for our coming, but who are forbidden to hold intercourse with us by the edicts of the Brother of the Moon. God forbid that England should appear armed at the Peiho merely to wreak vengeance upon stolid mandarins or their barbarous followers. We can fancy nothing more horrible or unnatural than such a spirit of revenge; it is not that we advocate; but we know that whilst, on the one hand, experience has taught us that it is false humanity to allow an Asiatic despot to suppose he may insult or slay a Christian with impunity on the other hand, "Providence, that doth shape our ends," has never caused us to vindicate the claims of Western civilisation without our leaving behind us abundant and living proofs of our desire to improve the races we have come in contact with. We therefore believe, and it will be nothing new in the history of our country, that the march of our legions in Shantung and Pechelee, and the explorations of our sailors in the Yang-tze river and Yellow Sea, will be but the prelude to a condition of things over which the merchant and philanthropist shall rejoice, and future Chancellors of the Exchequer congratulate themselves on our having at any rate legislated somewhat for posterity. Perhaps it may be said, "we cordially assent to the desirability of opening up China to Western civilisation; but we believe the civilian is better adapted to accomplish that end than the soldier or sailor." To this assertion we reply, that experience has shown the fallacy of such a theory. For two hundred years we traded at Canton, and we knew as much about China in 1830 as we did in 1630; indeed, our merchants were worse treated at the expiration of that time than at the commencement. It was not until England appeared as a belligerent that European civilisation progressed in the face of Chinese exclusiveness. It was to the strong arm of the executive that Western nations were indebted for their extension of trade to the five ports, and for our increased knowledge of that Empire; it was to the strong arm of the executive-not to the diplomatist, and not to the persuasions or enterprise of merchants or missionaries then resident in Canton-that Great Britain is indebted for her present revenue derivable from China. There is a remarkable coincidence in our position at this moment and that at which the extension of trade in China took place in 1840. We will give a brief synopsis of the circumstances, for they cheer us with the hope that now, as then, our sailors and soldiers will be the pioneers of extended commercial relations and extended knowledge of the Flowery Land. In the year of grace 1839, we were forced into a war with China, not because they had slain or defeated her Majesty's forces, but because they compelled our agent to surrender to them a quantity of British property which they considered contraband. There was then only one port of trade for us in all China: out of Canton, came in 150 ships the 44 million pounds of tea then consumed by us. It was an awful thing to contemplate the cutting off of such a supply; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer trembled for his budget. Commissioner Lin of Canton was quite as much in the dark as to the commercial instincts of his countrymen and ours, as quidnuncs at home were. He issued an edict, and stopped-as he fancied, poor man!—any more tea or rhubarb going to Britain, and wrote to Queen Victoria to tell her so. The Emperor, through his delegate, used every effort to stop all our trade with China. Does any one remember tea being scarce, dearer than usual, or worse than usual in 1840-41-42? We fancy not; for M'Culloch tells us that by 1844 the tea trade of that port had doubled itself; in short, the Chinese merchants would trade in spite of all hostilities, in spite of all edicts; and so they ever have, and ever will do. The only apparent difference in the trade was, that instead of our vessels loading at Whampoa, they loaded about Lintin, or in Hong-Kong and Macao. Yet remember Lin and his Emperor had placed us hors-le loi, rebels, outcasts, to be exterminated, and we had replied by a counter-declaration of war: is it likely that what an Emperor of China could not effect in 1840 at one port, could be carried out in 1860 at five carried out in that autumn, winter, places of trade? In 1840 our forces, and following spring were fraught far too small for the task in hand, with the utmost importance and beseized the Chusan group of islands, nefit to China and Western civiliand escorted our envoy to the mouth sation generally. Without those of the Peiho. There was one vessel operations, the Treaty of Nankin, in all that force that could cross the even if it ever had been signed, would bar, and so far as being really in a not have been worth the paper upon position to act against the capital of which it was written. Those miliChina, our admiral and fleet might tary operations, those explorations of as well have hoped to operate against Fokien, Chekiang, and the YangIspahan or Moscow. "Oh, you only tse-kiang up to the walls of Nanwant kind treatment and an apology kin, extended over a twelvemonth. for past insults," said the mandarins