In the light of the history of the subsequent fifty years, one is tempted to say that Lord Palmerston's dictum puts the eternal China question in a nutshell.

But when we reflect on the consequences of a man "of great experience" needing such lectures and yet left for years undisturbed at a centre of turbulence like Canton, can we greatly wonder at the periodical harvest of atrocities which followed?

The one important article in the April agreement was that suspending for a definite period of two years the operation of the article of the treaty of Nanking conferring the right of entering the city of Canton and the other ports of trade. Sir John Davis demanded either permission to "return your Excellency's visit in the city, or that a time be specifically named after which there shall be general free ingress for British subjects." To which Kiying replied, "The intention of entering the city to return my visit is excellent. The feelings of the people, however, are not yet reconciled to it." And Kiying easily had his way. Sir John thereupon explicitly sanctioned a definite delay of two years in the exercise of this treaty right, representing the privilege in his report to Lord Palmerston as of little importance.

Such, however, was not the view either of the Chinese or the British community of Canton. The throwing open of the city was by the latter considered the essential object of the recent expedition, and in their memorial to Lord Palmerston the merchants stated that the Braves having declared their determination to oppose the English at all costs, the withdrawal of our troops re infectâ "intoxicated all ranks of the people with an imaginary triumph." Exclusion from the city thus remained as a trophy in the hands of the reactionaries, to become in 1856 the crux of a new dispute and a new war.

It was no imaginary, but a very real, triumph for "the people"; and even looking back on the transaction with the advantage of fifty years' experience, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was an inversion of judgment to have a city entirely at your mercy and then yield to the city instead of making the city yield to you. The least that could have been expected was, that while the troops were on the spot they should have vindicated the treaty of Nanking once for all by opening the city gates and thus eliminating the most pregnant source of future strife.

On one point Sir John Davis was in agreement with the memorialists—namely, in "tracing back the conduct of the Canton populace to the operations of 1841, on which occasion they were spared by our forces at the rear of the city." But the merchants were pointing out to Lord Palmerston that Sir John Davis was himself implicitly following that very precedent.

The China career of Sir John Davis was destined to a tragic finale, for in the midst of a series of decidedly optimistic despatches he was startled by the news of the Hwang-chu-ke murders. Expiation was as prompt as could have been reasonably expected, the High Commissioner not daring to afford provocation for a further punitive expedition which might not have ended quite so easily as that of the previous April.

The Canton imbroglio of 1847 threw into strong relief the potency of the Chinese demos and its relation to the Central Government. The pretensions of the populace and the stress of events drove the Imperial Government into a corner and forced it to show its hand, with the result that the occult combination which had been the despair of British officials for fourteen years was resolved into its elements, and for a time made amenable to treatment. It was demonstrated by this experiment that though the Imperial Government dared not, except in extremity, oppose any popular movement, yet when necessity required the authorities assumed an easy mastery. Sir John Davis wrote in one of his latest despatches, "Kiying had clearly proved his power over the people when he chooses to exercise it." Coerced themselves, the authorities applied corresponding coercion to the people, even at the behest of foreigners, "truckling" to whom was equally disgraceful to both the Chinese parties. The interaction of the two Powers exemplified in a memorable way the principle of all Chinese intercourse, that boldness begets timidity and gentleness arrogance. When the people asserted themselves the authorities yielded and fell into line with them, and when the authorities asserted themselves the people succumbed. Such were the lessons of the Canton operations of 1847, lessons since forgotten and relearned again and again at ever-increasing cost.

But the relations between the Government and the people bore also a quasi-diplomatic character. They dealt with each other as if they were two Estates of the realm having parallel or concurrent jurisdiction. The most remarkable phase, however, of the popular pretensions which was evolved under the unaccustomed pressure of the British Minister was the attempt of the populace to diplomatise direct with him. So curious an incident may still be studied with profit. The new departure of the people was the more startling in that they had been hitherto known only as a ferocious and lawless mob addicted to outrage, whose hatred of foreigners gained in bitterness by a long immunity from reprisals. Now that they had felt the "mailed fist" of a man of fact, and were almost in the act of delivering up their own heroes for execution, they sought to parley with the Power they had despised.

