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[Illustration: Decorative illustration facing the title page]
THE ATTACHE
AT PEKING
BY
A. B. FREEMAN-MITFORD, C.B.
AUTHOR OF ‘TALES OF OLD JAPAN,’ ‘THE BAMBOO GARDEN,’ ETC.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1900
_All rights reserved._
PREFACE
These letters were written many years ago, but in China, and especially
at Peking, the old order changes slowly, and they are at any rate a
faithful record of the life which was led by those whose duties lay, as
the Chinese say, “within the walls.” They profess no more than that.
Those who wish to learn more about China and Chinese manners must go
to that monumental work of the late Dr. Wells Williams, _The Middle
Kingdom_, to Sir John Davies’s fascinating book, _The Chinese_, or to
Professor Douglas’s book on Chinese society.
It will occur to many people to ask how it comes that we should have
lived for so many years peacefully, travelling through the country
unarmed, in the midst of a people capable of the atrocities which
have recently taken place. China is of all countries the land of
contradiction and of paradox. But I think that those who read these
letters will see that though, for obvious reasons, they were written
in a spirit of optimism, there was an undercurrent of feeling that
at any moment things might become very different. For instance, if
the insurrection in Shantung had not been quelled, and the rebels had
marched upon Peking, which was undoubtedly part of their programme,
the tragedy of 1900 might, and probably would, have been anticipated
in 1865. Moreover, although we were riding at anchor in smooth water,
there were from time to time uncomfortable signs of disturbance below.
I remember how on more than one occasion we were warned that on such
and such a day there would be a massacre of Europeans for the old
reason, the murder of babies whose eyes were used for purposes of
photography. These stories were put about by intriguing mandarins, who
succeeded in deceiving even some of the more ignorant of their own
class. The famous General Tsêng Kwo Fan (father of the Marquis Tsêng,
who was afterwards minister in London) was talking one day with an
English doctor on the subject of this babies’-eyes fraud, when suddenly
he said, “It is no use your attempting to deny it, for I have here some
of the dried specimens,” and he pulled out a packet of those gelatine
capsules which are used for covering castor oil and other nauseous
drugs! We paid little heed to these warnings, though, as recent events
have proved, there was perhaps more in them than we supposed. We were
sitting on a volcano, for experience has often shown how swiftly
this seemingly mild and almost childlike people can be lashed into a
fury like that of the flaming legions of hell. One thing we knew for
certain. If a rising should take place, we were in a death-trap from
which there could be no escape. Those grim and frowning gates once
shut, rescue was impossible, for what could a mere handful of men—in
those days there were but some seventy or eighty Europeans, all told,
in Peking—avail against the seething mob of enraged devils? When years
afterwards, in 1879, there came the horror of Sir Louis Cavagnari’s
murder, with all his company, at Cabul, I could but think how much the
position of the Legations at Peking resembled his.
It is the fashion to belaud Japan for the spirit of progress which she
has shown, at the expense of China, which remains wedded to old ways
and worn-out customs. Much as we may admire the marvellous headway
which Japan has made, this is hardly quite fair. It must be remembered
that Japan has never originated anything. All that she knew, up to the
time of her first real intercourse with foreigners forty years ago,
she owed to China. Buddhism, which replaced and in some sort throve
hand-in-hand with the old ancestor worship, the Shintô, reading and
writing, every art and accomplishment, from music and dancing down to
the game of football, all filtered through Corea from China to Japan,
and the dates of their advent are solemnly recorded as important facts
in the _O Dai Ichi Ran_. “A Glance at the Generation of the Kings,”
the native history. Borrowers from the beginning of time, it mattered
little to the Japanese whether they borrowed once more or once less,
and so when they saw that if they wished to hold a place among the
nations their only chance was to get rid of ancient Chinese forms
and adopt the civilisation of the West, they did not hesitate—they
took a leap into the light and left the thirteenth for the nineteenth
century. To hear some enthusiasts talk one would almost be led to
believe that the Japanese invented the nineteenth century. They found
it ready made to their hand. It was impossible to go through the
intermediate centuries. They had to skip, and they did it with a will.
The transformation scene was as sudden as it was complete. But it cost
the Japanese no sacrifice of national pride. What they gave up was none
of their own invention.
The Chinese, on the other hand, have an autochthon civilisation of
which they are justly proud. Five hundred years before Christ came
into the world—when the inhabitants of these islands were hopeless
savages clad in skins, or stained with woad according to the seasons,
if the old stories be true—Confucius was teaching respect for customs
which were already ancient. Since his day there have been thirteen
changes of capital and no fewer than thirty dynasties, but even when
Tartar[1] emperors have sat upon the Dragon Throne they have been
compelled to follow the rules of the Chinese, and civilisation has
remained what it was “under the shadow” of the great Teacher. No wonder
that the son of Han thinks a good many times before he will scatter his
past to the four winds of heaven, as the Japanese did without a sigh!
