point, was more efiectual
than any half-hearted combination could have been.
Night after night was the question of Canton dis-
cussed with slow deliberation and accumulating em-
phasis in the executive and the administrative, the
naval and the political, camps respectively. Convic-
tion was imbibed with the claret and cheroots, and
it was not altogether without reason that what fol-
lowed has sometimes been called the " Merchants'
War."
The die was cast. The great Canton bubble, the
bugbear of a succession of British Governments and
representatives, was at last to be pricked, though
with a delay which, however regrettable at the time,
perhaps conduced to greater thoroughness in the long-
run. Those of our readers who desire to trace the
various operations against Canton during the twelve
months which followed cannot do better than con-
sult Mr Stanley Lane -Poole's 'Life of Sir Harry
Parkes,' the volume of ' Times ' correspondence by that
sage observer and vivacious narrator, Mr Wingrove
1856-60.] THE DRAMA UNFOLDS ITSELF. 317
Cooke, and the delightful sailor's book recently pub-
lished by Vice -Admiral Sir W. E. Kennedy. The
campaign unfolded itself in a drama of surprises. The
force at the admiral's disposal being too small to fol-
low up the initial movement against the city, which
gave no sign of yielding by first intention, Sir Michael
Seymour had to content himself with intimating to
the Viceroy Yeh that, notwithstanding his Excel-
lency's interdict, he had, with a guard of bluejackets,
visited the Viceregal Yamen ; and with keeping hos-
tilities alive by a blockade of the river while awaiting
reinforcements.
The Arrow incident occurred in October. In De-
cember the foreign factories were burned by the
Chinese, and the Viceroy Yeh issued proclamations
offering rewards for English heads. The mercantile
community retired to Hongkong, a few to the
quieter retreat of Macao. The vengeance of Com-
missioner Yeh pursued them exactly as that of Com-
missioner Lin had done in 1839. Assassinations were
not infrequent on the outskirts of the city of Vic-
toria; and in January 1857 the principal baker in
the colony was induced to put a sack of arsenic into
his morning supply of bread, which only failed of
its effect through the excess of the dose acting as an
emetic.
The early portion of the year 1857 was enlivened by
active operations in hunting out Chinese war-junks in
the various creeks and branches of the river, com-
menced by Commodore Elliot and continued on a bril-
liant scale by Commodore H. Keppel, who arrived
opportunely in the frigate Raleigh, of which he speaks
with so much pride and affection in his Memoirs. That
318 THE AREOW WAR. [chap. xvii.
fine vessel, however, was lost on a rock approaching
Macao, sinking in shallow water in the act of saluting
the French flag, a war vessel of that nationality having
been descried in the anchorage. The commodore and
his officers and crew, thus detached, were soon accom-
modated with small craft good for river service, and
in a very short time they made a memorable cutting-
out expedition as far as the city of Fatshan, destroying
formidable and well-posted fleets of war-junks in what
the commodore described as " one of the prettiest boat
actions recorded in naval history." Sir W. Kennedy
served as a midshipman in those expeditions, and his
descriptions supply a much-needed supplement to that
of the Admiral of the Fleet, correcting it in some par-
ticulars and filling in the gaps in a w^onderfully realistic
manner. No adequate estimate can be formed of the
importance of the year's operations in the Canton river
without reading Admiral Kennedy s brilliant but simple
story.
The Canton imbroglio made the kind of impression
that such occurrences are apt to do in England. The
merits of the case being usually ignored, the bare inci-
dents furnish convenient weapons with which to assail
the Government that happens to be in office. Under
such conditions statements can be made and arguments
applied with all the freedom of a debating club. The
Arrow trouble occasioned a temporary fusion of the
most incongruous elements in English politics. When
Lord Derby, Lord Lyndhurst, Bishop Wilberforce, Mr
Cobden'; Mr Bright, Mr Gladstone, and Mr Disraeli
were found banded together as one man, it was neither
common knowledge nor any sincere interest in the ques-
tion at issue, but " unanimosity " towards the Premier,
1866-60.] "THE CHINA DISSOLUTION." 319
that inspired them. The Opposition orators took their
brief from the published despatches of Commissioner
Yeh, which they assumed as the starting-point of the
China question, and found no difficulty whatever in
discovering all the nobility and good faith on the
Chinese side, the perfidy and brutality on the side
of the British representative. Though successful in
carrying a vote of censure on the Government, the
attitude of the Coalition did not impress the public,
and Lord Palmerston's appeal to the electorate was
responded to by his being returned to power by a
large majority.
How very little the question itself affected public
men in England may be inferred from the notices of
it in the Memoirs, since published, of leading statesmen
of the period. The fate of China, or of British com-
merce there, was not in their minds at all, their hor-
izon being bounded by the immediate fate of the
Ministry, to them the be-all and end-all of national
policy. What deplorable consequences all over the
world have arisen from the insouciance of British
statesmen as regards all matters outside the arena
of their party conflicts !
Sir John Bowring w^as made the scapegoat of the
war. A philosophical Radical, he had been president
of the Peace Society, and his quondam friends could
not forgive a doctrinaire who yielded to the stern
logic of facts. As consul at Canton he had had
better opportunities of studying the question of in-
tercourse with the Chinese than any holder of his
office either before or since his time. No one had
worked more persistently for the exercise of the
right of entry into Canton. Superseded in the office
320 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
of plenipotentiary by the appointment of the Earl of
Elgin as High Commissioner for Great Britain, Sir
John Bowring remained Governor of Hongkong, and
it fell to him to " do the honours " to his successor,
from whom he received scant consideration. Indeed
Lord Elgin made no secret of his aversion to the
colony and all its concerns, and marked his feeling
towards the governor by determining that he should
never see the city of Canton — that Promised Land so
soon to be opened to the world through Sir John's
instrumentality.
I. THE EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION.
Capture of Canton — The Treaty of Tientsin — Comments on the treaty —
Sequel to the treaty — Omission to visit Peking — Comments thereon —
How to deal with Chinese — Commissioners to Shanghai to negotiate
the tariff — Two pressing questions to be settled — Delay of Commis-
sioners' arrival — Resentment of Lord Elgin and change of tactics re
Canton — Canton question same as Chinese question — Chinese demand
for abandonment of Resident Minister — Lord Elgin's assent — Com-
ments thereon — Treaty with Japan — The Taku disaster.
The transports bringing the troops from England
were meanwhile hurrying at top speed — not in those
days a very high one — round the Cape of Good
Hope, and the navy was being reinforced by several
powerful ships, including the mosquito squadron of
gunboats which were destined to play so useful a
part, first in the operations of war, and subsequently
in patrolling the coast and rivers for the protection of
peaceful traders. Lord Elgin's arrival in Hongkong,
coinciding in time with that of the frigates Shannon,
commanded by Sir William Peel, and Pearl, Captain
1856-60.] LORD ELGIN VISITS INDIA. 321
Sotheby, put heart Into the long - suffering British
community at the port. But sinister news from India
had reached Lord Elgin on his voyage to China, in
consequence of which, and on the urgent request of
the Governor- General, he took on himself to intercept
the troopships wherever they could be met with, and
turn their course to Calcutta. Before he had been
many days in Hongkong, foreseeing an indefinite period
of inaction in China, and being obliged in any case
to wait the arrival of his French colleague, without
whom no French co - operation could be had, Lord
Elgin determined to proceed himself to Calcutta,
taking with him the two frigates Shannon and Pearl.
This welcome reinforcement not only arrived oppor-
tunely in India, but, as is well known, did heroic
service in throwing back the tide of mutiny.
Fortune seemed in all this to be favouring the
Chinese, nothing more hurtful threatening them than
a passive blockade of the Canton river and its branches.
But a fresh expedition was promptly despatched from
England to take the place of that which had been
diverted to India. A body of 1500 marines arrived
in the autumn, and on them, supplemented by the
Hongkong garrison, devolved the duty of bringing
China to terms, the navy, of course, being the essential
arm in all these operations.
Lord Elgin returned to China in ample time to
meet the French plenipotentiary. Baron Gros. His
lordship's policy had from the first been an inter-
esting theme for speculation, not less so as the time
for putting it in force drew near. It had been sur-
mised that his object would be to leave Canton alone,
and set out on another wild-goose chase to the north.
VOL. I. X
322 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
That SO futile a scheme should not be carried out with-
out at least a protest, the mercantile community met
Lord Elgin on his arrival in June with an address
couched in the following terms : —
We venture upon no opinion at present respecting the
readjustment of our relations with the empire at large, though
always prepared to hold our advice and experience at your
lordship's command ; but upon that branch of the question
which we distinguish as the " Canton difficulty " we would
take this, the earliest opportunity, of recording our opinion —
an opinion founded upon long, reluctant, and, we may add,
traditional experience — that any compromise of it, or any
sort of settlement which shall stop short of the complete
humiliation of the Cantonese, — which shall fail to teach them
a wholesome respect for the obligations of their own Govern-
ment in its relations with independent Powers, and a more
hospitable reception of the foreigner who resorts to their shores
for the peaceable purposes of trade, — will only result in further
suffering to themselves and further disastrous interruptions
to us.
Many of us have already been heavy sufferers by the present
difficulty. It must be apparent to your lordship that our
best interests lie upon the side of peace, and upon the earliest
solid peace that can be obtained. But, notwithstanding this,
we would most earnestly deprecate any settlement of the
question which should not have eliminated from it the very
last element of future disorder.
The meaning of these weighty words, as interpreted
by Wingrove Cooke, was, " You must take Canton,
my lord, and negotiate at Peking with Canton in your
possession." And he adds, " Such is the opinion of
every one here, from the highest to the lowest." We
learn from his private letters that it was by no means
the opinion of the new plenipotentiary. " The course
I am about to follow," he writes, " does not square
with the views of the merchants." Yet his reply to
1856-60.] HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS CANTON. 323
their address was so diplomatic that he was able to
say '* it gave them for the moment wonderful satis-
faction." The editor of Lord Elgin's letters suppresses
the rest of the sentence. The new plenipotentiary
hoped even '* to conclude a treaty in Shanghai, and
hasten home afterwards," — a hope which could only
coexist with an entire disregard of our whole previous
experience in China ; almost, one might argue, with
an entire ignorance of the record. ^
On his return from India, however, and on the as-
sembling of the Allied forces, he found that the course
prescribed by history and common-sense was, after all,
the only practical one to follow, and that was to com-
mence hostilities at Canton. Yet Lord Elgin seems to
have submitted to the inexorable demands of circum-
stances with no very good grace. Indeed his attitude
towards the Canton overture and his mission generally
was decidedly anomalous. The two leading ideas
running through the published portion of his corres-
pondence were, " It revolts me, but I do it " ; and,
"Get the wretched business over and hurry home."
Lord Elgin's mental constitution, as such, is of no in-
terest to us except as it affected his acts and left its
impress on the national interests in China. From that
point of view, however, it is public property, and as
much an ingredient in the history as any other quality
of the makers of it. First, we find him at variance
with the Government which commissioned him, in that
he speaks with shame of his mission : " That wretched
question of the Arrow is a scandal to us." Why ?
^ " Verily,' writes Wingrove Cooke, " Sir John Bowring, much abused
as he is both here and at home, has taken a more common-sense view of
these matters than the high diplomatists of England and France."
324 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
Her Majesty's Government had deliberated maturely
on the Arrow question, had referred it to their law
officers, had concluded it was a good case, and had
written unreservedly in that sense to their represent-
ative in China. Was it, then, greater knowledge, or
superior judgment, that inspired Lord Elgin to an
opposite opinion ? And in either case would it not
have been better to have had the point cleared up
before undertaking the mission ?
But, in point of fact, the Arrow question was not
the question with which Lord Elgin had to deal, as
it had long before been merged, as we have said,
into the much larger one of our official relations
with China.
The truth seems to be that Lord Elgin came to
China filled with the conviction that in all our dis-
putes the Chinese had been the oppressed and we
the oppressors. Of our intercourse with them he
had nothing more complimentary or more definite to
say than that it was " scandalous." For his own
countrymen he had never a good word, for the Chinese
nothing but good — until they came into collision with
himself, when they at once became " fools and trick-
sters." Having assembled a hostile force in front of
Canton, he writes, December 22, 1857, "I never felt
so ashamed of myself in my life. . . . When I look
at that town I feel that I am earning for myself a
place in the Litany immediately after ' plague, pesti-
lence, and famine.' " Becoming gradually reconciled to
events, however, he writes, "If we can take the city
without much massacre I shall think the job a good
one, because no doubt the relations of the Cantonese
with the foreign population were very unsatisfactory."
1856-60.] COMPUNCTIONS. 325
But why "massacre," much or little? It was but a
phantasy of his own he was thus deprecating. The
curious point is, however, that Lord Elgin imagined
that everybody was bent on this massacre except him-
self, and when all was over, and " there never was a
Chinese town which suffered so little by the occupation
of a hostile force," he appropriates the whole credit
for this satisfactory issue ! *' If," he writes, " Yeh had
surrendered on the mild demand made upon him, I
should have brought on my head the imprecations both
of the navy and the army, and of the civilians, the
time being given by the missionaries and the women."
An insinuation so purely hypothetical and so sweeping
would not be seriously considered in any relation of
life w^hatsoever ; but no one who knows either the
navy or the army would hesitate to affirm that the
humanity of every officer and man in these services
was as much beyond reproach as Lord Elgin's own,
albeit it might assume a different form of expression.
When the city, " doomed to destruction from the folly
of its own rulers and the vanity and levity of ours,"
had been occupied, and the bugbear of massacre had
vanished, the object of Lord Elgin's sympathies became
shifted : " I could not help feeling melancholy when I
thought that we were so ruthlessly destroying " — not
the place or the people, but — " the prestige of a place
which has been for so many centuries intact and un-
defiled by the stranger." Had he written this after
witnessing some of the horrors of the city described by
Wingrove Cooke, possibly these regrets for its defile-
ment might have been less poignant. But though
reverence for the mere antiquity of China is a most
salutary lesson to inculcate in these our days, it is
326 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
pathetic to see the particular man whose mission was
to humble her historical prestige tortured by com-
punctions for what he is doing. One is tempted to
wish the "job" had been intrusted to more common-
place hands.
Some of those English officials by whose vanity and
levity the " city was doomed to destruction" were also
writing their private letters, and this was the purport.
" I confidently hope," wrote Mr Parkes, before Lord
Elgin's first arrival in China, " that a satisfactory
adjustment of all difiiculties may be attained with a
slight effusion of blood. Canton, it is true, must fall.
I see no hope of any arrangement being arrived at
without this primary step being effected, but I trust
that with the fall of that city hostilities may end, and
that the emperor may then consent to receive a repre-
sentative at Peking." However, as soon as he gets to
actual business with the Chinese, Lord Elgin finds
that he also has to be stern even as others. As early
as January 10, 1858, a week after the occupation of the
city, " I addressed the governor in a pretty arrogant
tone. I did so out of kindness, as I now know what
fools they are, and what calamities they bring upon
themselves, or rather on the wretched people, by their
pride and trickery." But what the novice was only
beginning to find out the veterans had learned years
before.^
His attitude to his countrymen generally Is scarcely
less censorious than towards the officials who had borne,
1 Before the conclusion of his second mission Lord Elgin's opinion of at
least one of those whom at the outset he disparaged had undergone con-
siderable modification. "Parkes," he wrote in 1860, "is one of the most
remarkable men I ever met for energy, courage, and ability combhied. I
do not know where I could find his match."
1856-60.] THE ONE RIGHTEOUS MAN. 327
and were yet to bear, the burden and heat of the day
in China. From Calcutta he wrote : —
It is a terrible busineSvS being among inferior races. I have
seldom from man or woman since I came to the East heard a
sentence which was reconcilable with the hypothesis that
Christianity had ever come into the world. Detestation,
contempt, ferocity, vengeance, whether Chinamen or Indians
be the object.
From China : —
The whole world just now is raving mad with a passion for
killing and slaying, and it is difficult for a person in his sober
senses, like myself, to keep his own among them.
Again : —
I have seen more to disgust me with my fellow-countrymen
than I saw during the whole course of my previous life. ... I
have an instinct in me which loves righteousness and hates
iniquity, and all this keeps me in a perpetual boil. . . . The
tone of the two or three men connected with mercantile houses
in China whom I find on board is all for blood and massacre
on a great scale.
The perennial fallacy that underlies the "one-
righteous -man" theory from the days of Elijah the
Tishbite downwards, and the ineptitude of all indis-
criminate invective, would be sufficient answer to such
sweeping maledictions. Below these ebullitions of the
surface, however, there lay a grave misgiving in Lord
Elgin's mind concerning his mission as a whole, in which
many thoughtful people must have shared: "Whose
work are we engaged in when we burst thus with
hideous violence and brutal energy into these darkest
and most mysterious recesses of the traditions of the
past ? " This was written at Tientsin after the passage
of the forts, and it is well worth recalling, now that the
328 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
vultures of Europe are wheeling round the moribund
empire.
Canton city was occupied by the Allies on January 2,
1858. Commissioner Yeh was captured, carried on
board the paddle - sloop Inflexible, and conveyed to
Calcutta, where he eventually died. His absence made
it easier to deal with the other authorities. He is
perhaps the only Chinese official who has ever been
made personally responsible for attacks on foreigners.
A provisional government was established under three
commissioners nominated by the Allied commanders-in-
chief, though in fact the labour and responsibility
rested solely on one of the three, Mr Parkes. Having
induced the native governor, Pikwei, to resume his
functions and administer the aflairs of the city, under
supervision, order was partially established, and the
chiefs, diplomatic and military, withdrew — much too
abruptly, it was generally thought — to prepare an
expedition to the north.
But the commissioners were left with inadequate
forces to maintain order, fettered as they were by
instructions which rendered them immobile. The
British admiral, after nearly a year and a half's ex-
perience in the river, might have known something of
the Canton problem, while the Allied plenipotentiaries
apparently understood nothing of it. This was shown
by what contemporary opinion designated Lord Elgin's
"first symptom of weakness." When the figurehead
Pikwei was brought from his prison to be invested
with authority under the Allied commanders he coolly
claimed precedence of the English admiral and general,
and Lord Elgin, contrary to his own pre -arrangement of
seats, &c., conceded the claim, thereby striking the key-
1856-60.] ALLIES BESIEGED IN CANTON. 329
note of the relations which were to exist between the
Allied commissioners and the Chinese officials. Lord
Elgin had occasion to remember this when, in 1860,
Prince Kung tried to lead him into a similar trap,
whereby he himself would have been relegated to a
second place. The result of these arrangements was
very much what might have been expected. Finding
the foreign garrison passive, the turbulent elements in
the city and the surrounding villages soon began to fan
the embers of their former fires. They refused to con-
sider themselves conquered, and set about reorganising
their forces as they had done on previous occasions,
and, beginning with secret schemes of assassination, they
became emboldened by impunity, and by-and-by mus-
tered courage to attack and annoy the garrison of the
city, which was as helpless to repel insults as the
mounted sentries at the Horse Guards. The army of
occupation was besieged, the prestige of the capture of
the city was in a few months wholly dissipated, and
the officials and gentry affected to believe that the
barbarians were only in the river, their presence in the
city being ostentatiously ignored in public correspon-
dence. During the whole of the year 1858 the cry
went up continuously from the commissioners and
military commanders, but it remained practically un-
heeded by the chiefs in the far north, except in so
far that they drew still shorter the tether of the
beleaguered force, in order that they might avoid all
possible collision with their Chinese assailants. Lord
Elgin at first deemed the turbulence at Canton a good
reason for effecting a speedy settlement with the Im-
perial Government ; but, as we shall see presently, that
settlement when made had no influence at all upon
330 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
either the Government officials or the gentry and
populace of that city. The solution of the Canton
problem was found in an entirely different direction.
It may be mentioned here that besides the adminis-
tration of the city, several important matters of business
were arranged during the commissionership of Mr
Parkes. There was the question of the site at Shameen
for the future residence of foreigners ; and the regula-
tion of coolie emigration, which had been carried on in
an unsatisfactory manner ; and last, not least, the first
lease of Kowloon, on the mainland facing Hongkong,
and forming one side of the harbour. This important
concession, as already said, was negotiated on the sole
initiative of Mr Parkes, the military authorities being
talked into it afterwards. It was the first response to
the demand of Wingrove Cook, Why we had not taken
possession of the peninsula of Kowloon, for '4f any other
Powers should do so — and what is to prevent them — the
harbour of Hongkong is lost to us." Several important
exploratory expeditions w^ere also undertaken in 1859,
in which Parkes was everywhere warmly received by
officials and people, one of these excursions being far up
the West river, the opening of which, however, to foreign
trade remained in abeyance for forty years thereafter.
The next object of the plenipotentiaries, of course,
was to negotiate at Peking, or wherever properly
accredited negotiators could be met with, Canton being
held in pledge. Progress was slow, because the fleet
was so largely composed of sailing-vessels, which must
wait for the fair monsoon ; and the plenipotentiaries
did not assemble within the river Peiho — the forts at
its mouth having been silenced and the guns captured —
until June. There followed Lord Elgin to Tientsin the
1856-60.]
NEGOTIATIONS AT TIENTSIN.
331
French, American, and Russian Ministers, all bent on
making treaties and on observing each other. The
resources of Chinese resistance having been provi-
sionally exhausted, imperial commissioners came to
arrest the further progress of the foreigners by nego-
tiations, or, to speak with strict accuracy, to concede
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the minimum that was necessary to induce them to
depart. Such, we may be sure, was the beginning
and the end of their instructions then, as it was
afterwards. The work of negotiation, so far as the
form went, seems to have fallen to Mr H. N. Lay,
whose place was very soon to know him no more ;
332 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [cHAP. XVII.
but, in the words of Lord Elgin, '' anybody could have
made the treaty."
The contents of the treaty, signed June 26, 1858,
fulfilled the instructions of Lord Clarendon, and the
commercial articles which constituted its main body
corresponded substantially with the desiderata of the
merchants as set forth in their memorials in response to
the invitation of Lord Elgin, the treaty going in ad-
vance of their demands on certain points and falling
short of them on others. Opium was not mentioned,
but was afterwards placed on the tariff; and a tolera-
tion clause for the Christian religion was inserted,
without much apparent consideration for the conse-
quences involved in it. A special memorandum from
Consul Alcock, called for by the Foreign Office, had
dwelt mainly on the precautions which should accom-
pany the exercise of such new privileges as promiscuous
residence in the interior ; but, excepting in the case of
merchants, where little or no risk was involved, the
warnings of Mr Alcock were, unheeded alike in the
text of the treaty and in the subsidiary regulations.
" The most important matter gained by the treaty,"
however, in the opinion of Lord Elgin, was " the resident
Minister at Peking," "without which," wrote Mr Parkes,
" the treaty was not worth a straw." And substituting
"lost" for "gained," such, was also the opinion of the
Chinese negotiators. It was, indeed, the universal
opinion. Diplomatic representation at Peking might be
fairly considered to have been the primary object of the
war of 1857-58, as commercial extension and access to
Canton had been that of 1839-42. And when "the
miserable war was finished " and " his liberty regained "
Lord Elgin cleared out his force, bag and baggage, as if
1866-60.] TREATY OF TIENTSIN, 1858. 333
he had been escaping from something, leaving not a
trace behind.