The elders of the murderous villages, in the midst of his stern demands, sent a memorial to Sir John Davis full of amity and goodwill. "Come and let us reason together" was the burden of this novel address. The elders proposed a convention for the suppression of outrages, somewhat on the lines of the Kilmainham Treaty, to supersede the law of the land. "The former treaty drawn up in Kiangnan was not well understood by the common people"; in other words, it was wanting in validity, for "the resolutions of Government are in nowise to be compared to those self-imposed by the people.... Were not this preferable to the fruitless proclamations and manifestos of government?" "It has, therefore," they say, "been resolved to invite the upright and influential gentry and literati of the whole city to meet together, and, in concert with the wealthy and important merchants of your honourable nation, establish a compact of peace."

Though he could not receive such a communication officially, Sir John Davis forwarded a copy to the Foreign Office, to whom he imparted his belief that the author was no other than Kiying himself—a surmise which was soon confirmed. The paper was extensively circulated; its arguments and phraseology were adopted by Kiying in his official correspondence with Sir John Davis. "The compact of peace" which closed their negotiations amounted to no more, indeed, than police protection for foreigners in their country walks, which, however, was counterbalanced by a new restriction excluding them from the villages as they had already been from the city. The interesting point is that, such as it was, it was the proposal of the people ratified by the two plenipotentiaries.

From this hurried sketch of affairs at Canton during the first five years of the new intercourse we see that the secular policy of China had undergone no change as a result of the treaty. The settled determination of the Government to exclude foreigners from the country and keep them in strict subjection at the farthest maritime outpost of the empire had been overcome by violence; but the Chinese never abandoned the hope of retrieving their position in whole or in part, nor did they forego any opportunity of avenging their military defeat. A frontal attack being out of the question, the invader could be perpetually worried by guerilla tactics, his sentries caught napping, his chiefs bamboozled: what had been lost through force might thus be won back by force and fraud judiciously blended, for craft is the natural resource of the weak. The conditions of the contest have varied with the international developments of fifty years, but time has worked no change in the nature of the struggle East v. West.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NEW TREATY PORTS—FOOCHOW, AMOY, NINGPO.

Visit of Chinese commissioners to Hongkong—A supplementary treaty negotiated—Chinese thereby obtain control of junk trade of colony—Vain efforts to recover the lost ground—New ports criticised—Amoy—Alcock's temporary residence there, 1844—Interpreter Parkes—Foochow—Bad beginning—Insolence of mandarin and mob—Lost ground recovered during Alcock's consulate—His family arrive—Little trade—Difficulties of diverting the Bohea trade from old routes—Alcock's commercial reports—Their grasp of salient points in a fresh range of subjects.

It accorded with the fitness of things that the negotiator of the treaty should remain to carry out its provisions. Sir Henry Pottinger was appointed the first Governor of Hongkong, Chief Superintendent of Trade, and Minister Plenipotentiary for Great Britain; Kiying and two associates Imperial Commissioners for China. Intercourse between them was of the most agreeable character. Though the wound to the pride of China was deep and still fresh, the Imperial Commissioners' acceptance of the new state of things exceeded what the most stoical philosophy could call for. They came in person, on invitation, to the alienated island, there to exchange the ratifications of the Nanking treaty; entered heartily into the life of the community, showed great interest in their nascent institutions, and "returned to Canton charmed with English civilisation." China then was really converted, and Kiying the patron saint of the young colony! That adroit Manchu, however, had a purpose to serve by his effusive bonhomie: it was nothing less than to undermine the treaty of Nanking.

