THE NEW INTERCOURSE: CANTON, 1842-1847.
The fundamental difficulty of giving effect 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
provincial 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 -- Evacuation 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
protection in spite of remonstrance of merchants --
Massacre of six Englishmen 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 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 imperfection of
knowing what was right without always doing, or being able to do, it.
He is indeed himself 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 kinsman 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 Europeans have ever come in
contact in that part of the world; the most elevated in rank as well
as 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, Government 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 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 foreigners,
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 reaching him, the
emperor not only bestowed rewards on the leaders but encouraged the
populace to further hostile measures against the foreigners. The
liberal distribution of arms during the war proved afterwards a
powerful 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 instruction in the storing up and practising of hatred and
contempt for foreigners, and they did not choose suddenly to recant
merely because their Government had been coerced into making a treaty
in a distant province. 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 smoking," 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 provincial 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[13] 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. 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 organised 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 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 urbanity and
acted "with a degree of _brusquerie_, 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 committed on two British
seamen in the city of Canton in October following. In the ordinary
routine he reported the occurrence to the Foreign Office 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 wandering 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 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 interesting 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 during 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
of common-sense that they might sometimes be considered commonplace;
practical, true, clear as a bugle-note. He had been barely six months
in office 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
communication 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
Government 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 distinctness 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 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 experience
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 outrages in Canton and of refusal to fulfil
a specific article in the treaty, reflects either on the
superintendent of trade in China as having withheld information from
the Government, or on the Government itself in arriving at conclusions
diametrically opposed to the tenor of their agent's despatches. If it
be any justification of the Government 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 afflatus, 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 river, blew up the magazines, spiked
827 pieces of heavy cannon, and placed the city of Canton "entirely 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 overshadowed Sir John Davis's first essay in diplomacy. The
agreement in seven articles concluded with Kiying 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 afforded 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 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 himself to be convinced of the need of any such measure.
Writing to his Government in August 1847, he declared 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 required." 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 impression 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 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 bearing, 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 incalculable 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 protected 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 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 deflected 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 consul, had now to tell his subordinate that "Viscount
Palmerston was of opinion that we shall lose all advantages 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 determined to repel force by
force, and the Chinese are not in the least different in
this respect from the rest of mankind.
In the light of the history of the subsequent fifty years, one is
tempted to say that Lord Palmerston'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 conferring 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 Palmerston 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 infectâ_ "intoxicated all
ranks of the people with an imaginary triumph." Exclusion from 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 transaction with the advantage of fifty
years' experience, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was
an inversion 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 conduct 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 himself
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 decidedly 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 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 applied corresponding coercion to
the people, even at the behest of foreigners, "truckling" to whom was
equally disgraceful to both the Chinese parties. The interaction of
the two Powers exemplified in a memorable way the principle of all
Chinese intercourse, that boldness 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
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 wanting
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 surmise
which was soon confirmed. The paper was extensively circulated; its
arguments and phraseology were adopted by Kiying in his official
correspondence with 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 restriction 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 maritime 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 developments of fifty years, but time
has worked no change in the nature of the struggle East _v._ West.
FOOTNOTE:
[13] This convenient term, borrowed from the French, saves many
periphrases 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.