The new treaties found China unprovided with interpreters capable

of translating documents in foreign languages. Foreign nations

agreed to accompany their despatches with a Chinese version, until

a competent staff of interpreters should be provided. With a view to

meeting this initial want, a school was opened in 1862, in connection

with the Foreign Office, and placed under the direction of the

Inspector-General of Maritime Customs, by whom I was recommended

for the presidency. Professors of English, French, and Russian

were engaged; and later on German took a place alongside of the

three leading languages of the Western world.

At first no science was taught or expected, but gradually we succeeded

in obtaining the consent of the Chinese ministers to enlarge our

faculty so as to include chairs of astronomy, mathematics, chemistry,

and physics. International law was taught by the

[Page 210]

president; and by him also the Chinese were supplied with their

first text-books on the law of nations. What use had they for books

on that subject, so long as they held no intercourse on equal terms

with foreign countries? The students trained in that school of

diplomacy had to shiver in the cold for many a year before the

Government recognised their merits and rewarded them with official

appointments. The minister recently returned from London, the ministers

now in Germany and Japan, and a minister formerly in France, not to

speak of secretaries of legation and consuls, were all graduates

of our earlier classes.

In 1898 the young Emperor, taught by defeat at the hands of the

Japanese, resolved on a thorough reform in the system of national

education. It would never do to confine the knowledge of Western

science to a handful of interpreters and attachés. The highest

scholars of the Empire must be allowed access to the fountain of

national strength. A university was created with a capital of five

million taels, and the writer was made president by an imperial

decree which conferred on him the highest but one of the nine grades

of the mandarinate.

Two or three hundred students were enrolled, among whom were bachelors,

masters, and doctors of the civil service examinations. It was

launched with a favouring breeze; but the wind changed with the

_coup d'état_ of the Empress Dowager, and two years later the

university went down in the Boxer cyclone. A professor, a tutor,

and a student lost their lives. How the cause of educational reform

rose stronger after the storm, I relate in a special

[Page 211]

chapter. It is a far cry from a university for the _élite_

to that elaborate system of national education which is destined

to plant its schools in every town and hamlet in the Empire. The

new education was in fact still regarded with suspicion by the

honour men of the old system. They looked on it, as they did on

the railway, as a source of danger, a perilous experiment.

As yet the intercourse was one-sided: envoys came; but none were

sent. Embassies were no novelty; but they had always moved on an

inclined plane, either coming up laden with tribute, or going down

bearing commands. Where there was no tribute and no command, why

send them? Why send to the very people who had robbed China of her

supremacy! It was a bitter pill, and she long refused to swallow

it. Hart gilded the dose and she took it. Obtaining leave to go

home to get married, he proposed that he should be accompanied by

his teacher, Pinchun, a learned Manchu, as unofficial envoy--with

the agreeable duty to see and report. It was a travelling commission,

not like that of 1905-06, to seek light, but to ascertain whether

the representative of a power so humbled and insulted would be

treated with common decency.

The old pundit was a poet. All Chinese pundits are poets; but Pinchun

had real gifts, and the flow of champagne kindled his inspiration.

Everywhere wined and dined, though accredited to no court, he was

in raptures at the magnificence of the nations of the West. He

lauded their wealth, culture, and scenery in faultless verse; and

if he indulged in satire,

[Page 212]

it was not for the public eye. He was attended by several of our

students, to whom the travelling commission was an education. They

were destined, after long waiting as I have said, to revisit the

Western world, clothed with higher powers.

The impression made on both sides was favourable, and the way was

prepared for a genuine embassy. The United States minister, Anson

Burlingame, a man of keen penetration and broad sympathies, had made

himself exceedingly acceptable to the Foreign Office at Peking. When

he was taking leave to return home, in 1867, the Chinese ministers

begged his good offices with the United States Government and with

other governments as occasion might offer--"In short, you will

be our ambassador," they said, with hearty good-will.

Burlingame, who grasped the possibilities of the situation, called at

the Customs on his way to the Legation. Hart seized the psychological

moment, and, hastening to the _Yamên_, induced the ministers

to turn a pleasantry into a reality. The Dowagers (for there were

two) assented to the proposal of Prince Kung, to invest Burlingame

with a roving commission to all the Treaty powers, and to associate

with him a Manchu and a Chinese with the rank of minister. An

"oecumenical embassy" was the result. Some of our students were

again attached to the suite; reciprocal intercourse had begun; and

Burlingame has the glory of initiating it".

In the work of reform three viceroys stand pre-eminent, viz., Li

Hung Chang, Yuen Shi Kai and Chang Chitung. Li, besides organising

an army and

[Page 213]

a navy (both demolished by the Japanese in 1895), founded a university

at Tienstin, and placed Dr. Tenney at the head of it. Yuen, coming

to the same viceroyalty with the lesson of the Boxer War before

his eyes, has made the army and education objects of special care.

In the latter field he had had the able assistance of Dr. Tenney,

and succeeded in making the schools of the province of Chihli an

example for the Empire.

Viceroy Chang has the distinction of being the first man (with

the exception of Kang Yuwei) to start the emperor on the path of

reform. Holding that, to be rich, China must have the industrial

arts of the West, and to be strong she must have the sciences of

the West, he has taken the lead in advocating and introducing both.

Having been called, after the suspension of the Imperial University,

to assist this enlightened satrap in his great enterprise, I cannot

better illustrate the progress of reform than by devoting a separate

chapter to him and to my observations during three years in Central

China.

Tests of scholarship and qualifications for office have undergone

a complete change. The regulation essay, for centuries supreme in

the examinations for the civil service, is abolished; and more

solid acquirements have taken its place. It takes time to adjust such

an ancient system to new conditions. That this will be accomplished

is sufficiently indicated by the fact that in May, 1906, degrees

answering to A. M. and Ph. D. were conferred on quite a number of

students who had completed their studies at universities in foreign

countries. As a result there is certain

[Page 214]

to be a rush of students to Europe and America, the fountain-heads

of science. Forty young men selected by Viceroy Yuen from the advanced

classes of his schools were in 1906 despatched under the superintendence

of Dr. Tenney to pursue professional studies in the United States.

That promising mission was partly due to the relaxation of the

rigour of the exclusion laws.

The Chinese assessor of the Mixed Court in Shanghai was dismissed

the same year because he had condemned criminals to be beaten with

rods--a favourite punishment, in which there is a way to alleviate

the blows. Slicing, branding, and other horrible punishments with

torture to extort confessions have been forbidden by imperial decree.

Conscious of the contempt excited by such barbarities, and desirous

of removing an obstacle to admission to the comity of nations, the

Government has undertaken to revise its penal code. Wu-ting-fang,

so well known as minister at Washington, has borne a chief part in

this honourable task. The code is not yet published; but magistrates

are required to act on its general principles. When completed it will

no doubt provide for a jury, a thing hitherto unknown in China.

The commissioners on legal reform have already sent up a memorial,

explaining the functions of a jury; and, to render its adoption

palatable, they declare that it is an ancient institution, having

been in use in China three thousand years ago. They leave the Throne

to infer that Westerners borrowed it from China.

The fact is that each magistrate is a petty tyrant, embodying in

his person the functions of local governor,

[Page 215]

judge, and jury, though there are limits to his discretion and

room for appeal or complaint. It is to be hoped that lawyers and

legal education will find a place in the administration of justice.

Formerly clinging to a foreign flagstaff, the editor of a Chinese

journal cautiously hinted the need for some kinds of reform. Within

this _lustrum mirabile_ the daily press has taken the Empire

by storm. Some twenty or more journals have sprung up under the

shadow of the throne, and they are not gagged. They go to the length

of their tether in discussing affairs of state--notwithstanding

cautionary hints. Refraining from open attack, they indulge in

covert criticism of the Government and its agents.

Social reforms open to ambitious editors a wide field and make amends

for exclusion from the political arena. One of the most influential

recently deplored the want of vitality in the old religions of

the country, and, regarding their reformation as hopeless, openly

advocated the adoption of Christianity. To be independent of the

foreigner it must, he said, be made a state church, with one of

the princes for a figurehead, if not for pilot.

Another deals with the subject of marriage. Many improvements,

he says, are to be made in the legal status of woman. The total

abolition of polygamy might be premature; but that is to be kept

in view. In another issue he expresses a regret that the Western

usage of personal courtship cannot safely be introduced. Those who

are to be companions for life cannot as yet be allowed to see each

other, as disorders might result from excess of freedom. Such liberty

[Page 216]

in social relations is impracticable "except in a highly refined

and well-ordered state of society." The same or another writer

proposes, by way of enlarging woman's world, that she shall not

be confined to the house, but be allowed to circulate as freely

as Western women but she must hide her charms behind a veil.

Reporting an altercation between a policeman and the driver of

one of Prince Ching's carts, who insisted on driving on tracks

forbidden to common people, an editor suggests with mild sarcasm

that a notice be posted in such cases stating that only "noblemen's

carts are allowed to pass." Do not these specimens show a laudable

attempt to simulate a free press? Free it is by sufferance, though

not by law.

Reading-rooms are a new institution full of promise. They are not

libraries, but places for reading and expounding newspapers for the

benefit of those who are unable to read for themselves. Numerous

rooms may be seen at the street corners, where men are reciting

the contents of a paper to an eager crowd. They have the air of

wayside chapels; and this mode of enlightening the ignorant was

confessedly borrowed from the missionary. How urgent the need,

where among the men only one in twenty can read; and among women

not one in a hundred!

Reform in writing is a genuine novelty, Chinese writing being a

development of hieroglyphics, in which the sound is no index to

the sense, and in which each pictorial form must be separately made

familiar to the eye. Dr. Medhurst wittily calls it "an occulage,

not a language." Without the introduction of alphabetic

[Page 217]

writing, the art of reading can never become general. To meet this

want a new alphabet of fifty letters has been invented, and a society

organised to push the system, so that the common people, also women,

may soon be able to read the papers for themselves. The author of

the system is Wang Chao, mentioned above as having given occasion

for the _coup d'état_ by which the Dowager Empress was restored

to power in 1898.

I close this formidable list of reforms with a few words on a society

for the abolition of a usage which makes Chinese women the

laughing-stock of the world, namely, the binding of their feet.