So long as Sir Henry Pottinger was negotiating under the guns of her Majesty's ships he was master of the situation, but when pitted against the Chinese in the open field the position was reversed, for they had definite aims and knew how to gain them. Arrangements were found necessary for the conduct of trade at the five consular ports; the relations between the colony of Hongkong and the empire of China, as regards criminals, debtors, &c., required definition; and, more important still, the native shipping frequenting its harbour had to be regulated. The negotiations required for these purposes afforded Kiying a favourable opportunity for giving effect to the reactionary policy of the Chinese Government. The supplementary treaty was negotiated at the Bogue between Sir Henry Pottinger and Kiying in October 1843. The Chinese version seems to have been signed by the British agent without his having before him a textual English translation: by its provisions the Chinese authorities engaged to protect the junk traffic in colonial waters. Sir Henry Pottinger did not realise the kind of weapon he had thus placed in the hands of his friends until its damaging effects were demonstrated by experience. Then what had been lost by diplomacy was sought to be partially regained by persuasion. To this end strenuous efforts were made by successive governors of Hongkong to induce Kiying to forego some of the powers which had been inadvertently conferred on him, as their exercise was proving ruinous to the trade of the island. But as this result was precisely what had been intended by the Chinese, nothing short of another war would have moved them to yield a single point.

His hesitation to exercise the right of entry into the city of Canton conferred by the treaty of Nanking, while allowing the Chinese the full advantage of the concessions gained by them under the supplementary treaty, must likewise be held as a blemish on the policy of Sir Henry Pottinger. The best palliation of these errors of the first treaty-maker is perhaps to be found in the fact that his successors, with many years of actual experience to guide them, have fallen into the same errors of both omission and commission.

In other respects Sir Henry Pottinger's arrangements for giving effect to the treaty seem to have been as practical as the untried circumstances would allow.

The opening of the new ports, with the exception of Shanghai, was unfavourably commented upon by a section of the English press, not perhaps unwilling to score a point against the "Tory Government, which was alone answerable for the treaty of Nanking." They denounced the opening of so many ports on the ground that it would only multiply points of collision with the Chinese. Three years later the 'Times' pronounced "Amoy, Foochow, and Ningpo as good for nothing as places of trade," while Hongkong itself was equally despised as a commercial colony. Some of the journals resuscitated the idea which had been freely discussed during the years preceding the war, and advocated the acquisition in sovereignty of islands as emporia instead of ports on the mainland, and it is worthy of remark that the same idea was again revived by Mr Cobden twenty years later. "Get two other small islands," he said in 1864; "merely establish them as free ports" on the model of Hongkong. And this with a view to superseding the treaty ports on the coast, where trade had been established for twenty years.

Three of the new ports—Shanghai, Ningpo, and Amoy—were opened under Sir Henry Pottinger's auspices in 1843; Foochow in 1844. These places, distributed at approximately equal intervals along the coast-line of 1000 miles between Shanghai and Canton, were not chosen at random. They had all been at one time or another entrepots of foreign commerce with either Europe, Southern Asia, or Japan. Foochow had been many years before strongly recommended by one of the East India Company's tea-tasters as most desirable for the shipment of tea. An expedition equipped by the Company under Mr Hamilton Lindsay, who, like the other servants of the Company, was versed in the Chinese language, visited the northern coast in the chartered ship Amherst in 1832, and gained the first authentic information concerning the commercial capabilities of Shanghai. Mr Gutzlaff, who acted as secretary and coadjutor to Mr Lindsay's mission, made several adventurous voyages, including one in Chinese disguise, in a native junk, to Tientsin. Though the coast had not yet been surveyed, and navigation was in consequence somewhat dangerous, a good deal of fairly accurate information, some of it already obsolete, was by these means placed at the disposal of those who made the selection of the treaty ports. Ningpo was noted for its literary culture, for the respectability and intelligence of its inhabitants, and their friendly disposition towards foreigners. But although it was the entrepot of a flourishing coasting trade, the shallowness of its river, the want of anchorage at its embouchure, and its vicinity to Shanghai, combined to preclude the growth of foreign commerce at the port of Ningpo.