As this move constituted a veritable crisis in Anglo-
Chinese relations, it seems advisable for a moment
to consider its bearings. Judging after the event, it
is of course easy to perceive the fatal error of Lord
Elgin in hurrying away from the Peiho. A fair
criticism of his policy will confine itself strictly to
the circumstances as known at the time. His experi-
ence had so closely resembled that of his predecessors,
that he was aware that the Chinese were "yielding
nothing to reason and everything to fear." He had
seen with his own eyes the Queen's ratifications of
previous treaties exhumed from a collection of mis-
cellaneous papers in Canton, they being, as Commis-
sioner Yeh remarked, not worth sending to Peking;
he knew that the treaty of Nanking had been
observed by the Chinese only as far as force or fear
compelled them, and that its crucial stipulation had
been for many years evaded, and then with unmasked
arrogance repudiated ; he knew that the very war in
which he had been engaged, and his whole mission to
China, were caused and provoked by the refusal of the
provincial authorities to admit his predecessors or him-
self within the walls of Canton. In his own ultimatum
to Commissioner Yeh, Lord Elgin had asked no more
than the execution of the treaty of Nanking, which
included access to the city of Canton, and compensation
for damage to British property. Yet the Chinese
Government, dreading war as they did, had notwith-
standing incurred its hazards rather than open the
gates of a distant provincial city. How, then, were
they likely to regard the, to them, infinitely greater
334 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
outrage of resident foreign Ministers in the sacred
capital itself? This demand was practically the only-
one against which the Chinese commissioners made a
stand. When everything had been written down ready
for signature they drew back, saying it was as much as
their heads were worth to subscribe such a condition.
The answer was a peremptory threat to march on
Peking, whereupon the commissioners signed the paper
without another word. The crisis did not last twenty-
four hours. No one could believe that a miracle of
conversion had been wrought in that time, or that the
enforced signature of the Imperial Commissioners had
changed a fundamental principle of Chinese policy.
What, under these circumstances, was the " present
value " of the treaty ? Was it so much as conceivable
that it would be voluntarily carried out ? Was it not
evident rather that it was signed under duresse solely
with the immediate view of getting the barbarians out
of doors and leaving the key within ? What said the
imperial decree published in the ' Peking Gazette ' ?
" The barbarians ^ had come headlong with their ships
to Tientsin. Moved by the commands of Kweiliang
and his colleagues, they have now weighed anchor and
stood out to sea." If our former treaty needed a
material guarantee for its execution, how much more
this one ? The test of good faith was in Lord Elgin's
own hands ; he should clearly have applied it, and pre-
sented himself at Peking for audience of the emperor.
Perhaps it would have been refused, in which case he
would have at least known where he stood. A cam-
1 Lord Elgin protested against the use of this tabooed term, but took no
exception to the statement as to his having obeyed the commands of the
Imperial Commissioners.
1856-60.] OMISSION TO PROCEED TO PEKING. 335
paign against Peking would have been easy with the
handy force he possessed, or at the worst he could have
occupied Tientsin and the Taku forts until all questions
were settled.
This was the view generally held at the time both by
officials and the lay community in China, before any
untoward consequences had revealed themselves. It
was strongly expressed by Parkes, who deplored " the
ominous omission that Lord Elgin had gone away
to Japan without entering Peking or having an aud-
ience with the emperor." We have not the advantage
of knowing what Wingrove Cooke would have said of
it, but we may infer the prevailing opinion by what
another newspaper correspondent wrote from Shanghai
on the receipt of the first news of the signing of the
treaty : —
Shanghai, July 13, 1858. ^
The " Chinese War," properly so called, has now reached its
termination, and the fleet in the Gulf of Pechili is dispersing.
Lord Elgin arrived here yesterday with the new treaty, which
his brother, the Hon. F. Bruce, carries home by the present
mail. The document will not be published until it is ratified
by the Queen, but in the mean time the chief points of it may
be tolerably well guessed at. The diplomatists are confident
that the new treaty will "give satisfaction." That is saying
a good deal, but how could it be otherwise than satisfactory ?
The emperor was so terror-struck by our audacious advance
on Tientsin, that he was ready to concede everything we wanted
rather than see us approach any nearer to his capital. There
could have been but little discussion — the ambassadors had
simply to make their terms. The new treaty, then, provides
for indemnification for losses at Canton, a contribution to-
wards the expenses of the war (for which Canton is held as a
guarantee), the opening of more ports for trade, freedom of
access to the interior, toleration for Christians, and a resident
1 *The Scotsman,' September 18, 1858.
336 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
Minister at Peking. The only omission seems to be that
Lord Elgin did not himself go to Peking ; for unless the right
of residence at the capital receives a practical recognition from
the Chinese Government at once, it will certainly lead to
vexatious discussion whenever we wish to exercise it. The
right of entry into Canton, conceded by the treaty of Nanking,
but not insisted on through the timidity of our representatives,
ought to have taught us a useful lesson. While the emperor is
in a state of alarm anything may be done with him, but when
the pressure is removed and the fleet dispersed, Pharaoh's heart
will certainly be hardened, and then Chinese ingenuity will be
employed in evading as many of the provisions of the treaty as
they dare. Let us hope, however, that when the weather cools
a little and the thing can be done comfortably. Lord Elgin may
still pay a friendly visit to his new allies at their headquarters
[which he more than once threatened to do].
Such was contemporary opinion unbiassed as yet
by visible effects. When the tragedy took place a
year later, of course people spoke out more clearly.
Parkes then wrote : —
The Chinese Government never intended, nor do they intend,
if they can avoid it, to carry out the Elgin treaty. It was
granted by them against their will, and we omitted all pre-
cautions necessary to ensure its being carried out — I mean,
in quitting Tientsin as we did in July 1858, instead of re-
maining there until the treaty had been actually carried into
effect. You will recollect in what a hurry the admiral and
Lord Elgin, one and all, were to leave and run off to recreate
in Japan and elsewhere. By that step they just undid all they
had previously done.
Writing eighteen months after the event, and six
months after the Taku repulse, Laurence Oliphant fully
confirmed the views of Parkes. " The political im-
portance," he observed, " of such an achievement " —
i.e., a march to Peking — "it is impossible to overesti-
mate. The much-vexed question of the reception of a
1856-60.] ABANDONS RESIDENCE IN PEKING. 337
British Minister at the capital would have been set at
rest for ever." He then goes on to give a number of
exculpatory reasons for the omission, which would have
been more convincing had they been stated by Lord
Elgin himself in despatches written at the time.
Nor was Lord Elgin's own explanation to the House
of Lords any more satisfying. " In point of fact/' he
said, *' I was never charged with the ratification of the
treaty. The treaty was never placed in my possession.
I never had the option of going to Peking." If his
lordship had had a better case he would never have
elected to rest his vindication on a piece of verbal
finesse. Yet this speech gave their Lordships for the
moment "wonderful satisfaction."^
The omission to consummate the treaty was followed
a few months later by an act of commission of which it
is difficult to render any clear account, and which Oli-
phant in his ' Narrative ' makes no attempt to explain,
merely reproducing the official despatches. Before
leaving China Lord Elgin pulled the key- stone from
the arch of his own work, reducing the treaty to that
condition which Parkes had described as "not worth a
straw." At the instance of the Chinese commissioners
he moved her Majesty's Government to suspend the
operation of "the most important " article in it, the
residence of a British Minister in Peking. It is need-
less to follow the arguments, utterly unreal and having
no root either in history or in experience, by which this
fatal course was urged upon the Government, for they
were of the same species as those which had induced
^ It seems to have been a general opinion at the time that Lord Elgin
was deterred from proceeding to Peking by the protestations of his learned
advisers, who declared that his doing so would " shatter the empire."
VOL. I. Y
338 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
her Majesty's Ministers to tolerate for fourteen years
the exclusion of their representatives from Canton, the
right to enter which city had just been recovered by
force. It is most instructive to mark, as the key to
many failures, how, like successive generations of
youth, successive British agents in China have failed
to profit by the experience of their predecessors, and
have had in so many cases to buy their own at the
expense of their country ; for we see still the same
thing indefinitely repeating itself, like a recurring
decimal. Even at this the end of the nineteenth
century we seem as far off as ever from laying hold of
any saving principle, though it stares at us out of the
whole panorama of our intercourse. Lord Elgin's pro-
cedure afforded at once the best example what to do
and the clearest warning what to avoid in China, and
it is the most useful for future guidance for the reason
that effect followed cause as closely as report follows
flash. It was his fate, much against his will appar-
ently, to wage war on China in order to revindicate a
right which had lapsed through the weakness and
wrong-headedness of certain British representatives ;
yet in the closing act of a perfectly successful war he
commits the self-same error on a more comprehensive
scale, entailing on some future Government and pleni-
potentiary the necessity of making yet another war on
China to recover what he was giving away. What is
the explanation of this continuous repetition of the
same mistake ? It would seem that, knowing nothing
of the Chinese, yet imagining they know something,
the representatives of Great Britain and of other
Powers, notably the United States, have been in the
habit of evolving from their own consciousness and
1856-60.] DIPLOMATIC ILLUSIONS. 339
keeping by them a subjective Chinaman with whom
they play " dummy," and of course " score horribly," as
the most recent diplomatic slang has it. Their de-
spatches are full of this game — of reckoning without
their host, who, when brought to book, turns out to be
a wholly different personage from the intelligent auto-
maton kept for Cabinet use. Then, under the shock
of this discovery, denunciations of treachery — black,
base, and so forth — relieve the feelings of the foiled
diplomat, while the substance of his previous triumph
has quite eluded him. To this kind of illusion Lord
Elgin was by temperament more predisposed than per-
haps any of his predecessors save Captain Elliot.
Though convinced by his first encounter that Chinese
statesmen were " fools and tricksters," the simulacrum
soon asserted supremacy over the actuality of ex-
perience, and to the honour of the very persons so
stigmatised he committed the interests of his country,
abandoning: all the securities which he held in his
hand.
But what, then, is the secret of dealing with the
Chinese which so many able men, not certainly in-
tending to make failures, have missed ? This interesting
question is thus partially answered by Wingrove Cooke.
" The result of all I hear and see," he wrote, " is a
settled conviction that at present we know nothing —
absolutely nothing — of the nature of those elements
which are at work inside China. Crotchets, &c., are
rife, but they are all the offspring of vain imaginings,
not sober deductions from facts. . . . Treat John
Chinaman as a man, and exact from him the duties of
a civilised man, and you will have no more trouble with
him." Which is but a paraphrase of Lord Palmerston's
340 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvil.
prescription to consider the Chinese as " not greatly-
different from the rest of mankind." Such, however,
has always been too simple a formula for the smaller
minds. They would complicate it by trying, with
ludicrous effect, to get behind the brain of the Chinese
and play their opponent's hand as well as their own.
Probably it matters less on what particular footing we
deal with the Chinese than the consistency with which
we adhere to it. To treat them as proteges, and excuse
them as minors or imbeciles while yet allowing them
the full licence and privileges of the adult and the sane,
is manifestly absurd. To treat them as dependent and
independent at the same time can lead to nothing but
confusion and violent injustice. To allow engagements
with them to become waste paper is the surest road to
their ruin and our discomfiture. To let our Yea be Yea,
and our Nay, Nay, is as much the Law, and the Prophets
in China as it is throughout the world of diplomacy.
To this simplicity Lord Elgin had attained, at least in
theory, when he told the merchants of Shanghai that
in dealing with Chinese officials he had ** been guided
by two simple rules of action. I have never preferred
a demand which I did not believe to be both moderate
and just, and from a demand so preferred I have never
receded."
What misgiving troubled the repose of Lord Elgin as
to the good faith of the Imperial Government on which
he had ventured so much, may be partly inferred from
his avidity in catching at any straw which might sup-
port his faith. Hearing that " his friends the two
Imperial Commissioners" who had signed the treaty
were appointed to meet him in Shanghai to arrange
the tariff. Lord Elgin welcomed the news as " proof
1856-60.] EFFORTS TO ANNUL THE TREATY. 341
that the emperor has made up his mind to accept the
treaty." But as the emperor had already, by imperial
decree dated 3rd July, and communicated in the most
formal manner to Lord Elgin, expressly sanctioned the
treaty before the plenipotentiary left Tientsin, wherefore
the anxiety for further proofs of his good intentions ?
" This decree was forced out of the emperor," Mr
Oliphant tells us, " by Lord Elgin's pertinacity " — and
the threat of bringing up to Tientsin a regiment of
British soldiers then at the mouth of the river ! As a
matter of fact, the mission of the two Imperial Com-
missioners was of quite another character from that
assigned to it by Lord Elgin. The two men were
sent to complete their task of preventing by every
means the advent of the barbarians to Peking, just
as Lord Elgin himself was, two years later, sent back
to China to finish his work, which was to bring the
said barbarians into the imperial city. Between two
such missions there could be neither reconciliation nor
compromise.
There is authority for stating that the Imperial
Commissioners were expressly sent by the emperor
to Shanghai (l) to annul the whole treaty of Tientsin,
and (2) failing the whole, as much of it as possible, but
especially the article providing for a Minister at Peking.
The ostensible purpose of the mission, from the foreign
point of view, was the settlement of the tariff and trade
regulations, — about which, however, the Chinese cared
very little, — and delegates were appointed for this pur-
pose. The labour was conscientiously performed, on one
side at any rate, and the result was highly creditable
to the delegates. It was by insertion in the tariff of
imports that opium became recognised, chiefly, it would
342 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
appear, at the instance of the United States Minister,
Mr W. B. Reed, who was on the spot.
Apart from the tariff two principal questions occupied
the minds of the negotiators of the treaty — the actual
situation at Canton on the part of the English, and
the prospective residence in Peking on the part of
the Chinese. Lord Elgin hoped, by an appeal to the
treaty of peace, to put an end to the hostile proceed-
ings of oflScials and people which had harassed the oc-
cupying force in Canton with impunity for nine months.
But it was the treaty itself against which officials,
gentry, and braves were making war, just as they
had done in the case of the treaty of 1842. There
was no ambiguity about the movement. The Govern-
ment was carried on not in Canton but in the neigh-
bouring city of Fatshan, where the Governor-General
Huang, who had been appointed to succeed Yeh, held
his court and issued his decrees. Two months after
the occupation of Canton the puppet whom the Allies
had installed there admitted that the object of the
assemblage of braves was to retake the city. Two
months after the signature of the treaty and its ac-
ceptance by the emperor the Governor- General Huang
was publicly offering a reward of §30,000 for the head
of Parkes, and was stimulating the people in every
way to expel the foreigners from the city. All this
was in perfect accord both with imperial policy and
with Chinese ethics. It had the full sanction of the
emperor, just as similar operations had formerly had of
his father. For the grand purpose of destroying or
impairing the treaty there was no distinction in the
Chinese mind between legitimate and illegitimate,
honourable or treacherous, methods.
1856-60.] THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT EXASPERATED. 343
Lord Elgin, who had returned from Japan to Shang-
hai to meet the Imperial Commissioners in September,
disappointed at their non - arrival, opened communi-
cations with them by a threat of returning to Tientsin
and thus saving them the trouble of completing their
slow journey to Shanghai. On their eventual arrival
there he opened a diplomatic campaign against Canton
by a demand (October 7) to know under what authority
Huang and the military committees were organising
attacks on the Allies. In reply the Imperial Com-
missioners naively proposed to promulgate the treaty.
This frivolous answer provoked the rejoinder (October
9) that the treaty had been three months before
publicly sanctioned by imperial decree, that some-
thing more than " documents and professions " were
required to satisfy Lord Elgin on a question of " peace
or war," and he demanded the removal of the Governor-
General Huang. The commissioners then said they had
denounced Huang to the throne, and hoped for his re-
moval at no very distant date. They would also move
his Majesty the Emperor to withdraw his authority
from the hostile militia. Canton being thus disposed
of, as he supposed, Lord Elgin proceeded to other
business. But the hostilities at Canton continued
without the least abatement for three months longer,
until something more strenuous than diplomatising
with the Imperial Commissioners was resorted to.
The British Government had at last become exasper-
ated, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Malmesbury,
wrote on October 14 to Lord Elgin, "The most severe
measures against the braves are the only ones which
will obtain the recognition by the Cantonese of the
treaty of Tientsin." It was not long before Lord
344 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
Elgin himself became converted to the same belief,
for on January 20, 1859, he wrote to General van
Straubenzee, after some successful reprisals he had
made on the village braves, that " advantage should
be taken of the cool weather to familiarise the rural
inhabitants of the vicinity of Canton with the presence
of our troops, and to punish severely braves or others
who venture to attack them.'' By this time also he
had realised that the promise on which he relied in
October had been evaded, and he told the Imperial
Commissioners on January 22 that he would " have
nothing more to say to them on Canton matters,
— that our soldiers and sailors would take the braves
into their own hands."
The effect of the new tactics was immediate and
satisfactory. When the Allied troops began to move
about they were welcomed in the very hotbeds of hos-
tility. " At Fatshan," writes General van Straubenzee
on January 28, "we were received most courteously
by the authorities and respectfully by the people."
A five-days' excursion to Fa Yuen, the headquarters
of the anti-foreign committee, was likewise a perfect
success ; and so everywhere throughout the Canton
district. Lord Elgin was now able to assume a
bolder tone with the Imperial Commissioners and
address them in still plainer terms.
" The moderation of the Allies," he wrote to them
in February, " has been misunderstood by the officials
and gentry by whom the braves are organised. . . .
This habit of insult and outrage shall be put down
with the strong hand. ... It shall be punished by
the annihilation of all who persist in it." There was
no need for any such extreme remedy, for as soon as
1856-60.] THE STRONG HAND TELLS. 345
the burglars realised that the watch -dog had been
loosed they ceased from troubling the household, and
fell back on peaceful and respectable ways of life.
" With the cessation of official instigation," Lord Elgin
wrote in March, " hostile feeling on the part of the
inhabitants appears to have subsided," thus falling
into line with Consul Alcock, who wrote : " Clear
proof was furnished that the long-nurtured and often-
invoked hostility of the Cantonese was entirely of
fictitious growth, due exclusively to the inclinations
of the mandarins as a part of the policy of the Court
of Peking." And then, too, the difficulty of removing
the Governor -General Huang disappeared. He had,
in fact, been unsuccessful in expelling the barbarians,
just as Yeh had been, and the imperial decree super-
seding him naturally followed. His presence or absence
had then become of no importance to the Allies, as, had
he remained, he would have accepted the accomplished
fact of the foreign supremacy with as good a grace
as the gentry and their braves had done, for they
never contemplated endangering their lives by fight-
ing. Outrages on stragglers, assassination, kidnap-
ping, and bravado filled up the repertory of their
militant resources, and when these were no longer
effective they retired into private life as if nothing
had happened. The officials were no less acquiescent
once they realised that they had a master.
The interest of this Canton episode lies in its relation
to the Chinese question generally. Foreign intercourse
with China is marked by a rhythm so regular that any
part of it may be taken as an epitome of the whole, like
a pattern of wall-paper. From Canton we learn that
calculation of national advantage or danger, argument
34G EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
from policy, even threats which are not believed, are so
much " clouds and wind," not profitable even as mental
exercises. What alone is valid is concrete fact ; not
treaties, but the execution of them.
The Imperial Commissioners had in good time
presented their own demand on Lord Elgin, and
in most becoming terms, for between preferring and
meeting a request there is all the difference in the
world. The two Chinese signatories of the treaty
frankly avowed that they had signed without scrutiny
under military pressure, and that certain stipulations
were highly inconvenient to the Imperial Government,
particularly the right of keeping a Minister in residence
in Peking. Lord Elgin agreed to move his Govern-
ment, and the Government consented to waive the
right, conditionally. Lord Elgin laid stress on the
retention of the right as a right, forgetting that in
China a right conditionally waived is a right definitely
abandoned. Nor only so, but so far from consolidating
what remains, it constitutes a vantage - ground for
demanding further concessions, and in other fields of
international relations besides that of China. Nothing
therefore could have been wider of the mark than
any expectation that " the decision of her Majesty's
Government respecting residence in Peking would
induce the Chinese Government to receive in a becom-
ing manner a representative of her Majesty when he
proceeds to the Peiho to exchange the ratification."
Experience pointed to quite the opposite effect.
These critical remarks are by no means intended
either to belittle Lord Elgin's good work, to depreciate
his real statesmanship, or to scoff" at his sensibility and
1856-60.] HIS EPITAPH ON HIS POLICY. 347
high-mindedness. But his errors being like a flaw in a
steel casting, pregnant with destruction, and as the
same kind of flaw continues to vitiate many of our
smaller diplomatic castings, the China question could
not really be understood without giving proper con-
sideration to them. For the rest, as a despatch writer
Lord Elgin was both copious and able — he did not take
a double first at Oxford for nothing. Still, his writings
and orations are scarcely the source whence one would
seek for light and leading on the Chinese problem.
They are vitiated by self-vindication. Many of them
are elaborate efibrts to make the worse appear the
better reason, while their political philosophy is based
too much on speculative conceptions where ascertained
data were available.
On the last day of July 1858 Lord Elgin with his
suite set out on their memorable voyage to Japan, the
narrative of which has been so skilfully woven by
Laurence Oliphant. This episode will claim our
attention later. His lordship came, saw, and con-
quered— returned to China in a month crowned with
fresh laurels. At Shanghai he saw the tariff settled,
and then performed another pioneer voyage of pro-
digious significance. This was up the Yangtze as far
as the great central emporium Hankow. Captain
Sherard Osborn was the Palinurus of that original
and venturesome voyage. After that. Lord Elgin bent
his steps towards England; but before leaving China
the ghosts of things done and undone haunted him.
" A variety of circumstances lead me to the conclusion
that the Court of Peking is about to play us false," was
the melancholy epitaph he wrote on his mixed policy,
on his honest attempt to make war with rose-water,
348 EARL OF ELGIN AND HIS MISSION. [chap. xvii.
and his subordination, on critical occasions, of judgment
to sentiment.
Meantime his brother Frederick, who had carried the
Tientsin treaty to London, was returning with it and
the Queen's ratification and his letter of credence as
British Minister to China. The denoHment of the
plot was now at hand. The real mind of the Chinese
Government was finally declared in the sanguinary
reception the new envoy met with at the entrance
of the Peiho in June 1859. Frederick Bruce was
generally considered a man of larger calibre than his
elder brother. " In disposition he was a fine, upright,
honourable fellow," writes Sir Hope Grant, " and in
appearance tall and strong made, with a remarkably
good expression of countenance." But it took even
him a long time to fathom the new situation. After
his disastrous repulse from thfe Taku forts he wrote
in August, " I regret much that when the permanent
residence was waived it was not laid down in detail
what the reception of the Minister at Peking was
to be." But it was no question of detail that barred
his passage to Peking. It was the settled determina-
tion never to see the face of any foreign Minister ;
and it seems strano^e that it should have taken not
only another year but another war finally to convince
the British plenipotentaries and their Government that
the message of China from first to last, from Peking
and Canton, had been to fling the treaty in their
face.
SIR FREDERICK BRUCE.
1856-60.1 THE ALLIED FORCES. 349
II. LORD ELGIN'S SECOND MISSION.
Invasion of Peking — Convention of Peking — Establishment of the British
Legation — Russian and British, a contrast.
The Chinese perfidy at Taku had of course to be
avenged. A formidable expedition was equipped by
the Allied Powers, Lord Elgin and Baron Gros being
reappointed as plenipotentiaries. The history of the
famous Pekin campaign of 1860, with its tragic inci-
dents, has been impressed on the world by so many
writers, military and civil, most of them actors in the
scenes they depict, that the barest outline of events
may suffice in this place.
In the preliminary agreement between the two
Governments, the British military force was limited to
10,000 effectives; but the number actually placed in
the field exceeded that figure by the consent of the
French, whose forces were between 6000 and 7000.
The British contingent was commanded by General
Sir Hope Grant, the French by General Montauban,
afterwards created Count Palikao, — "a fine, hand-
some, soldier-like man, apparently under sixty years
of age."
The naval forces were commanded respectively by
Vice- Admiral Sir James Hope, '*a tall, noble-looking
man, with a prepossessing and most gentlemanlike
appearance,"^ and by Admiral Page, "a superior man
with a great deal of dry humour, but bad-tempered."^
The friction arising between Allies working together,
waiting for each other, consulting at every step, tak-
1 Sir Hope Grant's Journal. ^ Ibid.
350 LORD Elgin's second mission, [chap. xmi.
ing precedence of each other on alternate days, at
first vexatious, was in the end overcome by the tact
of the commanders on both sides.