The whole military resources of the of Taku. Augh! augh! go back Empire were brought against us. to Canton again, give up Chusan The Abbé Huc tells of the wild tribes when the apology arrives, and all of Mongolia that were marched will be well." The unlucky envoy, against us, and how the Tartar horseunable to act, hampered by instruc- men, over their cups in those wild tions from home, fears of the wrath plains, magnify their campaign against of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, the fair-haired men of the sea; and and beset by the doubts of a mer- we know that even the untamed cantile entourage, came back to Meaoutsze of the Himalayan ranges Canton to find the apology an were brought down to exterminate empty one, and that he had been those who would intrude upon the prisimply cajoled out of his hold on vacy of the Flowery Land. The EmChusan. The year 1841 found us as peror and Court did all that was in far off any solution of the question their power to bring upon us the whole as 1839 had left us. Trade at Can- weight of the masses, and they utton, Hong-Kong, and Macao was, terly failed. The Chinaman would however, steadily increasing, and trade: he did so, in the captured there were not a few who deprecated cities, before the mandarin who died farther prosecution of hostilities, not in resisting us at its gates was buried. only on the score of humanity, but The Chinese merchant of Ningpo on the advisability of letting things hired us vehicles, sold us stores, be. Had they those humanitarians wherewith to master the mandarin; who denounced the opium war-been and in the self-same day obtained a listened to, we should still have been ball-and-peacock-feather decoration trading with Canton Hong merchants, for a voluntary contribution to his and known as much of China to-day own government towards exterminas we did in the times of the Stuarts. ating us. He was only a Chinaman A more enlightened policy prevailed; -a creature who looked to profit, and in the summer of 1841 the naval and left conscience for priests and and military authorities organised a women to babble of. And what did force, and proceeded to act against they do at Canton during all that the Chinese military forces on the twelvemonth ?-simply traded. The coasts of Fokien and Chekiang pro- mandarins might look sulky; patrivinces. We knew as much of these otic retired officials, and Hong mercoasts then as we now do of those of chants who had made their fortunes Shantung and Pechelee-little or no- by the past condition of foreign comthing. The forces explored and sur- merce, might have been alarmed lest veyed as they advanced. Wherever the vested interests of Canton in the authorities resisted us, they were foreign trade should be impaired by firmly, but not inhumanly, expelled. the new order of things which then The inhabitants of the great cities only loomed in the distance; and the which fell into our hands saw that, provincial government, urged by the though irresistible in combat, we were Court to do something against the just and merciful; and it is not too barbarian, might have threatened, much to say that, quite apart from all but all wisely satisfied themselves the deeds of arms, the able operations with pouring stones into the channels VOL. LXXXVII.-NO. DXXXV. 2 M of the Pearl River, in order that their odorous city of Canton might never again be harassed by the presence of British men-of-war. But trade still went on, openly or covertly, for the native authorities soon discovered that to forbid commercial transactions with the foreigner was simply to sacrifice their revenue derivable from it, without depriving us of our tea and silks. The Cantonese were not sorry to see transferred to other quarters the punishment which their insolence and bigotry had brought down upon the Government; and having themselves reported the English to be "uncontrollable and fierce," they did not regret to find that the inhabitants of Fokien and Chekiang province were likely to come to the same conclusion. There was something truly Chinese in the sly chuckle with which your Canton friend described the astonishment and terror of the mandarins in Amoy and Chin-hae at the advent of Sir Hugh Gough and the 18th Royal Irish; and no one would have had to go farther than Hog Lane, or "Old Curiosity Street," in Canton, to become a firm believer in the truth of Rochefoucault's assertion, that "dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplaît pas." tsin, in 1858; whilst the alarmed Court were signing treaties, and decapitating those officers who failed to repel us in our approach to Pekin, all went pleasant as a marriage-bell in Shanghai, and would have done so in Canton likewise, but that we had touched the amour propre of the natives of that province by forcing a garrison of British troops upon them, and they retaliated by petty demonstrations of a purely local character. Where there is no chivalry, no generosity, in the heart of a people, there cannot be, we maintain, that patriotism which will lead them to blindly support a weak Government against a strong assailant. The Government of Pekin, it is true, can raise