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 -- Destruction of Canton factories and

flight of foreign residents -- Operations in river.

From the earliest days of the British occupation it had been the aim

of the Canton authorities to destroy 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

themselves, and gradually made headway against the restrictive schemes

of the mandarins. The Government fostered the legitimate commercial

ambition of the Chinese colonists by passing ordinances whereby 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. Certificates of registry were granted only to men of

substance 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, 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 registered vessels was the Arrow, commanded 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 ostentation, her crew

forcibly carried off on a charge, according to a Chinese version, "of

being in collusion with barbarians," and her ensign hauled down. How

this outrage on the British flag was perpetrated, 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 Bowring, governor of Hongkong, her Majesty's

plenipotentiary and superintendent 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 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 instructed 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 Cantonese

people and the impracticable arrogance of the imperial officers who

successively held office there had often prompted an appeal to Cæsar,

and more than one attempt had been made in times gone by to submit the

Canton grievances to the judgment of the Imperial Court. These

attempts were inspired by a total misconception of the relations

between the provinces and the capital. In the year 1854, however, it

was decided to renew the effort to open direct communications 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 fulfilment 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 calculated that the recovery of the duties unpaid

during 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 misconstruing 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 proceeded 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 deterrent effect on the rebels, who

withdrew their forces. Now at last the governor felt confident that

the barrier 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 superintendent of trade, Sir George

Bonham, for the assistance of one of her Majesty's ships in defending

Nanking against the expected attack of the Taipings. Divers

communications of like tenor had, during several months, led up to

this definite application. The appeal 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 characteristic 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 barbarians." Arrogant

and contemptuous of course they were, and yet it may perhaps be

questioned whether such terms fully explain the mutilation of the

plenipotentiary'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 communities by a divine right which excludes the idea of

reciprocity. This key to the history of foreign intercourse with China

is too often forgotten.

Nothing daunted, Sir John returned to the charge in June 1855, on the

occasion of the appointment of 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 assistance

indirectly accorded to him in defending the city from rebel attack, or

by the succession of respectful appeals made to him by Sir John

Bowring, a new campaign of aggression was inaugurated against the

lives and liberties of the foreign 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, following 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, solemnly warned

the Imperial Commissioner that such acts, if not promptly

discountenanced by the authorities (who of course were well known to

be the instigators), must inevitably lead to deplorable consequences.

The Chinese reply to this remonstrance was the outrage on the lorcha

Arrow. To isolate that incident, therefore, would be wholly to miss

the significance 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, in condoning the present insults, the

British authorities would have invited greater and always greater, as

in the days of Lin. The tone of recent despatches from the Foreign

Office fortified the governor 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 altogether 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 measures at Canton. And it happened that, scarcely perceived

either by themselves or by the other parties concerned, 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 for partner; both were noted for their

princely hospitality, 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

effectual than any half-hearted combination could have been. Night

after night was the question of Canton discussed with slow

deliberation and accumulating emphasis in the executive and the

administrative, the naval and the political, camps respectively.

Conviction was imbibed with the claret and cheroots, and it was not

altogether without reason that what followed 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 consult Mr Stanley

Lane-Poole's 'Life of Sir Harry Parkes,' the volume of 'Times'

correspondence by that sage observer and vivacious narrator, Mr

Wingrove Cooke, and the delightful sailors book recently published by

Vice-Admiral Sir W. R. Kennedy. The campaign unfolded itself in a

drama of surprises. The force at the admiral's disposal being too

small to follow 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 Excellency's interdict, he had, with a guard of

bluejackets, visited the Viceregal Yamên; and with keeping hostilities

alive by a blockade of the river while awaiting reinforcements.

The Arrow incident occurred in October. In December 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 Commissioner Yeh pursued them exactly as that of

Commissioner Lin had done in 1839. Assassinations were not infrequent

on the outskirts of the city of Victoria; 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, commenced by Commodore Elliot and continued on a brilliant

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 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 accommodated 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 particulars and filling in the gaps in a wonderfully

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 incidents 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 question

at issue, but "unanimosity" towards the Premier, 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

commerce there, was not in their minds at all, their horizon 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 was 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 intercourse 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 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 Commissioners'

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 -- Comments 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 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 opportunely 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 interesting theme for speculation, not less so as the time for

putting it in force drew near. It had been surmised that his object

would be to leave Canton alone, and set out on another wild-goose

chase to the north. That so futile a scheme should not be carried out

without 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 Government 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 their address was so

diplomatic that he was able to say "it gave them for the moment

wonderful satisfaction." 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.[37]

On his return from India, however, and on the assembling 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 commence hostilities at Canton. Yet Lord Elgin seems to

have submitted to the inexorable demands of circumstances 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 correspondence 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

interest 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? 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

representative 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 disputes 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 tricksters." 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, pestilence, 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." 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 himself, 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 whatsoever; 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

undefiled 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 defilement 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 pathetic to see the particular man

whose mission was to humble her historical prestige tortured by

compunctions for what he is doing. One is tempted to wish the "job"

had been intrusted to more commonplace 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 difficulties 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 representative 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.[38]

His attitude to his countrymen generally is scarcely less censorious

than towards the officials who had borne, and were yet to bear, the

burden and heat of the day in China. From Calcutta he wrote:--

It is a terrible business 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 indiscriminate 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 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 affairs 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

experience 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 keynote 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 consider 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 mustered 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

correspondence. During the whole of the year 1858 the cry went up

continuously from the commissioners and military commanders, but it

remained practically unheeded 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

Imperial Government; but, as we shall see presently, that settlement

when made had no influence at all upon 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 administration 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 regulation 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 Cooke,

Why we had not taken possession of the peninsula of Kowloon, for "if

any other Powers should do so--and what is to prevent them--the

harbour of Hongkong is lost to us." Several important exploratory

expeditions were 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.