The first operation of war was to occupy the harbour
of Chusan as an intermediate base. After that the
British force was conveyed in transports to Talien-wan,
where they were disembarked, while the French were
landed at Chefoo, on the opposite shore of the Gulf of
Pechili. At these points preparations were made for
the intended descent on the coast of the province of
Chihli, between 200 and 300 miles to the westward.
The British force included 1000 cavalry in splendid con-
dition, and a battery of Armstrong guns, then for the
first time used in active service. The French had no
cavalry, the attempts to import horses from Japan were
not successful, and the scarcity of draught-animals on
their side caused great delay in the sailing of the
expedition from the temporary depots. At length on
July 26 a fleet of over 200 sail — a magnificent spectacle
— carried the two armies to within twenty miles of the
Peiho, where they anchored, waiting for favourable
weather and a minute reconnaissance.
The one piece of strategy in the campaign was the
choice of a landing-place. The Taku forts, which had
been strong enough to repulse Sir James Hope with
severe loss a year before, had been further strengthened,
for to the Chinese it was a matter of life and death to
bar the entrance to the Peiho. The chain barrier across
the mouth of the river could not be forced under the
concentrated fire of the forts ; only the lightest draught
vessels could approach within five miles ; and a frontal
attack was not to be thought of But a decided difier-
ence of opinion between the Allied generals had dis-
1856-60.] THE PEKING CAMPAIGN. 351
closed itself as to the mode of procedure. The French
commander was determined to land on the coast to the
southward of the forts ; the English was still more
resolute in selecting as a landing-place the mouth of
the Peitang river, eight miles northward of Taku. So
irreconcilable were their views that it was agreed that
each should go his own way, only starting simultane-
ously. After more careful study, however, General
Montauban came to think better of his own scheme,
and proposed to Sir Hope Grant to join him in the
landing at Peitang.
So on August 2'^the first detachments of 2000
from each army were disembarked, and the campaign
proper commenced. The forts at Peitang were easily
occupied, "a kind old man" pointing out where there
were loaded shells which would explode on foot
pressure on a gun-lock laid so as to fire a train.
By means of a raised causeway leading through a
sea of " briny slush," positions were reached whence
the Taku forts could be attacked from the rear.
Though bravely defended, the forts on the left bank
were captured, and as they commanded those on the
opposite bank no resistance was offered by the latter.
The Peiho was thus opened for the conveyance of
troops and stores to Tientsin, which was made the
base of operations for the advance of the Allied
armies on Peking^.
The military movements were hampered by the pre-
sence of the two plenipotentiaries, who stopped on the
way to negotiate with the unbeaten foe. Delay was
not the only untoward consequence of these pro-
ceedings. At one moment a military disaster seemed
to have been narrowly escaped. Taking advantage of
352 LORD Elgin's second mission. [chap. xvn.
the singular credulity of the Allies, the Chinese, while
engaging them in friendly negotiations, had planned
to decoy the army into a convenient camping-ground
at Changchia - wan, towards which the troops were
marching, when, ** To my surprise," writes the com-
mander-in-chief, " we found a strong Tartar picket,
who retired on our approach ; and a little farther on
were seen great bodies of cavalry and infantry, the
latter drawn up behind a large nullah to our right front,
displaying a number of banners." In the meantime
the envoys, Parkes, Loch, and other officers, who had
been negotiating with the higher mandarins at Tung-
chow, a couple of miles off, were seized and made
prisoners with their escort, all being subsequently
cruelly tortured, and most of them massacred, in
accordance with Chinese practice in war.
Sir Hope Grant, finding his army of 4000 men in
process of being hemmed in, attacked and routed the
Chinese troops on September 18, resuming his march
on the 21st, when the remainder of his force had
joined him. He had not gone far, however, when
the way was again barred, and another action had to
be fought at the bridge Pali - chiao, ten miles from
Peking, where General Montauban distinguished him-
self, and whence he derived his title.
Far from owning themselves defeated, the Chinese
on the morrow resumed negotiations as between equals.
The Imperial Commissioners who had mismanaged the
affair were replaced by Prince Kung, a brother of the
emperor, who sent letters under a flag of truce, saying
he was ready to come to terms, but "said nothing
about our poor prisoners." The Allied plenipotentiaries
declined to treat until the captives should be returned,
1856-61.] PEKING ATTACKED. 353
whereupon Prince Kung sent another letter saying
they were safe, but would only be sent back on the
restitution of the Taku forts and the evacuation of the
river by the Allied fleets.
Lord Elgin had demanded that he should deliver
the Queen's letter in person to the emperor. Prince
Kung refused this demand, which Lord Elgin incon-
tinently abandoned. Waxing bolder, Prince Kung
next threatened that the entry of the Allied forces
into the capital would be followed by the instant
massacre of the prisoners. The plenipotentiaries re-
torted by intimating that the surrender of prisoners
was a necessary condition of the suspension of hos-
tilities. A week having been wasted in this vain see-
saw, an ultimatum was sent into Peking on September
30. This was answered by the Chinese inviting the
Allies to retire to Changchia-wan, the scene of the
great defeat of their army, offering to sign the treaty
there. And so the contest was maintained until the
Allied artillery was planted within sixty yards of the
north gate, and the hour was about to strike when the
wall was to be battered down.
Most valuable information — the topography of the
city — had been supplied by General Ignatieff, who ac-
companied the Allies. A map which he lent to Sir
Hope Grant showed every street and house of im-
portance in Peking, laid down by a scientific member
of the Russian mission in the city. The data had been
obtained by traversing the streets in a cart, from which
angles were taken, while an indicator fixed to the wheel
marked the distances covered. Without this plan the
attack would have been made from the south side, as
proposed by General Montauban, which would have
VOL. I. z
354 LORD Elgin's second mission. [chap. xvn.
involved a march through the commercial or Chinese
quarter, and the surmounting first of the Chinese and
then of the Tartar wall. The map made it clear that
from every point of view the north side offered the
most eligible point of attack, where nothing intervened
between a great open plain and the wall of the Manchu
city.
Passing over the dramatic incidents of the destruction
of the Summer Palace, an act of calculated vengeance
for the murder and maltreatment of envoys and prisoners,
the flight of the emperor on a hunting tour to Jeho,
whence he never returned, the release of the prisoners
and their account of the captivity, the new treaty
was signed at the Hall of Ceremonies on October 22,
1860, by Prince Kung, *' a delicate gentlemanlike
man, evidently overcome with fear," and his coadjutor,
Hangki. The treaties of Tientsin were ratified, and
some further indemnities exacted. The special pro-
visions introduced into the French treaty will be
referred to in a subsequent chapter.^
The closing scene was marked by a degree of haste
somewhat recalling Tientsin in 1858. The very slow
advance on Peking brought the climax of the campaign
unpleasantly close to the season when communication
by water would be shut off by ice ; " the weather
became bitterly cold, some of the hills being covered
with snow." And Sir Hope Grant's never-failing coun-
sellor, Ignatieff, with " his usual extreme kindness,"
furnished him with the most important information
that the Peiho would soon become frozen up and it
would be unsafe to linger in Peking. Mr Loch's gallop-
ing off with the treaty, as shown in the illustration,
1 Vol. ii. p. 224.
^\Mh
1856-61.] ALLIED ENVOYS LOCATED IN PEKING. 355
was rather typical of the whole business. The treaty
as such was of little consequence — the fulfilment of its
provisions was everything.
Some lessons, nevertheless, had been learned in the
school of diplomatic adversity. Peking was not left
without a locum tenens of the Minister, Tientsin was
not left without a garrison, and the Taku forts were
occupied by the Allies for a couple of years after the
final conclusion of peace.
" Ring out the old ; ring in the new." There seemed
a natural fitness in the Hon. Frederick Bruce succeed-
ing the Earl of Elgin as Minister plenipotentiary, and
there was a dramatic finish in the farewell ceremonial
when the retiring representative of the Queen vacated
the seat of honour, placing therein his younger brother,
whom he introduced to Prince Kung as the accredited
agent of Great Britain. The new era was inaugurated ;
a real representative of her Britannic Majesty was in-
stalled in the capital of the Son of Heaven.
The season was late, and though two palaces had
been granted on lease for the residences of the British
and the French Ministers, many alterations and re-
pairs were needed to render them fit for occupation,
which could not be effected before the closing of the
sea communication by ice. The Ministers therefore
resolved to withdraw from Peking for the winter,
placing their respective legations in charge of a junior
consular officer, Mr Thomas Adkins, who volunteered to
hold the post until the return of the plenipotentiaries
in the following spring.
Mr Adkins was not the only foreign sojourner in the
Chinese capital. There was a French Lazarist priest,
Mouilli by name, who, having successfully concealed
356 LORD Elgin's second mission, [chap. xvn.
himself among his native Christians during the mili-
tary advance of the Allies, emerged from his hiding-
place on the triumphant entry of the ambassadors,
and showed himself in the streets in a sedan chair
with four bearers. There was the permanent Russian
establishment within the city, with its unbroken record
of 173 years. Originally composed of prisoners taken
at the siege of Albazin, it had become a seminary of
the Orthodox Church and a political vedette of the
Russian empire, invaluable to the two masterful
diplomatists who appeared suddenly on the scene in
the years 1858 and 1860. The mission served as
a speculum through which Russia could look into
the inner recesses of the Chinese State, while to
the Chinese it was a window of bottle-glass through
which the external world was refracted for them. The
Russian Government selects its agents on the principle
on which we select university crews or All -England
elevens — namely, the most fit. So important and
far-sighted a scheme as the Peking mission was not
left to chance or the claims of seniority, but was main-
tained in the highest efficiency. Its members — six
ecclesiastical and four lay — were changed every ten
years. All of them, from the Archimandrite down-
wards, were accomplished linguists, speaking Chinese
like the natives, and masters also of the Manchu
and Mongol languages. Their relations with the
Chinese officials were unostentatious, yet brotherly.
Few secrets, either of administration, dynastic poli-
tics, or official intrigue, no communications between
the Government, provincial or imperial, and any
foreigners, escaped record in the archives of the
Russian mission. The personnel were protected from
MONSEIGNEUR MOUILLI.
1856-61.] M. POPOFF. 357
outrage or insult by their own tact and their tra-
ditional prestige ; and as the Daimios of Japan in
their anti - foreign manifestoes declared that every
foreigner could be insulted with impunity except the
Russians, so in China the name was a talisman of
security. While the Anglo - French expedition was
marching towards Peking the Russian Secretary, M.
Popoff, had occasion to leave that city and pass the
night at a native inn on the road to Tientsin. The
place became filled with the retreating Chinese sol-
diery, and M. PopoiF had the pleasure of hearing
their excited conversation respecting himself They
were for dragging him out and killing him on the
spot, when the landlord interposed. " That foreigner
is a Russian," said he ; "it will be dangerous to lay
a hand on him."
M. Popoff 's errand was to meet General Ignatieff,
who was making his way to Peking with the Allied
forces. It was of the utmost importance that he
should arrive simultaneously with the French and
English plenipotentiaries in order to save China from
her doom. China's extremity was Russia's opportunity
for showing the sincerity of her long unbroken friend-
ship. The foreigners had come to possess themselves
of the empire and destroy the dynasty. Their ruthless
character was soon to be shown in the burning and
pillage of the Summer Palace. The Chinese Court's
apprehension of the impending calamity was proved
by the flight of the emperor to a quasi- inaccessible
retreat. In that terrible crisis no sacrifice would
have been deemed by the imperial family too great
to "get rid of the barbarians." Confirming their
own worst fears as to the designs of the invaders.
358 LORD Elgin's second mission. [chap. xvn.
General Ignatieff revealed to them the only way of
salvation. Nothing would arrest the schemes of
the Allies but the intervention of a strong Power
friendly to China. He had it in his power to
make such representations to Baron Gros and Lord
Elgin as would induce them to withdraw their
troops. This essential service he offered to the Chinese
for a nominal consideration. Only a rectification of
frontier by inclusion of a sterile region inhabited by
robbers and infested by tigers, where no mandarin
could make a living, fit only for a penal settlement,
with a rugged sea-coast where no Chinese sail was ever
seen. Prince Kung jumped at the providential ofiPer of
deliverance, and so that great province called Primorsk,
with its 600 miles of coast-line, which gave to Russia
the dominion of the East — " Vladivostock " — was
signed away by the panic-stricken rulers of China.
A year later this transaction cropped up in conversa-
tion over the teacups, after the business of the day had
been disposed of, between Prince Kung and a certain
foreign diplomatist, who remarked that there was
never the remotest intention on the part of the Allies
of keeping a single soldier in China after the treaty
was made. The Prince looked aghast, then said
solemnly, " Do you mean to say we have been de-
ceived?" " Utterly," replied the other; and then the
dejection of the Prince was such as the foreigner,
who lived to enjoy a twenty-years' acquaintance with
him, declared he never saw in his or any other Chinese
countenance. Thus General Ignatieff, without any
force, in the vulgar sense, of his own, was adroit
enough and bold enough to wield the forces of his
belligerent neighbours so as to carry off the only
1856-61.] GENERAL IGNATIEFF. 359
solid fruit of the war, while fulfilling the obligations
of friendship for China and denouncing her spoilers.
The Russian envoy had not the same incentive to
hurry away from Peking as the other treaty-makers
had, for the ice which would imprison them would
afford him the most expeditious road for travel
homewards through Siberia. He was nearly as much
relieved as Prince Kung himself at getting rid of these
" barbarians," for then he had the field of diplomacy all
to himself He made his treaty, and departed during
the winter by the back door, across Mongolia.
Ignatieff was a man well known in English society,
and thoroughly conversant with England. Like most
educated Russians, he was affable and sympathetic — a
" charming fellow." He was courteous and companion-
able to the locum tenens of the English Legation, and
in taking leave of Mr Adkins expressed the opinion
that he would be all right in his isolation so long as
the emperor did not return to Peking, but in that
event his position would not be an enviable one.
However, " if you fear any trouble, go over to the
Russian mission : they will take care of you."
The winter of 'I860 left the statesmen of China some
food for reflection. The thundering legions had passed
like a tornado which leaves a great calm behind it.
The " still small voice " had also departed, with a
province in his chemaddn, gained without a shot or
even a shout. Two strongly contrasted foreign types
had thus been simultaneously presented to the
astonished Chinese. Can it be doubted which left
the deeper impression?
Preparations were made during the winter for
receiving the foreign Ministers in the spring. A
360
LORD Elgin's second mission, [chap. xvh.
department of Foreign Affairs was created under the
title of "Tsung-li Koh Kwoh She Yu Yam^n," or
briefly, " Tsungli-Yam^n," the three original members
being Prince Kung, Kweiliang, and Wdnsiang. The
Yamen was established by imperial decrees in January;
Mr Bruce and M. Bourboulon arrived in March 1861,
when diplomacy proper began, the thread of which will
be resumed in a later section.
361
CHAPTER XVIII.
INTERCOURSE UNDER THE TREATIES OF 1858 AND 1860.
I. THE DIPLOMATIC OVERTURE.
Spontaneous fulfilment of treaties not to be expected — Retreating attitude
of foreign Ministers — Repression of British tourists — Hostility of
Pekingese — Conciliation fails — Chinese refuse to conclude treaty with
Prussia — Glimpse of the real truth — Rooted determination to keep out
foreigners — Absence of the sovereign — Female regents — Diplomatic
forms in abeyance — Foreign Ministers' task complicated by assumed
guardianship of China — Pleasant intercourse with Manchu statesmen.
When Mr Bruce and M. Bourboulon took up their
residence in Peking on March 22, 1861, diplomacy was
as yet a white sheet on which it was their part to trace
the first characters. The treaty — for all the treaties
were substantially one — was their charter ; its integral
fulfilment their only safety. For as it had not been a
bargain of give-and-take between equals, but an im-
position pure and simple by the strong upon the weak,
there would be no spontaneous fulfilment of its obliga-
tions, rather a steady counter - pressure, as of water
forcibly confined seeking out weak spots in the dam.
Moreover, the two parties to the treaty, foreigners and
Chinese, were not acquainted with each other : aims,
incentives, temper and character, and the nature of the
362 THE DIPLOMATIC OVERTURE. [chap, xviii.
considerations by which they respectively would be
influenced, were all obscure. It was an uncertain
situation, calling^ for vio^ilance and caution. There can
be no doubt the pregnant importance of the first steps
was realised by the representatives on both sides.
The thoughts of the Chinese on that critical occasion
can only be inferred from their acts. Of what was
uppermost in the minds of the foreigners, or at least of
the English Minister, we have some slight indications
from the pen of a member of his staff, who, though not
himself in the diplomatic circle, claims to be the
authorised chronicler of the early days of the mission.
This pretension is implicitly indorsed by the fact that
the preface to Dr Rennie's book ^ was written in Govern-
ment House, Calcutta, whither he followed Lord Elgin
in the capacity of physician. When the Ministers
had only been five days in Peking Dr Rennie wrote
as follows : " Now is commencing perhaps the most
difficult part of a permanent English residency at
Peking — namely, the satisfying the Chinese that we
are a tolerably harmless and well-intentioned people,
inclined to live with them on terms of amity rather
than the contrary, and that the desire of our Govern-
ment is that its subjects should respect, as much as
is consistent with reason, their national prejudices."
Such an immaculate sentiment placed in the very
forefront of an ambassadorial programme, ushered in
at the cost of two wars which shook the foundations
of the Chinese empire, leaves something to be desired
as a justification for being in Peking at all. But Dr
Rennie indicates no other purpose for which foreign
legations were established there. He does not get
1 Peking and the Pekingese.
1861-65.] BEGINNING OF CONCESSIONS TO CHINESE. 363
beyond the mere " residency." A viceroy of India pro-
claiming at each stage of a "progress" that he was a
man of peace, a bride hoping to lead a passably
virtuous life, would scarcely be more naive than a
foreign Minister's pious aspiration to behave tolerably
well to the Chinese. For where was the " difficulty,"
one is tempted to ask ? It is explained by Dr Rennie.
Two English officers, it appears, had made an excur-
sion to the Great Wall without the necessary consular
and local authorisation, and had further shown *' the
bad taste, at a date so recent to its destruction," to
visit the Summer Palace. A formal complaint of these
indiscretions met Mr Bruce on his arrival, and credit
must be given to the Chinese for their appreciation of
the tactical value of w^hat Scotswomen call " the first
word of flytin'." They moved the first pawn, and put
the British Minister at once on the defensive. He
responded by an arbitrary exercise of authority where-
by Englishmen were prohibited from visiting Peking.
The restriction possessed little direct importance,
since few persons were then affected by it ; but as the
opening act of the new diplomacy, its significance could
hardly be overrated. Though "only a little one," it
was a recession from the right conferred on the subjects
of all treaty Powers to travel for business or pleasure
not only to Peking, but throughout the Chinese empire.
It was as the tuning-fork to the orchestra.
It is not permissible to suppose that the British
Minister had not good reasons for swerving from the
principle of exercising rights, great and small, for which,
as he well knew, experience in China had been one
long, unbroken, cogent argument. Dr Rennie furnishes
his readers with the reason. " The Chinese," he
364 THE DIPLOMATIC OVERTURE. [chap, xviii.
observes, " would seem to be very sensitive " ; and
"taking all the circumstances into consideration, . . .
the fear that casual visits on the part of strangers
. . . may prove antagonistic to the establishment of a
harmonious feeling at the opening of a new era in our
intercourse with the Chinese," the Minister resolved to
keep Englishmen (and only them) out of the capital.
This explanation, like that of the purpose of the
Legation itself, leaves on us a sense of inadequacy.
These hyper- sensitive people had been engaged, only
six months before, in torturing and massacring foreign
envoys and prisoners, for which atrocities the destruc-
tion and sack of Yuen-ming-yuen was thought to be not
too severe a reprisal. That the high officials who had
committed these cruelties and endured the penalty
should suddenly become so delicate that they could not
bear the thought of a harmless tourist looking upon the
ruins of the palace seems a somewhat fantastical idea.
As for the sensitiveness of the townspeople, Dr Rennie
himself had some experience of it three days after
penning the above remarks. " A good deal of shouting
and hooting," he says, was followed by " stones whizzing
past me." Then "my horse was struck by a stone"
and bolted. A similar experience befell another member
of the Legation on the same day in another part of the
city. Dr Rennie believed the stones to have been
thrown by boys, which is probable enough. The
favourite Chinese official palliation of outrages on
foreigners is to attribute them to youths and poor
ignorant people, which, however, in nowise softens the
impact of the missile. Let us give the Chinese full
credit for the virtues they possess — and they are many
— but no one familiar with the streets of Peking
1861-65.] FIRST BLOOD. 365
would consider delicacy their predominant charac-
teristic. View the diplomatic incident how we please,
it cannot be denied that the Chinese drew first blood
in the new contest, and at the same time practically
tested the disposition of the invading force.
Another *' straw" from Dr Rennie's journal maybe
noticed as indicating the set of the current. Aproi^os
of the first commercial case that had been sent up from
the ports to the Minister, he records the conclusion
that " in almost every dispute which arises between
ourselves and the Chinese we are in the first instance
in the wrong ; but, unfortunately [for whom ?], the
Chinese equally invariably adopt the wrong method of
putting matters right," so that " the original wrong
committed by us is entirely lost sight of." The observa-
tion refers exclusively to mercantile affairs, and it was
a rather large generalisation to make after a month's
experimental diplomacy in Peking.
The Minister soon found that his efforts to placate
the Chinese Government were not producing the in-
tended effect. It was not the " casual visitor " that in
any special way annoyed them, but the foreigner in all
his moods and tenses, most of all Mr Bruce himself, his
colleagues and their staff*, medical and other, and all
that they stood for. General Ignatieff* had not, after
all, conjured away the foreign plague, nor were the
Chinese statesmen entirely reassured even as to their
immunity from the military danger. In the month of
April Admiral Hope, Brigadier- General Staveley, and
Mr Parkes visited Peking, and were courteously re-
ceived ; but Prince Kung was visibly relieved, Dr
Rennie tells us, when assured that the admiral was not
to remain there. As for the general, his presence in.
366 THE DIPLOMATIC OVERTURE. [chap, xviii.
the vicinity was inevitable so long as a considerable
British and French force remained in garrison in Tien-
tsin and Taku. Like the Ministers themselves, he was
an unpleasant necessity to be endured as well as may
be. But being thus obliged to tolerate the greater evil,
it would appear to Western reasoning that an admiral
more or less in an inland town need not have so greatly
upset Chinese equanimity. Prince Kung, however, was
not yet able to look on such matters with Western
eyes. Every foreigner kept at arm's-length, no matter
what his rank or condition, was a gain, as every locust
destroyed is a gain to the peasant.
So when the Prussian envoy. Count Eulenberg, pre-
sented himself, the British Minister vouching for his
respectability, for the purpose of making a treaty on
the lines of those already made and ratified, his efforts
were frustrated by every plausible device. The envoy
was relegated to the most distant point at which it was
deemed feasible to stay his progress — namely, Tientsin,
where negotiations were vexatiously protracted during
four months. The first and final sticking-point was the
claim to residence in the capital, which the Chinese
absolutely refused to concede. Eventually they agreed
to compound for a deferred entry ten years after signa-
ture. This by haggling was finally reduced to five
years, and the treaty was thereupon concluded in
August 1861. The old Canton tactics were thus re-
vived, as if nothing had happened since 1857.
As the echo of Mr Bruce, Dr Bonnie's comment on
the proceeding is worth noting. " Looks very like
merely gaining time, in hopes that, before that period
expires, all foreign residence in the capital will be at
an end." Here we catch a glimpse of the fundamental
1861-65.] REACTIONARY TACTICS. 367
truth underlying all Chinese diplomacy from first to
last — the purpose, never relaxed for an instant, of some
day expelling foreigners from the country. No for-
eigner could hope to unravel the tangle of Chinese
reasoning so as to comprehend in what manner the
exclusion of one State was to assist in the eviction of
the representatives of four Great Powers already estab-
lished in the capital ; but it may be inferred from the
above remark that Mr Bruce was beginning to perceive
that good behaviour towards the Chinese was not the
be-all and end-all of the functions of a British repre-
sentative in China. There was another side. We
know, in fact, though Dr Rennie does not record it,
that Mr Bruce began to see the necessity of making a
stand against the reactionary pressure of the Chinese ;
that he was resolved on bending the Ministers of the
Yamdn to his will — being satisfied he could do it —
instead of yielding to theirs in the vain hope of gaining
their confidence.
