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 office 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 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 himself 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. Governments 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, where success depended on the
personal qualities of the pioneer navigators--their judgment,
resourcefulness, 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 telegraph,
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
providing for eventualities out of the range of common experience. The
conditions of service were therefore such as to constitute an ordeal
under which a bureaucratic official would shrivel into uselessness or
worse, 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
distinguished surgeon among many and gained in exchange a political
representative whose services must be considered 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 propositions 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 necessary 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 represented not ourselves alone, nor the East
India Company, nor a generation or two of timid traders, but
Christendom as a whole--our Spanish, Portuguese, 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 proceeding: 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 adventurers, 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 received 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 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 convention. Intercommunion between bodies so alien was as
the welding of heterogeneous metals, contact without fusion. From one
point of view, indeed, circumstances were highly favourable to a
sympathetic attachment, for there is no safer medium of intercourse
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 goodwill. 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 vivendi_? 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 concern 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 representatives 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 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 incomprehension of each others
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 ever
be isolated, so in this case the twofold interference 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
tariff of duties, there are harbour and police regulations, and there
are the laws of the land. The peculiarity of the Chinese official
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 practise on
them such indignities as a wanton schoolboy might inflict on a captive
animal, unrestrained by any consideration save the risk of
retaliation. The 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 formulated 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
writing, 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
intercourse was therefore superadded a special negation of human
rights, naturally accompanied by an overbearing 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 amelioration 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 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
Company's officers to practise constantly increasing insolence, and
small blame to them. The demeanour of the Company's representatives
was that of men carrying out instructions against their better
judgment. Occasionally, 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 monopoly of the Company had ceased. Indeed the case became
much aggravated when the British agents, beginning 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
Kings 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 relations, 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 Government 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 menacing
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 opinions or prejudices of the Chinese
people." That article of the "Sign-manual Instructions to the
Superintendents 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, accompanied 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 interference 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 commercial
intercourse between his subjects and China, but by the other
conciliatory measures so strongly inculcated 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? The records again assure us that
such measures have been attended with complete success." And he
recommended his Government "to consult immediately on the best plan to
be adopted for commanding a commercial 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 official 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 indignities 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 succession, who received the King's commission in
1836. That officer indeed went far beyond his instructions 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;[3] and not to head his communications with
the word "petition"; and notwithstanding his own reiterated opinion in
the same sense, Captain Elliot entirely yielded to the Chinese
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 exhaustion 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 pleasure." The result
of this extreme humility was that Captain Elliot was forced to strike
his flag at Canton and withdraw to the Portuguese settlement of Macao,
on the ground that he was unable to maintain intercourse with the
authorities on the conditions prescribed for him by her Majesty's
Government.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTE:
[3] These were a syndicate appointed by the Chinese Government to
conduct the foreign trade and be responsible to the Government for the
proceedings of the foreign merchants.