In one sense the mandarins have been wiser in their generation than
the men who made the Japanese revolution of 1868. These were the
daimios, such men as Satsuma, Tosa, Choshiu, and their karôs (elders
or councillors), who thinking to overthrow the Tycoon and his rule,
were blind to the fact that in so doing they were working their own
downfall as well as his. For they, no less than he, were the embodiment
of the feudal system. Where are they now? _Où sont les neiges d’antan?_
They have vanished, and their places are filled by a mushroom growth of
dukes, marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons. For Japan has stopped
short at nothing; not content with adopting the cocked hat, which as we
all know is the very marrow of all good government, giving the _entrée_
to the comity of nations, she has actually invented a full and complete
peerage. Far more astute is the mandarin. Such wily anachronisms as
Li Hung Chang and his compeers know full well that under the sun of
Western civilisation they must melt away, and it is no matter for
surprise that they die hard. All the myriads of officials, from the
highest to the lowest, swarming like ants over that vast empire, are
alive to the fact that their very existence depends on keeping up a
constant animosity against the Hung Kwei Tzŭ, the red devils. That has
always appeared to me as the keynote of the situation.
Various causes are commonly assigned for the fanaticism against
foreigners, which has from time to time broken out with fatal
consequences in different parts of China. Some blame missionary
enterprise; some commerce in general; others the opium trade in
particular. My belief is that it is due to neither of these in itself,
but to the dread of reform which haunts the official mind, and which in
the end must win its way.
The Chinese are not by nature a people of strong religious convictions,
nor have they any strong religious antipathies. If it were otherwise,
how is it that a colony of Jews[2] has dwelt among them unmolested
for two thousand years, and still remains, dwindling in numbers, it
is true, at Kai Fêng in the province of Ho Nan? How is it that the
Mohammedans have flourished exceedingly in certain provinces, even to
becoming a danger to the empire? On the walls of the Imperial palace at
Peking there is a pavilion richly decorated with Arabic inscriptions
from the Koran in honour of a Mohammedan lady who was a wife, or
favourite, of one of the emperors. This does not look like persecution
for religion’s sake. And, more than these, Buddhism? Ever since the
Emperor Ming Ti dreamt a dream, nearly nineteen centuries ago, and sent
for Buddhist books and images to China, Buddhism has been the popular
religion, as Confucianism is the popular school of moral philosophy.
Tao-ism, the native religion of Lao Tsŭ, cannot hold its own with it.
Troublous days, indeed, it has gone through at various times, but it
has outlived them, and now, to quote Dr. Morrison, “Buddhism in China
is decried by the learned, laughed at by the profligate, yet followed
by all.” (See further Wells Williams, _ut suprà_.)
Why, then, this tolerance in certain cases, side by side with the
cruellest intolerance where Christianity is concerned? If it is not
religious conviction, it must be political antipathy. And there is the
rub. The bitter hatred of Christianity is not inborn in the people,
who have in many instances, indeed, shown a sort of limp willingness,
not altogether unconnected with better wages, to embrace its tenets;
but the hostility is bred, fostered, and fomented by the mandarins to
whom it means the end of their rule. Under a Christian dispensation
the whole tottering fabric of their power must inevitably fall to
the ground. The poor Jews were to them a negligible quantity. The
Mohammedan creed, the sacred book of which may not be translated,
presents for that reason but small terrors to the lettered class,
though we hear of an old prophecy to the effect that there will be a
great Mohammedan revolution, and that a Hui-Hui (Mohammedan) dynasty
shall rule over China. Buddhism, on the other hand, except in Tibet,
aims at no temporal power, and even there the Chinese Emperor is the
Suzerain. But Christianity is a very real terror, to be put down at
any cost, however bloody. And yet, strange to say, there was a time
when it seemed as if it were destined to conquer everything and to
become the state religion. Internal dissensions and ambitions amongst
its sects alone stopped its course.
The history of the early missions to China is full of interest; it is
not possible, however, to do more than glance at it here. Putting on
one side the dim legend that St. Thomas, the doubting apostle, was
the first to preach the Gospel to the Chinese, there is no doubt that
missionaries did visit them in very remote ages. It was two Nestorian
monks who carried the first Eastern silkworms’ eggs to Justinian in
the sixth century (see my _Bamboo Garden_, pp. 31–33). It is strange
at the present time to read how at the end of the thirteenth century
John of Monte Corvino was sent by Pope Nicholas the Fourth to the
court of Kublai Khan at Kambaluk (the ancient name of Peking); how he
was kindly entreated there, building a church “which had a steeple
and belfry, with three bells that were rung every hour to summon the
new converts to prayer”; how he baptized nearly six thousand persons
during that time, “and bought one hundred and fifty children, whom he
instructed in Greek and Latin, composing for them several devotional
books.” Clement the Fifth made him an archbishop, and sent him seven
suffragan bishops. He died full of years in 1328, “having converted
more than thirty thousand infidels.” All Kambaluk is said to have
mourned for him, Christians and heathen rending their garments at
his funeral, and his tomb became the resort of pious pilgrims. This
account, which will be found given at length in the third volume of the
_Chinese Repository_, is probably not a little exaggerated; but even
discounting it largely, it is very striking as an evidence of devotion
on the one side and toleration on the other. “It is now twelve years,”
he wrote, “since I have heard any news of the west. I am become old
and gray-headed, but it is rather through labours and tribulations
than through age, for I am only fifty-eight years old. I have learned
the Tartar language and literature, into which I have translated the
whole New Testament and the Psalms of David, and have caused them to
be transcribed with the utmost care. I write and read and preach openly
and freely the testimony of the law of God.” Until the year 1368, when
the Yuan or Tartar dynasty was driven out by the Chinese, and the Ming
Emperors ruled first at Nanking and afterwards at Peking, Dr. Williams
says “there is no reasonable doubt that the greater part of Central
Asia and Northern China was the scene of many flourishing Christian
communities.” From that time forth, during upwards of two hundred
years, they dwindled away so that nothing more was heard of them.