The grand desideratum had been at last obtained,
access to the capital ; but how different the realisation
from the anticipation ! There was no sovereign and no
Court, only the shell of the nut without the kernel.
And as diplomacy began so it continued, in successive
illusions, partially dispelled, yet clung to with slow-
dying hope.
At first sight, no doubt, the task of the foreign repre-
sentatives seemed an easy one : they had but to lay down
the law to a defeated Power, to hammer the softened
metal. This course would have been as simple in fact
as it was in principle had they been united, and had it
been possible for them to take a simple view of their
mission ; but from the first their duty to their respec-
368 THE DIPLOMATIC OVERTURE. [chap, xviii.
tive countries was complicated, and in varying degrees,
by what they conceived to be their duty towards China.
It was inevitable that the attempt to follow two lines
of policy divided by such cleavage should result in a
fall into the crevasse. China, in fact, was too large a
subject for either the treaty Powers or their agents to
grasp. She made huge demands on the humanity, the
indulgence, and the protection of the Powers who had
broken down her wall of seclusion, and she had nothing
in kind to offer them in return — neither gratitude nor
co-operation, nor even good faith. For this China
could be blamed only in so far as her own welfare was
hindered by her irresponsiveness, for her statesmen
were not far wrong in attributing to any motive rather
than pure philanthropy the obtrusive solicitude of the
Western Powers. International relations even between
kindred peoples are in the nature of things selfish, or
worse ; and the more they assume an altruistic mask
the more they lie open to suspicion. In this cynical
view of the attitude of her neighbours China has never
wavered.
Yet it was not all illusion and Dead Sea apples.
Something had been gained by diplomatic access to
the capital. The elaborate insolence of the Chinese
mandarin had been exchanged for the urbanity of the
well-bred Manchu. It became possible to converse.
Foreigners were listened to with attention, and answered
with an open countenace. The change was incalculable.
It recalled the days of Lord Macartney and the Em-
peror Kienlung, of Sir John Davis's pleasant intercourse
with Kiying, and of the agreeable impression left by
the Manchu statesmen who were concerned from 1841
onwards in the conduct of war or the conclusion of
1861-65.] NEW COAST PORTS. 369
peace. If to the kindly personal relations which charac-
terised the earlier years of Peking diplomacy no per-
manent tangible result could be definitely ascribed, who
can tell what evils were staved off or calamity averted
by these friendly amenities ?
In order, however, to appreciate the state of affairs in
Peking in 1865, it is necessary to fill the gap in our
narrative by an outline of events following the ratifica-
tion of the treaty of Tientsin and Convention of Peking
in October 1860.
II. NEW PORTS AND OPENING OF THE YANGTZE.
Seven new coast ports — Admiral Hope's Yangtze expedition — His relations
with Taiping rebels — Hankow, Kiukiang, and Chinkiang opened to
trade — Panic in Hankow, and exodus of population for fear of
rebels.
The new ports opened to trade — Tientsin, New-
chwang, and Chefoo in the North ; Swatow, and two
Formosan ports ; Kiungchow in Hainan — added con-
siderably to the range of foreign commerce, and ne-
cessitated a large extension of the foreign customs
and of the consular services. But the most import-
ant feature in the new arrangements was the effective
opening of the river Yangtze. It was interesting, as
giving access to the commercial centre of the empire ;
and as bringing foreigners into direct contact, possi-
bly conflict, with the Taiping rebels. For the banks
of the great river were at the time checkered with
the alternate strongholds of rebels and imperialists.
Trade must therefore either be carried on on suffer-
ance from both, or be efficiently protected from the
VOL. I. 2 A
370 OPENING OF THE YANGTZE. [chap, xviii.
interference of either belligerent. Obviously this was
a matter to be gone about discreetly.
The course and capabilities of the great waterway,
and the disposition of the military forces on its banks,
had been w^ell reconnoitred by Lord Elgin himself in
1858 ; and the ports to be opened, which were left
unnamed in the treaty, were pretty definitely indicated
in the survey then made. There were to be three in
all. Chinkiang, which had been recently recovered
from the rebels, situated at the intersection of the
Imperial Canal and the Yangtze- kiang, was definitely
fixed. The two others farther up river remained to be
selected.
The opening of the river was by treaty made con-
tingent on the restoration of imperial authority on its
banks ; but as there was nothing more likely to acceler-
ate that consummation than commercial traffic on the
river, the Chinese Government acquiesced in the British
authorities making the experiment, at their own risk
as regarded possible trouble with the insurgents. The
object was to " throw open the general coasting trade
of the river " ; and Lord Elgin, on his departure from
China, left the undertaking in the hands of Admiral
Hope, to whom he attached Mr Parkes, withdrawn
for the occasion from his duties as commissioner in
Canton.
The admiral started from Shanghai in advance of Mr
Parkes, with a squadron of light-draught steamers, on
February 11, 1861. He carried an exploring expe-
dition composed of Colonel Sarel, Captain Blakiston,
Mr Shereshewsky, and Dr A. Barton, whose proceedings
are reported in Blakiston's ' Five Months on the Upper
Yangtze ' ; several American missionaries ; two French-
1861-65.] APPROACH TO NANKING. 371
men, afterwards distinguished, MM. Eugene Simon and
A. Dupuis, the latter proving the means of eventually
giving Tongking to France ; a French military attache ;
Lieut .-Colonel Wolseley, D.A.Q.-M.G. ; and a delega-
tion from the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, with
several private persons. Whether the pilots pre-
sumed upon light draught and steam power, or whether
the course of the river had changed so much since the
previous surveys were made, the vessels got stranded,
one after another, in the estuary ; and as each grounded
a companion was told off to stand by her, so that before
they had got clear of what is known as the Langshan
Crossing (the home of the famous breed of black poultry)
the admiral's tender, the Coromandel, was the only
vessel left in a mobile condition. Not to lose time,
the admiral determined to push on in that non-com-
batant craft to Nanking, the rebel capital, and test the
temper and intentions of the Taipings.
As the steamer slowly approached the landing-
place, in bright sunshine and a still atmosphere, the
batteries on the river front were crowded, but re-
mained silent.
*' What will you do, sir, if they fire ? " the admiral
was asked.
"Oh, I will just drop down out of range, and send
and ask them what they mean by it," he replied, with
deep deliberate utterance, not unlike Beaconsfield's.
An officer was sent ashore to parley, some rebel
officers came on board, and the prospect of an amicable
understanding appeared to be satisfactory. It was a
critical juncture in the history both of the Taiping
movement itself and of foreign relations with it and
with China. Without exaggeration, it may be said
372 OPENING OF THE YANGTZE. [chap, xviii.
that the proximate fate of the Taipings then lay hidden
within the brain of Sir James Hope, and each occasion
of contact between him and them during the next few
months added its definite contribution to the data on
which the momentous decision was ultimately taken.
Although he had then no higher opinion of the Taipings
than that they were " an organised band of robbers,"
the admiral was resolved to give them fair play ; and
since no diplomatic intercourse could be held with in-
surgents, he determined to take relations with them
under his own supervision (March 8, 1861). " The
principle I shall adopt being that in the .district of
country of which they hold possession the Taiping
authorities must be regarded as those of the de facto
Government, . . . and this principle being likely to
lead to the payment of double duties (to rebels and
imperialists) on all trade conducted at places in their
possession, I am desirous of definite instructions on the
subject."
The first point to be settled with the rebel authorities
at Nanking was the non-molestation of British traffic
passing up and down the river within range of their
batteries or otherwise, to secure which object it had
been determined to station a ship of war abreast of the
city. The sanction of the Taiping chiefs was wanted
to this arrangement, which, however, without such
sanction, it would have been all the more necessary to
insist upon. The second point affected the general
relations between foreign trade and the rebel move-
ment. The next aim of the admiral was to arrive at an
understanding with the leaders for the neutralisation of
Shanghai and Wusung within an area of thirty miles
round these two places.
1861-65.] RELATIONS WITH REBELS. 373
Not being prepared to enter into definite negotiations
until the arrival of Mr Parkes, who had not yet joined
the expedition, Sir James Hope returned to the
squadron which he had left aground in the lower
reaches of the river. But thinking the time and the
opportunity might be usefully employed in gathering
some acquaintance with the Taipings at their head-
quarters, he landed three volunteers at Nanking, whose
presence he ascertained would not be unwelcome to the
authorities there. They were to remain in the city as
the guests of the rebels till the admiral's return. The
party consisted of Lieut. -Colonel Wolseley, Mr P. J.
Hughes, vice-consul designate of Kiukiang, and one of
the Shanghai delegates. They were joined on shore
by the E-ev. William Muirhead, missionary, who had
reached Nanking by land from Shanghai. The party
was thus a thoroughly representative one. On the
return of the admiral a week later, accompanied by Mr
Parkes, the arrangements for a guard-ship were satis-
factorily settled after some puerile obstruction, and
the expedition proceeded on its way up the river to
Hankow, where, as also at Kiukiang and Chinkiang,
consular officers were established ; and the Yangtze
was declared open by notification in Shanghai on March
18, 1861.
The expedition was fruitful in information concerning
the rebels, all tending to confirm the purely destructive
character of the movement. Certain incidents of the
voyage were also most instructive to the visitors.
While the expedition was still at Hankow the Taipings
had captured a walled city, fifty miles distant, which
had been passed by the squadron on its way up a few
days before. The news created a universal panic
374 OPENING OF THE YANGTZE. [chap, xviii.
throughout the three cities, Wuchang, Hanyang, and
Hankow, and the scene which followed could not be
paralleled. It is thus laconically referred to in the
report of the delegates of the Chamber of Commerce :
** The abandonment was most complete, not a house nor
a shop was open, and it became equally impossible
to purchase goods, to check quotations, or pursue
inquiries."
One day the deep Han river was so packed with
junks that one might almost walk from bank to bank
over their mat coverings. The next day everything
that could float was crowded with fugitive families with
their household stuff huddled precariously on the decks,
and such a fleet as, for number and picturesqueness, was
probably never seen, covered the broad bosom of the
Yangtze, making slow headway under sail against the
current.
Mr Parkes, eminently a man of fact, thus describes
what he was witness to : —
Darkness fell upon crowds of the people lying with their
weeping families, and the debris of their property, under the
walls of Wuchang, anxious only to escape from defences that
should have proved their protection. . . . The noise and cries
attending their embarkation continued throughout the night,
but daylight brought with it a stillness that was not less im-
pressive than the previous commotion. By that time all the
fugitives had left the shore, and the river, as far as the eye
could reach, was covered with junks and boats of every de-
scription bearing slowly away up-stream the bulk of the
population of three cities, which a few days before we had
computed at 1,000,000 of souls.
Of what came of this and many such another melan-
choly exodus of humanity, without resources, ready
to brave any death rather than fall into the hands
1861-65.] NEUTRALITY OF TREATY PORTS. 376
of the destroyers, there is no record ; and the scene
at Hankow, magnified a hundred times, would give
an inadequate conception of the havoc of the fifteen
years of the Taiping rebellion.
III. ADMIRAL HOPE'S POLICY TOWARDS INSURGENTS.
Devastation only to be expected of them — Enforces neutrality and respect
for foreign property — Thirty-mile radius round Shanghai — Hesitancy
of British Minister and Foreign Office — Overcome by firmness of Ad-
miral— Capture of Ningpo by rebels — Arrangements for trade there —
Bad faith of rebels — Shanghai to be defended — Its dangerous position
— Ravages of rebels — Offensive movements against them — Clearing of
the thirty-mile radius — Cordial relations between English and French
admirals — Mr Bruce won over — The campaign — Recapture of Ningpo
— Chinese raise foreign force — Ward — Burgevine — Chinese statesmen
who organised the suppression of the rebellion — General Gordon takes
command of the " Ever- Victorious Army."
None of the spectators was more profoundly im-
pressed than Admiral Hope, and the spectacle
undoubtedly helped to mature his views on the
demerits of the rebellion. On April 6 he wrote to
the Admiralty : "A period of anarchy, indefinite in
duration, appears likely to ensue, in which the com-
mercial towns of the empire will be destroyed, and
its most productive provinces laid waste. For this
state of things, so destructive to foreign trade, I see
no remedy except the recognition by both parties, if
practicable, of the neutrality of the consular ports,
which would then become places of security in which
the Chinese merchants and capitalists could take
refuge." And towards the realisation of this scheme
the first step was the obligation laid upon the rebel
Government at Nanking that their forces should not
376 hope's policy towards insurgents. [chap. XVIII.
approach within thirty miles of Shanghai or Wusung.
This idea, however, was but slowly assimilated by her
Majesty's Minister at Peking and by the Government
at home, and Lord Russell, while approving generally
of the admiral's policy, stipulated that no force be
used except in direct defence of British property. Mr
Bruce wrote able despatches from Peking, in which
the pros and cons, the contingencies and risks, of alter-
native courses were so well balanced, that the only
practical conclusion that could possibly issue therefrom
was that eventually arrived at, — to leave the decision
to the admiral with a promise of support, whatever
course he might adopt. The Foreign Office and the
Peking Legation, in fact, faithfully represented the
orthodox view of affairs, whereby national policy is
primarily reduced to a game of safety for officials,
and to the application of theories and general prin-
ciples often having little bearing on the actualities
of the case. The admiral's mind was cast in a
different mould. To him the exigencies of the situa-
tion were everything, the official balance very little,
the fear of responsibility nothing. The man on the
spot, seeing clearly the right thing to do and resolved
to do it, was bound in the end to gain the Government
to his side, for Governments like a strong arm to lean
on. . With men like Sir James Hope there was no risk
of complications arising, for complications arise mostly
from the nervous dread of them, never from going
straight and clear to the objective point. It needed
a visit of the admiral to Peking, however, and the best
part of a year's correspondence, to convert the British
Government point by point to his views.
Meantime the Taiping rebels advanced to Ningpo,
1861-65.] REBELS CAPTURE NINGPO. 377
the defence of which Mr Bruce had refused to sanction,
and they captured the city on December 9, 1861, after
engaging not to do so. The leaders there were inter-
viewed by the French Admiral Protet and the English
Captain Corbett with a view to gaining a comprehen-
sion of their plans, and " to prevent the atrocities of
which they have hitherto been guilty, and to en-
deavour to effect an arrangement by which trade can
be conducted from the town. The French Rear-
Admiral Protet will act in concert with me," wrote
Admiral Hope to Corbett, December 7.
After the capture of the city the admiral instructed
Captain Corbett that if the rebels wished to levy
any duties, he was to see that in amount they did
not exceed those stipulated in the imperial tariff.
Arrangements were also made by the three treaty
Powers for the protection of foreign life and the
safety of the foreign quarter. The position was,
however, a very difficult one, as the rebels had no
idea of order or of keeping faith. Indeed the problem
of protecting British subjects while observing Lord
Bussell's neutrality instructions was fast becoming
impossible, for tiie conventions made with the Tai-
ping authorities in Nanking were disregarded by them,
and Shanghai itself was threatened.
The admiral's conception of what was required, for
the protection of British interests was all the while
undergoing steady development, and in January he
wrote that Kiukiang and Hankow had become as
essential to our trade as Shanghai. Writing a month
later, he pressed his plans still more definitely upon
the Admiralty. " On every occasion," he said on
February 21, 1862, "on which I have reported the
378 hope's policy towards insurgents, [chap. XVIII.
state of Shanghai since my return here, it has been
my duty to bring the devastation and atrocities com-
mitted by the rebels in its immediate vicinity very
prominently under their Lordships' notice. These pro-
ceedings have been conducted at a distance much too
close to be consistent with the respect due to the
occupation of the town by French and EngUsh forces,
or to leave its supplies of provisions and native trade
unaffected."
The tension was at length relieved by the relaxation
of Earl Russell's restrictions. He had already said that
"it might be expedient" to protect the treaty ports,
and that he was " of opinion that we ought to defend
Shanghai and Tientsin as long as our forces [the garri-
son left from the Peking campaign] occupied these
ports." But now, on March 11, 1862, he took a more
practical view of the whole situation, and issued her
Majesty's commands that " Admiral Hope should not
only defend Shanghai and protect the other treaty
ports, but also the British flag and the Yangtze, and
generally that British commerce is to have the aid of
her Majesty's ships of war."
During the winter of 1861-62 matters had become
very critical in Shanghai. The rebel chiefs sent an
intimation to the foreign consuls that it was their
intention to capture the town, and they proceeded
to burn the villages and ravage the country on both
sides of the river within gun-shot of the military lines.
Special local measures of defence were adopted by the
residents, and fugitives in thousands flocked into the
only asylum where their lives were safe. The pressure
of these events led to yet more definite action on the
part of Sir James Hope, who perceived that the eflec-
1861-65.] OFFENSIVE DEFENSIVE. 379
tive defence of Shanghai and its sources of supply
involved aggressive movements against the rebels in
order to drive them out of all the places they occupied
within the thirty-mile radius. In all these proceedings
the admiral went hand in hand with his French col-
league, and with the commanders of the French and
British military forces. An agreement signed by the
four on February 13, 1862, settled the immediate
question of the defence of the city of Shanghai. An
appeal to the British Minister completed his conver-
sion to a " forward policy." " I strongly recommend,"
wrote the admiral on February 22, " that the French
and English commanders should be required by your-
self and M. Bourboulon to free the country from
rebels within a line " — specified ; and the reply was
as hearty and free from ambiguity as could be
wished : " We can no more suffer Shanghai to be
taken by famine or destroyed by insurrection than we
can allow it to be taken by assault ; and it requires
but little experience in China to be assured that the
effect of remaining on a strict defensive within the
walls is to convince our assailants that we are unable
to meet them in the field."
The plan of campaign was settled in an agreement
signed by Sir James Hope, Admiral Protet, and Briga-
dier Staveley, April 22, 1862, and was carried out to
the letter during the early summer and the autumn
following. At an early period of the operations
Admiral Protdt was killed : his loss was deeply la-
mented, most of all by his British colleague, with
whom relations of exceptional intimacy had sprung up.
" The extent to which I enjoyed his confidence and
regard will ever prove a source of unmingled satis-
380 hope's policy towards insurgents. [chap. XVIII.
faction to me," wrote Sir James Hope on the day of
the admiral's death, May 17, 1862, himself at the
time confined to his cabin by wounds.
The rebel forces in Ningpo, who had been on their
good behaviour for a short time, became aggressive and
insulting, even going the length of offering rewards for
foreign heads in the good old mandarin fashion. It is
well to remember that even in their unkempt condition,
and with everything to gain from the goodwill of
foreigners, the Taiping rebels lacked nothing of the
most arrogant of Chinese assumptions. The preten-
sions of the chief far exceeded those of the Emperors of
China. The Taipings required foreigners to be subject
to their jurisdiction, and they habitually applied de-
rogatory terms to foreign countries. Such things were
regarded much as the eccentricities of a lunatic might
be. Nevertheless they were a faithful reflex of what
is rooted in the Chinese mind.
The position of foreigners and the foreign ships
there having thus been rendered intolerable, the city
was recaptured from the rebels by Commander Roderick
Dew in the same month — a brilliant feat of arms.
After the capture he wrote : "In the city itself, once
the home of half a million of people, no trace or vestige
of an inhabitant could be seen. . . . The canals were
filled with dead bodies and stao-nant filth." The
recapture of Ningpo was the beginning of an x^LUglo-
Franco- Chinese campaign against the rebels in Che-
kiang which was carried on simultaneously with that
round Shanghai.
It is needless to follow in detail the operations
which culminated two years later in the final suppres-
sion of the Taiping rebellion ; but the relations which
1861-65.] THE TAIPING REBELLION. 381
grew up between the British and French commanders
on the one side, and the Chinese military forces which
were being organised on the other, were so fruitful in
results as to merit their being held in particular
remembrance. Though the history has been many
times written, it may still not be considered super-
erogatory to trace some of the points of contact be-
tween the native and foreign motives and plans of
action, and the evolution of the defensive idea which
was the product of the combination.
The Taiping rebellion had devastated the central
and southern provinces many years before the Chinese
Government roused itself to a serious effort to resist it.
The movement of repression originated with the Gover-
nor-General of the Hu provinces, whose chief lieutenant
and successor was Tseng Kwo-fan, Governor- General
of Kiangnan at the time of which we now speak.
His brother, Ts6ng Kwo - chuan, the Governor of
Chekiang province, was the military leader, and Li
Hung-chang, the most capable and energetic of them
all, was governor of the province of Kiangsu. The
imperialist forces had been gradually closing on
Nanking, and it was thought probable that this
hemming-in process forced the rebels to seek outlets
and new feeding-grounds in the populous districts of
Kiangsu and Chekiang. The rebels had enlisted a
number of foreigners in their ranks, and made great
efforts to supply themselves with foreign arms and
ammunition, for which purpose, among others, com-
munication with the sea was most important for them.
lA.futai (governor), also began to enlist foreigners and
raise a special corps, drilled and armed in foreign
fashion, and led by foreign officers. The foreign agent
382 HOPES POLICY TOWARDS INSURGENTS. [chap, xviii.
in this enterprise on the imperialist side was Frederick
Ward, to whom Mr Bruce referred in May 1861 as
''a man called Ward, an ex - Californian fillibuster."
Within a year Mr Bruce wrote, " In the Chinese force
organised and led by Mr Ward I see the nucleus of a
military organisation which may prove most valuable in
the disturbed state of China." The truth is, " Ward's
force," which became known by its high-flown Chinese
title of the '' Ever -Victorious Army," was seized on
from its origin by Sir James Hope, whose encourage-
ment and support were essentially serviceable to it in
its early days. The admiral treated Ward as a com-
rade, fighting by his side, and thus giving the new
levy a military status. While the Chinese troops were
yet raw he co-operated with them by capturing posi-
tions from the rebels and trusting Ward's men to hold
them, on the assurance of their leader that they were
equal to that duty. Ward himself was an unpreten-
tious, cool, and daring man, reckless of his own life.
During his brief campaign he was riddled with bullets,
one of which entering his mouth destroyed the palate
and impaired his speech, and before long the fatal
missile reached its mark. He was succeeded in the
command by his second, Burgevine, who, though a good
soldier, lacked Ward's tact and moderation, and got
into trouble with his paymasters, to whom he used
violence and threats. He was deposed from the com-
mand by Governor Li, which brought about a serious
crisis, for the disciplined force of foreigners and Chinese
was left without a head. In this emergency Li applied
to the British authorities for the loan of an ofiicer to
command the disciplined force. The responsibility of
the British representatives, naval and military, became
1861-65.] GORDON. 383
thus extended to finding a suitable Englishman to
replace Burgevine. Their first selection was Captain
Holland, KM., who held the post for a short time,
and was succeeded by Captain C. G. Gordon, E..E.
Gordon had arrived in China in 1860 in time to share
in the last act of the Peking campaign ; he passed the
year 1861 at Tientsin, where he was highly esteemed
as a model man and meritorious officer. In the winter
of 1861 he had conferences with Mr Bruce and Prince
Kung on the question of suppressing the rebellion ; but
none of their ideas, nor the policy of the British Govern-
ment, were then sufficiently advanced to lead to any
practical result. Gordon accompanied his corps to
Shanghai in the spring of 1862, and was engaged in
the operations for clearing the thirty-mile radius under
General Staveley, who spoke warmly of his daring
reconnoitring services, for which Gordon had been
already distinguished in the Crimea. In the following
winter he was busy surveying and mapping the country
which had been reconquered from the rebels, and in
the spring of 1863 he was offered by his chief the
leadership of Ward's force. Gordon's was no doubt the
best selection that could have been made, having regard
only to the abilities which were then recognised in him ;
for though General Staveley knew him well both in
Tientsin and Shanghai, it is not claimed for him, or any
one else, that he had prescience of those transcendent
qualities and that magnetic power which the subsequent
campaign against the rebels was the means of bringing
to light. When Gordon took command of the " Ever-
Victorious," the force had had two years' training and
regular campaigning, and the men were entitled to rank
as veteran troops. Gordon, however, was to infuse new
384 hope's policy towards insurgents, [chap. XVIII.
life into the corps by his dynamic personality and by
the diligent use of the regenerative agency of " Ser-
geant What's -his -name." The number of foreigners
actually employed in the force is doubtful, but detailed
returns of killed and wounded in the course of a year's
operations gave a hundred names. Gordon's faculty of
control was probably more severely tested by his man-
agement of that motley foreign crew than of the whole
indigenous force ; but the best of which it was capable
was got out of this fortuitous concourse of men, and
under the inspiration of the commander several names
of distinction emerged from the cosmopolitan group.