With the minds of her daughters cramped by ignorance, and their

feet crippled by the tyranny of an absurd fashion, China suffers an

immense loss, social and economic. Happily there are now indications

that the proposed enfranchisement will meet with general favour.

Lately I heard mandarins of high rank advocate this cause in the

hearing of a large concourse at Shanghai. They have given a pledge

that there shall be no more foot-binding in their families; and the

Dowager Empress came to the support of the cause with a hortatory

edict. As in this matter she dared not prohibit, she was limited to

persuasion and example. Tartar women have their powers of locomotion

unimpaired. Viceroy Chang denounced the fashion as tending to sap the

vigour of China's mothers; and he is reported to have suggested a

tax on small feet--in inverse proportion to their size, of course.

The leader in this movement, which bids fair to become national,

is Mrs. Archibald Little.

[Page 218]

The streets are patrolled by a well-dressed and well-armed police

force, in strong contrast with the ragged, negligent watchmen of

yore. The Chinese, it seems, are in earnest about mending their

ways. Their streets, in Peking and other cities, are undergoing

thorough repair--so that broughams and rickshaws are beginning to

take the place of carts and palanquins. A foreign style of building

is winning favour; and the adoption of foreign dress is talked of.

When these changes come, what will be left of this queer antique?

[Page 219]

CHAPTER XXX

VICEROY CHANG-A LEADER OF REFORM

_His Origin--Course as a Student--In the Censorate--He Floors a

Magnate--The First to Wake Up--As a Leader of Reform--The Awakening

of the Giant_

If I were writing of Chang, the Chinese giant, who overtopped the

tallest of his fellow-men by head and shoulders, I should be sure

of readers. Physical phenomena attract attention more than mental

or moral grandeur. Is it not because greatness in these higher

realms requires patient thought for due appreciation?

Chang, the viceroy of Hukwang, a giant in intellect and a hero in

achievement, is not a commonplace character. If my readers will

follow me, while I trace his rise and progress, not only will they

discover that he stands head and shoulders above most officials

of his rank, but they will gain important side-lights on great

events in recent history.

During my forty years' residence in the capital I had become well

acquainted with Chang's brilliant career; but it is only within

the last three or four years that I have had an opportunity to

study him in personal intercourse, having been called to preside

over his university and to aid him in other educational enterprises.

[Page 220]

Whatever may be thought of the rank and file of China's mandarins,

her viceroys are nearly always men of exceptional ability. They

are never novices, but as a rule old in years and veterans in

experience. Promoted for executive talent or for signal services,

their office is too high to be in the market; nor is it probable

that money can do much to recommend a candidate. A governor of

Kwangsi was recently dismissed for incompetence, or for ill-success

against a body of rebels. Being a rich man, he made a free use

of that argument which commonly proves effective at Peking. But,

so far from being advanced to the viceroyalty, he was not even

reinstated in his original rank. The most he was able to obtain by

a lavish expenditure was the inspectorship of a college at Wuchang,

to put his foot on one of the lower rounds of the official ladder.

Chang was never rich enough to buy official honours, even in the

lower grades; and it is one of his chief glories that, after a

score of years in the exercise of viceregal power, he continues

to be relatively poor.

His name in full is Chang Chi-tung, meaning "Longbow of the Cavern,"

an allusion to a tradition that one of his ancestors was born in

a cave and famed for archery. This was far back in the age of the

troglodytes. Now, for many generations, the family has been devoted

to the peaceful pursuit of letters. As for Chang himself, it will

be seen with what deadly effect he has been able to use the pen, in

his hands a more formidable weapon than the longbow of his ancestor.

Chang was born at Nanpi, in the metropolitan

[Page 221]

province of Chihli, not quite seventy years ago; and that circumstance

debarred him from holding the highest viceroyalty in the Empire,

as no man is permitted to hold office in his native place. He has

climbed to his present eminence without the extraneous aids of

wealth and family influence. This implies talents of no ordinary

grade; but how could those talents have found a fit arena without

that admirable system of literary competition which for so many

centuries has served the double purpose of extending patronage

to letters and of securing the fittest men for the service of the

state.

Crowned with the laurel of A. B., or budding genius, before he

was out of his teens, three years later he won the honour of A.

M., or, as the Chinese say, he plucked a sprig of the _olea

fragrans_ in a contest with his fellow-provincials in which

only one in a hundred gained a prize. Proceeding to the imperial

capital he entered the lists against the picked scholars of all

the provinces. The prizes were 3 per cent. of the whole number

of competitors, and he gained the doctorate in letters, which, as

the Chinese title indicates, assures its possessor of an official

appointment. Had he been content to wait for some obscure position

he might have gone home to sleep on his laurels. But his restless

spirit saw fresh battle-fields beckoning him to fresh triumphs.

The three hundred new-made doctors were summoned to the palace to

write on themes assigned by the Emperor, that His Majesty might

select a score of them for places in the Hanlin Academy. Here again

fortune favoured young Chang; the elegance of his penmanship and

his skill in composing

[Page 222]

mechanical verse were so remarkable that he secured a seat on the

literary Olympus of the Empire.

His conflicts were not yet ended. A conspicuous advantage of his

high position was that it qualified him as a candidate for membership

of the Board of Censors. Nor did fortune desert her favourite in

this instance. After writing several papers to show his knowledge

of law, history, and politics, he came forth clothed with powers

that made him formidable to the highest officers of the state--powers

somewhat analogous to the combined functions of censor and tribune

in ancient Rome.

Before I proceed to show how our "knight of the longbow" employed

his new authority, a few words on the constitution of that august

tribunal, the Board of Censors, may prove interesting to the reader.

Its members are not judges, but prosecuting attorneys for the state.

They are accorded a freedom of speech which extends even to pointing

out the shortcomings of majesty. How important such a tribunal for

a country in which a newspaper press with its argus eyes has as

yet no existence! There is indeed a court _Gazette_, which

has been called the oldest newspaper in the world; but its contents

are strictly limited to decrees, memorials, and appointments. Free

discussion and general news have no place in its columns; so that

in the modern sense it is not a newspaper.

The court--even the occupant of the Dragon Throne--needs watch-dogs.

Such is the theory; but as a matter of fact these guardians of official

morals find it safer to occupy themselves with the aberrations of

satellites than to discover spots on the sun. About

[Page 223]

thirty years ago one of them, Wukotu, resolved to denounce the

Empress Dowager for having adopted the late emperor as her son

instead of making him her grandson. He accordingly immolated himself

at the tomb of the late emperor by way of protesting against the

impropriety of leaving him without a direct heir to worship his

manes. It is doubtful whether the Western mind is capable of following

Wukotu's subtle reasoning; but is it not plain that he felt that

he was provoking an ignominious death, and chose rather to die

as a hero--the champion of his deceased master?

If a censor succeeds in convicting a single high functionary of

gross misconduct his fortune is made. He is rewarded by appointment

to some respectable post, possibly the same from which his victim has

been evicted. Practical advantage carries the day against abstract

notions of æsthetic fitness. Sublime it might be to see the guardians

of the common weal striking down the unworthy, with a public spirit

untainted by self-interest; but in China (and in some other countries)

such machinery requires self-interest for its motive force. Wanting

that, it would be like a windmill without wind, merely a fine object

in the landscape.

As an illustration of the actual procedure take the case in which

Chang first achieved a national reputation. Chunghau, a Manchu of

noble family and high in favour at court, had been sent to Russia

in 1880 to demand the restoration of Ili, a province of Chinese

Turkestan, which the Russians had occupied on pretext of quelling

its chronic disorders. Scarcely had he reported the success of

his mission, which had

[Page 224]

resulted in recovering two-thirds of the disputed territory, when

Chang came forward and denounced it as worse than a failure. He

had, as Chang proved, permitted the Russians to retain certain

strategic points, and had given them fertile districts in exchange

for rugged mountains or arid plains. To such a settlement no envoy

could be induced to consent, unless chargeable with corruption

or incompetence.

The unlucky envoy was thrown into prison and condemned to death

(but reprieved), and his accuser rose in the official scale as

rapidly as if he had won a great battle on land or sea. His victory

was not unlike that of those British orators who made a reputation

out of the impeachment of Lord Clive or Warren Hastings, save that

with him a trenchant pen took the place of an eloquent tongue. I

knew Chunghau both before and after his disgrace. In 1859, when

an American embassy for the first time entered the gates of Peking,

it was Chunghau who was appointed to escort the minister to the

capital and back again to the seacoast--a pretty long journey in

those days when there was neither steamboat nor railway. During

that time, acting as interpreter, I had occasion to see him every

day, and I felt strongly attracted by his generous and gentlemanly

bearing. The poor fellow came out of prison stripped of all his

honours, and with his prospects blighted forever. In a few months

he died of sheer chagrin.

The war with Japan in 1894-1895 found Chang established in the

viceroyalty of Hukwang, two provinces in Central China, with a

prosperous population of over fifty millions, on a great highway

of internal

[Page 225]

traffic rivalling the Mississippi, and with Hankow, the hub of

the Empire, for its commercial centre. When he saw the Chinese

forces scattered like chaff by the battalions of those despised

islanders he was not slow to grasp the explanation. Kang Yuwei, a

Canton man, also grasped it, and urged on the Emperor the necessity

for reform with such vigour as to prompt him to issue a meteoric

shower of reformatory edicts, filling one party with hope and the

other with dismay.

Chang had held office at Canton; and his keen intellect had taken

in the changed relations of West and East. He perceived that a

new sort of sunshine shed its beams on the Western world. He did

not fully apprehend the spiritual elements of our civilisation;

but he saw that it was clothed with a power unknown to the sages

of his country, the forces of nature being brought into subjection

through science and popular education. He felt that China must

conform to the new order of things, or perish--even if that new

order was in contradiction to her ancient traditions as much as

the change of sunrise to the west. He saw and felt that knowledge

is power, a maxim laid down by Confucius before the days of Bacon;

and he set about inculcating his new ideas by issuing a series

of lectures for the instruction of his subordinates. Collected

into a volume under the title of "Exhortations to Learn,"[*] they

were put into the hands of the young Emperor and by his command

distributed among the viceroys and governors of the Empire.

[Footnote *: Translated by Dr. Woodbridge as "China's Only Hope."

Kelly & Walsh, Shanghai.]

