Prince Kung, at Sir Rutherford Alcock's parting interview with him in 1869,
said: "Yes, we have had a great many discussions, but we know that you have
always endeavored to do justice, and if you could only relieve us of
missionaries and opium, there need be no more trouble in China."
He spoke the mind of the officials, literati, and the great masses of the
people. Heathenism is incarnate selfishness. How can a Chinese understand
that men will turn their backs on the ancestral home, travel ten thousand
miles with no other object but to do his countrymen good? The natural
Chinaman cannot receive it. He suspects us. And he has enough to pillow
his suspicion on. Let him turn the points of the compass. He sees the
great North-land in the hands of Russia. He sees the Spaniard tyrannizing
over the Philippine Islanders. He sees Holland dominating the East Indies.
He sees India's millions at the feet of the British lion. "What are these
benevolent-looking barbarians tramping up and down the country for? Why
are they establishing churches and schools and hospitals? They are trying
to buy our hearts by their feigned kindness, and hand us over to some
Western monarch ere long." So reasons our unsophisticated Chinese. He is
heartily satisfied with his own religion or utterly indifferent to any
religion. He has no ear for any new doctrine except as a curiosity, to
give momentary amusement, and then to be thrown to the ground like a
child's toy.
The missionary appears on the scene in dead earnest. "Agitation is our
profession." We are among those "who are trying to turn the world upside
down."
The Spirit of God touches and dissolves the apathy, melts the ice, breaks
the stone, and we see men alive unto God; "old things are passed away,
behold all things are become new." What a change in the recipient of God's
grace.
A change, too, takes place in him who resists. Icy apathy becomes burning,
bitter hatred. The whole enginery of iniquity is set in motion to sweep
off this strange foreign propaganda. Malicious placards are posted before
every yamen and temple. Basest stories are retailed. "The barbarians dig
out men's eyes and cut out men's hearts to make medicine of them." The
thirst for revenge is engendered, until, like an unleashed tiger, the mob
springs upon the missionary's home, and returns not till its thirst has
been slaked with the blood of the righteous. That is the dark shadow
hanging over missionary life in nearly every part of the Chinese Empire.
We have had no name to add to the foreign missionary martyr list, from the
region of Amoy.
Chinese martyrs there may have been. Men who have endured the lifelong
laceration of taunt and sneer and suffered the loss of well nigh all
things, there have been not a few. Though the fires of persecution have
burned with fiercer intensity in other parts of China, yet we have not
escaped having our garments singed in some of their folds.
Perhaps the most widespread anti-missionary uprising in China occurred
during the years 1870 and 1871.
It was during the summer of 1870 that Dr. Talmage was compelled to go to
Chefoo, North China, for much-needed rest and change.
On August 8th he wrote to Dr. J. M. Ferris:
"The next day after my arrival at Chefoo the news was received of the
terrible massacre at Tientsin on June 21st. (Tientsin is the port of
Peking, and has a population of upwards of one million.) Nine Sisters of
Charity, one foreign priest, the French consul and other French officials
and subjects, and three Russians--in all, twenty-one Europeans--were
massacred. Many of them were horribly mutilated. Especially is this true
of all the Sisters. Their private residences and public establishments, as
well as all the Protestant chapels within the city, were destroyed."
Not long after, the American Presbyterian Mission at Tung chow, Shantung
Province, North China, was broken up, for fear of an intended massacre.
The missionaries were helped to Chefoo by two vessels sent by the British
Admiral, Sir Henry Kellet.
At Canton, vile stories about foreigners distributing poisonous pills were
gotten up, and such was the seriousness of the crisis that two German
missionaries had to flee for their lives, one having his mission premises
utterly destroyed. A people whose credulity is most amazingly developed by
feeding on fairy tales and demon adventures from their childhood, are
prepared to believe anything about the "ocean barbarians" whose name is
never spoken without mingled fear and hatred and suspicion.
The ferment, started at Canton, spread along the coast. The people of Amoy
were inoculated with the virus.