It was at the end of the sixteenth century that the Jesuits first began
to exercise an influence which was very nearly overwhelming all rivalry
in China. Saint François Xavier, the gospeller of India and Japan, had
marked China as the special field of his future labours, but he died of
fever at the island of Shang Chuen, near Macao, being only forty-six
years old at the time of his death—a wonderful man, truly! But his work
was destined to fall into hands no less competent for the task than
his own.
Matteo Ricci, the famous Jesuit father, was born at Macerata, in the
Papal States, in 1552. At the age of nineteen he was sent to Rome to
study law, which career he quickly abandoned, to his father’s great
displeasure, to enter the Society of Jesus. Here he came under the
orders of Father Valignani, the Inspector-General of Eastern Missions,
with whom, before he had even finished his noviciate, he went to
India, continuing his studies at Goa, where he became professor of
philosophy. In 1580 he followed Father Ruggiero to Macao, where the
two priests gave themselves up to the study of the Chinese language.
They availed themselves of the trading privileges of the Portuguese
to visit Canton, and some two years later, not without encountering
some difficulties and disappointments, they obtained the permission
of the Viceroy of Kwang Tung to build a house at Shao Ching Fu, and
a church. Ricci soon saw that a reputation for learning was then,
as now, the only passport to high consideration among the lettered
classes. He published a map of China and a catechism, in which he set
forth the moral teaching of Christianity, excluding carefully all that
pertains to the doctrines of revealed religion. He had his reward,
for many learned men came to consult him, and his fame spread far
and wide. For some years the Jesuit fathers adopted the garments of
Buddhist priests, but finding that these were treated with anything
but respect, they, upon the advice of Father Valignani, dropped the
yellow robes and assumed the garb of the men of letters, whom above all
it was their wise endeavour to conciliate. Ricci paid three visits to
Nanking, but on the second occasion he was expelled, and forced to go
to Nanchang, where he established a school and published two treatises,
the _Art of Memory_ and a _Dialogue on Friendship_. This last work was
a marvellous success, for it became famous not only “for the loftiness
of its thoughts, but even for the purity of its style,” a feat perhaps
unique in a country where literary style is so much thought of, and
so difficult to attain, even by native scholars. In the year 1600 he
achieved his ambition of going to Peking charged with presents for the
Emperor Wan Li from the Portuguese at Macao. But the mission was not
accomplished without difficulty. A eunuch of the court had offered
himself as his escort, and with him Ricci set out in a native junk. But
the presents of which he was the bearer had aroused the cupidity of the
eunuch, who contrived to imprison Ricci and his companion Pantoja at
Tientsing for six months. Happily the affair came to the ears of the
Emperor, who ordered him to be released and brought to Peking, where
he was kindly received by Wan Li, who assigned him a house and salary.
Ricci soon made many friends and converts, of whom one named Sü helped
him in the translation of Euclid. His secret of success was being all
things to all men, and he contrived so to edit Christianity as to make
it fit in with existing manners and customs, and to give offence to
none. Among other things he allowed the rites of ancestral worship to
be continued, affecting to consider them as being of a civil and not
of a religious character. In short, he followed the Buddhist system
of incorporating, not condemning, those articles of native faith to
have fought against which would have been fatal to his schemes. Father
Ricci died in 1610, being fifty-eight years of age. If, on account of
the laxity of his theological concessions, he cannot be called a great
Christian missionary, he was at any rate a great conciliator, and it
was no fault of his that the seed which he successfully sowed did not
bring forth good fruit. He was possessed of rare talents, his learning
was conspicuous in many branches, and his winning charm of manner
commended him to the favour of high and low. He was perhaps the only
European who ever acquired the Chinese literary style to such a degree
as to call forth the admiration of native critics. To such an extent
was this recognised, that about 150 years after his death his treatise
on _The True Doctrine of God_, revised by a minister of state named
Sin, was included in the collection of the best Chinese works made by
the order of the Emperor Chien Lung.