[Page 226]

What a harvest might have sprung from the sowing of such seed in

such soil by an imperial husbandman! But there were some who viewed

it as the sowing of dragons' teeth. Those reactionaries induced the

Dowager Empress to come out from her retirement and to reassume

her abdicated power in order to save the Empire from a threatening

conflagration. It was the fable of Phaëton enacted in real life.

The young charioteer was struck down and the sun brought back to

his proper course instead of rising in the west. The progressive

legislation of the two previous years 1897-98 was repealed and

then followed two years of a narrow, benighted policy, controlled

by the reactionaries under the lead of Prince Tuan, father of the

heir-apparent, with a junta of Manchu princes as blind and corrupt

as Russian grand dukes. That disastrous recoil resulted in war,

not against a single power, but against the whole civilised world,

as has been set forth in the account of the Boxer War (see page

172).

Affairs were drifting into this desperate predicament when Chang

of the Cavern became in a sense the saviour of his country. This

he effected by two actions which called for uncommon intelligence

and moral force: (1) By assuring the British Government that he

would at all costs maintain peace in Central China; (2) by refusing

to obey an inhuman decree from Peking, commanding the viceroys to

massacre all foreigners within their jurisdiction--a decree which

would be incredible were it not known that at the same moment the

walls of the capital were placarded with proclamations offering

rewards of 50, 30 and 20

[Page 227]

taels respectively for the heads of foreign men, women, and children.

It is barely possible that Chang was helped to a decision by a

friendly visit from a British man-of-war, whose captain, in answer

to a question about his artillery, informed Chang that he had the

bearings of his official residence, and could drop a shell into

it with unerring precision at a distance of three miles. He was

also aided by the influence of Mr. Fraser, a wide-awake British

consul. Fraser modestly disclaims any special merit in the matter,

but British missionaries at Hankow give him the credit. They say

that, learning from them the state of feeling among the people, he

induced the viceroy to take prompt measures to prevent an outbreak.

At one time a Boxer army from the south was about to cross the

river and destroy the foreign settlement. Chang, when appealed

to, frankly confessed that his troops were in sympathy with the

Boxers, and that being in arrears of pay they were on the verge

of revolt. Fraser found him the money by the help of the Hong Kong

Bank; the troops were paid; and the Boxers dispersed.

The same problem confronted Liu, the viceroy of Nanking; and it

was solved by him in the same way. Both viceroys acted in concert;

but to which belongs the honour of that wise initiative can never

be decided with certainty. The foreign consuls at Nanking claim it

for Liu. Mr. Sundius, now British consul at Wuhu, assures me that

as Liu read the barbarous decree he exclaimed, "I shall repudiate

this as a forgery," adding "I shall not obey, if I have to die for

it." His words have a heroic ring; and

[Page 228]

suggest that his policy was not taken at second-hand.

A similar claim has been put forward for Li Hung Chang, who was at

that time viceroy at Canton. Is it not probable that the same view

of the situation flashed on the minds of all three simultaneously?

They were not, like the Peking princes, ignorant Tartars, but Chinese

scholars of the highest type. They could not fail to see that compliance

with that bloody edict would seal their own doom as well as that

of the Empire.

Speaking of Chang, Mr. Fraser says: "He had the wit to see that

any other course meant ruin." Chang certainly does not hesitate

to blow his own trumpet; but I do not suspect him of "drawing the

longbow." Having the advantage of being an expert rhymer, he has

put his own pretensions into verses which all the school-children

in a population of fifty millions are obliged to commit to memory.

They run somewhat like this:

"In Kengtse (1900) the Boxer robbers went mad,

And Peking became for the third time the prey of fire and sword;

But the banks of the Great River and the province of Hupei

Remained in tranquillity."

He adds in a tone of exultation:

"The province of Hupei was accordingly exempted

From the payment of an indemnity tax,

And allowed to spend the amount thus saved

In the erection of schoolhouses."

In these lines there is not much poetry; but the fact which they

commemorate adds one more wreath to

[Page 229]

a brow already crowned with many laurels, showing how much the viceroy's

heart was set on the education of his people.

In the interest of the educational movement, I was called to Chang's

assistance in 1902. The Imperial University was destroyed in the

Boxer War, and, seeing no prospect of its reëstablishment I was

on the way to my home in America when, on reaching Vancouver, I

found a telegram from Viceroy Chang, asking me to be president

of a university which he proposed to open, and to instruct his

junior officials in international law. I engaged for three years;

and I now look back on my recent campaign in Central China as one

of the most interesting passages in a life of over half a century

in the Far East.

Besides instructing his mandarins in the law of nations, I had to

give them some notion of geography and history, the two coördinates

of time and place, without which they might, like some of their

writers, mistake Rhode Island for the Island of Rhodes, and Rome,

New York, for the City of the Seven Hills. A book on the Intercourse

of Nations and a translation of Dudley Field's "International Code,"

remain as tangible results of those lectures. But the university

failed to materialise.

Within a month after my arrival the viceroy was ordered to remove

to Nanking to take up a post rendered vacant by the death of his

eminent colleague, Liu. Calling at my house on the eve of embarking

he said, "I asked you to come here to be president of a university

for two provinces. If you will go with me to Nanking, I will make

you president of a university

[Page 230]

for five provinces," meaning that he would combine the educational

interests of the two viceroyalties, and showing how the university

scheme had expanded in his fertile brain.

Before he had been a month at that higher post he learned to his

intense disappointment that he was only to hold the place for another

appointee. After nearly a year at Nanking, he was summoned to Peking,

where he spent another year in complete uncertainty as to his future

destination. In the meantime the university existed only on paper.

In justice to the viceroy I ought to say that nothing could exceed

the courtesy and punctuality with which he discharged his obligations

to me. The despatch which once a month brought me my stipend was

always addressed to me as president of the Wuchang University,

though as a matter of fact I might as well have been styled president

of the University of Weissnichtwo. In one point he went beyond his

agreement, viz., in giving me free of charge a furnished house

of two stories, with ten rooms and a garden. It was on the bank

of the "Great River" with the picturesque hills of Hanyang nearly

opposite, a site which I preferred to any other in the city. I there

enjoyed the purest air with a minimum of inconvenience from narrow,

dirty streets. To these exceptional advantages it is doubtless due

that my health held out, notwithstanding the heat of the climate,

which, the locality being far inland and in lat. 30° 30', was that

of a fiery furnace. On the night of the autumnal equinox, my first

in Wuchang, the mercury stood in my bedroom at 102°. I was the

guest of the Rev. Arnold Foster of the London Missionary

[Page 231]

Society, whose hospitality was warm in more ways than one.

The viceroy returned from Peking, broken in health; the little

strength he had left was given to military preparation for the

contingencies of the Russo-Japanese War; and his university was

consigned to the limbo of forgotten dreams.

Viceroy Chang has been derided, not quite justly, as possessing a

superabundance of initiative along with a rather scant measure of

finality, taking up and throwing down his new schemes as a child

does its playthings. In these enterprises the paucity of results

was due to the shortcomings of the agents to whom he entrusted

their management. The same reproach and the same apology might be

made for the Empress Dowager who, like the Roman Sybil, committed

her progressive decrees to the mercy of the winds without seeming

to care what became of them.

Next after the education of his people the development of their

material resources has been with Chang a leading object. To this

end he has opened cotton-mills, silk-filatures, glass-works and

iron-works, all on an extensive scale, with foreign machinery and

foreign experts. For miles outside of the gates of Wuchang the

banks of the river are lined with these vast establishments. Do

they not announce more clearly than the batteries which command

the waterway the coming of a new China? Some of them he has kept

going at an annual loss. The cotton-mill, for example, was standing

idle when I arrived, because in the hands of his mandarins he could

not make it pay expenses. A Canton merchant leased it on easy terms,

and made it

[Page 232]

such a conspicuous success that he is now growing rich. It is an

axiom in China that no manufacturing or mercantile enterprise can

be profitably conducted by a deputation of mandarins.

Chang is rapidly changing the aspect of his capital by erecting

in all parts of it handsome school-buildings in foreign style,

literally proclaiming from the house-tops his gospel of education.

The youth in these schools are mostly clad in foreign dress; his

street police and the soldiers in his barracks are all in foreign

uniform; and many of the latter have cut off their cues as a sign

of breaking with the old régime. In talking with their officers I

applauded the prudence of the measure as making them less liable

to be captured while running away.

Chang's soldiers are taught to march to the cadence of his own

war-songs--which, though lacking the fire of Tyrtæus or Körner,

are not ill-suited to arouse patriotic sentiment. Take these lines

as a sample:

"Foreigners laugh at our impotence,

And talk of dividing our country like a watermelon,

But are we not 400 million strong?

If we of the Yellow Race only stand together,

What foreign power will dare to molest us?

Just look at India, great in extent

But sunk in hopeless bondage.

Look, too, at the Jews, famous in ancient times,

Now scattered on the face of the earth.

Then look at Japan with her three small islands,

Think how she got the better of this great nation,

And won the admiration of the world.

What I admire in the Japanese

Is not their skill in using ship or gun

But their single-hearted love of country."

[Page 233]

Viceroy Chang's mode of dealing with his own malady might be taken

as a picture of the shifting policy of a half-enlightened country.

The first doctor he consulted was a Chinese of the old school. Besides

administering pills composed of

"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,"

the doctor suggested that one thing was still required to put the

patient in harmony with the course of Nature. Pointing to a fine

chain of hills that stretches in a waving line across the wide city,

he said: "The root of your trouble lies there. That carriage-road

that you have opened has wounded the spinal column of the serpent.

Restore the hill to its former condition and you will soon get

well."

The viceroy filled the gap incontinently, but found himself no

better. He then sent for English and American doctors--dismissing

them in turn to make way for a Japanese who had him in charge when

I left Wuchang. For a paragon of intelligence and courage, how

pitiful this relapse into superstition! Did not China after a trial

of European methods also relapse during the Boxer craze into her old

superstitions? And is she not at this moment taking the medicine

of Japan? To Japan she looks for guidance in the conduct of her

public schools as well as for the training of her army and navy.

To Japan she is sending her sons and daughters in growing numbers.

No fewer than eight thousand of her young men, and, what is more

significant, one or two hundred of her young women from the best

families are now in those islands inhaling the breath of a new

life.