When Gordon took over the command in March
1863 it was six months since the thirty-mile radius
had been entirely cleared of rebels, and the first duty
of the " Ever- Victorious " was to keep that area clear ;
its second to carry the war as far as it was able into
the regions beyond. Its efficiency, especially for this
latter purpose, depended on the support and co-oper-
ation of the British and French commanders, whose
troops remained in occupation of the treaty port of
Shanghai. For a time there was danger of a lapse in
this co-operation. The dismissed General Burgevine
carried his grievances to Peking, and made such an im-
pression by his plausible address on the American and
British Ministers there, that Mr Bruce espoused his
cause and wrote strong despatches to the British com-
mander, Staveley (April 10, 1863), urging the rein-
statement of Burgevine and the suppression of Gordon,
to whom it was to be explained that the step was no
reflection on him, &c. Again and again the Minister
returned to the charge, both to the commander in
Shanghai and to the Foreign Office at home ; but the
1861-65.] MAJOR-GENERAL BROWN. 385
Governor Li was firm, and adduced such cogent
reasons for the dismissal of Burgevine that Major-
General Brown, who had just succeeded to the British
command, joined Li in resolutely protesting against
the removal of Gordon, whom, it may be remarked, the
English general had never yet seen. The men on the
spot prevailed against the man who was theorising
from a distance, and on the worst data conceivable,
the culprit's own account of himself Mr Bruce, who,
as we have seen, was well acquainted with Gordon,
must have had reasons for his policy not given in his
official despatches, for these were inadequate and
narrow for a man of his large capacity.
We have said Major-General Brown had not then
seen Gordon. He had arrived from India in April to
relieve General Staveley of the command of the British
troops in China. He was a wiry man and of an active
temperament, and rapidly mastered the situation.
Probably to him is due the credit of the first true per-
ception of what manner of man this young engineer
officer was. General Brown was for a few days after
his arrival a guest in one of the spacious hongs in the
Shanghai settlement, which had a wide verandah,
giving access to all the bedrooms. One morning very
early the general, excited by a message that had just
reached him, rushed round in deshabille calling for his
host with a piece of coarse Chinese paper in his hand.
" Do you know Major Gordon ? " he said. " Why, yes,
a very nice fellow, and reported to be a first-rate offi-
cer." " But," exclaimed the general, " he is a genius !
Just look what I have received from him from the
front," and he unfolded the whitey-brown paper with
some rough diagrams, and a few not very legible pencil
VOL. I. 2 b
386 hope's policy towards insurgents. [chap. XVIII.
notes indicating his position and plan of attack on
Taitsan (where Captain Holland had been repulsed)
and Kuensan,^ both cities on the line of communication
with the provincial capital, Soochow. *' The man is a
genius," reiterated the general, "and must be sup-
ported." A few days later another of these cryptic
missives arrived, when a similar scene was repeated
with redoubled emphasis. *' I tell you that man is a
military genius ; that's what I call him, a military
genius," said the dapper little soldier in his vivacious
reiterative manner. " I'll support him for all I am
worth." And then he developed his own plan of re-
lieving the " Ever- Victorious " of garrison duty, leav-
ing the whole force — secure of its base — free to engage
in aggressive operations. This plan of giving effective
support to Gordon's force was carried out to the letter,
as subsequently described by the general in his official
despatches reporting the capture of Taitsan and Kuen-
san: "I had a field force acting in conjunction, as a
support, moving on the extreme edge of our boundary,
. . . which was of great assistance to Major Gordon
in his operations." He adds : " Kuensan having fallen.
Major Gordon now proposes to make it his head-
quarters ; . . . and as the fatal intends to make
Taitsan his headquarters, I shall bring it within the
boundary, thus giving the imperialists every confidence
to hold it, knowing they could receive support from me
at any moment." How vital to the fortunes of the
" Ever- Victorious Army " was this decided action of
General Brown s was seen when, three months later.
General Burgevine had gone over, with a certain
following of malcontents, to the Taipings, a movement
^ Kuiishan or Quinsan.
1861-65.] DEFECTION OF BUKGEVINE. 387
which suggested to Gordon serious misgivings as to the
loyalty of the foreigners remaining in his own force.
Burgevine, however, had no success in the rebel camp,
and soon, in a secret interview with Gordon, sued for
safe -conduct and amnesty. Improving his acquaint-
ance, however, with the new commander of the *' Ever-
Victorious," Burgevine's next proposal was the bold
one of eliminating as between themselves all questions
of conflicting loyalty to the respective belligerents by
throwing over both, and by joining forces on their own
account, to capture Soochow, and there raise an army
to march on Peking. It was a partnership which did
in nowise commend itself to Gordon, but the proposal
served to show how shrewd Li Hung-chang had been
in his estimate of the deposed leader.
IV. THE LAY-OSBORN FLOTILLA.
Orders sent through Mr Hart to Mr Lay — Fleet equipped under Captain
Osborn, R.N. — Ratification of their agreements refused in Peking —
Government would not place foreigners in a position of authority —
Misunderstandings and final sacrifice of Mr Lay — Ships paid ofi" and
sold — Crucial question the recapture of Nanking.
The invincible distrust of foreign auxiliaries which
dominates Chinese policy and prevents the empire from
ever having an army or a navy, received another signal
illustration in the same year in the great fiasco of the
Lay- Osborn flotilla. Mr H. N. Lay, Inspector-General
of Chinese Maritime Customs, was in England on leave
in 1861, his locum tenens in Peking being Mr (now
Sir) Bobert Hart. Conferences with the Chinese Min-
isters on the naval weakness of the empire resulted in
388 THE LAY-OSBORX FLOTILLA. [chap, xviii.
a very important decision, in consequence of which Mr
Hart was empowered to send to Mr Lay orders for
certain armed vessels to be officered and manned by
Englishmen. Mr Lay executed the rather " large
order" according to his lights, engaging Captain
Sherard Osborn to command the fleet, which was
equipped on a war-footing. The foreign enlistment
difficulties of the British Government were overcome,
as the Government was by that time ready to go to
any length in assisting the Government of China. The
fleet duly arrived in China, and Mr Lay and Captain
Osborn presented themselves in Peking to obtain rati-
fication of their agreements from the Imperial Govern-
ment. This was refused, the force was disbanded, and
the ships sold, at a heavy pecuniary sacrifice to the
Chinese, for they made no demur about payment.
The rock on which the scheme seemed to split was
the contention of Mr Lay that the fleet was imperial,
and that the commodore should take no orders from
viceroys or provincial authorities, but only from the
emperor, and through Mr Lay himself This was a
shock to the very edifice of Chinese Government,
conceived of as feasible only under the belief that in
its helpless condition the Government must accede
to anything. But the scheme was really impossible.
So also, however, was the alternative of provincial-
ising the naval force, as has been shown by subse-
quent failures in the attempt to use the services of
British officers in the Chinese navy. Such an instance
of reckoning without your host was never heard of be-
fore or since. It was like a practical joke on a titanic
scale. The ships were actually there, manned, officered,
and armed. It was a dangerous knot, which had to be
1861-65.] THE REJECTION OF THE SCHEME. 389
promptly cut or untied. Following the line of least
resistance, Mr Lay was made the scapegoat, on whose
head the Minister " laid both his hands " — rather
heavily — '* confessing over him the iniquities of all,"
and sending him away into the wilderness. In the
general interest the sacrifice of Mr Lay was perhaps
the safest way out of the imbroglio, for he was a
pugnacious little man in whose hands despotic power
might have been attended with inconvenience. Never-
theless, the blame of the failure belonged to all the
parties concerned — to Prince Kung, Wensiang, Mr
Hart, Mr Bruce, and the British Government. They
each entered into the scheme with different ideas,
more or less vague, except Mr Lay's own, which had
perforce to be reduced to the definite when he came
to draw up contracts with British naval officers, and
to meet the strict requirements of British law. The
Chinese Ministers of course could have no conception
what a foreign- equipped navy really meant, nor had
they probably fully divulged what was really in their
mind ; Mr Lay and Mr Hart were young men with
large ideas, but without experience ; Mr Bruce was
a man of the world who had seen service, and was,
from his position, the most responsible of them all,
and therefore the most culpable in deceiving himself,
and allowing the British Government to be misled. He
approved of the project, or it could never have been
carried out. But what was it precisely that he ap-
proved of? He "saw with pleasure that Captain
Osborn was about to reorganise the preventive service"
(October 6, 1862), and as late as February 8, 1863, he
wrote to Prince Kung of the '' speedy arrival of the
steam flotilla which your Imperial Highness has so
390 THE LAY-OSBORN FLOTILLA. [chap, xviii.
wisely ordered " — as if it were a pair of official boots !
Yet on the arrival of the flotilla it was found that
everybody concerned was at cross-purposes, and the
question naturally suggests itself, what steps her
Majesty's Minister had taken to satisfy himself as
to the real intentions of Prince Kung, whether they
had been properly transmitted by Mr Hart and cor-
rectly interpreted by Mr Lay and fully communicated
to her Majesty's Government. It appears that Mr
Bruce had, in fact, undergone a change of mind —
induced, no doubt, by cogent considerations — during
Mr Lay's final sojourn in Peking. Having received
a message from the Minister urging a stiff attitude
with the Chinese Government and promising the full
support of the Legation, Mr Lay proceeded to the
Yamen and laid down the law strongly, as his manner
was, in the full assurance that he had the British
Minister at his back. But after thus burning his
boats he found himself abandoned, for reasons of State
which he was unable to appreciate. Such was the
account of the crisis given at the time by Mr Lay
himself to a confidential friend then residing in Peking.
For the Chinese Government the scheme was neces-
sarily a leap in the dark. For the British Government
it involved a violent reversal of recently declared
policy, and on a most important issue. It was con-
sequently a case where extreme and minute precautions
against possible misunderstandings would not have
been superfluous, yet — so far as has yet been made
public, for there is doubtless a missing link in the
record — such seem to have been wholly absent from
the inception of the enterprise.
The crux of the question, no doubt, was the position
1861-65.] LI HUNG-CHANG PROTESTS. 391
of Nanking. The lever Mr Lay employed to secure
acceptance of his conditions was the prospect of the
immediate capture of the Taiping capital, against
which the provincial Government, represented by the
Viceroy Tseng, his brother, and the governor of
Kiangsu, Li, were expending their forces. The
temptation was exceedingly strong to close with Lay
and secure the services — probably much overrated
for that particular object — of the new flotilla, were
it even by recourse to some ambiguous phrase which
might leave a loophole of escape from the agreement
when its immediate object had been served. Some-
thing like this might have been attempted but for
the uncompromising attitude of Li Hung-chang, for
it was he who smashed the flotilla scheme. It was
true, he allowed, that the assistance of the ships
would enable the viceroy's forces to capture the city
at once ; but, he added confidently, we shall succeed
in time by our own resources, and it were better to
lose the city and the province, and even the empire
itself, than to place such power as Lay demanded
in the hands of any foreigner. Burgevine was fresh
in the futai's mind — was indeed at that very time
in the rebel camp near him. Li's arguments clinched
the matter. The flotilla was never commissioned.
The whole chapter of experiences of the campaign in
Kiangsu has left a vivid impression on the mind of
Li Hung-chang : it was the most interesting period
of his life, but no incident of it imparts such vivacity
to his reminiscences as that of the Lay-Osborn fleet.
Nothing warms him to dramatic locution like a ref-
erence to that episode.
392 THE END OF THE REBELLION. [chap, xviii.
V. THE END OF THE EEBELLION.
Gordon's brilliant campaign — His quarrel with Li Hung-chang — And
reconciliation — Other French and English officers co-operate in sup-
pression of rebellion — Russian aid offered.
Gordon's campaigning lasted one year : it was
marked by great successes, sundry reverses, more
than one crisis, and many discouragements. The
famous quarrel with the futai Li was illustrative of
several points of great utility to be borne in mind in
considering the working relations of Eastern and Wes-
tern peoples ; but perhaps its chief interest lay in its
revelation of the independent and dominating character
of Gordon himself, which was his distinguishing mark
through life. After a confused and scarcely intelligible
bargain with the rebel chiefs at Soochow, by which
their lives were to be spared, they were beheaded by
order of Li. Gordon resented this, and, like another
Achilles, withdrew to his tent. For this he was
warmly applauded by General Brown, Mr Bruce, and
the Foreign Office, who all denounced Li as the most
odious criminal, with whom no further communication
should be held. When, two months later, Gordon,
without consultation with any of these parties, but not
without friendly advice, changed his mind, resumed his
friendship with the governor and active operations in
the field, the same chorus of approval greeted his action
as had previously been pronounced of his inaction.
Mr Bruce wrote on February 10, 1864, to Prince
Kung, among other things, that " Major Gordon is to
be relieved from any communication with Governor
1861-65.] DISBANDMENT OF GORDON'S FORCE. 393
Li." Within a week Gordon, of his own motion, had
abandoned that position, leaving to the Minister to ex-
plain the change of attitude in any way he pleased,
which he did by resort to that token coinage of dip-
lomatic fiction which serves the domestic purposes of
the craft, but has no market-value outside its conven-
tional domain. An able explanatory letter from Mr
Hart, the new Inspector- General of Customs, who in-
vestigated the transaction on the spot, would have
afforded to the Minister colourable grounds for " re-
vision " of the earlier judgment, had he been allowed time
to avail himself of it. But Gordon's action forced his
hand, and left him no choice but to acquiesce first and
find his reasons afterwards. The Foreign Office, how-
ever, being at a distance, could not be swung back
again so quickly, and they had, on the impulse of the
first advices, withdrawn their sanction for Major Gor-
don's serving the Chinese at all. This order reached
him after he had, on his own motion, definitely re-
signed the service, so that there was no further
clashing of authorities. Though the force contributed
materially to the suppression of the rebellion, the
final act, the capture of Nanking, was left to the
unaided resources of the Viceroy Tseng.
Not the least of Gordon's successes was the peaceable
dissolution of the force when it had done its work ; for
the establishment was, for its size, enormously costly,
and it was a two-edged sword in the hands of the
Chinese. The "Ever-Victorious Ai^my" was happy in
the opportuneness of its death. A prolonged existence
might easily have dispelled the wonderful prestige it
had gained in its short career and limited scope. Per-
haps, after all, its place in history owes everything to
394 THE END OF THE REBELLION. [chap, xviii.
the personality of its last leader, whose legacy to man-
kind is not so much a catalogue of achievements as a
life — immortal.
The renown of Gordon and the brilliancy of his
exploits have thrown unduly into the shade the
Anglo-Chinese and Franco-Chinese campaign in the
neighbouring province of Chekiang, which had Ningpo
for its sea base. In their degree these operations were
no less essential to the ultimate overthrow of the rebel-
lion than those in the province of Kiangsu, and, among
many others, the names of Prosper Giquel, who after-
wards managed the arsenal at the Pagoda anchorage,
Foochow, and of the large-hearted bishop, Mgr. Dela-
place, afterwards translated to the metropolitan see,
where he died, deserve to be had in remembrance.
Sundry risings in other provinces caused trouble and
apprehension ; but we may, for the purposes of this
narrative, consider that the year 1864 witnessed the
closing scene of the great rebellion.
It would be impossible, within any reasonable space,
to follow even in outline the course of that stupendous
devastation, exceeding in its wanton waste of human
life the horrors of the Thirty Years' War in Germany :
our concern has been only with that side of the move-
ment with which foreign nations were forced into con-
tact, with its political bearing, and its influence on the
position of the Chinese Government. It happened that
only two of the Powers were directly concerned in of-
fensive operations against the rebels, but in the task of
suppression they had the moral support of them all.
Indeed, but for the French and English activity it
seems probable that Hussia was ready single-handed to
undertake the whole business. The Hussian Govern-
1861-65.] BUSSIA's ATTITUDE. 395
ment from time to time signified its approval of the
action taken by the French and EngHsh in assisting
the Chinese Government to put down the rebellion.
Russia was included in the thanks of the Chinese to
their foreign allies ; she had at least furnished material
in the shape of " 10,000 rifles and several cannons."
These arrived in Peking, after a protracted journey,
at a time when the Russian Minister deemed it
expedient to explain to his British colleagues that
the arms had reference only to the rebellion. More-
over, Russia had, or professed to have, serious inten-
tions of sending a large force of her own to co-operate
in its suppression. M. Petchroff, a member of the
Russian Legation, spent a month in Shanghai in the
autumn of 1862 in frequent conferences on this
subject with the Chinese authorities, the report of
which he carried in person to Admiral Popoff, who
was at the time in Japan. M. Petchroff called upon
the British admiral while in Shanghai, and informed
him of this project. It was not carried out, as Prince
Gortchakoff explained to Lord Napier, because the
Russian Government had not force enough available
to render effective assistance, but they wished to show
the Chinese that they were in hearty sympathy with
the Anglo-French policy, and might, for moral effect,
show their flag in co-operation, so far as prudence
would allow.
The importance of putting an end to the rebellion,
and the value of foreign aid in doing so, were fully
realised by the Peking Government. Of this the
abortive, but costly, Osborn flotilla furnished proof
enough ; and the honours bestowed on Gordon by
imperial decree were an expression of the unspeakable
396 EVACUATION OF CANTON. [chap, xviii.
relief which was felt in the palace at the dispelling of
the hideous nightmare. A final decree summing up
the movement, in a tone of restrained sincerity not
usual in these conventional documents, says : " Words
cannot convey any idea of the misery and desolation
he [the Taiping chief] caused ; the measure of his
iniquity was full, and the wrath of both gods and men
was roused against him."
VI. EVACUATION OF CANTON.
Good feeling and compliments on both sides — Mr Parkes's able
administration of the city.
An event which passed off without the slightest
sensation, because without hitch, was the evacuation
of Canton by the Allied troops in October 1861.
Were it only for one clause in the proclamation issued
by the high Chinese authorities on the occasion,
this transaction would form a valuable historical
landmark : —
During the occupation of Canton by the allied troops of
England and France during a period of four years, their con-
duct has never been otherwise than friendly towards the
military and people of the whole city, and the military and
people having also corresponded with courtesy and friendship,
harmony has been maintained from first to last. Now that
the troops are being withdrawn, the consuls of England and
France will continue to reside within the city, while the
merchants and people of all nations will constantly pass in
and out, or reside therein at their pleasure. It remains the
duty of yourselves, the military and people, to continue to
them the same respectful and courteous relations that have
prevailed during the occupation.
1861-65.] EMPEROR HSIENFIiNG DIES IN RETREAT. 397
Compare this with the state of things existing only
three years before ! Much of the success of the
occupation and its good permanent results were un-
questionably due to the high qualities of Parkes, the
British commissioner, who thus modestly refers to the
matter in his despatch : " The confidence of the people
in a strong and inoppressive Government, added to
their own governable character, materially facilitated
the task of maintaining order in a vast and most
intricate city containing a population of upwards of
1,000,000 inhabitants." The "Canton question" was
thus finally disposed of to the satisfaction of all
parties.
VII. DEATH or THE EMPEROR.
His flight from the capital — Succession of his son — Regency of the two
empresses — Prince Kung's sanguinary coup d'etat.
Next in importance to the suppression of the
Taiping rebellion, the death of the Emperor Hsienfeng
marked the period we are now considering. That
unfortunate monarch, who deserted his capital against
the strongest remonstrances of his advisers, on the
approach of the Allied forces, died at his hiding-place
in August 1861, and his only son was proclaimed in
his stead under the style of Tungchih. The new
emperor was a child, and provision had to be made for
a regency. How this regency fell into the hands of
two empresses — one the mother of the young emperor,
the other the true widow of the deceased — was not
very well understood by the foreigners then in the
capital. Prince Kung's coup d'etat, by which the
398 INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS. [chap, xviii.
three male members of the regency were elaborately
arraigned and then assassinated, was not organised to
get rid of any imaginary " anti-foreign faction," as was
too easily assumed at the time, but simply and solely
to place the empire at the feet of himself and the
emperor's mother. " Parties " in Peking have always
been, and are to this day, a puzzle to foreigners,
who, having seldom at the moment any trustworthy
means of informing themselves, are apt to be carried
away by '' cries," sometimes got up for the purpose of
misleading them, — for the Chinese are not at all averse
from turning to account the half knowledge on which
foreigners are prone to form their opinions.
VIII. INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS ON PROGRESS
OF DIPLOMACY.
Inadequacy of foreign diplomacy — Absence of sovereign — Allies committed
to protection of China — Coercion impossible — Large outlook of Mr
Bruce — The provincial versus imperial administration — Attempt to
force Central Government to coerce provincial — Contemptuous attitude
of Chinese Ministers — Sir F. Bruce's despair — He clutches at various
straws — General reaction of Chinese.
How did these various occurrences influence the
progress of diplomatic relations with the Government ?
We have seen that diplomacy in Peking was a venture
launched on imported capital, which, meeting with no
indigenous support, was doomed from the first to feed
upon itself. There was no dialect through which the
foreign idea could translate itself to Chinese compre-
hension, no medium by which Chinese political concep-
tions could be made intelligible to the foreigner. When
1861-65.] OBSTACLES TO INTERCOURSE. 399
Gordon could not get his meaning filtered through
an interpreter, he called for a dictionary and put his
finger on the word "idiotcy" — and the most orthodox
interpreting could not get much beyond this point
in establishing a common currency for the interchange
of national ideas. The initial difficulty in imposing
foreign forms, foreign terms, foreign procedure — of
revolutionising at a stroke a system of administration
petrified by ancient usage — would have existed even
if the statesmen of China had been sincere converts to
the innovation. The contrary was, of course, the case :
they were as much opposed to the new relations as
they had been to the military invasion itself No
help, therefore, was to be expected from the Chinese
side in creating a workable scheme of international
intercourse. They desired nothing of that kind, their
ambition soaring no higher than the creation of a
buffer against which external impulsion might ex-
pend its force. That buffer was the Tsungli-Yamen.
Foreign diplomacy, therefore, if it were to subsist at
all, must subsist on its own resources, the foundation
of which was force. The force that brought foreigners
to Peking must, either in esse or in posse, for an
indefinite time keep them there and render them
efficient. Force no doubt would have enabled the
foreign Ministers to bring about even those structural
changes in the Chinese system which were necessary
to clear the ground for the operation of their diplomacy.
But if there was one thing more than another of which
Western Governments were determined to convince
themselves, it was that the law of force was finally
abrogated in China ; that on a certain day at a certain
hour, coincident with the signing (by force) of a sheet
400 INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS. [chap, xviii.
of paper, the spirit of hostility had departed from the
Chinese mind ; and that the law of love and reason
was, without preamble, to take the place of that
which had brought about the new relations. Whether
believed in or not, this curious paradox was to be the
rule of all future action.