contributions of men or money in all the provinces of the Empire; we have experienced this, and we know its extent already; but a levy en masse--a general wish to thrust us forth at any sacrifice, personal or pecuniary-is not in the disposition of the people, or in the power of its effete Government. Monsieur Huc, who has lived more amongst Chinamen, and knows them better than perhaps any of our countrymen, confirms so much our opinions of the want of a generous or chivalrous feeling in the Chinese, that we must give his words:"At Manilla," says Huc, We have dwelt rather longer than "the number of Chinese Christians we intended upon this retrospect, but is considerable; but that may be our object is to meet the objections ascribed to the effect of a law passed made to a declaration of war or war- by the Spaniards, which forbids a like operations in China, lest trade Chinese to marry a native woman at the open ports should be stopped, until he has become a Christian. or lest the population-the masses- When the Chinese wish to marry, should rise against us. We may even therefore, they receive baptism just as they would go through any other point to the experience of 1857-58 to prove that in China such a thing is ceremony that was required. But if, unheard of, as that whilst you are even after the lapse of many years, carrying on successful military ope- the fancy takes them to return to rations in one province, the China- their own country, they leave the wife men dwelling in another one should and religion behind, and go back as be guilty of running their heads they came. It is this radical, proagainst the victor. It would be found indifference to all religion-an quite contrary to Li or reason. indifference that is scarcely conceivWhilst the battles of Canton and able by any who have not witnessed Fatshan were being fought with it-which is, in our opinion, the real Commissioner Yeh in Quang-tung, grand obstacle that has so long optrade was flourishing at Amoy, Foo- posed the progress of Christianity in chow, and Shanghai. Whilst the China. The Chinese is so completely Allies were blowing up the Taku absorbed in temporal interests, in the earthworks, and marching about Tien- things which fall under his senses, that his whole life is only materialism put in action. Lucre is the sole object on which his eyes are constantly fixed. A burning thirst to realise some profit, great or small, absorbs all his faculties-the whole energy of his being. He never pursues anything with ardour but riches and material enjoyments." With such a people—and we believe the picture drawn by Huc to be a perfect photograph of the race-we need not fear that they will throw themselves as one man between us and their Emperor, or that they will allow a lucrative trade to be interfered with, because he chooses to encourage a Manchou general in an act of treachery towards us. With respect to the lasting impression left upon the minds of the inhabitants of those portions of China where we first appear as belligerents, not as traders simply, and of the salutary influence such an impression ever after exercises in our favour, we need do little more than point to our relations since 1842 with the native officials and residents of Amoy, Ningpo, Foo-chow, and Shanghai. Every merchant and consul in China will, we feel sure, bear us out in saying that the effect there has been most salutary through a long course of seventeen years, and in marked contrast to that experienced at Canton; and at Canton we hold that much of the contempt for us arises from our having hesitated, in 1840, to convince them of the superiority of our military power, in accepting a ransom of six million dollars, instead of marching through that city an error subsequently redeemed at the sacrifice of more English treasure and more English lives than we should like the Member for Lambeth to be fully aware of. Lastly, we have but to peruse the writings, blue-books, and pamphlets upon China between 1842 and 1857, to be convinced how little progress the European communities at the five ports were making, during that period, in opening up to the knowledge of Europe that vast hive of human beings, at whose threshold they were simply tolerated. When the Treaty of Nankin was signed in 1842, and our fleet withdrawn, sanguine people-who did not understand the stolidity of the Chinaman, and who did not appreciate the extent of his country, and the barriers, moral and physical, which prevented a peaceful opening up of Chinadreamed that from those five ports would go forth a spirit of religious and commercial enterprise which would, before long, had their views been realised, have made it an Eden teeming with pious free-traders. Nothing of the sort has taken place; the old Jesuit map of China, compiled two centuries ago, is still our only guide, not only for all the interior, but even for those provinces on the seaboard of which our civilians have been so long located. Our naval surveyors, Captains Kellett and Collinson, it is true, surveyed the coast between Shanghai and Canton, but when hostilities commenced in 1857, beyond the points attained by our soldiers and sailors, our