[Page 234]

Some writers have sounded a note of alarm in consequence of this

wholesale surrender on the part of China. But for my part I have

no fear of any sinister tendency in the teachings of Japan, whether

political or educational. On a memorable occasion twelve years ago,

when Marquis Ito was entertained at a banquet in Peking by the

governor of the city and the chancellor of the Imperial University, I

congratulated him on the fact that "Japan exerts a stronger influence

on China than any Western power--just as the moon raises a higher

tide than the more distant sun"--implying, what the Japanese are

ready enough to admit, that their country shines by borrowed light.

After all, the renovating effect, for which I look to them, will

not come so much from their teaching as from their example. "What

is to hinder us from doing what those islanders have done?" is an

argument oft reiterated by Viceroy Chang in his appeals to his drowsy

countrymen. It was, as I have said, largely under his influence that

the Emperor was led to adopt a new educational programme twelve

years ago. Nor can there be a doubt that by his influence more than

that of any other man, the Empress Dowager was induced to reenact

and to enlarge that programme.

To show what is going on in this very decade: On September 3, 1905,

an edict was issued "abolishing the literary competitive examinations

of the old style," and ordering that "hereafter exclusive attention

shall be given to the establishment of schools of modern learning

throughout the Empire in lieu thereof." The next day a supplementary

decree ordained that

[Page 235]

the provincial chancellors or examiners who, like Othello, found their

occupation gone, should have the duty of examining and inspecting the

schools in their several provinces; and, to give the new arrangement

greater weight, it was required that they "discharge this duty in

conjunction with the viceroy or governor of the province."

An item of news that came along with these decrees seemed to indicate

that a hitherto frivolous court has at length become thoroughly in

earnest on the subject of education. A sum of 300,000 taels appeared

in the national budget as the annual expense of a theatrical troupe

in attendance on the Court. At the instance of two ministers (Viceroy

Yuan and General Tieliang) Her Majesty reduced this to one-third of

that amount, ordering that theatricals should be performed twice

a week instead of daily; and that the 200,000 taels thus economised

shall be set apart for _the use of schools_. How much this

resembles the policy of Viceroy Chang who, exempted from raising

a war indemnity, set apart an equal amount for the building of

schoolhouses! An empire that builds schoolhouses is more certain

to make a figure in the world than one that spends its money on

batteries and forts.

In addition to adopting the new education there are three items

which Chang proclaims as essential to a renovation of Chinese society.

In the little book, already cited, he says:

[Page 236]

The crippling of women makes their offspring weak;

The superstition of _Fungshui_ prevents the opening of mines,

And keeps China poor."

How could the man who wrote this fall back into the folly of

_Fungshui?_ Is it not possible that he closed that new road

in deference to the superstitions of his people? In either case

it would be a deplorable weakness; but his country, thanks to his

efforts, is now fully committed to progress. She moves, however, in

that direction much as her noble rivers move toward the sea--with

many a backward bend, many a refluent eddy.

POSTSCRIPT NO. I

In taking leave of this eminent man, who represents the best class

of his countrymen, there are two or three incidents, which I mention

by way of supplement. In his telegram to Vancouver, besides engaging

me to assume the office of president of the proposed university, he

asked me to act as his legal and political adviser. In the agreement

formally made through the consul in New York, in place of these

last-named functions was substituted the duty of instructing his

junior mandarins in international law. The reason assigned for

the change was that the Peking Government declined to allow _any

foreigner_ to hold the post of adviser. The objection was represented

as resting on general policy, not on personal grounds. If, however,

the Peking officials had read my book on the Siege, in which I

denounce the treachery of Manchu government and favour the

[Page 237]

position of China, it is quite conceivable that their objection

might have a tinge of personality.

When Viceroy Chang was starting for Peking, I called to see him

on board his steamer. He held in his hand a printed report of my

opening lecture at the beginning of a new term, and expressed regret

that in the hurry of departure he had been unable to find time to

attend in person. On that occasion (the previous day) several of

his higher officials, including the treasurer, judge, and prefect,

after giving me tiffin at the Mandarin Institute, brought sixty

junior officials to make their salaam to their instructor. This

ceremony performed, I bowed to Their Excellencies, and requested

them to leave me with my students. "No," they replied, "we too

are desirous of hearing you"; and they took seats in front of the

platform.

Viceroy Chang seems to have manifested some jealousy of Sir Robert

Hart, in criticising the Inspector-General's proposal for a single

tax. He likewise criticised unfavourably the scheme of Professor

Jenckes for unifying the currency of the Empire--influenced, perhaps,

by the fear that such an _innovation_ might impair the usefulness

of a costly plant which he has recently erected for minting both

silver and copper coin. For the same reason perhaps he objects, as

I hear he does, to the proposed engagement of a Cornell professor

by the Board of Revenue in the capacity of financial adviser.

With all his foibles, however, he is a true patriot; and his influence

has done much to move China in the right direction. O for more men

like Chang, the "Longbow of the Cavern!"

[Page 238]

I append a weighty document that is not the less interesting for

being somewhat veiled in mystery. I regret that I am not at liberty

to disclose its authorship. The report is to be taken as anonymous,

being an unpublished document of the secret service. To the reader

it is left to divine the nationality and personality of its author.

Valuable for the light it throws on a great character in a trying

situation, the report gains piquancy and interest from the fact that

the veil of official secrecy has to be treated with due respect.

My unnamed friend has my thanks and deserves those of my readers.

OFFICIAL INTERVIEWS WITH VICEROY CHANG DURING THE CRISIS OF 1900

"At our interview of 17th June, described at length in my despatch

to you of 18th June, the Viceroy explained his determination to

maintain order and to afford the protection due under treaty; he

also emphasised his desire to be on friendly terms with England.

"Early in June, the three cities of Wuchang, Hanyang and Hankow had

been full of rumours of the kidnapping of children and even grown

persons by means of hypnotism; and though a concise notification by

the Viceroy, that persons spreading such tales would be executed,

checked its prevalence here, the scare spread to the country districts

and inflamed the minds of the people against foreigners and, in

consequence, against converts and missions.

"On the 25th June, the Viceroy, as reported in a separate despatch

of 28th June, to Lord Salisbury, sent a special envoy to assure me

that H. E. would not accept or act upon any anti-foreign decrees

from Peking. At the same time he communicated copy of a telegraphic

memorial from himself and seven other high provincial officers

insisting on the suppression of the

[Page 239]

Boxers and the maintenance of peace. This advice H. E. gave me

to understand led to the recall of Li Hung Chang to the north as

negotiator.

"Distorted accounts of the capture of the Taku forts and the hostilities

of the north caused some excitement, but the Viceroy's proclamation

of 2nd July, copy of which was forwarded in my despatch of 3rd

July to the Foreign Office, and the vigorous police measures taken

by His Excellency soon restored calm which, despite occasional

rumours, continued until the recent plot and scare reported in my

despatch to you of 23rd of August. In the same despatch I described

how, in compliance with my wish, H. E. took the unprecedented step

of tearing down his proclamation embodying an Imperial Decree which

had been taken to imply license to harry converts. To foreigners

during the past two months the question of interest has been whether

the Viceroy could and would keep his troops in order. The Viceroy

himself seemed to be in some doubt until the return of his trusted

officers, who were attending the Japanese manoeuvres when the

northern troubles began. Every now and then reports of disaffection

have been industriously circulated, but the drilled troops have

never shown any sign of disloyalty.

"A point of H. E.'s policy which has caused considerable suspicion

is the despatch of troops northward, At the end of June some 2,000

or 3,000 men passed through Hankow bound for Nyanking where the

Governor was said to want a body-guard. They were unarmed and did

no mischief beyond invading the Customs and China Merchants' Steam

Navigation Company's premises. During July some 5,000 troops, of

whom perhaps half were drilled men, went from Hukeang provinces

overland to Honan and on to Chihli. They were led by the anti-foreign

Treasurer of Hunan; and their despatch was explained by the

constitutional duty of succouring the Emperor. Since July I have

not heard of any further detachments leaving, though it was said

that the total would reach 10,000. Possibly the Viceroy sent the

men because he did not feel strong enough to defy Peking altogether,

because failure to help the court would

[Page 240]

have excited popular reprobation, and also in order to get rid of

a considerable part of the dangerous 'loafer' class.

"About the 20th July there was a persistent report that the Viceroy

was secretly placing guns on the opposite banks of the river. The

German military instructors assured me that the report was baseless;

and Lieutenant Brandon, H. M. S. _Pique_, thoroughly searched

the bank for a distance of three miles in length and breadth, without

discovering a trace of a cannon. The only guns in position are the

two 5-inch Armstrong M. L. within the walls of Wuchang, and they

have been there for a long time and are used 'merely for training

purposes.'

"So early as our interview of June 17th, the Viceroy expressed

anxiety as to missionaries at remote points in the interior; and I

had about that time suggested to the various missions that women and

children would be better at a treaty port. The missions themselves

preferred to recall all their members, and at the Viceroy's request

supplied lists of the stations thus left to the care of the local

authorities. Since then, even in Hupeh, there have been a few cases

of plundering, especially in the large district of Sin Chan on the

Hunan border, while at Hangchow-fu, in Hunan, the London Mission

premises were wrecked early in July and for a time throughout the

whole province it appeared probable that the Missions would be

destroyed. The chief cause of this, as of the riots in Hupeh, was

the dissemination of an alleged decree of 26th June praising the

Boxers and ordering the authorities to imitate the north in

exterminating foreigners. This decree seems to have reached local

authorities direct; and those hostile to foreigners acted upon

it or let its existence be known to the gentry and people. The

chapels in Hunan were all sealed up; and it was understood that

all mission and convert property would be confiscated. Towards the

end of July, however, the Viceroy and the Hunan Governor issued

a satisfactory proclamation, and I have heard no more complaints

from that province, the western part of which seems tranquil.