To follow a man so various and so plastic as Ricci was no easy task;
but the Society of Jesus has never been wanting in men possessed at any
rate of the latter quality, and Father Longobardi proved an efficient
successor, though he did not make history. But there were troubles in
store for the missionaries. Their successes aroused the jealousies of
courtiers and officials, whose intrigues led to the publication of
an edict banishing the Christian teachers. This decree, however, was
never carried into effect. They had made many converts who protected
them, and foremost among these were Sü (Ricci’s special friend) and
his daughter, christened under the name of Candida. These two Chinese
converts were so famous for their virtues and so beloved for their
charity, that they are actually worshipped to this day by the people
at Shanghai, and the Roman Catholic Mission at Sü Chia Wei, near that
city, occupies the property once held by the Christian Sü. Candida was
indeed a saintly woman. She built no fewer than thirty-nine churches;
she published upwards of one hundred books; she established a foundling
hospital for babies whom, then as now, their unnatural parents were
in the habit of abandoning; and she employed the blind improvisatori
of the streets to substitute Gospel stories for their obscenities and
inanities. The Emperor himself conferred upon her the title of “The
Virtuous Woman,” and sent her a robe and headgear embroidered with
pearls, which she stripped off to further her religious works with
their price.
The beginning of the seventeenth century was a time of internal trouble
and revolution in China. The old Chinese dynasty of the Mings was about
to be replaced by the present Tartar dynasty, the Chi̔ng. That the
Jesuits had become a real power in the land is proved by the fact that
the claimant to the Ming throne was supported by the missionaries, his
troops being led by two native Christian generals, Kiu who was called
Thomas, and Chin who was baptized Luke. His mother, wife, and son were
christened as Helena, Maria, and Constantine, and Helena went so far as
to write to Pope Alexander VII. “expressing her attachment to the cause
of Christianity, and wishing to put the country, through him, under the
protection of God”! (Wells Williams).
The Jesuits held a high position in the early days of the Tartar rule.
This was due to the pre-eminent abilities of their leader, Johann Adam
Schall, a man of good family, native of Cologne. This great priest
was born in A.D. 1591, and entered the Society of Jesus at Rome in
1611. There he became a student of theology and mathematics, and left
for China in 1622. His great learning won for him such renown that
he was sent for by the Emperor in 1631, installed at Peking as court
astronomer, and charged with the revision of the Chinese calendar.
Needless to say this position was not won without exciting great
jealousy among the native men of science, who attacked him fiercely,
both openly and in secret. But his correct calculation of an eclipse,
as to which they were hopelessly wrong, defeated all their intrigues,
and he was more than ever in favour with the Emperor Chung Ch’êng
(the last of the Mings), who, in dread of the Tartars, caused him,
much against his will, to start a cannon foundry, rewarding him with
a pompous autograph inscription in praise of his science and virtue.
When at last the Tartars became masters of Peking, Schall, though in
continual danger himself, was able to give effectual protection to the
Christian converts. It cannot fail to strike us with amazement that,
like the Vicar of Bray, when matters settled down, Schall should have
enjoyed even more favour under the Tartar Emperor Shun Chih than he had
done under his Ming predecessor; and when, at that sovereign’s death in
1662, he actually was holding the post of tutor to the young Emperor
Káng Hsi, who became one of the most famous monarchs that ever ruled
in China, it seemed as if nothing could arrest the progress of Jesuit
influence.
But the supreme power was for a time in the hands of four regents
who were opposed to the Christians, and a memorial was presented
to court denouncing the new sect as dangerous to the state. The
Dominicans and Franciscans, of whom I shall speak presently, had,
during a quarter of a century and more, been working in opposition
to the Jesuits, and the internal dissensions of the sects gave their
enemies an opportunity of which they were not slow to avail themselves.
The memorial, a remarkable document, calls attention to the strife
between the orders as to the worship of Ti̔en (Heaven) and Shang Ti
(God), which dissensions as to the principle of doctrine show the
true aspirations of the rival sects to be political; and in this
connection the memorialists call attention to the schisms and civil war
to which Christianity gave rise in Japan, evils which could not fail
to occur sooner or later in China if the missionaries were allowed to
remain there. The regents, nothing loth, yielded to the wishes of the
memorialists, and in 1665 the Christian teachers were proscribed as
seducers of the people, leading them into a false path. Father Schall
died miserably at the age of seventy-eight, after having been for
thirty-seven years the trusted and favoured servant of five emperors.
His converts were degraded, and his colleagues imprisoned or banished.