On the 22d of September, 1871, Dr. Talmage addressed a letter to General Le
Gendre, U. S. Consul at Amoy, informing him of the state of affairs in and
about Amoy. The missionary knowing the language and having constant
dealings with the people would be more likely to know the extent and
gravity of any conspiracy against foreigners than the Consul. A part of
the letter reads:
"In July last inflammatory placards were extensively posted throughout the
region about Canton, stating that foreigners had imported a large quantity
of poison and had hired vagabond Chinese to distribute it among the people;
that only foreigners had the antidote to this poison and that they refused
to administer it, except for large sums of money or to such persons as
embraced the foreigner's religion. In the latter part of July some of
these placards and letters accompanying them were received by Chinese at
Amoy from their Canton friends. They were copied, with changes to suit
this region, and extensively circulated. The man who seems to have been
most active in their circulation was the Cham-hu, the highest military
official at Amoy under the Admiral. He united with the Hai-hong, a high
civil official, in issuing a proclamation, warning the people to be on
their guard against poison, which wicked people were circulating. This
proclamation was not only circulated in the city of Amoy, but also in the
country around.
"It did not mention foreigners, but the people by some other means were
made to understand that foreigners were meant. The district Magistrate of
the city of Chiang-chiu issued a proclamation informing the people of the
danger of poison, especially against poison in their wells. Two days later
he issued another proclamation, reiterating his warnings, and informing the
people that he had arrested and examined a man who confessed that he, with
three others, had been employed by foreigners to engage in this work of
poisoning the people.
"Their especial business was to poison all the wells. This so-called
criminal was speedily executed.
"A few days afterwards a military official at Chiang-chiu also issued a
proclamation to warn the people against poison, and giving the confession
of the above-mentioned criminal with great particularity. The criminal is
made to say that a few months ago he had been decoyed and sold to
foreigners. In company with more than fifty others--he was conveyed by
ship to Macao. There they were distributed among the foreign hongs, one to
each hong. (Hong is pigeon English for business house.)
"That afterwards he with three others was sent home, being furnished with
poison for distribution, and with special direction to poison all the wells
on their way. They were to refer all those on whom the poison took effect
to a certain individual at Amoy, who would heal them gratuitously, only
requiring of them their names. This, doubtless, is an allusion to the
hospital for the Chinese at Amoy, where the names of the patients are of
course recorded and they receive medicine and medical attendance
gratuitously.
"In this confession foreigners are designated by the opprobrious epithet of
'little'--that is, contemptible--'demons.' This, by the way, is a phrase
never used to designate foreigners in this region except by those in the
mandarin offices. Besides the absurdity of charging foreigners with
distributing poison, the whole confession bears the evidence not only of
falsehood, but, if ever made, of having been put into the man's mouth by
those inside the mandarin offices and forced from him by torture, for the
express purpose of exciting the intensest hatred against foreigners.
"In consequence, excitement and terror and hatred to foreigners, and
consequently to native Christians, became most intense, and extended from
the cities far into the country around. Wells were fenced in and put under
lock and cover. People were called together by the beating of gongs to
draw water. The buckets were covered in carrying water to guard against
the throwing in of poison along the streets. At the entrances of some
villages notices were posted warning strangers not to enter lest they be
arrested as poisoners. In various places men were arrested and severely
beaten on suspicion, merely because they were strangers. The native
Christians everywhere were subjected to much obloquy and sometimes to
imminent danger, charged with being under the influence of foreigners and
employed by them to distribute poison.
"Even at the Amoy hospital, which has been in existence nearly thirty
years, the number of patients greatly decreased; some days there were
almost none."
In the large cities of Tong-an and Chinchew placards were posted in great
numbers. They averred that black and red pills were being sold by the
agents of foreigners under presence of curing disease and saving the world.
Instead they were causes of terrible diseases which none but the foreign
dogs or their agents could cure. And to get cured, one must join the
foreign religion or else give great sums. It was asserted that all this
poison emanated from the foreign chapels, was often thrown into wells, and
secretly put into fish or other food in the markets.