"Besides safeguarding foreign life and property in his own province

the Viceroy has frequently been asked to aid missionaries retiring

from Kansuh, Shensi, Shansi, and Honan. In

[Page 241]

every case H. E. has readily consented. Detailed telegrams have

been sent again and again not only to his frontier officers, but to

the governors of other provinces with whom H. E. has expostulated,

when necessary, in strong terms. Thus, when Honan seemed likely

to turn against us, the Viceroy insisted on the publication of

favourable decrees, and even went so far as to send his men to

establish a permanent escort depot at Ching Tzu Kuan, an important

post in Honan where travellers from the north and northwest have

to change from cart to boat. Happily the acting Governor of Shensi

has coöperated nobly. But the refugees who testify invariably to the

marvellous feeling of security engendered by reaching Hupeh, will,

I doubt not, agree that they owe their lives to Chang Chi-tung's

efforts; for simple inaction on his part would have encouraged the

many hostile officers to treat them as Shansi has treated its

missionaries.

"At times during the past two anxious months the Viceroy's action

in sending troops north, the occurrence of riots at various points,

H. E.'s communication of decrees in which the Peking Government

sought to gloss over the northern uprising, and his eagerness to

make out that the Empress Dowager had not incited the outbreak and

had no hostile feeling against foreigners have inevitably made one

uneasy. But on looking back one appreciates the skill and constancy

with which H. E. has met a most serious crisis and done his duty to

Chinese and foreigners alike. It is no small thing for a Chinese

statesman and scholar to risk popularity, position, and even life

in a far-seeing resistance to the apparent decrees of a court to

which his whole training enforces blind loyalty and obedience.

His desire to secure the personal safety of the Empress Dowager on

account of her long services to the Empire is natural enough; nor

need he be blamed for supplying some military aid to his sovereign,

even though he may have guessed that it would be used against those

foreign nations with whom he himself steadfastly maintains friendship

and against whose possible attack he has not mounted an extra gun."

[Page 242]

POSTSCRIPT NO.2

TUAN FANG OF THE HIGH COMMISSION

During Chang's long absence, Tuan Fang, Governor of Hupeh, held the

seals and exercised the functions of viceroy. He was a Manchu--one

of those specimens, admirable but not rare, who, in acquiring the

refinement of Chinese culture, lose nothing of the vigour of their

own race. "Of their own race," I say, because in language and habits

the Manchus are strongly differentiated from their Chinese subjects.

In the Boxer War Governor Tuan established an excellent record.

Acting as governor in Shensi, instead of killing missionaries, as

did the Manchu governor of the next province, he protected them

effectually and sent them safely to Hankow. One day when I was at

his house a missionary came to thank him for kindness shown on

that occasion.

Mentioning one of my books I once asked him if he had read it. "You

never wrote a book that I have not read," was his emphatic reply.

He was a pretty frequent visitor at my house, punctually returning

all my calls; and when he was transferred to the governorship of

Hunan he appeared pleased to have the Yale Mission commended to

his patronage. He has a son at school in the United States; and

his wife and daughters have taken lessons in English from ladies

of the American Episcopal Mission.

Governor Tuan (now viceroy) is a leading member of a commission

recently sent abroad to study and report on the institutions of

the Western world. Its

[Page 243]

departure was delayed by the explosion of a bomb in one of the

carriages just as the commission was leaving Peking. The would-be

assassin was "hoist with his own petard," leaving the public mystified

as to the motive of the outrage.

[Page 244]

CHAPTER XXXI

ANTI-FOREIGN AGITATION

_American Influence in the Far East--Officials and the

Boycott--Interview with President Roosevelt--Riot in a British

Concession--Ex-territoriality--Two Ways to an End--A Grave Mistake--The

Nan-chang Tragedy--Dangers from Superstition_

So far from being new, an anti-foreign spirit is the normal state

of the Chinese mind. Yet during the year past it has taken on new

forms, directed itself against new objects, and employed new methods.

It deserves therefore a conspicuous place among the new developments

in the China of the twentieth century.

Where everything is changing, the temper of the people has undergone

a change. They have become restless as the sea and fickle as a

weather-vane, The friends of yesterday are the enemies of to-day;

and a slight or petty annoyance is enough to make them transfer

man or country from one to the other category. Murderous outbreaks,

rare in the past, have now become alarmingly frequent, so much so

that the last year might be described as a year of anti-foreign

riots. The past nine months have witnessed four such outbreaks,

In four widely separated provinces, venting their fury pretty

impartially on people of four nationalities and of all professions,

they were actuated by a

[Page 245]

common hate and indicated a common purpose. That purpose--if they

had a purpose--was to compel a readjustment of treaty relations.

America has the distinction of being the target for the first assaults.

In treating the subject I accordingly begin with America and the

boycott, as set forth in a long extract from an address before

the Publishers' League of New York, November 8, 1905, on

AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN THE FAR EAST

"Mr. President and Gentlemen:

"If I were asked to find a _pou sto_, a fulcrum, on which

to erect a machine to move the world, I should choose this league

of publishers; and the machine would be no other than the power

press! I have accepted your invitation not merely from pleasant

recollections of your former hospitality, but because new occurrences

have taken place which appeal to the patriotism of every good citizen.

They are issues that rise above party; they involve our national

character and the well-being of another people whom we owe the

sacred duties of justice and humanity.

"When I agreed to speak to you of American influence in the Far

East, I was not aware that we should have with us a representative

of Japan, and I expected to spread myself thinly over two empires.

Happy I am to resign one of these empires to Mr. Stevens.

"I shall accordingly say no more about Japan than to advert to

the fact that the wise forbearance of Commodore Perry, which, in

1854, induced the Shogun to open his ports without firing a gun,

has won the gratitude of the Japanese people; so that in many ways

they testify a preference for us and our country. For instance, they

call the English language 'Americano,' etc. They were disappointed

that their claims against Russia were not backed up by the United

States. That, however, caused only a momentary cloud. Beyond this,

nothing has ever occurred to mar the harmony of the two peoples who

[Page 246]

face each other on the shores of the Pacific. Perry's wise initiative

was followed by the equal wisdom of Townsend Harris, who, before

any other consul or minister had arrived, was invited to Yedda

to give advice to the government of the Shogun.

"American influence thus inaugurated has been fostered by a noble

army of ministers, consuls, and missionaries. The total absence

of massacres and murders[*] makes the history of our intercourse

with Japan tame in contrast with the tragic story from China. It

speaks the reign of law.

[Footnote *: The only missionary killed in the last fifty years

was stabbed while grappling with a burglar.]

"My acquaintance with Japan dates back forty-six years; and in the

meantime I have had pleasant relations with most of the ministers

she has sent to China. One of her officials recently gave me a

beautiful scarf-pin that speaks volumes for American influence,

showing as it does the two flags in friendly union on one flagstaff.

I gave him in return the following lines:

"'To sun and stars divided sway!

Remote but kindred suns are they,

In friendly concord here they twine

To form a new celestial sign.

"'Thou, Orient sun, still higher rise

To fill with light the Eastern skies!

And you, ye stars and stripes, unfurled

Shed glory on the Western world!

"'Our starry flag first woke the dawn

In the empire of the Rising Sun.

May no ill chance e'er break the tie,

And so we shout our loud _banzai!_'

"I now turn to the less cheering theme of American influence in

China. It reminds me of the naturalist who took for the

[Page 247]

heading of a chapter 'Snakes in Iceland,' and whose entire chapter

consisted of the words 'There are no snakes in Iceland.' Though

formerly blazing like a constellation in the Milky Way, American

influence has vanished so completely that you can hardly see it with

a microscope. What influence can we presume on when our commodities

are shut out, not by legislative action but as a result of popular

resentment?

THE BOYCOTT

"True, the latest advices are to the effect that the boycott has

broken down. I foresaw and foretold more than two months ago that

it could not in the nature of the case be of long duration, that

it was a mere _ballon d'essai_--an encouraging proof that

Orientals are learning to apply our methods. But is there not a

deplorable difference between the conditions under which it is

used in the two countries? In one the people all read, and the

newspaper is in everybody's hand. The moment a strike or boycott

is declared off all hands fall into their places and things go on

as usual. In the other the readers are less than one in twenty.

Newspapers, away from the open ports, are scarcely known, or if

they exist they are subject to the tyranny of the mandarins or

the terrorism of the mob. Hence a war may be waged in one province

and people in another may scarcely hear of it. Chevaux-de-frise may

bar out goods from one port, while they are more or less openly

admitted in other ports. Not only so, the hostile feeling engendered

by such conflict of interest is not dissipated by sunshine, but

rankles and spreads like an epidemic over vast regions unenlightened

by newspapers or by contact with foreign commerce.

"Witness the massacre of American missionaries at Lienchow in the

Canton province. I am not going to enter into the details of that

shocking atrocity, nor to dwell on it further than to point out

that although the boycott was ended on September 14, the people

in that district were in such a state of exasperation that the

missionaries felt themselves in danger fourteen days after that

date. In the New York _Sun_ of November 5 I find part of a

letter from one of the victims, the Reverend Mr.

[Page 248]

Peale, written exactly one month before the tragedy. Allow me to

read it along with an introductory paragraph.

"'PRINCETON, N. J., Nov. 4.--A. Lee Wilson, a student in the Princeton

Theological Seminary, received a letter a few days ago from John R.

Peale, the missionary who, with his wife, was killed in Lienchow,

China, on October 28. The letter was dated September 28, and reached

America at the time that Peale and his wife were murdered. It gives

a clue to the troubles which led to the death of Peale. The letter

says in part:

"'"The interest in the boycott is vital to the missionaries. Heretofore

the Americans always enjoyed special favour, and to fly the American

flag meant protection; but it is different now. No personal violence

has been attempted, but the people are less cordial and more suspicious.

People in China are not asking that their coolies be allowed entrance

into the States, but they only ask that the Americans cease treating

the Chinese with contempt and allow their merchants and students

the same privileges that other foreigners receive."

"'Peale graduated from the Princeton Theological Seminary last May.

"Is it not evident that whatever spark caused the explosion, the

nitro-glycerin that made it possible came from the boycott?

"Not only do they boycott ponderables such as figure at the

custom-house, but they extend the taboo to things of the head and

heart. The leader of the whole movement was formerly an active

supporter of the International Institute, an institution which

proposes to open gratuitous courses of lectures and to place Chinese

men of intelligence on common ground with scholars of the West,

He now opposes the International Institute because, forsooth, it

is originated and conducted by Dr. Reid, a large-minded American.