Among those who were held in chains, beaten, and subjected to every
indignity, was Father Verbiest, a native of Flanders, partly educated
at Seville, the third of the great triad of priests who, by their
talents, their learning, and their personal charm, so nearly succeeded
in turning the current of Chinese history. For six long years who
shall say what he suffered? Six years of the horrors of a Chinese
prison! At last, however, the minority of the Emperor Ka̔ng Hsi came
to an end. He had not forgotten the good teaching of Father Schall,
and one of his earliest acts, on assuming the power in 1671, was to
release the priests, with Father Verbiest at their head. Ka̔ng Hsi was
not a Christian; but though he forbade his subjects to follow the new
teaching, he was sufficiently liberal to put an end to persecution, and
to recognise the value of Western learning. There is a myth to the
effect that an earthquake was the immediate cause of the release, but
the truth is that the Emperor wanted Verbiest’s astronomical science
to set straight the crooked inventions of the native professors. The
father was appointed court astronomer and chief mathematician. He was
also ordered, as Schall had been, to cast cannon, which, with much
pomp and ceremony, robed as for mass, he blessed, in the presence of
the court, sprinkling them with holy water, and giving to each the
name of a female saint which he had himself drawn on the breech. This
brought him a letter from Pope Innocent XI., praising him for having
so wisely brought the profane sciences into play for the salvation of
Chinese souls. To Father Verbiest are due the wonderful mathematical
instruments of bronze, beautiful as works of art, which are still one
of the sights of Peking. They are in the Observatory at the southern
corner of the Tartar city, where they remain as the last witnesses of
the Jesuit greatness. Verbiest died in 1688, and the Emperor himself
composed the funeral oration, which was read with great pomp before
his coffin. No three men ever succeeded in obtaining the favour of
the Chinese court so signally as the three Jesuit fathers, Ricci,
Schall, and Verbiest. When Father Verbiest died there was no man with
a sufficiently commanding intellect to fill his place and continue his
work.
It is conceivable that if they had not been thwarted by the Dominicans
and the Franciscans, the Jesuits might have succeeded in their
ambition even to the extent of Christianising China. But those two
sects effectually put a stop to the process of conversion. The great
bone of contention was the so-called worship of ancestors and of
Confucius. Another point was the translation of the name of God by
Ti̔en, literally Heaven, and Shang Ti, for which there is indeed no
other rendering. This last controversy, which has in it much that is
childish, and mere splitting of hairs, is not worth discussing. The
great point was to render the Sacred Name by some term that should
be intelligible to the Chinese mind. Both seemed to fulfil that
condition. As regards the former question, we have seen how Father
Ricci dealt with it. He saw the wisdom of not repelling the Chinese
by at once condemning a custom to which they were so wedded that any
attempt to do away with it would evidently alienate them altogether,
so he, a true Jesuit, effected a clever compromise, treating the rites
in honour of ancestors and of Confucius as civil and not as religious
ceremonies. It always has seemed to me that he acted wisely, for in no
other way could he have hoped to obtain any hearing. By degrees the
Christianised Chinese might have been weaned from their old practices,
and Christianity in all its purity have been made a dominant religion.
This, however, is mere speculation.
When the Dominicans and Franciscans became aware of the successes of
the Jesuits, they too resolved to have their share in the work, and
they promptly sent out missions to China on their own account. But
their school lacked the liberality and plastic nature of the Jesuits.
They resolutely refused any compromise. They accused the Jesuits
of countenancing idolatry and heathen practices, and one Morales, a
Spanish Dominican, sent home a report to the Propaganda to that effect.
This produced a decree from Pope Innocent the Tenth, in which the
conduct of the Jesuits was censured and their doctrine condemned in
1645. It took the Jesuits eleven years to procure from Pope Alexander
VII. another Bull, not indeed contradicting that of Pope Innocent, but
one which might be so read as to give them a free hand. But the battle
was not over, for in 1693 Bishop Maigrot, Vicar Apostolic in China,
declared in the face of the Inquisition and the Pope that Ti̔en meant
the material heaven, and not God, and that the worship of ancestors was
idolatrous. In this difficulty it is not a little strange to find that
the Jesuits appealed to the Emperor Ka̔ng Hsi to show them the way out.
They addressed him in a memorial which is quoted at length by Wells
Williams from the _Life of St. Martin_, and which is so curious that I
am tempted to transcribe it, the more so as it shows so clearly all
the points of the great controversy:—
“We, your faithful subjects, although originally from distant
countries, respectfully supplicate your Majesty to give us clear
instructions on the following points. The scholars of Europe have
understood that the Chinese practise certain ceremonies in honour
of Confucius; that they offer sacrifices to Heaven, and that they
observe peculiar rites towards their ancestors; but persuaded that
these ceremonies, sacrifices, and rites are founded in reason, though
ignorant of their true intention, earnestly desire us to inform them.
We have always supposed that Confucius was honoured in China as a
legislator, and that it was in this character alone, and with this view
solely, that the ceremonies established in his honour were practised.
We believe that the rites in honour of ancestors are only observed in
order to exhibit the love felt for them, and to hallow the remembrance
of the good received from them during their life. We believe that
the sacrifices offered to Heaven are not tendered to the visible
heavens which are seen above us, but to the Supreme Master, Author,
and Preserver of heaven and earth, and of all they contain. Such are
the interpretation and the sense which we have always given to these
Chinese ceremonies; but as strangers cannot be considered competent
to pronounce on these important points with the same certainty as the
Chinese themselves, we presume to request your Majesty not to refuse to
give us the explanations which we desire concerning them. We wait for
them with respect and submission.”