It was to Foochow that Mr Alcock was appointed in 1844, by Mr Davis (as he then was), who had recently succeeded Sir Henry Pottinger. The new consul, however, made his actual début at Amoy, where he was detained for four months, from November 1844 to March 1845, acting for the titular consul at that port. There he at once displayed that energy and clear-sightedness which were to become so conspicuous in his subsequent career. Two important matters had to be arranged within the period named—the evacuation of the island of Kulangsu by the British garrison and the future residence of the consul. Trifling as this last may seem, it was a matter of no small consideration in China, where, to paraphrase Polonius, the dwelling oft proclaims the man. It was one of the innumerable devices of the Chinese authorities for degrading new-comers in the eyes of the populace to force them to live, as at Canton, within a confined space or in squalid tenements. Mr Alcock knew by instinct the importance of prestige, while his Peninsular training had taught him the value of sanitation. Following these two guiding stars, he overbore the obstruction of the officials, and not only obtained a commodious site but had a house built to his own specification during his temporary incumbency of the office. That, and his general bearing towards the authorities, stamped on the Amoy consulate the impress of dignity which has never been wholly effaced. He was most fortunate, it must be allowed, in his instruments, chiefly in the interpreter whom he found at Amoy, a man, or rather a boy—for he was only sixteen—entirely after his own heart. That was Harry Parkes, one of the bravest and best of our empire-builders. It is indeed to the journals and letters of Sir Harry Parkes, edited by Mr Stanley Lane-Poole, and to notes supplied for that biography by Sir Rutherford Alcock himself in 1893, that we are chiefly indebted for the record of their joint proceedings at Amoy, Foochow, and to some extent also Shanghai, from 1844 to 1848. The consul made a favourable first impression on the young interpreter, who described him in a family letter as "tall but slimly made, standing about six feet in his boots; ... very gentlemanly in his manners and address, and exceedingly polite." It was not, however, till he reached his proper post, Foochow, that the mettle of the new consul and interpreter was seriously tested.

Foochow was of superior rank to the other two ports, being, like Canton, at once a provincial capital and the seat of a governor-general or viceroy of two provinces—namely, Fukien and Chêkiang—and possessing a Manchu garrison. The Chinese Government was believed to have been most reluctant to open Foochow as a trading port at all, which seemed reason enough for the British negotiators insisting on its being opened. Its trade was small, which perhaps rendered the port the more suitable for the experimental purpose of testing the principles which were to govern the new intercourse.

As the leading occurrences there have been set forth at some length by Mr Stanley Lane-Poole in the above-mentioned work, there is the less reason for us to linger over details. We find that on arrival at the end of March 1845 Mr Alcock discovered that he had not to maintain, but to regain, the prestige which had already been lost at Foochow. Canton was, in fact, repeating itself both as regards the arrogance of the Chinese and the acquiescence of British officials. Exclusion from the city and various other indignities had been imposed on the consul, who, on his part, had followed the course which had proved so fatal at Canton of currying favour by submission. Living in a shed,[14] where Mr Davis on a flying visit was ashamed to receive return calls from the native authorities, keeping up no great state, afraid even to hoist his consular flag for fear of hurting the feelings of the Chinese, the consul soon brought upon himself and his nationals the inevitable consequences of his humility. Mob violence and outrages, encouraged at first by the authorities in order to cow the foreigners, had attained dimensions which at last alarmed the authorities themselves, all within two years of the opening of the port. Mr Alcock set himself sternly to oppose this downward current, but a year elapsed before the violence of the people and the studied rudeness of the officials were finally stamped out. For, curiously enough, as Mr Lane-Poole has so well pointed out, every outrage in Canton found its echo at Foochow, showing clearly where lay the "centre of disturbance," as our meteorologists express it.