The game that opens with the " king " off the board,
and is afterwards continued with the " queen " pro-
tected, is an obviously impossible one. The foreign
Ministers had to do with a Government of irresponsi-
bility, and instead of teaching its members from the
outset to recognise their new obligations — training
them as children, which as regards foreign matters
they really were — the foreign Ministers began by
treating the Chinese Government rather as an infant
too delicate for discipline, with the familiar results
of such treatment. The diplomats betrayed so much
anxiety to lure the sovereign back to his palace, that'
the Chinese Ministers soon learned to exploit this
feeling for their own ends. That such and such a
concession " would have a good effect at J^ho " was
inducement enough to the foreign representatives to
waive one point after another in the transaction of
public business. When the emperor died, after six
months of this regime of indulgence, the position was
changed materially for the worse, — for the diplomats
had now a veritable infant on their hands, with a
female regent " behind the curtain." No prospect
thenceforth of even the initial formality of delivering
letters of credence until the child should grow up,
by which time many things might happen. Thus the
European scheme of diplomacy, which was to have
been imposed bodily on the Court of Peking, stumbled
1861-65.] SIR FREDERICK BRUCE's OUTLOOK. 401
heavily on the threshold, and never recovered Itself.
But the Chinese recovered. Their fear of the " fierce
barbarians " disappeared as they saw them throw away
their weapons, and the process was resumed by which
the fruits of the war and of the treaties of peace were
gradually nibbled away.
And of course the whole idea of coercing the Im-
perial Government, even had it ever been entertained,
was openly reduced to nullity when the foreign Powers
interfered for the suppression of the rebellion. The
Allies could not knock down with one hand what
they were propping up with the other, and thus
the Imperial Government not only enjoyed immunity,
but knew that they possessed it, — that their late con-
querors were now fully committed to the upholding
of the integrity of China and the maintenance of the
dynasty. Any liberties might consequently be taken :
remonstrances from the foreigfners would be loud in
proportion to their hollowness, but the barbarians
could not attack a citadel full of their own hostages.
Although remoteness from the scene of action and
imperfect acquaintance with local requirements were
apt to invalidate his conclusions on points of detail,
and to compel him occasionally to follow^ where he
might have been expected to guide the action of
his subordinate executive, yet whenever Sir Frederick
Bruce delivered his mind on the position of China
and her foreign relations as a whole, his views were
large, luminous, and statesmanlike. He foresaw from
the first what the degradation of the Chinese Gov-
ernment must inevitably lead to. His outlook is re-
vealed in a brief sentence in one of his earlier de-
spatches : "The weakness of China rather than her
VOL. I. 2 c
402 INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS. [chap, xviii.
strength is likely to create a fresh Eastern question
in these seas." There need be little doubt that that
idea dominated his Chinese diplomacy. Severity, or
even strictness, may well have seemed on the face
of the matter inconsistent with the pious wish to
strengthen China, yet we now know that what she
then most needed was to be braced up to the fulfil-
ment of her obligations as a necessity of her own
wellbeing.
The field of diplomacy in the orthodox sense being
closed, and there being no foreign interests in Peking,
the subject-matter for the Ministers' activity was fur-
nished entirely from the trading-ports. Of these there
were fifteen open in 1861. The kind of questions
which arose may be generally defined as claims arising
out of breaches of treaty by provincial ofiicials, for
which redress was sought from the Central Govern-
ment. This was a reversal of Chinese methods, which,
even had the Government been well disposed, would
not have been easy to effect ; and as the Government
was hostile, difiiculty became impossibility. The Brit-
ish Minister after a year's trial began to realise the
magnitude of his Sisyphean task. "In a country
like China," he wrote to the Foreign Ofiice in July
1862, "where the principles of administration differ
entirely from those practised by us, the conclusion
of a treaty is the commencement, not the termination,
of difficulties."
To a consul he wrote at the same time : "The
important result to be gained by the establishment
of direct relations with the Government of Peking
is the avoidance of local acts of violence. . . . Time
will elapse before the new system will work smoothly
1861-65.] HIS "IDEAL POLICY." 403
and efficiently, . . . but you must not go beyond
pacific efforts to remedy the abuses complained of."
A few months later, in a general circular to consuls,
he thus carefully recapitulated the instruction : —
The object to be attained is that of forcing the local officials
to observe the treaty . . . through the pressure brought to
bear upon them by the Peking Government, and thus escape
from the false position in which we have hitherto been placed
of coercing the local authorities and people, and thus doing the
work of the Imperial Government. To initiate this new
system of relations is a task which can only be effected
gradually and patiently; but the attempt must be steadily
and perseveringly made, in order that the Chinese Government
may be forced to teach its people, &c.
And at the same time he summed up the situation to
the Foreign Office in these words : " Our relations with
China cannot be put upon a safe footing until the
Imperial Government itself compels its local officers
to observe treaties" — a matter in which the Central
Government itself most needed compulsion !
But all this about "forcing" the local officials and
"forcing" the Imperial Government, without using any
force, recalls the ancient Chinese maxim of " ruling
barbarians by misrule." The world rested securely
enough on the tortoise, but what did the tortoise itself
rest on? With grim satisfaction must the Chinese
Ministers have watched the foreigners entering on a
desert campaign where they would exhaust their
strength without reaching the enemy. The warnings
and threats which alone the Minister allowed himself
to use to enforce his demands or his admonitions, as
the case might be, were to the Chinese mere blank
cartridge. Prince Kung, replying to one of those
404 INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS. [chap, xviil.
minatory despatches, " imagines that his Excellency
uses this outspoken language for the purpose of
stimulating the Chinese Government to activity. His
Highness is sure that it is not his Excellency's desire
to act in the manner indicated." And so on in-
definitely. The impression made on the Chinese
Government by the force of foreign diplomacy was
likened by an American Minister twenty years after-
wards to " boxing a feather-bed." The policy above
described, inaugurated by Mr Bruce and followed
consistently by the British Government, was pithily
termed by Lord Salisbury, when in Opposition, as an
" ideal policy " in pursuit of which the concrete inter-
ests of the country were allowed to lapse.
It would be tedious to trace in detail the process of
disintegration of treaty rights which followed these
interesting overtures. It will be more to the purpose
to cite the British Minister s review of the results
twelve months later in a despatch to Prince Kung.
This despatch and the reply to it were deemed so
important at the time that they were separately called
for by the House of Commons, and were published as
independent Blue Books (Nos. 6 and 8, 1864) : —
Sir Frederick Bruce wished the Prince of Kung to under-
stand that he had reason to be greatly dissatisfied
1. With the general disregard of treaty provisions mani-
fested at the ports.
2. With the tone of the Government generally towards
foreigners.
It is entirely due to the exertions of the Allied forces that
Shanghai and Ningpo are not now in rebel possession. Had
Shanghai fallen, the imperial authority would have received a
blow from which it could never have recovered.
Sir F. Bruce did not look for any extraordinary demon-
1861-65.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH PRINCE KUNG. 405
stration of gratitude for these services, but he had hoped that
the Central Government would at least have insisted on the
faithful observance of the treaty at the ports. He had hoped
also that it would have addressed itself with some increase of
vigour to the organisation of a competent executive.
These expectations have not been realised. At several of
the ports the treaty is daily broken in matters great and small ;
and the Central Government, if not unwilling, shows itself
unable to enforce a better order of things. The orders sent
by the Foreign Board, when Sir Frederick Bruce complains,
are not carried out, either because the local authorities do not
stand in awe of the Foreign Board or because they do not
believe the Foreign Board issues them in earnest.
The Foreign Board has gone through the form of issuing
instructions, but the causes of complaint remain as they were,
either because the local authorities do not fear or because the
Foreign Board does not care. Seeing that none of the author-
ities complained of have been punished or removed, that officials
notoriously hostile to foreigners have been appointed to places
in which they have increased opportunity of indulging in their
anti-foreign tendencies, while officials of friendly disposition
have been withdrawn, Sir Frederick Bruce is induced, how-
ever reluctantly, to infer that if the Imperial Government be
not adverse to friendly intercourse, it is, at all events, indis-
posed to do what is necessary to teach the people and local
authorities that China is sincerely desirous of friendly relations
with foreign Powers.
It is for the Chinese Government to consider whether it will
listen to these warnings, &c.
Prince Kung's Reply, l^th June 1863.
With reference to the proposition on which the British
Minister's note insists, that the treaty should rank with the
law, the Prince has to observe that the principle that the
treaty is identical with the laws of the Imperial Government,
and that breach of treaty is the same thing as violation of the
law, is the principle on which the Government of China pro-
ceeds, and its only desire is that foreign nations should regard
the treaty in the same light.
As regards the cases still undetermined in the provinces,
406 INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS. [chap, xviii.
the Prince hopes that the British Minister will refer to the
record and inform him, case by case, of the particulars of each,
and the Yamen will at once write to the Provincial Govern-
ments concerned to hurry them with the cases enumerated. . . .
Sir Frederick Bi^lccs Ueyly, July 2, 1863.
Your Imperial Highness states in explicit terms that the
Government of China recognises the treaties as the law of the
empire in its relations with foreigners, and that breaches of
treaty are considered violations of those laws. But the
despatch of your Imperial Highness contains nothing to show
that this principle will be carried out in practice. I stated
instances in which the authorities, in spite of the remonstrances
of her Majesty's consul, had deliberately set aside the letter
of the treaty for no other object than to curtail the privileges
of her Majesty's subjects. Your Imperial Highness in your
reply does not allude to these cases, nor do you inform me that
any steps have been taken to remedy these grievances or to
prevent a repetition of such conduct. I am simply requested
to send in a list of the grievances complained of ; and I am
informed that the local authorities will be urged to settle them
with speed. Such a proposal is entirely unsatisfactory ; for
what reason have I to suppose that the instructions now to
be sent by your Imperial Highness will be attended to, when
I see that the orders which I am assured were given by your
Imperial Highness for the redress of outrages such as . . .
have been disobeyed ?
In these State Papers the relations present and
prospective between China and the outer world are
accurately represented. Putting aside local and tem-
porary questions, the despatches might be dated 1873,
1883, or 1893, for the position remained substantially
the same during the three decades.
The attitude of the British Minister we see to be
one of hopeless pleading and vague admonition ; of the
Chinese Ministers, elastic resistance. One wonders
how far, under the mask of dull decorum, the Chinese
1861-65.] "co-operative" POLICY. 407
entered into the real humour of the situation : for-
eigners chafing impotently, but with their teeth drawn,
occupying themselves largely with the preservation
of China and the dynasty ; urging reforms, military,
financial, and administrative, while putting up with
the non-fulfilment of the commonest obligations.
Sir F. Bruce was much too wise a man not to be
perfectly conscious of the negative result of foreign
diplomacy in Peking. His private letters, some of
which were published by Mr Lay in 1864, are more
emphatic on the point than his public despatches. He
saw it was a case for desperate remedies, but unfortun-
ately he had no remedy except such as aggravated
the disease. Like a drowning man. Sir Frederick
Bruce clutched at one straw, then another — first at
the inspectorate of customs, then at the collective body
of his colleagues — to redress the balance which lay so
heavily against him. We see in the despatch of June
12, 1863, the inception of what became known as the
" co-operative policy." That was an arrangement by
which the cause of one foreigner was to be made the
cause of all, so that the treaty Powers might present
a solid front to the Chinese. Unfortunately such a
policy bears no fruit, since half-a-dozen Powers with
separate interests, and of varying tempers, can only
unite in doing nothing. The co - operative policy,
therefore, by tying the hands of all the Powers, ren-
dered the Chinese more secure than ever from outside
interference.
From Sir Frederick Bruce's despatches it may be
gathered that the reason for the non- success of the
Peking diplomacy was, that it was not founded on fact.
It assumed that the Government of China was cen-
408 INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS. [chap, xviii.
tralised instead of decentralised ; that the administra-
tion of the empire hinged on the initiative of Peking,
from which distant point the resident Ministers could
protect their respective national interests throughout
the empire. This hypothesis, which might have
graced an academic debate, was acted upon as if it
was a reality, and the struggle to make it so has
absorbed the resources of diplomacy for forty years.
The real fact, however, was quite otherwise. The
distinctive character of Chinese Government is, not
autocracy, but democracy and provincial autonomy.
The springs of action work from below, not from
above, and to reverse this order of the ages was to
convert a court of appeal into a court of first instance :
to sue for a tradesman's debt before the Lord Chan-
cellor, requiring the legal machinery to be first turned
upside down. Diplomacy in China has thus been a
disheartening effort to drive in a wedge by its thick
end without adequate leverage. It is possible, indeed,
that force might have accomplished even as much as
that, but force was the one thing the use of which
was proscribed.
The redress of grievances being sought not where
it could have been exacted, at the point affected, but
in the capital, the Central Government was called on
to exercise over the provincial officials a kind of con-
trol which had never been exercised before. The
provincial officials, relieved from the local pressure
which they respected, easily evaded the novel and
unconstitutional interference of the capital, and vio-
lated the treaties with an impunity unknown in the
days before the admission of the foreign Ministers
to Peking. The treaties, no doubt, had become the
1861-65.] FAILUEE OF DIPLOMACY. 409
**law of the land" so far as a mere barbarian phrase
could make them so, but a full - grown tree of
Western legality could not so easily transplant itself
to an alien and refractory soil. The argument from
legality appealed, therefore, to the ear only. The
practical conclusion to which Sir Frederick Bruce was
led is very simply stated in two paragraphs of his
letters to Prince Kung : " My object has been to seek
redress through the Imperial Government, and to do
away with the necessity of seeking redress by forcible
demonstrations at the ports. But it is evident that
the reluctance of your Imperial Highness to enter
frankly into this policy renders my efforts ineffectual."
*' Either the Imperial Government is unwilling to use
its influence to cause the treaties to be fairly carried
out, or it has not the power to cause its orders to be
obeyed." Sir Frederick would have hit still nearer
the mark if he had omitted the " either," "or," and said
simply the Imperial Government was hoth unwilling
and unable.
Notwithstanding these definite views, the experi-
ment of forcing a centralisation which would have
been a revolution on the unintelligible Government
of China had to be continued through many weary
years that were to follow, during which time the rights
conferred by treaty on foreigners fell more and more
into abeyance.
The progress in that direction made in the two first
years is thus summarised by Mr H. N. Lay, the first
Inspector-General of Customs, on his return to China
in 1863 :—
When I left China the emperor's Government, under the
pressure of necessity, and with the beneficial terror established
410 INFLUENCE OF THESE EVENTS. [chap, xvili.
by the Allied foray to Peking in 1860 fresh in their recol-
lection, was in the best of moods, willing to be guided, grateful
for help, and in return for that help prepared to do what was
right by the foreigner. What did I find on my return ? The
face of things was entirely changed. There was the old in-
solent demeanour, the nonsensical language of exclusion, the
open mockery of all treaties. ... In short, all the ground
gained by the treaty of 1858 had been frittered away, and we
were thrust back into the position we occupied before the war,
— one of helpless remonstrance and impotent menace; . . .
the labour of years lost through egregious mismanagement.
The Foreign Board looked upon our European representatives
as so many rois faineants. . . . Prince Kung was no longer
accessible. ... He professed to be engaged with more im-
portant matters.
APPENDIX I.
NOTE ON OUR PRESENT POSITION AND THE STATE OF OUR
RELATIONS WITH CHINA, BY CONSUL ALCOCK, JANUARY
19, 1849.
Section I.
The lesson of the past is very legibly written in the history
of our relations, — oppression in the Chinese, increased by sub-
mission in the English. Eesistance of the latter followed by
concession in the former may be read in every stage, and the
influence of the late war, beyond the tangible effects embodied
in the provisions of the treaties, has been limited very much
to outward forms : there is reason to suspect that the policy of
the Chinese has been masked, not changed.
The same arrogant and hostile spirit exists, and their policy
is still to degrade foreigners in the eyes of the people, and to
offer every obstacle which may with safety be interposed to any
extended intercourse, — objects which they seek to carry out by
various covert and indirect means. In this sense the letter of
the treaty is often quoted, but any large interpretation can only
be secured under a moral compulsion, as the least objectionable
alternative. This may not, perhaps, be wholly owing to bad
faith, for distrust and fear of foreigners probably influences the
result. Hence all the principal advantages enjoyed under the
treaty are only held by a species of personal tenure of pre-
carious character, and a consul at one of the ports may lose
more in a week than her Majesty's Government may find it
easy to recover with costly and embarrassing efforts in a year.
Our present relations consist in a never-ceasing struggle, under
veiled appearances of amity ; and the treaty extorted by force
is generally sought to be eluded by cunning. They have no
objection to the foreign trade as one of the elements of their
412 APPENDIX I.
own prosperity, though they much underrate its importance ;
but to make it wholly acceptable [to them], the former humili-
ating conditions are wanting.
The whole effort of the Chinese rulers seems to be limited to
preserving peace as the first object, and, so far as may be
compatible with this, to assimilate our present to our ancient
position as the second.
From the general bearing of our relations in connection with
the past and the future, the nature and extent of the dis-
advantages under which we labour may be easily deduced : —
1. Local insecurity to person and property at Canton.
2. Want of access to the first markets and of the means of
pushing and verifying the consumption of our manu-
factures in the interior.
3. Ill-adjusted rates of duty on several important articles.
4. Want of reciprocity and equality in our political relations,
and a certain inferiority in our position social and
political.
By the first we are menaced with perpetual danger of fatal
collision and interruption to our commerce, while our general
position is at the same time prejudiced. By the second we are
deprived of any large market for our goods, and pay dearer for
native produce. By the third the Straits, Indian, and the
native carrying trade are all impeded in their growth and
dwarfed in their proportions ; and by the fourth insuperable
difficulties in remedying abuses or amending our relations are
encountered, our only means of action being upon Canton and
its governor, acting as an imperial commissioner.
The full and rapid development of our commerce, a new and
profitable field for our manufactures, and a better guarantee for
the maintenance of our friendly relations, are the chief ad-
vantages to be sought in the removal of these disabilities.
The practicability of maintaining our relations on their
present unsatisfactory footing in the south must be very
doubtful, nor is there much hope that any of the essential
advantages above specified may be gained incidentally in the
natural progress of time, and still less that the grounds of
alarm should of themselves disappear. The causes of all that
is bad in our position spring from too deep a source, and may
be traced too far back, to admit of any such hope : a rooted
conviction in the minds of a whole population, derived from
IMPROVEMENT DEPENDS ON EMPEROR's WILL. 413
traditional knowledge of the humiliating and derogatory posi-
tion voluntarily accepted by foreigners, cannot be effaced by a
treaty, or even a short successful war which passed over the
city that was the offending cause almost harmless. How far it
may be possible to convert popular contempt and dislike into
respect and fear, we cannot judge from experience : hitherto, in
the steps taken to that end, either too much or too little has
been attempted.
There are practical difficulties of a peculiar and altogether
local character [it is obvious] to any immediate amelioration of
our position at Canton which do not exist elsewhere. Setting
aside these considerations, it will be found that all that is most
valuable and important in the advantages to be desired are of
a nature to be granted by the sole exercise of the emperor's
will : greater freedom of access, the modification of half-a-dozen
items in the tariff, even the exchange of envoys between the
two Courts, if this were deemed expedient, are all matters to
be decided by a stroke of the vermilion pencil. No hostile
populations interpose a practical negative to concessions such
as these. The grounds upon which we may claim the revisal
of some of the provisions of existing treaties are derived from
the well-established conditions of all permanent relations of a
friendly and commercial character between sovereign States in
the civilised world.
We may claim of right a modification of the basis of our
relations on the injury resulting to our interests from the bad
faith or impuissance (it matters little which) of the Chinese
Government in giving execution to the treaties in force. We
may insist upon prejudicial limits being abolished, since they
have plainly failed in their ostensible object to secure freedom
from molestation or injury which was the condition of their
acceptance.
If it be the traditional policy of the Tartar dynasty to keep
foreigners at the outer confines of the empire and in a de-
grading position, it may with better justice be the policy of
Great Britain to obtain a direct action upon their centre, and
freedom from idle and vexatious restrictions. The right of a
nation to interdict intercourse and commerce, and therefore to
determine upon what conditions it shall exist, is but an im-
perfect right, and subject to such modifications as the rights of
other nations to the use of innocent objects of utility dictate i
414 APPENDIX I.
and the refusal of a common right is an abuse of the sovereign
power, and an injury to be resisted.
China, however disposed its rulers may be to deny the fact,
is one of a community of nations with common rights and
obligations, and any claim to exemption from the recognised
terms of national intercourse is inadmissible in the interest of
all other countries. To admit such a right of exemption would
be to allow the arrogated superiority in power and civilisation,
and to pamper the hostile conceit of her people.
So long as the sovereign States of Europe will permit so
obvious an inference it cannot be matter of surprise, and
scarcely subject of reproach, to the Chinese, that they should
be so ready to assert and so pertinacious in acting upon it.
But even if exclusion from the territories, from all trade and in-
tercourse, were an absolute right in the first instance, the Chinese
have forfeited all claim to its exercise — first, by voluntarily
entering into relations political and commercial in ages past with
other States and people, by exchange of embassies, by opening
their ports and territories and encouraging trade ; and secondly,
by aggressive wars and invasion of the territory of Europe by
the Tartar and Mongolian races who have ruled the country.
China preserves her undoubted right of self-preservation as
a political society and an empire, but this does not involve the
incidental right of interdicting intercourse, because her own
history shows that danger does not necessarily follow unlimited
access, since as late as the seventeenth century such free com-
munication existed with foreigners ; and secondly, because the
right of decision must be shared by the interdicted party.
Section II.
It is not enough, however, to determine the abstract prin-
ciples upon which a policy may be founded — that which is just
may not always be most expedient, and if both the one and the
other, it may not be practicable.
The chief difficulties to be encountered in any attempt to
place our relations on an improved basis may be traced to three
principal sources : —
The Canton popular traditions and hostility.
The treaties in force.
The contraband trade in opium.
RELATIONS AT CANTON AND SHANGHAI. 415
The characteristic features of our position at Canton and
their origin are too well known to require illustration. To our
political relations before the war, and the humble and in every-
way derogatory attitude assumed towards the Chinese, is clearly
to be traced their present insolence, assumed superiority, and
hostility on finding it questioned.
The principle of narrow boundaries and restricted limits
confirmed by the Treaty of Nanking virtually sanctioned the
tradition of the past, which no mere verbal assertion of equality
thus practically contradicted can modify. The repudiation of
this principle and the establishment of a different footing seem
to be essential to our political equality, which would form the
best foundation of an improved social and commercial position,
most especially in the south. Were our chief political relations
with the Chinese Government not centred at Canton, it is very
evident that that port would lose much of the importance
which now attaches to the sayings and doings of its turbulent
mob and impracticable authorities. Were the centre of our
political action anywhere else, the local difficulties, troublesome
as they are, must soon merge into comparative insignificance,
and such a measure as this would seem an easier task to
accomplish than to change the habits and the prejudices of a
whole population.
If we turn from Canton and its unsatisfactory history of
oriental insolence and presumption on the one side, and undue
submission to their exigencies on the other, and consider the
exemption from all such characteristics at Shanghai, the respec-
tive infiuences of the treaties and of local circumstances may be
deduced by a comparison of the two chief ports.
The various concurring circumstances terminating in the
Tsingpu outrage, which threatened to approximate the position
of the British at Shanghai to that occupied at Canton, have
been detailed in the correspondence of the period. The position
was seriously affected by the comparative immunity of whole
villages participating in the murders at Canton in the previous
year, by the atrocious features of the crime itself, and by the
assumed necessity of the consul's inaction pending a reference
to her Majesty's plenipotentiary, occupying several weeks.
Prompt redress was imperiously demanded by the interests
at stake and the sinister aspect of affairs, and to enforce this
coercive means were employed, leaving nothing to be desired.
416 APPENDIX I.
The most important of the results obtained was the demon-
stration of a power to shift the centre of action from a port
where no progress could be made to a vulnerable point nearer
to Peking where immediate attention could be commanded, and
this was supplied by the mission to Nanking.
From these two circumstances — the serious deterioration of
our position, and the prompt and efficacious remedy provided —
an important conclusion may be drawn as to our means of
effecting any required change in our relations.
In an empire vast in area as China, with an overflowing
population, it is no slight advantage to be enabled, without
a single battle, to invest and vigorously blockade the capital ;
and this it is in our power to effect by a small squadron at
the mouth of the Grand Canal in the early spring, when Peking
is dependent for its supplies for the year on the arrival of the
grain and tribute junks by that channel. A more effective
means of coercion this than the destruction of twenty cities
on the confines of the Chinese territory or on the coast. With
a starving Court and population around him, flight or concession
appears to be the emperor's only alternatives.