Ka̔ng Hsi cut the Gordian knot by declaring that “Ti̔en means the true
God, and that the customs of China are political.” In spite of this
Imperial opinion Pope Clement XI. upheld Bishop Maigrot, declared that
Ti̔en Chu, Lord of Heaven, must be the name for God, Ti̔en and Shang Ti
being altogether inadmissible.
Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, was sent to Peking, where at an audience
of Ka̔ng Hsi the Emperor demanded to be informed of the decision of
the Pope. When Ka̔ng Hsi learnt that a Pope of Rome had ventured to
give an opinion contrary to his own in a matter which was altogether
Chinese, and in part purely linguistic, he was furious, and issued
a decree declaring that the Jesuits should be protected, but the
followers of Bishop Maigrot should be persecuted. The Patriarch Tournon
was banished to Macao, where further difficulties arose between him
and the bishop of that diocese, who went so far as to imprison the
legate in a private house, where he died. A second legate was sent to
Peking in 1715 in the person of one Mezzabarba. Ka̔ng Hsi received
him civilly, but would not talk about rites, and after six years
fruitlessly spent he returned to Europe.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century it is claimed that there
were in the provinces of the two Chiangs alone one hundred churches
and a hundred thousand Christians. Those were the palmy days of
missionary enterprise, but they did not last long. The quarrels of the
missionaries amongst themselves, their political ambitions, which it
was represented constituted a danger to the state, disgusted Ka̔ng Hsi.
The Jesuits, indeed, he continued to tolerate, forbidding any priests
but those who would follow the rules of Ricci to remain in China. In
1723 Ka̔ng Hsi died, and was succeeded by his son Yung Chêng, who in
the following year issued an edict strictly forbidding the propagation
of the Christian religion. A few missionaries were retained at Peking
on account of their scientific acquirements, but the majority were
banished to the south. The native Christians in the north were left
as a flock without shepherds; they were subjected to extortion and
blackmailing of the worst description, and although many remained
faithful and even contrived to harbour their teachers secretly, this
edict of Yung Chêng gave the death-blow to an energy which had made
itself powerfully felt for a century and a quarter.
I have been led further afield than I intended in this sketch of the
Jesuit enterprise (based mainly upon Dr. Wells Williams’s book and on
the _Biographie Universelle_), but it is a fascinating subject, and
few people outside of those personally interested in China know how
nearly at one time the Christian religion seemed to be reaching a great
triumph. The story of Ricci, Schall, and Verbiest teaches one great
truth. If missionaries are to be successful it must be by the power of
masterly talent and knowledge. They can only work on any scale through
the lettered class, and in order to dominate them must be able to give
proof of superior attainments as the old Jesuits did. With courage,
devotion, self-sacrifice, our missionaries are largely endowed. They
have given proofs of these, even to the laying down of their lives; but
these qualities are as nothing in the eyes of the cultivated Confucian.
One such convert as Schall’s friend Sü and his daughter Candida would
do more towards Christianising China than thousands of poor peasants.
To make such a convert needs qualifications which are rare indeed.
Above all things an accurate and scholarly knowledge of the language
is necessary. There have been not a few excellent scholars among our
missionaries. But there are many more whose ignorance in that respect
has been fatal, covering themselves and the religion which they
preach with ridicule. Fancy a Chinese Buddhist mounting on the roof
of a hansom cab at Charing Cross and preaching Buddhism to the mob in
pidgin English! That would give some measure of the effect produced
on a Chinese crowd by a missionary whom I have seen perched upon a
cart outside the great gate of the Tartar City at Peking, haranguing
a yellow crowd of gapers in bastard Chinese, delivered with a strong
Aberdonian accent. The Jesuits knew better than that.
Not an uncommon argument in support of the truths of Christianity is to
call attention to the purity of the lives of the missionaries. I find
a note of a conversation on this subject in my Journals. “Venerable
sir,” answered the learned and respectable Kung, “the goodness of a
dumpling does not depend upon the pucker at the top of it. You can no
more judge a man’s merits by his outward seeming than you can mete out
the sea in a bushel measure. It is true that to all appearance your
missionaries lead very pure lives; but to all appearance so do our
people. Look at Mr. Li and Mr. Pao, who live in my street. Nothing can
be more respectable than their outward demeanour, yet we know perfectly
well that Mr. Li sleeps in flowers and closes his eyes in willows” (a
metaphorical expression for leading a dissolute life), “while as for
Mr. Pao, the less said about him the better. What guarantee have I that
these men, whose excellence you extol, are not like my neighbours Li
and Pao? Since I must doubt even that which passes before my eyes, how
can I believe that which comes to me only by hearsay? The proverb says,
‘If your front teeth are knocked out, swallow them.’ Nobody publishes
his own misfortune or his own disgrace.”
The Chinaman knew his own country well. Virtue without the supremest
power of science and education is not enough to carry conviction to the
man of letters.