"After this, will you be surprised to hear that your own publications,

the best text-books for the schools of the Far East, have been put

on the _index expurgatorius?_ A number of such books were

lately returned with the excuse that they were forbidden because

they bore the stamp of an American press.

[Page 249]

"If I should go on to say that government officials, high and low,

look with satisfaction on this assertion of something like national

feeling, you might reply, 'National feeling! Yes, it is a duty to

cultivate that.' But do we not know how it has been fostered in

China? Has not hatred of the foreigner been mistaken for patriotism,

and been secretly instigated as a safeguard against foreign aggression?

In this instance, however, there is no room to suspect such a motive.

The movement is purely a result of provocation on our part; and it

is fostered with a view to coercing our government into modifying

or repealing our offensive exclusion laws. The Viceroy of Central

China, with whom I have spent the last three years, is known as

a pioneer of reform--a man who has done more than any other to

instruct his people in their duties as well as their rights. When,

on the expiration of my engagement, I was about to leave for home,

the prefect of Wuchang, a Canton man, addressed me a letter begging

me to plead the cause of his people with the President of the United

States. That letter was referred to in an interview by the viceroy,

and the request which it contained reiterated by him. He gave me

a parting banquet, attended by many of his mandarins, and on that

occasion the subject came up again and the same request was renewed

and pressed on me from all sides. While I promised to exert myself

on their behalf, let me give you a specimen of the kind of oil

which I poured on their wounded feelings.

"Said I, 'Under the exasperating effect of these petty grievances

your people forget what they owe to the United States. They lose

sight of the danger of alienating their best friend. In the Boxer

War, when Peking was captured by a combined force of eight foreign

powers, who but America was the first to introduce a self-denying

ordinance forbidding any power to take any portion of the Chinese

territory? In this she was backed up by Great Britain; the other

powers fell into line and the integrity of the Empire was assured.

Again, when China was in danger of being drawn into the vortex

of the Russo-Japanese war, who but America secured for her the

privileges of neutrality--thus a second time protecting her national

life? And now you turn

[Page 250]

against us! Is not such conduct condemned by your ancient poet who

says:

"_'Ki wo siao yuen, wang wo ta teh', etc._

(How many acts of kindness done

One small offence wipes out,

As motes obscure the shining sun

And shut his lustre out.')

"If the cause of offence be taken away there is reason to hope

that the beneficent action of our country, on those two occasions

so big with destiny, will be remembered, and will lead China to

look to our flag as an ægis under which she may find protection

in time of need. Not till then will our influence, now reduced

to the vanishing-point, be integrated to its full value.

PROVOCATIONS TO A BOYCOTT

"The injuries inflicted, though trifling in comparison with the

benefits conferred, are such as no self-respecting people should

either perpetrate or endure. Take one example, where I could give

you twenty. Two young men, both Christians, one rich, the other

poor, came to the United States for education. They were detained

in a prison-shed for three months, One of them, falling sick, was

removed to a hospital; the other obtaining permission to visit

him, they made their escape to Canada and thence back to China.

"What wonder no more students come to us and that over 8,000 are

now pursuing their studies in Japan![*]

[Footnote *: The conciliatory policy of President Roosevelt is

bearing fruit Forty students are about to start to the United States

(May, 1906).]

"The present irritation is, we are assured by the agitators, provoked

by the outrageous treatment of the _privileged classes_ (merchants,

travellers, and students) and not by the exclusion of labourers, to

which their government has given its assent. Yet in the growing

intelligence of the Chinese a time has come when their rulers feel

such discrimination as a stigma. It is not merely

[Page 251]

a just application of existing laws that Viceroy Chang and his

mandarins demand. They call for the rescinding of those disgraceful

prohibitions and the right to compete on equal terms with immigrants

from Europe. If we show a disposition to treat the Chinese fairly,

their country and their hearts will be open to us as never before.

Our commerce with China will expand to vast proportions; and our

flag will stand highest among those that overarch and protect the

integrity of that empire."

On November 16, I was received by President Roosevelt. Running

his eye over the documents (see below) which I placed in his hands

he expressed himself on each point. The grievances arising from

the Exclusion Laws he acknowledged to be real. He promised that

they should be mitigated or removed by improvements in the mode

of administration; but he held out no hope of their repeal. "We

have one race problem on our hands and we don't want another," he

said with emphasis. The boycott which the Chinese have resorted

to as a mode of coercion he condemned as an aggravation of existing

difficulties. The interruption of trade and the killing of American

missionaries to which it had led made it impossible, he said, to

turn over to China the surplus indemnity, as he had intended.

This response is what I expected; but it will by no means satisfy

the ruling classes in China, who aim at nothing short of repeal.

When I assured him the newspapers were wrong in representing the

agitation as confined to labourers and merchants, adding that the

highest mandarins, while formally condemning it, really give it

countenance, he replied that he believed that to be the case, and

reiterated the declaration that

[Page 252]

nothing is to be gained by such violent measures on the part of

China.

From the Executive Mansion, I proceeded to the Chinese Legation,

where I talked over the matter with the minister, Sir Chentung

Liang. He was not surprised at the attitude of the President. He

said the state of feeling towards China in Congress and in the

entire country is improving, but that, in his opinion, it will

require ten years to bring about the repeal of the Exclusion Laws.

The present hitch in negotiations comes in part from Peking, but

he hoped a temporary settlement would soon be arrived at.

The papers referred to above are here appended.

LETTERS REQUESTING GOOD OFFICES

(_Translation_)

"To the Hon. Dr. Martin.

"Sir:

"During the last three years we have often exchanged views on the

subject of education and other topics of the day; and to me it

is a joy to reflect that no discordant note has ever marred our

intercourse.

"In view of your learning and your long residence of forty years

at our capital, besides fifteen years in other parts of China, you

are regarded by us with profound respect. When we hear your words

we ponder them and treasure them up as things not to be forgotten.

It is by your scholarship and by your personal character that you

have been able to associate with the officers and scholars of the

Central Empire in harmony like this.

"Now, sir, there is a matter which we wish to bring to your attention--a

matter that calls for the efforts of wise men like yourself. I refer

to the exclusion of Chinese labourers. It affects our mercantile

as well as our labouring population very deeply.

[Page 253]

"We beg you to bear in mind your fifty-five years' sojourn in China

and to speak a good word on our behalf to the President of the

United States so as to secure the welfare of both classes.

"If through your persuasion the prohibitory regulations should be

withdrawn the gratitude of our Chinese people will know no bounds;

your fifty-five years of devotion to the good of China will have

a fitting consummation in one day's achievement; and your name

will be handed down to coming generations.

"Being old friends, I write as frankly as if we were speaking face

to face.

"(Signed) LIANG TING FEN,

"Director of the Normal College for the Two Lake

"Provinces, Intendant of Circuit (_Taotai_), etc. etc.

"Wuchang, July 8, 1905."

The foregoing translation was made by me, and the original is attached

to the copy presented to the President, for the satisfaction of

any official interpreter who may desire to see it.

This letter may be regarded as expressing the sentiments of the

higher officials of the Chinese Empire. It was written on the eve

of my embarkation for home by a man who more than any other has

a right to be looked on as spokesman for Viceroy Chang; and the

following day the request was repeated by the viceroy himself. These

circumstances make it a document of more than ordinary importance.

The outrageous treatment to which the privileged classes (merchants,

students, and travellers) have been subjected, under cover of enforcing

the Exclusion Laws, has caused a deep-rooted resentment, of which

the boycott is only a superficial manifestation. That movement may

not be of long duration, but it has already lasted long enough

to do us no little damage.

[Page 254]

Besides occasioning embarrassment to our trade, it has excited a

feeling of hostility which it will require years of conciliatory

policy to eradicate.

The letter makes no direct reference to the boycott, neither does

it allude to coming negotiations; yet there can be little doubt

that, in making this appeal, the writer had both in view. The viceroy

and his officials are right in regarding the present as a grave

crisis in the intercourse of the two countries.

Their amicable relations have never been interrupted except during

a fanatical outbreak known as the "Boxer Troubles," which aimed

at the expulsion of all foreigners. The leading part taken by our

country in the subsequent settlement, especially in warding off the

threatened dismemberment of China, added immensely to our influence.

Again, on the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese conflict, which was

waged mainly on Chinese territory, it was American diplomacy that

secured for China the advantage of neutrality, and once more warded

off a danger that menaced her existence.

Yet every spark of gratitude for these transcendent services is

liable to be extinguished by the irritation caused by discrimination

against her labourers and the consequent ill-treatment of other

classes of her people. No argument is required to show how important

it is to remove all grounds of complaint in the interest of our

growing commerce.

That any sweeping alteration will be made in our existing laws, I

have given my mandarin friends no reason to expect. Self-preservation

stands on a higher plane than the amenities of intercourse. For

many years these laws served as a bulwark without which the

[Page 255]

sparse population of our Western States would have been swamped by

the influx of Asiatics. In early days it was easier for the Chinese

to cross the ocean than for the people of our Eastern States to cross

the Continent. Now, however, the completion of railroads has reduced

the continental transit to five or six days, in lieu of many months;

and the population of our Pacific Coast is so considerable that

there is no longer any danger of its being overrun by immigrants

from the Far East. Is it not therefore a fair question whether the

maintenance of these old restrictions is desirable or politic?

Swaddling bands, necessary for the protection of an infant, are an

impediment to a growing boy. That question can perhaps be best

decided by ascertaining the general sentiment of our Pacific States.

My impression is that, with the exception of the fruit-growers of

California and some others, they are strongly opposed to what they

call "letting down the bars."

The most feasible way of meeting the difficulty would be, as it

appears to me, the enactment of regulations to provide against

abuses in the enforcement of our Exclusion Laws. The President

has already spoken forcibly in condemnation of such abuses. The

"privileged classes" might be construed in a more liberal sense.

Provision might be made to mitigate the hardships of detention and

repatriation; and a better class of inspectors might be appointed

with a general superintendent, whose duty it should be to see that

the laws are enforced humanely as well as faithfully.

On December 18, less than three months after the attack on Americans

at Lienchow, an attempt

[Page 256]

was made to destroy the British settlement in Shanghai.