A preacher, sixty miles from Foochow, one hundred and fifty miles north of
Amoy, barely escaped with his life. He was pounded with stones while the
bystanders called out, "Kill the poisoner, the foreign devils' poisoner!"
The whole object of this diabolical calumniating was to kindle the people
into a frenzy against foreigners, especially missionaries, and to make
foreign powers believe that the people are so anti-foreign that the
authorities cannot secure a foreigner's safety outside of the treaty ports.
Even when these reports were traveling like wildfire there were those among
the Chinese who knew better, and it was often said, "It cannot be the
missionaries and native Christians, for have they not been going in and out
among us all these years and they never did us any harm?"
Speaking of the "Political State of the Country," Dr. Talmage says:
"With the atrocities committed at Tientsin the world is acquainted, though
many seem still to be under the grievous error that these atrocities were
designed only against Romanism and the French nation.
"If this were the fact, it would be no justification. Others are under an
error equally grievous, that the Chinese Government has given reasonable
redress. It has given no proper redress at all. Instead of reprobating
the massacre, it has almost, and doubtless to the ideas of the Chinese,
fully sanctioned it. The leaders in the massacre have not been brought to
justice. The Government has readily given life for life--a very easy
matter in China--but it has so highly rewarded the families of the victims
thus sacrificed to placate the barbarians, and put so much honor on the
corpses of these martyrs to foreign demands, that it has encouraged similar
atrocities whenever a suitable time shall arrive for their perpetration.
The Imperial proclamation stating even this unsatisfactory redress, which
the Government solemnly promised should be published throughout the land,
has not been published except in a few instances where foreigners have
compelled it. The massacre at Tientsin is known throughout the empire, but
it is not known generally that any redress at all has been given.
"Instead of the publication of this proclamation the vilest calumnies--too
vile to be even mentioned in Christian ears--have been circulated secretly,
but widely throughout the land. Throughout the coast provinces of this
southern half of the empire the people have been warned of a grand
poisoning scheme gotten up by foreigners for the destruction of the
Chinese.
"Because the foreign residents in China report the truth in regard to the
feeling of hatred to foreigners, and warn the nations of the West of the
coming war and designed extirpation of all foreigners, for which China is
assuredly preparing with all its might, we are charged as being desirous of
bringing on war. We know that the Church will not impute such motives to
her missionaries. But the testimony of missionaries agrees in this respect
with that of other foreign residents. We see the evidence, as we walk the
streets, in the countenances and demeanor of the literati and officials,
and somewhat in the countenances and demeanor of the masses.
"We see it in the changed policy of the local magistrates toward the
Christians; we learn it from rumors which are circulated from time to time
among the people; we see it in the activity manifested in forming a proper
navy and in preparing the army.
"We learn it from the secret communications, some of which have reached the
light, passing to and fro between the Imperial Government and the higher
local authorities, and we fear that we have another proof in the barbarous
treatment of a shipwrecked crew some two weeks ago along the coast a little
to the north of Amoy.
"A British mercantile steamer ran ashore in a fog. She was unarmed. The
natives soon gathered in force and attacked the vessel. The people on
board attempted to escape in their boats. These boats were afterwards
attacked by a large fleet of fishing-boats and separated.
"One boat's company were taken ashore, stripped naked, wounded, and robbed
of everything. They finally made their way overland to Amoy. The other
three boats, after the crew and passengers had been stripped and robbed,
were let go to sea. They providentially fell in with a steamer which took
them to Foochow. Such atrocities were once common here.
"We do not believe that any large proportion of the foreign residents in
China wish war. We do wish, however, the rights secured to us by treaty.
These, with a proper policy, can be secured without war. We wish most
heartily to avoid war. Besides all its other evils it would be a sad thing
for our work and our churches. We still hope that God in His providence
will ward it off. He will do it in answer to our prayers if so it be best
for His cause. This is our only hope, and it is sufficient."
The threatening war cloud did blow over, and a restraint, at least
temporary, was laid upon the officials and the people in their treatment of
foreigners.