At any rate, the history of the great Jesuit movement proves my
point that the spirit of religious intolerance is not a fault which
can fairly be laid to the charge of “The Hundred Names,” as the οἱ
πολλοί of China call themselves, and that where it has shown itself
it has been engendered and fostered by the fears of the officials. It
is the same with trade. The rulers and not the ruled are the authors
of all difficulties. The Chinaman is a born trader. Buying, selling,
and barter are the very joy of his life, and so long as he can get the
better of a bargain what cares he with whom he deals? Foreigner or
fellow-countryman, it is all one to him.
The third source to which hatred of foreigners is ascribed is opium.
That has been dealt with so recently by a Royal Commission that there
is nothing new to be said upon the subject. All I can say, speaking
from personal observation, is that I have known some hundreds of
Chinese of all classes who were opium smokers. None of them abused
the drug. They regarded it as a most valuable prophylactic against
fever and ague, and would have been very loth to do without it. Some
were literary men and officials doing hard brainwork; others, like a
travelling pedlar whom I met on one of my Mongolian excursions, were
doing equally hard bodily work. The abuse of opium has, so far as I
can judge, been grossly exaggerated. It cannot be denied that there
are to be seen in the opium dens of great cities a few poor wretches
who have reduced themselves to a state of abject degradation by their
intemperance; but their percentage must be small indeed compared
to that of the victims of alcohol who are the disgrace of our own
towns, and at any rate, as has been cunningly observed, they do not
go home and beat their wives. To deprive the Chinaman of the finest
qualities of Indian opium would be to condemn him to the use of the
miserable substitute which he grows in his own fields. It would be
like forbidding the importation of champagne and Château Lafitte into
England, and driving our epicures and invalids to the necessity of
falling back upon cheap and nasty stimulants. If the opium trade were
to be abolished to-morrow it is my firm conviction that it would
spring up again immediately, but under altered conditions and in
native hands. If it be thought that I am wrong in what I say as to
the use of opium, read what Dr. Morrison says in his delightful book,
_An Australian in China_. There you have the independent testimony of
a competent physician who has travelled over the whole of China from
east to west, and who has dealt exhaustively with the question. No one
has had better opportunities of judging. No opinion is worthy of more
respect.
My conclusion then is that neither the religion of the missionaries,
nor the trade of the merchants, nor even the much-abused drug, can
honestly be counted as the cause of the anti-foreign movement in
China, though one and all have been used as levers to envenom it.
Foreign intercourse in any shape is the bugbear of the mandarin, as
being the one standing danger threatening abolition of himself and
his privileges, of which the two most dearly prized are robbery and
cruelty.
Let us be just, however, even to the mandarin. It often happens that
the missionaries are surrounded by natives of bad character, who hang
on to them for protection. Especially is this the case with certain
Roman Catholics, who have always endeavoured to “extra-territorialise”
their converts, that is, to exact for them the same privileges of
immunity from Chinese jurisdiction as are granted to the subjects of
their own country. It is easy to see how this may give just cause of
offence to the officials, and how readily a cunning malefactor will
run to his priest to shelter his back from the bamboo rod, swearing
that the charge brought against him is a mere pretext, his profession
of the Christian faith, in which he is protected by treaty, being the
real offence. Full of righteous indignation and confidence in the truth
of his convert, who, being a Christian, must necessarily be believed
before his heathen accuser, the priest rushes off to the magistrate’s
office to plead the cause of his protégé. The magistrate finds the
man guilty and punishes him; the priest is stout in his defence; a
diplomatic correspondence ensues, and on both sides the vials of wrath
are poured out. How can a priest who interferes, and the mandarin who
is interfered with, love one another? Some instances there have been
where the priests have gone a step farther, and have actually urged
their disciples to own no allegiance to their native authorities, but
to obey only themselves as representatives of the Sovereign Pontiff of
Rome.
The missionaries, on the other hand, of the China Inland Mission put
forth no such pretensions, and excite no such animosities.
The jealousies of the different sects of Christianity among themselves
throw as great difficulties in the way of conversion to-day as they did
in Ka̔ng Hsi’s time. A highly-educated Chinese gentleman, who had been
making inquiries into the doctrines of Christianity, once appealed to
me on the subject. “How is it,” he asked, “that if I go to one teacher
and talk to him of what I have learnt from another he answers me, ‘No,
that is not right; that is the doctrine preached by So-and-So; if you
follow him you will go to hell’?” But that one missionary should speak
of the Church of another Christian as a “Scarlet Woman” appeared to him
to be altogether lacking in decorum. It must be a puzzle—yet not worse
than the various schools of Buddhism.
It used to be a cardinal article of faith among Europeans in China
during the fifties, that if once we could throw Peking open to foreign
diplomacy all would be well. That was to be the sovereign cure for
all the ills of which we had to complain. We should be in touch with
the Emperor and his court, and we could not fail to convert the most
recalcitrant of mandarins to the adoption of our Western civilisation:
perhaps even China might become a Christian country. We have now been
at Peking for forty years, during which time successive ministers of
all countries have preached, flattered, scolded, and threatened over
the sweetmeats and tea of the Tsung-Li Yamên, and what is the result
to-day?