A woman arrested on a charge of kidnapping was sent to the foreign

jail to await trial. The Chinese assessor insisted, not without

reason, that she ought to be kept in a native jail. No attention

being given to his protest, though supported by the _taotai_

or local governor, a mob of riff-raff from beyond the limits burst

into the settlement, put the foreign police to flight, and began to

burn and pillage. Happily a body of marines with gatling guns and

fire-engines succeeded in quelling the flames and suppressing the

insurrection. A few hours' delay must have seen that rich emporium

converted into a heap of ashes. Forty of the rioters were killed

and many wounded. Though on ground granted to Great Britain, the

settlement is called international and is governed by a municipal

council elected by the foreign ratepayers. The Chinese residents,

numbering half a million, are allowed no voice in the council; and

that also is felt as a grievance. They are, however, protected

against the rapacity of their own officials; and it is said they

took no part in the riot. In fact had it not been promptly suppressed

they must have suffered all the horrors of sack and pillage. After it

was over they took occasion to demand recognition in the municipal

government; promising to be satisfied if allowed to appoint a permanent

committee, with whom the council should consult before deciding on

any question affecting their interests.

Modest as this request was, it was rejected by an almost unanimous

vote of the foreign ratepayers. They knew that such committee,

however elected,

[Page 257]

was certain to be manipulated by the governor to extend his

jurisdiction. Their decision was quietly accepted by the Chinese

residents, who appreciate the protection which they enjoy in that

strange republic. The question is certain to come up again, and

their claim to be heard will be pressed with more insistence as

they become more acquainted with the principles of representative

government.

The existence of an _imperium in imperio_ which comes between

them and their people is of course distasteful to the mandarins;

and they are bent on curtailing its privileges. If its franchises

were surrendered, "Ichabod" might be inscribed on the gates of

the model settlement.

The practice of marking out a special quarter for each nationality

is an old one in China, adopted for convenience. When, after the

first war, the British exacted the opening of ports, they required

the grant of a concession in each, within which their consuls should

have chief, if not exclusive authority. Other nations made the

same demands; and China made the grants, not as to the British

from necessity, but apparently from choice--the foreign consul

being bound to keep his people in order. Now, however, the influx

of natives into the foreign settlements, and the enormous growth

of those mixed communities in wealth and population, have led the

Chinese Government to look on the ready compliance of its predecessors

as a blunder. Accordingly, in opening new ports in the interior it

marks out a foreign quarter, but makes no "concession." It does not

as before waive the exercise of jurisdiction within those limits.

[Page 258]

The above question relates solely to the government of Chinese

residing in the foreign "concessions." But there is a larger question

now looming on the political sky, viz., how to recover the right

of control over foreigners, wherever they may be in the Empire.

If it were in their power, the Chinese would cancel not merely

the franchises of foreign settlements, but the treaty right of

exemption from control by the local government. This is a franchise

of vital interest to the foreigner, whose life and property would

not be safe were they dependent on the native tribunals as these

are at present constituted.

Such exemption is customary in Turkey and other Moslem countries,

not to say among the Negroes of Africa. It was recognised by treaty

in Japan; and the Japanese, in proportion as they advanced in the

path of reform, felt galled by an exception which fixed on them the

stigma of barbarism. When they had proved their right to a place

in the comity of nations, with good laws administered, foreign

powers cheerfully consented to allow them the exercise of all the

prerogatives of sovereignty.

How does her period of probation compare with that of her neighbour?

Japan resolved on national renovation on Western lines in 1868.

China came to no such resolution until the collapse of her attempt

to exterminate the foreigner in 1900. With her the age of reform

dates from the return of the Court in 1902--as compared with Japan

four years to thirty! Then what a contrast in the animus of the

two countries! The one characterised by law and order, the other

[Page 259]

by mob violence, unrestrained, if not instigated, by the authorities!

When the north wind tried to compel a traveller to take off his

cloak, the cloak was wrapped the closer and held the tighter. When

the sun came out with his warm beams, the traveller stripped it

off of his own accord.

The sunrise empire has exemplified the latter method; China prefers

the former. Is it not to be feared that the apparent success of

the boycott will encourage her to persist in the policy of the

traveller in the north wind. She ought to be notified that she

is on probation, and that the only way to recover the exercise of

her sovereign rights is to show herself worthy of confidence. The

Boxer outbreak postponed by many years the withdrawal of the cloak

of ex-territoriality, and every fresh exhibition of mob violence

defers that event to a more distant date.

To confound "stranger" with "enemy" is the error of Bedouin or

Afghan. Does not China do the same when she mistakes hostility to

foreigners for patriotism? By this blunder she runs the risk of

alienating her best friends, England and America. A farmer attempting

to rope up a shaky barrel in which a hen was sitting on a nest full

of eggs, the silly fowl mistook him for an enemy and flew in his

face. Is not China in danger of being left to the fate which her

friends have sought to avert?

In April a magistrate went by invitation to the French Catholic

Mission to settle a long-standing dispute, and he settled it by

committing suicide--in China the most dreaded form of revenge. Carried

[Page 260]

out gasping but speechless, he intimated that he was the victim of a

murderous attack by the senior priest. His wounds were photographed;

and the pictures were circulated with a view to exciting the mob.

Gentry and populace held meetings for the purpose of screwing their

courage up to the required pitch--governor and mandarins kept carefully

in the background--and on the fifth day the mission buildings were

destroyed and the priests killed. An English missionary, his wife

and daughter, living not far away, were set upon and slain, not

because they were not known to belong to another nation and another

creed, but because an infuriated mob does not care to discriminate.

English and French officials proceeded to the scene in gunboats to

examine the case and arrange a settlement. The case of the English

family was settled without difficulty; but that of the French mission

was more complicated. Among the French demands were two items which

the Chinese Government found embarrassing. It had accepted the

theory of murder and hastily conferred posthumous honours on the

deceased magistrate. The French demanded the retraction of those

honors, and a public admission of suicide. To pay a money indemnity

and cashier a governor was no great hardship, but how could the

court submit to the humiliation of dancing to the tune of a French

piper? An English surgeon declared, in a sealed report of autopsy,

that the wounds must have been self-inflicted, as their position

made it impossible for them to have been inflicted by an assailant.

But

[Note from PG proofer: two lines of text missing here.]

[Page 261]

In 1870 France accepted a money payment for the atrocious massacre at

Tientsin, because the Second Empire was entering on a life-and-death

struggle with Germany. If she makes things easy for China this time,

will it not be because the Republic is engaged in mortal combat

with the Roman Church?

China's constant friction and frequent collisions with France spring

chiefly from two sources; (1) the French protectorate over the Roman

missions, and (2) the menacing attitude of France in Indo-China.

It was to avenge the judicial murder of a missionary that Louis

Napoleon sent troops to China in 1857-60. From this last date the

long-persecuted Church assumed an imperious tone. The restitution

of confiscated property was a source of endless trouble; and the

certainty of being backed up by Church and State emboldened native

converts not only to insist on their own rights, but to mix in

disputes with which they had no necessary connection--a practice

which more than anything else has tended to bring the Holy Faith

into disrepute among the Chinese people.

Yet, on the other side, there are more fruitful sources of difficulty

in the ignorance of the people and in the unfair treatment of converts

by the Chinese Government. While the Government, having no conception

of religious freedom, extends to Christians of all creeds a compulsory

toleration and views them as traitors to their country, is it not

natural for their pagan neighbours to treat them with dislike and

suspicion?

In this state of mind they, like the pagans of ancient Rome, charge

them with horrible crimes, and seize the slightest occasion for

murderous attack. A church

[Page 262]

spire is said to disturb the good luck of a neighbourhood--the

people burn the building. A rumour is started that babies in a

foundling hospital have their eyes taken out to make into photographic

medicine--the hospital is demolished and the Sisters of Charity

killed. A skeleton found in the house of a physician is paraded

on the street as proof of diabolical acts--instantly an angry mob

wrecks the building and murders every foreigner within its reach.

One of these instances was seen in the Tientsin massacre of 1869,

the other in the Lienchow massacre of 1905. Nor are these isolated

cases. Two American ladies doing hospital work in Canton were set

upon by a mob, who accused them of killing a man whose life they

were trying to save, and they narrowly escaped murder. But why

extend the gruesome list? In view of their mad fury, so fatal to

their benefactors, one is tempted to exclaim: _Unglaube du bist

nicht so viel ein ungeheuer als aberglaube du!_ "Of the twin

monsters, unbelief and superstition, the more to be dreaded is

the last!"

In China if a man falls in the street, the priest and Levite consult

their own safety by keeping at a distance; and if a good Samaritan

stoops to pick him up it is at his peril. In treating the sick a

medical man requires as much courage and tact as if he were dealing

with lunatics! These dark shadows, so harmful to the good name of

China, are certain to be dissipated by the numerous agencies now

employed to diffuse intelligence. But what of the feeling towards

religious missions?

Medical missions are recognised as a potent agency in overcoming

prejudice. They reach the heart of

[Page 263]

the people by ministering to their bodily infirmities; high officials

are among their supporters; and the Empress Dowager latterly showed a

disposition to give them her patronage. But how about the preaching

missionary and the teaching missionary? Are the Chinese hostile

to these branches of missionary work?

Unlike Mohammedan or Brahman, the Chinese are not strongly attached

to any form of religious faith. They take no umbrage at the offer

of a new creed, particularly if it have the advantage of being

akin to that of their ancient sages. What they object to is not

the creed, but the foreigner who brings it. Their newspapers are in

fact beginning to agitate the question of accepting the Christian

faith and propagating it in their own way, without aid from the

foreigner. That they would be glad to see merchant and missionary

leave them in peace, no one can doubt. Yet the influence of missions

is steadily on the increase; and their influence for good is

acknowledged by the leading minds of the Empire.

Said the High Commissioner Tuan Fang, in an address to the Mission

Boards at New York, February 2,1906:

"We take pleasure this evening in bearing testimony to the part

taken by American missionaries in promoting the progress of the

Chinese people. They have borne the light of Western civilisation into

every nook and corner of the Empire. They have rendered inestimable

service to China by the laborious task of translating into the Chinese

language religious and scientific works of the West. They help us

to bring happiness and comfort to the poor and the suffering by

the establishment

[Page 264]

of hospitals and schools. The awakening of China which now seems

to be at hand may be traced in no small measure to the hand of the

missionary. For this service you will find China not ungrateful."