belligerents, in 1842, there was no local informa tion whatever, and it was only during the prosecution of recent hostilities that the explorations of the Peiho River to Tientsin, of the Yang-tse to Hankow, and of the West River in Quang-tung province, were either practicable, or have been accomplished. It is a homely simile, but not less true on that account, that China is an oyster, which must and will only open to our good swords and strong wills. In passing to the consideration of the best means by which this may be effected, we deprecate any idea, in the first place, of it being supposed that, because there are fourteen out of the eighteen provinces of China with which we have no relations, we deem it possible they should all be at once exploité; or, secondly, that we desire to dictate precisely to our military or naval authorities what their course of action should be. We believe that this curious and antiquated piece of topography has just been reproduced for the use of our naval and military authorities in China by the topographical department of the War Office. Of course, in the absence of any better, our officials could not do otherwise. With respect to the first point, we merely wish to show the resources of the untouched portions of that vast Empire; to point out those places or provinces immediately accessible to us; and whence, in good time, farther progress may eventually be made. We are no believers in finality; we leave that faith to the gentlemen of the Foreign Office. We hold the Treaty of Tientsin to be a very good one, but God forbid that we should say that a better one for British interests may not be required within the next fifteen or twenty years. What a blessing fifteen years of perfect peace with China will be, reader-prithee do not smile and under-estimate its value; if thou dost, read and ponder over the history of our last fourteen years' intercourse with that country, and you will then assuredly say with us, if that is Peace, in the name of all that is merciful, let us have war for twelvemonths, provided it inaugurate a healthier condition of our commercial and political relations! Let us therefore turn to our map of China, and see how, and where, access is to be attained. In the first place, if the finger be run up the seacoast, which is about two thousand miles in extent from the Gulf of Tonquin to the head of that of Leo-tong, it will be found that we have as yet only had access or trade with exactly one-half of that extent of coast-viz. the provinces of Quangtung, Fokien, and Chekiang, and a portion of Kiang-soo, leaving twothirds of Kiang-soo, all Shan-tung, Pechelee, and Shing-king, totally without a seaport open to our traders or our ships; and it is therefore apparent that, in sending our sailors to explore those provinces, we shall not interfere in any way with the portion of the sea-coast to which our merchant ships now go and come. The next consideration is, are those provinces likely to yield a profitable trade, and in what way will they affect our future relations with the Empire of China? Happily, although we possess no perfect chart of the regions in question, it so happens that the information brought by our two embassies to the capital, and the very imperfect explorations of 1858, compared with Chinese statistical and geographical information collected by our Sinologues, leave but little doubt upon this point. We find, that whereas the combined population of the three sea-coast provinces we are trading with, represents the total figure of sixty millions, that of the untouched provinces of the northern sea-coast equals fifty-nine millions,* without taking into consideration any portion of the thirty-eight million souls who dwell in Kiang-soo, the rich delta, so to speak, of the Yang-tse and Huang-Ho. Furthermore; if we consider our open ports in Southern China the gateways by which the streams of civilisation and commerce are to permeate through the provinces immediately contiguous and bordering upon them: it will be found that, whereas that region, south of the great rivers which cut China in twain, contains one hundred and thirty-six millions of Chinese, the northern half of the Empire boasts of two hundred and twentysix millions; and knowing, as we do, that every Chinaman is equally industrious, what a vision of our future trade does it conjure up, when we know there is such a field lying fallow to the trader and manufacturer of England. There is one essential difference, too, between Northern and Southern China, which must ever be borne in mind; the south is the producing, almost tropical region, whose exports must ever be in excess of imports, for the soil teems with vegetable products, and the climate is so genial that the Chinaman's wants are few. In the north, on the contrary, we have over half of its area the climate and products of the temperate zone, and much of it will be found an importing rather than an exporting country, the wealth of the provinces in metals, wools, oil, seed, timber, wheat, and pulse, enabling them to pay handsomely for the luxuries and necessaries they will soon learn to pur * See Chinese Census for 1812. |