What really was wanted was not to get into Peking ourselves, but to
get the Emperor with his court and Government out of it. This is no
new theory of mine. So confident have I always been that Peking is the
worst capital on all grounds for China, that thirty years ago, writing
in _Macmillan’s Magazine_ of the Tientsing massacre in 1870, I said,
“This time we hope that the past will be a lesson for the future, and
that such conditions will be imposed as will secure our countrymen,
be they laymen or missionaries, from outrage, and will prevent China
from remaining the one bar to the progress and civilisation of the
world. It is not within the province of a magazine article to suggest
what those conditions should be; but we cannot help hinting that if
the treaty powers were to treat China as Peter the Great did Russia,
and transplant the capital and court from Peking back to Nanking,
whence it was removed by the Emperor Tai Tsung, who reigned under
the style of Yung Lo at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
headquarters of obstructiveness and mandarinism would be destroyed,
the power of the viceroys would be brought under the control of the
central Government, and a new era might be inaugurated which should
be as conducive to the welfare and happiness of the Chinese people
as to the safety and profits of the European trader. Above all, the
representatives of European powers, instead of being boxed up in Peking
like rats in a trap, would in the not improbable event of their having
from time to time certain demands and requisitions to make of the
Chinese Government, be backed up by the presence of their men of war
on the spot. It is wonderful how distance weakens a threat, and how
wholesomely the sight of power acts upon the Oriental mind.”
Subsequent events have not led me to alter an opinion formed so many
years ago. So long as Peking remains the capital so long will it be
impossible to bring home to the Government certain facts which are
well known to many of the provincial governors, but which only in rare
instances they dare to report to headquarters. It is not conceivable
that, if the Empress Tsŭ Hsi had known what a hornet’s nest she was
stirring, she would have acted as she must have done in encouraging
Prince Tuan and the Boxers. But it is a far cry to Peking.
It cannot be said that the policy of foreign governments in China
has been calculated to raise the powers in the estimate of those
very Chinese whom it ought to be our chief duty to impress. Take the
outrages upon missionaries and the constant murders of which we have
had to complain—until the German Emperor seized Kwei Chao we have
always been content to accept a money indemnity as reparation; so
that the local mandarins must have looked upon the death of a few
missionaries—the most sweet-smelling offering that could be made to
Tsŭ Hsi and her eunuchs—as a mere question of cost, and that moreover
not to be defrayed by themselves, but squeezed out of the people. If
some poor wretch or wretches were decapitated, the instigator, the real
culprit, could enjoy the luxury of sitting in judgment over his own
crime, and sentencing to death some victim caught at random out of the
prisons, or perhaps even—for Chinese methods are ingenious—paying off
an old score.
As regards intercourse with the ruling classes, or obtaining
any influence with the court, our presence at Peking has been
useless—perhaps worse than useless, actually mischievous. For what can
a Chinese gentleman think when he sees the filthiest beggar pass freely
without let or hindrance in parts of the city where the presence of the
minister of the proudest nation in Europe would be deemed a pollution?
We have been tolerated in Peking as a necessary evil—accepted we have
never been. The receptions at court have been so rare, and made such
a great favour of, that they have been a mere farce, and in some
cases, such as the visit of the ladies of the _Corps diplomatique_
to the Empress Tsŭ Hsi, a degradation. Compare with the position of
the British Minister at Peking—stoned and insulted in the streets,
and unable to obtain protection or redress—the reception of Li Hung
Chang by all Europe three years ago. How that astute old intriguer
must have laughed in his sleeve when he found himself petted, coaxed,
and flattered, treated like a royal personage! and what must have been
the inference drawn by every ignorant Chinese, from Tsŭ Hsi and the
poor down-trampled Emperor Kwang Hsu down to the meanest beggar on the
bridge? Crystal is not so clear as the fact that the Son of Heaven is
the ruler of the world, and all other monarchs mere vassals, doing
homage to the steps of the Jasper Throne.
Peking has exercised upon foreign representatives a sort of unholy
glamour. They have been bewitched. Some have fallen down and worshipped
before its scholastic and historical traditions; others have treated
the great city and its rulers as a sort of gigantic “curio”; optimism
has been the bane of all. If any serious attempt has been made to bring
the mandarins into the pale of statesmanship it has been singularly
unsuccessful. They remain as retrograde and as hopelessly obstructive
as ever. They have occasionally been clever enough, like Li, to throw
dust in the eyes of foreigners, and that is all. Unless a radical
change is effected European diplomacy will continue to be abortive; to
effect that change it is absolutely necessary that the court should be
removed from the headquarters of obstruction, and brought into actual
contact with our civilisation and with the material evidence of Western
power. The old-world prejudices of Moscow were a hindrance to Peter the
Great; the Kugés buried for centuries at Kiyôto were a drag upon the
reformers of Japan; the capitals were moved. These are the two great
precedents for such a policy.