In the end, however, the ascendancy of the British authority was completely achieved. The consul and the interpreter between them succeeded in getting proud Tartars put in the common pillory and lesser ruffians severely flogged, while before they left Foochow in 1846 they had extorted from the authorities substantial pecuniary compensation for injuries sustained by British subjects. The credit of these vigorous measures no doubt belonged in the first instance to Sir John Davis, the chief superintendent, who had been so struck with the deplorable condition of things on his first official visit to the port in 1844 that he empowered the new consul to find the remedy. The effect of this resolute policy on the mandarins was as prompt and natural as the effect of the submissive policy had been, and it is instructive to read the testimony of Sir John Davis that, after redress had been exacted, "the consul was on the best terms with the local authorities," which is the perpetual lesson taught in all our dealings with the Chinese.

Foochow is distinguished among the coast ports of China by the beauty and even grandeur of its scenery and the comparative salubrity of its climate. The city itself contains above half a million of people, covers an extensive area on the left bank of the river Min, and is connected with the foreign quarter by a stone bridge of forty-five "arches," which are not arches but spaces between the piers on which huge granite slabs are laid horizontally, forming the roadway. The houses and business premises of the merchants, the custom-house and foreign consulates, are all now situated on Nantai, an island of some twenty miles in circumference, which divides the main stream of the Min from its tributary, the Yungfu. In the early days the British consulate was located within the walled city, in the grounds of a Buddhist temple, three miles from the landing-place and business quarter on Nantai, and approached through narrow and exceedingly foul-smelling streets.

Mrs Alcock joined her husband as soon as tolerable accommodation could be prepared for her, and being the first foreign lady who had set foot in the city, her entry excited no small curiosity among the people. A year later Mrs and Miss Bacon, Mrs Alcock's mother and sister, were added to the family party, and though curiosity was still keen, they were safely escorted through the surging crowd to their peaceful enclave in the heart of the city. The situation was suggestive of monastic life. Being on high ground the consulate commanded a superb mountain view, with the two rivers issuing from their recesses and the great city lying below forming a picturesque foreground, while in the middle distance the terraced rice-fields showed in their season the tenderest of all greens. The circumstances were conducive to the idyllic life of which we get a glimpse in the biography of Sir Harry Parkes, who shared it. He speaks in the warmest terms of the kindness he received from Mr and Mrs Alcock, who tended him through a fever which, but for the medical skill of the consul—no other professional aid being available—must have ended fatally. They helped him with books, enlarged his field of culture, and there is no doubt that daily intercourse with this genial and accomplished family did much to supply the want of that liberal education from which the boy had been untimely cut adrift. The value of such parental influence to a lad who had left school at thirteen can hardly be over-estimated, and he did not exaggerate in writing, "I can never repay the Alcocks the lasting obligations I am under to them."

During the first few years there was practically no foreign trade at Foochow except in opium, which was conducted from a sea base beyond port limits, a trade which was invisible alike to Chinese and British authorities in the sense in which harlequin is invisible to clown and pantaloon. The spasmodic attempts which were made to open up a market for British manufactures met with no encouragement, for only one British merchant maintained a precarious existence, and the question of abandoning the port was mooted. The prospect of commercial development at Foochow depended on its vicinity to that classic centre of the tea cultivation, the famous Bohea range, about 250 miles to the westward, whose name, however, was used to cover many inferior products. Ten years more elapsed before this advantageous position was turned to practical account, owing to the serious obstacles that stood in the way of changing the established trade route to Canton and the absence of aggressive energy sufficient to overcome them. Through the enterprise of an American merchant in alliance with Chinese, Foochow began to be a shipping port for tea about the year 1853, growing year by year in importance until it rivalled Canton and Shanghai. But as its prosperity has always rested on the single article, the fortunes of the port have necessarily fallen with the general decay of the Chinese tea trade.