[Illustration: ROADS AND WATERWAYS BETWEEN PEKING AND TIENTSIN.]

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

French, American, and Russian Ministers, all bent on making treaties

and on observing each other. The resources of Chinese resistance

having been provisionally exhausted, imperial commissioners came to

arrest the further progress of the foreigners by negotiations, or, to

speak with strict accuracy, to concede 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; 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 advance

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 toleration clause for the Christian religion was

inserted, without much apparent consideration for the consequences

involved in it. A special memorandum from Consul Alcock, called for by

the Foreign Office, had dwelt mainly on the precautions which should

accompany 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 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 experience 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 miscellaneous papers in Canton, they being, as

Commissioner 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

himself 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 notwithstanding 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

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[39] 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 presented

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 campaign 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 audience 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_.[40]

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

towards 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 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

precautions necessary to ensure its being carried out--I

mean, in quitting Tientsin as we did in July 1858, instead

of remaining 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 importance," he observed, "of such an achievement"--_i.e._,

a march to Peking--"it is impossible to overestimate. The much-vexed

question of the reception of a 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."[41]

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 Oliphant 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 needless 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 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 procedure 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 apparently, 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 plenipotentiary 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 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 despatches 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 automaton 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 perhaps 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 experience, 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 intending 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 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

_protégés_, 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

support 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 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 Commissioners 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 (1) 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 purpose. 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 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 proceedings of officials and

people which had harassed the occupying 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

Government was carried on not in Canton but in the neighbouring 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 acceptance 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.

Lord Elgin, who had returned from Japan to Shanghai to meet the

Imperial Commissioners in September, disappointed at their

non-arrival, opened communications 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 Commissioners naïvely

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 something 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 removal 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 exasperated, 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 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 hostility. "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 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 superseding

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 fighting. Outrages on stragglers,

assassination, kidnapping, 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 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 Government, 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 becoming 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 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 consideration 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 efforts 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 conquered--returned to

China in a month crowned with fresh laurels. At Shanghai he saw the

tariff settled, and then performed another pioneer voyage of

prodigious 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, 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 _dénoûment_ 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 the 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 determination

never to see the face of any foreign Minister; and it seems strange

that it should have taken not only another year but another war

finally to convince the British plenipotentiaries 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.

[Illustration: SIR FREDERICK BRUCE.]

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

Peking campaign of 1860, with its tragic incidents, 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,

handsome, 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,"[42] and by Admiral Page, "a superior man

with a great deal of dry humour, but bad-tempered."[43]

The friction arising between Allies working together, waiting for each

other, consulting at every step, taking 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 condition, 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

difference of opinion between the Allied generals had disclosed

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 simultaneously. 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 presence of the two

plenipotentiaries, who stopped on the way to negotiate with the

unbeaten foe. Delay was not the only untoward consequence of these

proceedings. At one moment a military disaster seemed to have been

narrowly escaped. Taking advantage of 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 commander-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 Tungchow, 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 himself,

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, 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 incontinently 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 retorted by intimating that the surrender of

prisoners was a necessary condition of the suspension of hostilities.

A week having been wasted in this vain seesaw, 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 accompanied the Allies. A map which

he lent to Sir Hope Grant showed every street and house of importance

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 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 Jêho, 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 provisions introduced into the French

treaty will be referred to in a subsequent chapter.[44]

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 counsellor, 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 galloping off with the treaty, as shown in the

illustration, was rather typical of the whole business. The treaty

as such was of little consequence--the fulfilment of its provisions

was everything.

[Illustration: MR LOCH DEPARTS FROM PEKING FOR ENGLAND WITH CHINESE

TREATY.]

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 succeeding 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 installed 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 repairs 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 himself among his native Christians during the

military 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 maintained in the

highest efficiency. Its members--six ecclesiastical and four lay--were

changed every ten years. All of them, from the Archimandrite

downwards, 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 politics,

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 outrage or insult by their own tact and their traditional

prestige; and as the Daimios of Japan in their anti-foreign manifestos

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 soldiery, and M. Popoff 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."

[Illustration: MONSEIGNEUR MOUILLI.]

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 friendship. 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,

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 offer 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 conversation 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 deceived?"

"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

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

companionable 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 1860 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 _chemadán_, 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 department of Foreign Affairs was created

under the title of "Tsung-li Koh Kwoh She Yu Yamên," or briefly,

"Tsungli-Yamên," the three original members being Prince Kung,

Kweiliang, and Wênsiang. The Yamên 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.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[37] "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."

[38] 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 considerable modification. "Parkes," he wrote in 1860, "is

one of the most remarkable men I ever met for energy, courage, and

ability combined. I do not know where I could find his match."

[39] 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.

[40] 'The Scotsman,' September 18, 1858.

[41] 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."

[42] Sir Hope Grant's Journal.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Vol. ii. p. 224.