Mission stations, now counted by hundreds, have generally high

schools or colleges. Not only is the science taught in them up-to-date,

but the conscientious manner in which they are conducted makes

them an object-lesson to those officials who are charged with the

supervision of government schools. To name only a few:

Here in Peking is a university of the American Methodist Episcopal

Church which is not unworthy of the name it bears. At Tungchow, a

suburb of the capital, is a noble college of the American Board

(Congregationalist) which is in every point a worthy compeer. These

coöperate with each other and with a Union Medical College which

under the London Mission has won the favour of the Empress Dowager.

The American Presbyterian Mission has a high school and a theological

seminary, and coöperates to a certain extent with the three societies

above named. A quadrilateral union like this speaks volumes as

to the spirit in which the work of Christian education is being

carried forward. The Atlantic is bridged and two nations unite;

denominational differences are forgotten in view of the mighty

enterprise of converting an empire. In the economy of their teaching

force they already experience the truth of the maxim "Union is

Strength."

In Shantung, at Weihien, there is a fine college in

[Page 265]

which English Baptists unite with American Presbyterians. The original

plant of the latter was a college at Tengchow, which under Dr.

Mateer afforded conclusive proof that an education deep and broad

may be given through the medium of the Chinese language. In most

of these schools the English language is now claiming a prominent

place, not as the sole medium for instruction, but as a key to the

world's literature, and a preparation for intercourse with foreign

nations.

At Shanghai, which takes the lead in education as in commerce,

there is an admirable institution called St. John's College which

makes English the basis of instruction. Numberless other schools

make it a leading branch of study to meet the wants of a centre

of foreign trade.

One of the best known institutions of Shanghai is a Roman Catholic

College at Siccawei, which preserves the traditions of Matteo Ricci,

and his famous convert Paul Sü. In connection with it are an

astronomical observatory and a weather bureau, which are much

appreciated by foreigners in China, and ought to be better known

throughout the Empire.

Passing down a coast on which colleges are more numerous than

lighthouses, one comes to Canton, where, near the "Great City"

and beautifully conspicuous, rises the Canton Christian College.

These are mentioned by way of example, to show what missionaries are

doing for the education of China. It is a narrow view of education

that confines it to teaching in schools. Missionaries led the way

in Chinese journalism and in the preparation of textbooks in all

branches of science. The Society for the

[Page 266]

Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is spreading broadcast the seeds of

secular and religious truth.

Gratitude for the good they have already done, as well as for benefits

to come, ought to lead the Chinese Government to accord a generous

recognition to all these institutions. At the opening of the Union

Medical College, Mr. Rockhill, the American minister, in a remarkable

address, proposed the recognition of their degrees by the Government;

and as a representative of the Empress Dowager was in the chair on

that occasion, there is reason to hope that his suggestion will

not be overlooked.

[Page 267]

CHAPTER XXXII

THE MANCHUS, THE NORMANS OF CHINA

_The Ta-Ts'ing Dynasty--The Empress Dowager--Her Origin--Her

First Regency--Her Personality--Other Types--Two Manchu Princes--Two

Manchu Ministers--The Nation's Choice--Conclusions_

In a wide survey of the history of the world, we discover a law

which appears to govern the movements of nations. Those of the

north show a tendency to encroach on those of the south. The former

are nomads, hunters, or fishers, made bold by a constant struggle

with the infelicities of their environment. The latter are occupied

with the settled industries of civilised life.

The Goths and Vandals of Rome, and the Tartars under Genghis and

Tamerlane all conform to this law and seem to be actuated by a

common impulse. In the east and west of the Eastern hemisphere

may be noted two examples of this general movement, which afford

a curious parallel: I refer to the Normans of Great Britain and

the Manchus of China. Both empires are under the sway of dynasties

which originated in the north; for the royal house of Britain,

though under another title, has always been proud of its Norman

blood.

The Normans who conquered Britain had first

[Page 268]

settled in France and there acquired the arts of civilised life.

The Manchus coming from the banks of the Amur settled in Liao-tung,

a region somewhat similarly situated with reference to China. There

they learned something of the civilisation of China, and watched

for an opportunity to obtain possession of the empire. In Britain a

kindred branch of the Norman family was on the throne, and William

the Conqueror contrived to give his invasion a colour of right, by

claiming the throne under an alleged bequest of Edward the Confessor.

The Manchus, though not invoking such artificial sanction, aspired

to the dominion of China because their ancestors of the Golden

Horde had ruled over the northern half of the empire. The Norman

conquest, growing out of a family quarrel, was decided by a single

battle. The Manchus' conquest of a country more than ten times the

extent of Britain was not so easy to effect. Yet they achieved

it with unexampled rapidity, because they came by invitation and

they brought peace to a people exhausted by long wars. Their task

was comparatively easy in the north, where the traditions of the

Kin Tartars still survived; but it was prolonged and bloody in

the south.

Both houses treated their new subjects as a conquered people. Each

imposed the burden of foreign garrisons and a new nobility. Each

introduced a foreign language, which they tried to perpetuate as

the speech of the court, if not of the people. In each case the

language of the people asserted itself. In Britain it absorbed

and assimilated the alien tongue; in China, where the absence of

common elements made amalgamation

[Page 269]

impossible, it superseded that of the conquerors, not merely for

writing purposes, but as the spoken dialect of the court.

Both conquerors found it necessary to conciliate the subject race

by liberal and timely concessions; but here begins a contrast.

In Britain no external badge of subjection was ever imposed; in

process of time all special privileges of the ruling caste were

abolished; and no trace of race antipathy ever displays itself

anywhere--if we except Ireland. In China the cue remains as a badge

of subjection. Habit has reconciled the people to its use; but it

still offers a tempting grip to revolutionary agitators. Every

party that raises the standard of revolt abolishes the cue; would

it not be wise for the Manchu Government to make the wearing of

that appendage a matter of option, especially as it is beginning

to disappear from their soldiers' uniform?

The extension of reform in dress from camp to court and from court

to people (to them as a matter of option) would remove a danger.

It would also remove a barrier in the way of China's admission

into the congress of nations. The abolition of the cue implies

the abandonment of those long robes which make such an impression

of barbaric pomp. Already the Chinese are tacitly permitted to

adopt foreign dress; and in every case they have to dispense with

the cue. The Japanese never did a wiser thing than to adopt our

Western costume. Their example tends to encourage a reform of the

same kind in China. A new costume means a new era.

Another point is required to complete the parallel:

[Page 270]

each victor has given the conquered country a better government

than any in its previous history. To Confucius feudalism was a

beau-ideal, and he beautifully compares the sovereign to the North

Star which sits in state on the pole of the heavens while all the

constellations revolve around it, and pay it homage. Yet was the

centralised government of the First Hwang-ti an immense improvement

on the loose agglomeration of the Chous. The great dynasties have all

adopted the principle of centralisation; but not one has applied it

with such success, nor is there one which shows so large a proportion

of respectable rulers as the house of Ta-ts'ing. Of the first six

some account has been given in Part II. As to the next two it is

too soon to have the verdict of history. One died after a brief

reign of two years and three months, too short to show character.

The other now sits at the foot of the throne, while his adoptive

mother sways the sceptre. Both have been overshadowed by the Empress

Dowager and controlled by her masterful spirit.

China has had female rulers that make figures in history, such as

Lu of the Han and Wu of the T'ang dynasties, but she has no law

providing for the succession of a female under any conditions. A

female reign is abnormal, and the ruler a monstrosity. Her character

is always blackened so as to make it difficult to delineate. Yet in

every instance those women have possessed rare talent; for without

uncommon gifts it must have been impossible to seize a sceptre

in the face of such prejudices, and to sway it over a submissive

people. Usually they are described much as the Jewish chronicler

sketches the character of Jezebel

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or Athaliah. Cruel, licentious, and implacable, they "destroy the

seed royal," they murder the prophets and they make the ears of

the nation tingle with stories of shameless immorality.

Among these we shall not seek a parallel for the famous Empress

Dowager, so well known to the readers of magazine literature. In

tragic vicissitudes, if not in length of reign, she stood without

a rival in the history of the world. She also stood alone in the

fact that her destinies were interwoven with the tangle of foreign

invasion. Twice she fled from the gates of a fallen capital; and

twice did the foreign conqueror permit her to return. Without the

foreigner and his self-imposed restraint, there could have been no

Empress Dowager in China. Did she hate the foreigner for driving

her away, or did she thank him for her repeated restoration?

The daughter of Duke Chou (the slave-girl story is a myth), she

became a secondary wife of Hienfung in 1853 or 1854; and her sister

somewhat later became consort of the Emperor's youngest brother.

Having the happiness to present her lord with a son, she was raised

to the rank of Empress and began to exert no little influence in the

character of mother to an heir-apparent. Had she not been protected

by her new rank her childless rival might have driven her from

court and appropriated the boy. She had instead to admit a joint

motherhood, which in a few years led to a joint regency.

Scarcely had the young Empress become accustomed to her new dignity,

when the fall of Taku and Tientsin, in 1860, warned the Emperor

of what he might

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expect. Taking the two imperial ladies and their infant son, he

retired to Jeho, on the borders of Tartary, in time to escape capture.

There he heard of the burning of his summer palace and the surrender

of his capital. Whether he succumbed to disease or whether a proud

nature refused to survive his disgrace, is not known. What we do

know is, that on his death, in 1861, two princes, Sushun and Tuanhwa,

organised a regency and brought the court back to the capital about

a year after the treaty of peace had been signed by Prince Kung as

the Emperor's representative. Prince Kung was not included in the

council of regency; and he knew that he was marked for destruction.

Resolving to be beforehand, he found means to consult with the

Empresses, who looked to him to rescue them from the tyranny of

the Council of Eight. On December 2 the blow was struck: all the

members of the council were seized; the leader was put to death in

the market-place; some committed suicide; and others were condemned

to exile. A new regency was formed, consisting of the two Empresses

and Prince Kung, the latter having the title of "joint regent."

What part the Empress Mother had taken in this her first _coup

d'état_, is left to conjecture. Penetrating and ambitious she

was not content to be a tool in the hands of the Eight. The senior

Empress yielded to the ascendency of a superior mind, as she continued

to do for twenty years.