The facility and the certainty with which this object may
be attained are important considerations. The insurmountable
obstacles to the advance of a European army into the interior
are rendered nugatory and altogether unimportant by the know-
ledge of this highroad to the heart of the empire.
The maintenance of our present relations is probably in no
slight degree due to the secret consciousness of their weakness
at this point.
In any future policy that may be adopted, therefore, these
facts and views are calculated to supersede the necessity for
active hostilities, and must tend to avert from a peaceful and
industrious population all the worst calamities of war, at the
same time that they free her Majesty's Government from the
embarrassment of a costly and protracted war in prospectu.
A simple and ready resource for commanding attention to
any just demands is indeed invaluable in China, and without it
there is every reason to believe the Chinese rulers would still
be the most impracticable of Orientals. With such a power, no
insuperable obstacles exist to the satisfactory solution of diffi-
culties without either costly effort or interruption to the trade
of the five ports ; and it was the long-matured conviction of our
INFLUENCE OF THE OPIUM TRADE. 417
powerful action, by means of a command over the necessary
supplies for Peking, that dictated the course followed in the
Tsingpu affair.
The Chinese view of the opium trade and our agency in it
forms perhaps the chief obstacle to our taking that high ground
with the rulers, and good position with the people, which the
extension of our commercial interests demands. Let us look,
then, to this opium traffic and the influence it actually exercises
upon our position in China.
It is no question here whether opium should be classed in
the category of medicines, stimuli, or fatal poisons ; the Chinese
have decided that for themselves, and regard it only as a poison,
and the British as the great producers, carriers, and sellers of
the drug, to our own great profit and their undoubted im-
poverishment and ruin. Nor does their conviction end here :
they believe to maintain this traffic we made war and dictated
a humiliating peace, and that we are prepared to do so again, if
they ventured on any interference to its prejudice.
These opinions may be false or true in their foundation, that
is not the question, but. What is the influence they are cal-
culated to exercise ? Hostility and distrust can alone be
traced to this source. No other feelings flow from it, and the
consequences will meet us at every turn of our negotiations, in
our daily intercourse, and every changing phase of our relations.
As it overshadows with a sinister influence the whole field of
our political action, so must it be seriously taken into account
and calculated upon as an adverse element in all we attempt in
China.
Accepted as un fait accompli, the best means of neutralising
and counteracting its bad effects are alone to be considered,
since the enormous capital, large revenue, and inseparable con-
nection of our legitimate trade with opium, as a means of laying
down funds in China, involved in the traffic, precludes all idea
of its cessation or removal.
The effective protection lent to the chief opium-dealers, in
their capacity of British merchants, resident at the ports under
the provisions of the treaty, and the manifest inability of the
Chinese either to bring the legal proof we should require against
these principals, or of attacking by force their agents in the
glaring infraction of the Chinese laws, at the opium stations,
no doubt flings an air of insincerity over all our protestations
VOL. I. 2d
418 APPENDIX I.
of non-intervention, while there is mockery in the invitation
to assail large fleets of heavily-armed European vessels. Even
if the Chinese for a single moment believed in the honesty
of our declarations, they know the utter futility of any means
of attack they possess against such superior force as the opium
fleets present. This is the view taken by the Chinese, who,
though they do not confess their own weakness, do not disguise
or deny it to themselves.
The obstacles which these opinions create and fling in our
path whenever advantages are sought at the hands of the
Chinese in furtherance of our national interests are to be
overcome before any progress can be made. There are three
modes of dealing with them : —
1. By arguments to prove the fallacy of their assumption
that we were either the original cause of this traffic, or have
now tlie power to put an end to it, or finally, that it is an
unmixed evil.
2. By a modification in the demands we should, without this
consideration, be entitled to insist upon.
3. By a mixture of kindness and decision, of instruction and
intimidation, and, in last resort, by coercion for the attainment
of all just and necessary concessions.
And as we should naturally begin with the first, and may
eventually find ourselves compelled to resort to the last, so
no doubt it will be expedient many times to combine all the
different methods of overcoming the active or inert resistance
we encounter in the Chinese rulers.
As to any remedy to be applied to the evils of the opium
trade, tliere seems to be none open to either Government but
its legalisation, which would strip it of its contraband character,
and remove from the emperor the open reproach to his autho-
rity, while it might be made to yield a large revenue to his
treasury.
If on a question of national policy or morality, this measure,
as the lesser of two evils, is declined, there seems to be no help
for the mischief which must accrue to us from being the chief
agents in the traffic. But it is useless to disguise from our-
selves the injurious influence it will unfailingly exercise upon
our political action, when any rights on our part are weighed,
and it is this which may entail the necessity of our flinging
the weight of the sword into the opposite scale — sheathed
COLLISION OF RIVAL CIVILISATIONS. 419
it may be, but not the less significant and compulsory in
its effect.
The opium grief and the Canton hostility thus work together
and dovetail into each other to our manifest prejudice, that
port continuing to enjoy its old privilege of being the great
exponent and centre of both. There we meet in their least
veiled form the national adverseness to foreigners concentrated
and localised — the conviction of injury and loss at our hands
from opium, heightened into asperity and bitterness by the
arrogance of their tempers and the consciousness of their
weakness.
In no other port does it seem likely the same overt expres-
sion and concentration of adverse feelings will ever be experi-
enced. It would appear the more important, therefore, to modify
the virulent form they assume at Canton, and remove the bad
precedent and example incessantly furnished by the Cantonese.
The entrance into the city is obviously a question of prin-
ciple, not of any direct practical advantage in a commercial
sense. The freedom from annoyance, and security to property,
are more truly so, and of these two the latter, by far the most
essential and important to our interests, seems only to require
more storage room for goods, away from a dense Chinese suburb
which renders insurance from risk of fire impossible, and entails
upon our merchants all the additional danger of fraud in the
Chinese warehouse-keepers, who are of necessity the custodians
of our goods.
We cannot hope that any effort of ours or of the emperor
will suffice to change at once the character and habits of a
people, or even of the population of a city. But the last war
has shown that with us it rests to bring at any time the preten-
sions of the Chinese rulers down to a nearer level with their
military power ; and if they cannot from inherent weakness do
all that may be desirable, neither are they in a position to refuse
any concession, clearly at their option to grant, and such are
these which it would seem most important to Great Britain to
secure : the nature of our demands and the circumstances under
which they shall be preferred are considerations of policy and
expediency. But the real question, and by far the most im-
portant, it will be obvious, is rather what it may be wise to
demand, than what it may be possible to obtain. The danger
of collision between the rival civilisations of the East and West
420 APPENDIX I.
has long been foreseen, instinctively felt by the Chinese, and
more clearly discerned by Europeans in the result of the late
war ; and the larger commercial interests growing up under, and
in spite of, the present system of restrictions, has only tended,
by partially extending the points of contact without placing our
relations on a plain basis of reciprocity and equality, to increase
the chances. It can only be hoped that the gradual introduc-
tion of European arts and ideas and their fructification may in
some degree fuse and harmonise the discordant elements before
the course of events which otherwise tend to precipitate a
violent and disastrous collision are beyond our control. To
such a peaceful and beneficial termination of the difficulties
which unavoidably beset our relations with China, the efforts of
all Western Powers should in the common interest be directed.
These considerations must act as the most powerful checks to
any initiative measures of a large and comprehensive character
for the improvement of our position and the more rapid develop-
ment of our commerce.
In this point of view the two greatest obstacles to any
advance are the large commercial interests and national revenue
at stake, and the danger of being followed by the envoys of
other foreign Powers who, having no such great interests to
jeopardise, are without this beneficial and most needful check,
and may therefore be induced to repeat at a semi- barbarian
Court the intrigues and counter-projects for the destruction of
our influence and the injury of our trade in the East which are
at work in our own times in every capital in Europe, as formerly
in India and the Eastern Archipelago.
Eussia, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and America, with
their several jealousies and united rivalry with England, their
missionary enterprises or commercial and political schemes
clashing in their aim and development, are all capable of
creating such turmoil, strife, and disturbance throughout the
empire, if free access to the Court and the provinces were
insisted upon by Great Britain, as could only end in the ejection
of Europeans from China as formerly from Japan, or an intestine
war in which European power would probably be involved on
opposite sides, and to their mutual destruction as States with
commercial interests in the country. These, again, might lead
to attempts at territorial possession, suggested in the first in-
stance, as in India, in self-defence, and afterwards continued
POLICY OF EXTENDED INTERCOURSE. 421
from necessity. With Russia spreading her gigantic arms to
the north and east, Great Britain on the south and west, Spain,
Holland, and Portugal with their colonies in the Chinese and
Indian seas, a struggle for superiority on the soil of China for
exclusive advantages or predominant influence might be centred
in Peking and embroil the whole of Europe in hostile relations.
The same objection applies to all efforts to enlarge our inter-
course and remove limitations, and has ever prevailed. It was
recognised as an objection to the last war. The course of events
urged on by the opium trade left but little alternative at the
last, or there can be no doubt, with the additional fear of the
uncertain result of a struggle with a vast empire like China,
the resources of which were so imperfectly known, the British
Government would have been deterred from any onward step, as
these motives did in effect prevent any hostile aggression, so long
as it was possible to avoid it, without the sacrifice of our trade.
The war over, it again prevailed, and we are once more in
a position to accept as final the increased but limited advan-
tages resulting, or to try for more, and by our policy to avert
or provoke disturbing causes which must lead to change. The
moderation which marked, and the policy which dictated, our
treaties carried us back to the old ground of a nation trading
by sufferance, under limitations and restrictions which kept
us at the boundaries of the empire, and with us the rest of
the Western world, the only difference being enlarged facilities
and better guarantees for the pursuit of trade on the coast-line,
and within the restricted limits of the five ports selected. It
is now for the British Government to determine whether we
should rest content with the revenue derived from an import
of some 60 million lb. of tea and the export from India of
40,000 chests of opium, netting together some 7 millions
sterling to the British and Indian Government, together with
the incidental advantage of the raw produce of silk, promising
to render us independent of Europe and the adjoining markets
for the supply of this staple of an important branch of our
manufactures at a cheaper rate, and the market for Indian
cotton, the circumstances which lend to China nearly all its
importance ; or take measures, not free from danger and
difficulty, of great prospective magnitude, both in a political
and commercial sense, to make China a great market for our
manufactures also. At present the Chinese take considerably
422 APPENDIX I.
less than 2 millions sterling in annual value out of an aggregate
production of sorae 70 millions. In this respect they are of
less importance to us as customers than the West India colonies,
the Italian States and islands, or one of the larger European
States, so small a fraction do they absorb. The prospect that
would urge us on should be the hope of seeing China take
of our manufactures as large a share as all Europe, and instead
of a couple of millions, create a demand for more than twenty.
The produce of tea and silk we have, the market for opium
and Indian cotton is ours. We want an equally large and
beneficial market for our manufactures — our cotton fabrics,
woollens, linen, and cutlery, for which our powers of production
are all but unlimited.
Two questions suggest themselves, therefore, on the solution
of which the decision should depend, it being assumed as
unquestioned that something of risk and danger to that which
we have must attend all effective efforts to win that which
is as yet wanting.
To the first four great commercial objects involved in our
relations with China, as above specified, shall we sacrifice the
fifth?
Or shall we peril all for the attainment of the fifth, by the
endeavour to create a market for our manufactures which at
present exists only in its rudiments, and to a small fractional
value ?
If the extreme exiguity of the market for manufactures be
not held to justify the voluntary incurrence of great risk or
danger to our tea, silk, opium, and raw cotton trade, which
form the great bulk of our commerce as it exists at the present
day, British and Indian, it will only remain to be determined
what are the various secondary means at our disposal for the
improvement of this fifth or manufacturing branch as the
primary object, and their respective chances of success on the
one hand and dangers attending their adoption on the other.
For the dangers, it must be well understood, are of two kinds
— those attending failure, and those which may be consequent
upon, and the ulterior results of, success in the first instance.
It being borne in mind that whatever we ask and obtain
will be claimed and enjoyed by others, it is necessary to
consider to what use they are liable to be turned by foreign
Powers over whom we can exercise no control, and whose
S1*EC1F1C MEASURES. 423
interests or national jealousies may clearly be adverse to our
position in China and the advancement of our commerce. To
these various heads of a subject in every point of view great
and important, and surrounded by doubts and difficulties of
the most embarrassing character, the best information that can
be brought by any one individual is insufficient for a perfectly
satisfactory solution of the questions which must be discussed.
All that can be attempted is to throw some additional light
upon the general bearing of the whole, and to contribute such
data and practical inferences, illustrative of our present position
and its future prospects, as may help to suggest a safe con-
clusion as circumstances develop new phases in our relations
and call for action.
Section III.
Assuming the present basis of our relations to continue, the
best course to be pursued in actual circumstances, more especially
for the maintenance of our advantageous position in the north,
is worthy of consideration. The instructions lately received
from her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs are of
a nature to suggest inquiry under the three heads to which
they refer : —
1. Eecourse to the authorities by British subjects in danger
of popular violence.
2. Eeference in all cases to her Majesty's plenipotentiary for
instructions.
3. The verification of the punishment awarded to Chinese
offenders.
In reference to tlie instructions under the first of these heads,
it is to be observed that even with such unusual facilities as
some of the older missionaries possess who speak the dialect,
and are often familiar with the localities they visit, the resource
indicated cannot be counted upon as available.
In the Tsingpu affair, as soon as they actually became
sensible of danger, it was clearly impossible, nor in one case
in a hundred is it probable, that such a resource will be in their
power.
In these cases the authorities keep out of the way, they and
all their ragged staff of runners and police ; and if otherwise,
moved by a fear of worse consequences from the acts of the
nearest British authority, the means they take to rescue a mal-
424 APPENDIX I.
treated foreigner are miserably ineffective and uncertain in their
results. Whoever will read the details of the species of rescue
effected in the Tsingpu business will see that it was by the
merest chance the three Englishmen had not their brains beaten
out, either before the arrival of the disguised runners or while
they were waiting an opportunity of stepping in to render the
unfortunate sufferers any service.
It must be clear, therefore, that access to the authorities in
emergencies of this nature must always be difficult and generally
impracticable for a foreigner. Retreat to a boat or other place
of safety is as little likely to be attainable.
A salutary dread of the immediate consequences of violence
offered to British subjects, the certainty of its creating greater
trouble and danger to the native authorities personally than
even the most vigorous efforts to protect the foreigner and seize
their assailants will entail, seems to be the best and only pro-
tection in this country for Englishmen. When the Chinese
authorities of all ranks, from the viceroy at Nanking to the
lowest police runners, are thoroughly imbued with this feeling,
it will not only rouse them to greater energy but find its way
to the populace by certain steps, and render such exertion un-
necessary, and the nationality of an Englishman will become
his safeguard. Hence the impolicy, not to say impossibility, of
treating instances of personal outrage such as that of Tsingpu
as police cases, and leaving redress to the ordinary administra-
tion of Chinese laws. Where justice exists only nominally, and
her image should be represented not only blind but deaf, deplor-
able consequences would result from such a course. There
seems to be a democratic spirit among the Chinese which
renders the authorities especially averse to risk collision with
the populace or any popular feeling. The Chih-hsien is himself
exposed to insult and violence if he attempt to enforce the
collection of the taxes in a bad season, and but lately he was
besieged here in his own yamen. Not ten days ago the Taotai paid
1600 taels of silver to secure a piece of building-ground at the
urgent demand of the French consul, rather than exert his
authority to compel the owners to take the fair value of $400
offered, and upon the posts put up to mark the boundaries these
parties did not hesitate to prohibit its appropriation. The
principal check upon the people, and safeguard for the authori-
ties in cases of popular disturbance, seems to be the conviction
NO REDRESS FOR INJURIES. 425
under which every Chinese quails, of the terrible vengeance that
may pursue them and their families, the tumult once over, if
they should have been marked or recognised. In proportion
as the magistrate is helpless before numbers, is his power
large of wreaking summary and vengeful punishment upon each
of the individuals that may form the mob, once separated from
each other.
Considerations such as these necessarily influence her
Majesty's consul on the spot, who each day has under his eyes
these significant details, national and administrative. Where
danger threatens to involve the persons or the property of
British subjects, his sole direct resource is to fall back upon the
treaty, and to cover with the aegis of national inviolability
individual interests. By any other course he falls inevitably
into the hopeless condition of one waiting for such redress as
the common course of justice in China usually affords, where
everything assuming its form is venal and arbitrary.
The result of all efforts made to secure the apprehension of
thieves or the recovery of property stolen from foreigners is
conclusive as to the kind of security to be obtained for British
subjects where infractions are dealt with as affairs of police in
which justice is to take its ordinary course. In scarcely one
instance has any redress been obtained since the port was
opened. If thieves are overtaken, it is only that they may
disgorge their booty for the benefit of the police sent after
them, and the larger the amount the less chance is there of
either apprehension or restitution. Witness Mr Hubertson's
robbery, where his servant went off with nearly $10,000 in
gold and silver, and he was promptly traced and pursued.
Then in reference to the standing orders that, in case of
difficulty arising, reference shall invariably be made to her
Majesty's plenipotentiary for instructions. Instances have been
very numerous showing the nullity of any means of action on
the local authorities here through the Imperial Commissioner at
Canton, not only in these matters, but in those treated on
higher grounds, and affecting our political position. Last year
(1847) not only a list of cases where no satisfactory exertion
had been made to obtain redress for property stolen was for-
warded, but the consul urged upon Sir John Davis, her Majesty's
plenipotentiary at the time, the urgent necessity for the removal
of the then acting magistrate at Shanghai, who had openly
426 APPENDIX I.
reviled a consulate servant for taking the service of the
barbarians, and dismissed him without redress. The only-
answer to be obtained from his Excellency Kiying was to the
effect that the Chih-hsien, as a territorial officer, was not under
his jurisdiction. Fortunately he was removed very shortly for
misconduct in the management of Chinese affairs, — for however
injurious his proceedings to the British, it was obvious neither
redress nor assistance was to be obtained from Canton and the
Imperial Commissioner.
The paramount necessity of protecting its subjects in distant
countries is of course well understood by her Majesty's Govern-
ment, and in an oriental State this can only be effected by
letting it be known and felt that whoever attacks one of the
solitary subjects will be held to have attacked the sovereign
and the nation. By this policy a firman, far more potent than
the Grand Seignior's in his own territory, is given to every
Englishman abroad, ensuring his freedom from injury all over
the world.
The treaty viewed in this light becomes a real and efficient
bulwark against encroachments, and without such safeguard,
with Chinese management, it would at no distant period in all
its most important provisions become null and void. No doubt
inconvenience results from the necessity of treating casualties of
collision between subjects of different countries as infractions of
a solemn treaty ; but the oriental, and in some respects very
peculiar, character of the Chinese, and our relations with them,
must be borne in mind, and the lesser of two evils chosen with
such discretion and judgment as the circumstances imperatively
demand.
At a distant and isolated port like Shanghai, where a brig of
war is by no means permanently stationed, the consul is left to
his own resources, separated by an interval of many weeks from
the assistance of her Majesty's plenipotentiary. When difficul-
ties and emergencies supervene, it is only by prompt demands
for redress, and firm resistance to any virtual negation of the
rights and privileges guaranteed by treaty, that he can hope
successfully to defend the very important interests confided to
his charge.
As regards the practicability and expediency of verifying the
punishments of any Chinese offender by the presence of a
British officer when a sentence is carried into execution, the
PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES IN PUNISHMENTS. 427
iustruction received could only have been partially applicable to
the Tsingpu offenders had it been earlier received, for the most
serious punishment was banishment to a penal settlement in
Tartary.
But the whole subject is one of peculiar difficulty, nor can
any hope be entertained of submitting in this place a satis-
factory solution. It has long been felt that of all the provi-
sions of the two treaties, that which provided for the due
administration of the laws on Chinese offenders was the most
nugatory. The chief difficulty consists in a British officer
being present at all during a trial in a Chinese court, assuming
the right were to be granted by treaty. Where the ordinary
mode of questioning is by torture, a process utterly repugnant
to our notions of justice and our sense of what is due to
humanity and truth, are we by our presence to sanction and be
made parties to such proceedings ? Or are we to interfere and
insist upon justice being administered not according to their
usages, but ours ? The objection to both courses seems equally
valid, and yet without the presence of an efficient officer there
is no guarantee whatever for the due administration of justice.
As regards the presence of an officer at punishments, unless
he is in a position to identify the criminal, which must often
from the circumstances of the case be impossible, it may be
questioned whether our national character is not in danger of
being compromised without the real object of such risk being
attained. Nothing could more effectually tend to lower us in
the opinion of the Chinese than to be imposed upon by the
jugglery of a substituted criminal, or the punishment of an
innocent man at our instigation, or even the illegal and excess-
ive punishment of a real offender. Yet to all these we are
exposed when we take upon ourselves to watch the course of
justice and verify the execution of the sentences. It may
finally be observed that there are punishments recognised in
the Chinese code revolting for their brutality, which an English
officer could scarcely sanction with his presence without dis-
credit to our national feeling. A lesser objection exists in the
frequency of minor punishments for theft and petty misde-
meanours, so that an interpreter would be required for this
duty alone.
These are some of the practical difficulties to the effective
exercise of any check upon the proceedings of the Chinese
428 APPENDIX II.
authorities in criminal informations against Chinese subjects,
and to devise a remedy may require more consideration than
has probably yet been given to the subject.
From this review of our actual position at the most favourably
situated of the northern ports, and the means by which it has
been preserved from deterioration, and in many essential points
materially improved, a correct inference may be drawn of the
injurious consequences of any retrograde influence from Canton,
direct or indirect.
APPENDIX 11.
CONFIDENTIAL DESPATCH BY CONSUL ALCOCK TO SIR GEORGE
BONHAM, JANUARY 13, 1852.
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your
Excellency's confidential despatch of the l7th ultimo, and
although the departure of the Audax within three days of its
receipt leaves me but little time for consideration or inquiry, I
have devoted so much time and thought to the subject during
the last five years that I venture to reply without delay.
On the general scope of coercive measures adapted to ensure
success in any negotiations with the Chinese Government, and
more especially on the blockade of the Grand Canal as a very
cogent means, I have already in my confidential report of January
19, 1849, and subsequently in another of February 13, 1850,
submitted the opinion I had formed after long and careful study
of our position in China ; and further inquiries and experience
of the people we have to deal with have only served to confirm
the views contained in those reports.
I took the responsibility of sending Mr Vice- Consul Eobert-
son with the Espiegle to Nanking in the spring of 1848 with
the strong conviction that at that particular season, with the
tribute of grain uncollected and a thousand of these grain-junks
actually under an embargo at Shanghai, any demonstration of
force in the neighbourhood of the Grand Canal would command
immediate attention, and the result went far to establish the
MEANS OF COERCINa CHINA. 429
accuracy of the conclusion. Circumstances since then have,
however, altered both in a favourable and an adverse sense.
Taokuang, with his humiliating experience of the superiority
of our arms and his known and acknowledged desire to avoid
any further collision during his reign, is no longer on the
throne ; and his young successor, untaught by the experience
of his father, has given very unequivocal signs of disposition to
enter upon a different policy. On the other hand, a protracted
and serious insurrection in the southern provinces has drained
his treasury, weakened his authority, and now threatens, unless
he finds means by force or bribery to put the insurgents down,
at no distant period to afifect the stability of his throne. If
the arrogance of youth in the new sovereign should therefore
dispose him on the one side to venture on a crusade against
Western Powers, his perilous position in regard to his own
provinces cannot fail to impress upon him the prudence of at
least temporising until a more convenient season. I am led to
think, therefore, from all I can learn, that the two contrary
forces will go far to neutralise each other, and that Hsienf^ng,
with all his hostile feeling, will be at the present moment as
accessible to reason, from the peculiarly embarrassing position
in which he is placed, if backed by coercive means, as was his
predecessor at the conclusion of the war.
From this your Excellency will perceive that I deem the
present time, from the political condition of China, more
favourable than any later period may be for the success of
coercive measures. As regards the season of the year to be
selected, both in reference to the navigation of the Yangtze-
kiang and the transmission of the grain tribute, the blockading
should not be commenced later than April. During the summer
the sun melts the snow on the mountains and sends down the
freshets, swelling the river until it overflows its banks with great
accession of violence to the current. When the fleet sailed up
in July 1842 many of the soundings taken were over paddy-
fields, and altogether out of the bed of the river, as the sound-
ings and observations of the Espi^gle clearly demonstrated.
The tribute also begins to be sent up to Peking from some parts
as early as April. A fleet of grain-junks were at the mouth of
the canal when the Espiegle made her appearance at the end of
March in 1848.
How far a blockade at the present time would have the desired
430 APPENDIX II.
effect — that is, if made effective before the month of May — is a
question upon which I cannot feel any doubt. Much would of
course depend upon the suddenness of the descent, and therefore
upon the previous secrecy observed ; much upon the available
nature of the force employed. Besides two or three large-class
vessels, I am strongly persuaded there should be at least two
small steamers of light draught of water, and one or two brigs,
which would be quite as effective against any force the Chinese
could bring to bear, and far more manageable and serviceable,
as well as less costly, than larger vessels. If the result aimed
at were not very promptly attained, it might be necessary to
retake Chinkiang-fu as a base of operations, and to detach two
or three small-class vessels to watch the entrances of water-
courses and canals nearer the moutli of the Yangtze-kiang, of
which there are at least four, and through them junks with
tribute might otherwise pass to the north and into the Grand
Canal at some point above the Yangtze-kiang, and between it
and the Yellow river. There is also a very free communication
with all the lowland districts south of the Yangtze-kiang and
the north above Nanking by means of the Seu ho, which runs
from Soochow west into tlie Yangtze-kiang at W^t Hu and
Taiping. But from this point northward there does not appear
to be any good water communication leading to the Grand Canal
without descending the Yangtze-kiang as far as Iching and
Kwachow on the two mouths of the Grand Canal at its junction
with the Yangtze-kiang below Nanking. These secured would
therefore stop the main traffic by the Seu ho route to the north
for the relief of Peking. My own impression is that if no
warning were given, nor time allowed for previous preparation,
our demands would be granted within one month of the com-
mencement of the blockade. If from any unforeseen cause,
however, the negotiations were protracted, and the Chinese
Government had leisure to recover from its panic and adopt
plans for obtaining tribute and grain by circuitous routes, it
would be in that case that Chinkiang-fu might be required,
together with a good watch on the various tributaries of the
Yangtze-kiang below and eastward of Nanking already referred
to ; and perhaps on the coast towards the Yellow river and the
Peiho two or three cruisers might be required to intercept junks
sent hy sea with tribute. Such in effect is the intention of the
Chinese Government at the present moment, without any refer-
BLOCKADE OF GRAND CANAL. 431
ence to us. The grain to be collected from the eight provinces,
divided into upper and lower, consists of the common grain and
of white rice, the latter for the consumption of the emperor and
his Court, which it is intended shall be sent this season by sea
from Shanghai, — a circumstance peculiarly favourable to the
success of any blockading measures, since, as it would be neces-
sary under any contingencies to cover Shanghai and our large
interests there with an effective force, the same means would
enable her Majesty's Government to lay an embargo on a large
and especially important portion of the tribute already collected
in the port. I do not imagine it would be contemplated to
abandon Shanghai, and I am far from thinking it would be
either necessary or expedient — though at Ningpo, Foochow, and
perhaps Amoy, it might be considered well — to withdraw the
few foreigners for a time. At Canton, no doubt, it would be
imperative either to give adequate protection or to abandon the
place. On this point I am scarcely called upon to offer an
opinion. It probably does not enter into any plans contem-
plated to strike a blow at Canton, or to adopt any measure
necessarily entailing bloodshed and heavy loss : were it other-
wise, no doubt the fall of Canton and the humiliation of the
Cantonese would in itself go far to read a salutary lesson
throughout the empire, and especially at Peking, where there
is reason to believe they look upon Canton and the Cantonese
as affording the great barrier to our progress, from our inability
to make any impression either upon the city or the people.
I do not, of course, presume to offer these suggestions on the
general measures which might be found needful for the protec-
tion of British interests along the coast, and the distribution and
economising of our forces while a blockade on the Yangtze-kiang
was being effected, as better informed than your Excellency on
such points, but merely refer to them incidentally as necessary
parts of any plan for demanding redress by coercive measures
at the mouth of the Grand Canal.
For the better illustration of the points touched upon in this
despatch in reference to the different points of access to the
Grand Canal, either coastwise or by tlie Yangtze-kiang below
Nanking and the two mouths of the canal, which will have to
be borne in mind, I beg to enclose a very rough and hasty plan
of the main channels, taken chiefly from the elaborate map of
the empire published under the Jesuits, and which Mr Medhurst,
432 APPENDIX III.
when my last confidential report was in hand, was good enough
at my suggestion to work at on an enlarged scale, availing him-
self of all the additional information, by comparison of maps,
itineraries, &c., that was accessible.
I shall be glad if in this somewhat hasty reply to your
Excellency's despatch I have been able to afford such informa-
tion as you have desired ; but if not, or upon any other points
it should appear that further inquiries can be prosecuted advan-
tageously and without creating suspicion, I shall be happy to
give my best efforts to carry out your Excellency's instructions.
APPENDIX III.
CONFIDENTIAL DESPATCH TO SIR GEORGE BONHAM, DATED
JUNE 17, 1852. (EXTRACT.)
If I might without presumption express an opinion on our
general policy in China, I should add that it seems in danger of
being paralysed by the two antagonistic forces [alluded to in
the preamble], and by necessities difficult to reconcile. The
magnitude and extreme importance of our interests in the East
— in commerce and revenue (for, as I have shown, the China
trade is the connecting-link between Great Britain and India,
and necessary to complete the circle of trading operations) —
suggest on the one hand the necessity of avoiding all measures
that may rashly jeopardise such interests, yet nevertheless make
it imperative on the other to adopt firmly and unhesitatingly
whatever steps may be necessary to prevent loss or deteriora-
tion. How these can best be reconciled is the problem to be
solved. As late as the last war, throughout all our previous
intercourse the attempt had been made to arrive at the solution
by a system of temporising and concession, even to that which
was unjust and injurious, and this steadily carried out, with a
few rare and brief exceptions. Our policy since the treaty has
manifested a tendency to an opposite course, encouraged no
doubt by the result of the first determined stand made. It has,
NEED OF A FIRM POLICY. 433
nevertheless, been so hesitatingly developed that we appear to
halt between the two. In words we have asserted resistance to
insult or wrongful treatment, but in acts we have not seldom
temporised and submitted. The fruit of this policy we now are
beginning to reap. Principles of action have sometimes been
asserted and then abandoned, instead of being persisted in until
the end was accomplished. In dealing with the Chinese, how-
ever, nothing appears to be so necessary as to keep the ground
once assumed. If this be true, there cannot be too much
caution used in first asserting or contending for a right ; but
that step once taken, there is no safe halting-place between it
and full success. A course of alternate opposition and submis-
sion cannot do otherwise than end in defeat ; and defeat in this
country is never limited to its immediate consequences. It has
appeared, on looking back through the ten years which have
now elapsed since the termination of the war, that the first half
of the period was passed in comparative security under the
strong influence its events were calculated to exercise on the
Chinese mind ; but, true to their invariable policy, they have
never ceased to seek by every means in their power to make
the British authorities develop under what instructions they
were acting and to penetrate into their true spirit, in order to
ascertain the limits to which our sufferance would extend and
the nature of the powers of resistance or retaliation her
Majesty's Government were ready to authorise. I think it
cannot be matter of doubt to any one resident in China
throughout this period, that during the latter portion the
Chinese have felt assured of the essentially pacific determina-
tion of our Government and the policy of endurance and suffer-
ance in all cases of minor wrongs. And, assured under such a
system (with the known impossibility of any direct action in
Peking), they have, during the last two years more especially,
felt emboldened, systematically, by a series of apparently small
encroachments and aggressions, to undermine our position, and
to restore, as nearly as may be, the state of things existing be-
fore the war, extending the system to all the ports.
With this conviction I have thought it desirable to bring be-
fore her Majesty's plenipotentiary in detail many illustrations
of the deteriorating influences at work at this port, and now
venture to pass these rapidly in review, that their collective
evidence may not be wanting. And in order that I may be
VOL. I. 2 E
434 APPENDIX III.
brief, I shall merely note in the margin the number and dates of
various despatches bearing upon similar matters, without further
reference to their contents. By these I think it will be seen
that the general current and tendency of all the official acts for
the last two years upon which I have frequently commented as
they occurred has been distrust, and strongly adverse alike to
our trade and the stability of our position.
Evidence, I think, will be found in these records to establish
the fact that the present Taotai Wu (or Samqua, as he is more
familiarly known, of Canton trading memory) has been especially
selected as the chief agent to initiate, and the fit instrument for
carrying out, a retrograde policy : his character, means, and the
general direction of his efforts to damage our local position,
territorial and social — to cripple and restrict our trade, and to
Cantonise the whole of our relations both with people and
authorities in the north — are all in keeping with this mission,
and incomprehensible on any other supposition.
The steps of his progress have been carefully watched, and
in the despatches noted in the margin traced, together with
their effects — neither very apparent on the surface. These may
perhaps best be considered by aid of a somewhat arbitrary
division as to subjects rather than chronologically, for they
have generally run on conterminous and parallel lines. Starting
from the Tsingpu affair, in the spring of 1848, and his baffled
efforts to pluck from us the best fruit of the risks incurred to
vindicate an important principle, from which date he hung
about the place — in the background it is true, but not the less
busy as a spy from Nanking, between which place and Shanghai,
occasionally acting Taotai, at others absent, he oscillated until
the fit time appeared to have arrived. After the accession of
the new emperor, Lin was displaced from the Taotai office, and
he was finally installed by " imperial appointment " to put his
hand to the work before him. His steps may be traced in the
sinister influences and obstruction brought to bear upon all our
interests.
The land tenure and regulations under which a foreign colony
had rapidly risen covering more than a hundred acres of land,
as an element of strength and independence to the British more
especially, seems to have excited both the jealousy and the fears
of the Chinese authorities. There seemed no limit to its pro-
gress and development ; each year saw more and more land
A DIFFICULT SITUATION. 435
occupied, while houses of a large and costly description rapidly
filled up the vacant spaces.
Before Wu came ostensibly upon the scene some progress
had been made in the creation of difficulties, and the authorities
having in the spring of 1849 granted a large and absurdly
disproportionate tract to the French, over which the French
consul claimed a territorial jurisdiction, the national suscepti-
bilities of the Americans gave the opportunity of bringing French
and Americans, and the latter and the English, into collision,
and they were not slow to profit by it to set the land regulations
practically aside while officially appearing to uphold them.
The desire of the community to carry out an extravagant and
not very practicable scheme for a new park or exercise-course
that should enclose nearly the whole arable ground and villages
within our limits afforded the next opportunity, and the arrogant
humour and superstitions of the Fukein clans supplied the ready
instruments for inflicting a second blow upon the rights and
security of the foreigner at Shanghai connected with the occu-
pation of land.
These attacks and aggressions have since been perseveringly
followed up — popular commotions, abusive and menacing placards,
having all been used in turns to the damage of our position,
and the result has been discredit, broken regulations, divided
and antagonistic pretensions between the two most numerous
classes of foreign residents — the British and American — and
between all foreigners and the Fukein clans, the most turbulent
and aggressive of the native population at the port, — a result
of which, looking to all the present embarrassment and future
danger to our interests it is calculated to produce, I am bound
to say I think Samqua may well be proud. The national vanity
of the French leading them to an absurd and useless acquisition,
the love of exercise of the British leading the equestrians to
press an ill-advised and impracticable scheme for a three-mile
racecourse, and the national susceptibilities of the Americans
leading them to dispute the land tenure which hitherto had
been the condition of their own security, — all have been adroitly
turned to the greatest advantage, to the profit of the Chinese
and the serious detriment of the foreigner.
The progress made in creating obstacles to our commerce has
been not less worthy of remark. For a system of total laxity
in the custom - house administration under Lin a capricious
436 APPENDIX III.
alternation of vigilance and neglect, under which oppressive acts
of partiality and injustice are frequently perpetrated, has been
substituted, to the great derangement of operations in trade.
The carrying trade has been harassed and impeded, and the
Taotai is now actively engaged in efforts to get the cargo- boats
under his exclusive control, and to organise a cohong of five
firms on the model of the ancient establishments at Canton,
while already — I believe at his suggestion (indeed he scarcely
denies it) — information has reached me that a new transit duty
of seven mace per picul has been levied at Chung- An on the
produce proceeding thence from the Black Tea districts to
Shanghai. A duty of over 7 per cent, in violation of one of the
most important of our treaty stipulations, with a monopoly of
cargo-boats, a right to levy new transit duties, and a cohong —
the three leading advantages secured by the treaty vanish. It
is vain to disguise the fact, for nothing can be clearer or
more certain. On these points I have been collecting detailed
information, and shall shortly be enabled to write more fully on
the subject. I beg your Excellency in the meantime to rest
assured that the main facts have already been placed beyond
doubt. In connection with these, freedom of access to different
points in the interior and with Ningpo by the inland route as
advantages long enjoyed have also attracted attention, and some
more feeble effbrts have been made to throw obstacles in the
way.
In the administration of justice perhaps more than in any
other directions adverse influences have been brought to bear
with complete effect. Eedress for any injury inflicted on a
foreigner, protection from frauds, or recovery of debts, are all
wholly unattainable. The action of the Chinese tribunals in
our behalf is null and void, and the course taken by the
authorities in all cases referred to there amounts to a total
denial of justice. The act of the Taotai in seizing and flogging
Mr 's boatmen was only wanting to withdraw from the
foreigners all protection dependent upon the Chinese laws and
their administration under our treaties.
Under these three heads, therefore, I would sum up the
progressive and evident deterioration in our position here. The
tenure of land, the operations of trade, the administration of
justice, have all been objects of attack, and with serious pre-
judice. That, however, which is at present evident as the
HOW TO RECOVER LOST GROUND. 437
effect of the steps taken, forms but a small part of the injury
which will in a very short period be too manifest to be over-
looked if no determined steps are taken to reverse the policy
now pursued. The time, I am firmly persuaded, has arrived
for meeting by energetic action these insidious attacks — as the
least dangerous course — if our most important interests here are
really to be defended with any effect.
How this may best be done I feel your Excellency is entitled
to demand from the officer who seeks so earnestly to impress
you with a conviction that action is necessary, and I have no
wish to shrink from the responsibility of suggesting measures
by which I conceive some positive good may be effected, to
repair the mischief, and much impending evil at all events
averted.
In reference to the land, also, it would seem very desirable
that some understanding should be come to with the United
States charge d'affaires by which any participation in the
advantages of the British location, consistent with the security
of all, should be freely conceded, while anything incompatible
with this condition must be as certainly resisted, in their interest
not less than ours. If Dr Parker prove impracticable I see no
resource but a reference home, when I trust all the real im-
portance of the questions at issue to the interests of British
trade and the British position at this fort will be steadily kept
in view ; nor should it be forgotten that in its maintenance all
foreign States are deeply interested, whatever the Americans
for the moment may think. Any injury to our position must
recoil with double force upon so weak and small a minority
as they are when left to stand alone.
As regards the measures now in progress for organising a
cohong, levying new transit duties, and creating a monopoly of
cargo- boats, all tending in the most serious degree to fetter
our trade, in indirect violation of the express stipulations of
our treaty, I confess there seems to be but one course con-
sistent with the credit of our Government or the defence of
our interests, and that is resolutely and firmly to resist them
as infractions of treaty. Two modes of doing this, however,
suggest themselves. The one is by active proceedings — prohibit-
ing the payment of any maritime duties by British subjects until
satisfaction is obtained, and a distinct intimation that if this
does not suffice other and more determined measures should
438 APPENDIX III.
follow. The other involves a system of negatimi that would
be peculiarly embarrassing to the Chinese local authorities, and
eventually to the Government at Peking. This may be carried
out by simply holding the treaty to be in abeyance by their
own acts, and declining to take any steps with British subjects
to enforce the conditions — whether as regarded customs, access
to the interior, the purchase of land, or the administration of
justice — so long as the measures objected to were persisted in.
In reference to these two courses, I will not hesitate to say
that, if left to my discretion, I should adopt the first; but the
condition of ultimate success would be the certainty that, if the
object was not attained by such means, her Majesty's Govern-
ment would feel pledged to send a squadron to the mouth of
the Grand Canal next spring with an imperative demand for
the Taotai's disgrace and the reversal of all this obnoxious
policy, and authority to resort to coercive measures if not
listened to.
If, however, it should be deemed preferable to incur the
risk of doing nothing — or what, I confess, appears to me even
more dangerous, to make protests, or demonstrations which
there is no serious intention of following up to their legitimate
conclusion — the negative policy is of course the only one to
be attempted. The responsibility of the initiative would then
be thrown upon the Chinese themselves. The tables would be
turned, and the Chinese will be left to right themselves as they
best could, while a large revenue will slip through their hands
and manifold complications and embarrassments in their rela-
tions with foreigners arise to their confusion. The task, in
fine, they now assign to us w^ould devolve upon them, and
their sole remedy, if they did not choose to give way, would be
to stop the trade ; but as that would be a plain and ostensible
casus belli, they will not attempt it.
If, on the other side, nothing effective be done, I must
frankly state my conviction that our position in the north
will rapidly deteriorate, and our relations be embroiled, if not
irreparably injured. I believe means for the amelioration of
both may be safely taken, and have long been required ; but I
feel still more strongly convinced that at no distant period they
miist be taken, and the longer they are delayed the greater will
be the ultimate cost, and the more imminent the hazard to our
future trade and relations with China.
DETAILS OF SALT TRADE. 439
If I am correct in these inferences, the conclusion of the
whole must be that the time has arrived when it will be no
longer safe to defer strong and effective measures in defence of
our interests, and that there is a clear necessity for present
action to avert at no distant period a costly war and a shock
to this empire it is so ill capable of sustaining, that it must
of necessity be attended with great peril not only to the
present dynasty but to the existing social organisation of the
country.
APPENDIX IV.
ACCOUNT OF THE SALT TRADE ANNEXED TO MR PARKES SUM-
MARY OF THE NATIVE MARITIME TRADE OF FOOCHOW, 1846.
(EXTRACTS.)
They have constituted the sale of salt a monopoly, which
they place in the hands of a set of merchants whom they hold
liable for the payment of a fixed amount of tax. This, in some
instances, falls ratlier heavy upon them, but proves an easy
measure to the authorities, who have thus but little trouble
or expense of collection. All the supplies of salt are drawn
from the sea-shore, and consequently there is an appointment
of salt inspector in every maritime province, who superintends
everything connected with the gabelle : he holds a high rank
and receives good emoluments from the Government, 3000
taels per annum. It also forms one of the duties of the
governor-general of the province to act as chief superintendent
of salt excise.
Most of the supplies from Fukien have to be sent into
the interior and the adjacent province of Kiangsi vid Foochow.
The salt is made all along the shore to the southward. . . .
The salt is made at these places by people belonging to the
various localities, and the manufacture gives employment to
numbers of individuals, who in those sterile districts have few
other means of subsistence. The general method of manu-
440 APPENDIX IV.
facture is to collect the saturated loam from the beach in
heaps, and thence to draw off the brine by drainage into large
but shallow-built vats, when crystallisation is effected by expo-
sure to the natural heat of the sun. The brine being all
extracted from the heap, it is removed to the beach, and the
same earth, having been immersed in the salt-tide, can again
be used. In fine weather great quantities can thus be expe-
ditiously manufactured, but a succession of rain stops the works,
and a scarcity in the supplies is the consequence. The pro-
ducers are exempted from all taxes or charges on the part of
the Government, on the consideration tliat they are in mean
labouring circumstances, though many of the salt-farms are
very extensive, and some of their conductors possessed of better
competence than the merchants, on whom the whole burden
of taxation falls. Junks are despatched to these places by the
salt merchants for freights.
The Government system of exacting a fixed annual amount
of gabelle is very defective, and places the trade, which might
prosper under other management, on an unhealthy basis. When
the trade is dull, it becomes still more depressed by the nature
of the liabilities that the merchants have at all times equally
to bear, and which then become burdensome ; and again, on
the other hand, in case of a thriving season, the revenue is in
no way advantaged. Their wretched executive, however, pre-
vents any improvement. They therefore content themselves
with fixing a stated sum, upwards of 300,000 taels per annum ;
and if they can secure the requisite number of persons to under-
take to dispose of a certain quantity of salt that will yield
excise to this amount, they are content. Thus each merchant
is bound to conduct the sale of the quantity that he undertakes,
or rather is held responsible for the amount of duty due on
such quantity, and having once paid this up, should he be so
disposed, he is at perfect liberty to transport and sell more
salt on his own account, duty free ; whilst, on the other hand,
should he, from a glut in the market or other circumstances,
not be able to dispose of the quantity of which he had under-
taken the sale, he has still to pay duty on the whole at a fixed
unalterable rate.
It is therefore the imminent risk attending salt speculations
that causes people of property to be so averse towards entering
them. They involve a great outlay of capital, with continual
THE SALT MERCHANTS. 441
liability but uncertain remuneration. Thus, if a man embarks
the whole or greater part of his means in speculations which
do not succeed, he becomes instantly embarrassed with the
Government, and, with no incomings to relieve him, may per-
haps not succeed in recovering his first failure. Most of the
merchants being men who are selected merely on account of
their capital, the management of their business is entirely in
the hands of those they employ, for whose honesty or capacity
they are mainly dependent for success. The charges and
expenses connected with carrying on a salt business are very
great. Yet there are several instances of old merchants employ-
ing good managing men, and possessing plenty of supporting
capital, having amassed large fortunes in the trade, though, on
the contrary, cases are much more numerous of speculators
having suffered losses and contracted debts with the Govern-
ment. A debt to the State of no less than 1,450,000 taels by
the salt dealers of Foochow has thus gradually collected.
The nomination of salt merchants is almost invariably com-
pulsory, and no one can retire from the business without he is
totally unable from want of means to continue in it. In these
cases the reflection that they were obliged to undertake the
transactions that led to their ruin must add increased poignancy
to their losses. When once, however, they have undertaken a
transaction, they are much favoured by the authorities, who give
them entertainments and confer honours and distinctions upon
them. There are head merchants appointed, who hold some
control over the proceedings of the others. To be a head
merchant a man must be of known character and not owing
anything to the Government. They are responsible for all
the other merchants, who, however trustworthy, have all to
be secured by the head merchants. In case of any merchant
becoming in arrears with the payment of his duties, the salt
inspector orders the head merchants to limit him to a certain
time in which to liquidate all charges. According as the case
needs, the head merchants convene and consult as to whether
they should pray for an extension of the term or require some
of the other merchants in substantial circumstances to lend the
necessary amounts, or perhaps they may proceed to pay it
themselves. If also they find that any of the other merchants
are incompetent, from want of means, to manage their business,
they represent the same to the salt inspector, that they may be
442 APPENDIX IV.
allowed to retire. At present there are four head merchants
out of a total of sixty-one. . . .
Smuggling is also carried on to some extent. As this, how-
ever, affects the vital interests of the salt merchants, they show
great vigilance in investigating and reporting to the authorities
any instances that may come within their knowledge, and for
this purpose fit up and maintain several small vessels which
keep up a constant watch against contraband proceedings.
There are a multiplicity of fees and charges which prove
very onerous to the merchants. [Here follows a list of forty-
seven separate fees, dues, and charges, amounting to 15,300
taels, or about £5000 sterling, on 900,000 lb. weight, or about
one-eighth of a penny per lb.]
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
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