Apart from the task of putting the official intercourse on a good working basis, of maintaining order between the few foreigners, residents, and visitors, and the native population, the consular duties at a port like Foochow were necessarily of the lightest description. But it was not in Mr Alcock's nature to make a sinecure of his office. He was a stranger to the country, about which he had everything to learn. He was surrounded by problems all of great interest, and some of them pressing urgently for solution, and he had to make a success of his port or "know the reason why." Among the fruits of his labours during the latter part of his term at Foochow are a series of commercial reports, partly published by Government, which bear witness to exhaustive research into every circumstance having any bearing on the genesis of trade, and applying to those local, and to him absolutely novel, conditions the great root principles which are of universal validity. Considering how alien to his previous experience was the whole range of such subjects, his at once grappling with them and firmly seizing their salient features showed a mind of no common capacity. For there was nothing perfunctory about those early treatises; on the contrary, they were at once more polished and more profound than most things of the same kind which have appeared during the subsequent half century. The principal generalisations of recent commentators on the trade of China were in fact set forth in the three Foochow consular reports of 1845-46, while many supposed new lights which the discussions of the last few years have shed on Chinese character and methods had been already displayed, and in a more perfect form, in the buried records of the superintendency of trade in China.

CHAPTER IX.

SHANGHAI.

Shanghai—Importance of its situation—Consul Balfour—Germ of municipal institutions—The foreign settlements—Confidence and civility of the natives—Alcock appointed consul, 1846—Excursions into the country—Their limitations—Responsibilities of consuls.

Of the four new ports, Shanghai, by far the most important, had been fortunate in the selection of its first consul. This was Captain George Balfour of the Madras Artillery, who, like a wise master-builder, laid the foundations of what is now one of the greatest emporia in the world. Captain Balfour had managed the beginnings of the settlement so judiciously that the merchants enjoyed the fullest facilities for prosecuting their business, while the consul maintained good relations with the native authorities and no hostile feeling existed between the foreign and native communities. The circumstances of the place were favourable to all this: the foreign residents were not, as at Canton, confined to a narrow space; they had abundance of elbow-room and perfect freedom of movement in the surrounding district, which was well provided with footpaths and an excellent system of waterways. The people of that part of the country are of a peaceable and rather timid disposition. Altogether, a healthy condition of things had grown up, there seemed to be no grievance felt on either side, while the material prosperity of the natives rapidly increased as a result of a great and expanding foreign trade, to which they had never been accustomed. The regulation of business accommodation and residence was very simple and worked automatically. A certain area, ample for every purpose that could be foreseen, was set apart by the Chinese Government for the residence of foreigners, the location having been indicated by Sir Henry Pottinger on his way from Nanking after the signing of the treaty. The rights of the native proprietors were in no way interfered with, the merchants and others who desired to settle were at liberty to deal with the natives for the purchase of building lots, and as the prices paid were so much above the normal value of the land there was no essential difficulty in effecting purchases. But there being so many interested parties, several years elapsed before the whole area had passed into the possession of foreign occupants. The land remained the property of the Crown, held under perpetual lease, subject only to a small ground-rent, which was collected through the consulates, as at this day. Roads were gradually marked out and jetties for boats were built on the river frontage, and what is now a municipal council served by a large secretarial staff and an imposing body of police, and handling a budget amounting to £130,000, came into existence under the modest title of a "Committee for Roads and Jetties." In the beginning there seems to have been an idea of forming separate reservations of land for the subjects of the three treaty Powers—Great Britain, France, and the United States; but the exigencies of business soon effaced the theoretical distinction as between England and America, whose separate ideal settlements were merged for all practical purposes into one cosmopolitan colony, in which the Powers coming later on the scene enjoyed the same rights as the original pioneers.

The level country round Shanghai was, as we have said, very favourable for excursions by land and water, affording tourists and sportsmen congenial recreation. The district was in those days remarkably well stocked with game. Pheasants of the "ring-necked" variety, now so predominant in English preserves, abounded close up to the city wall, and were sometimes found in the gardens of the foreign residents. Snipe, quail, and wildfowl were plentiful in their season, the last named in great variety. All classes of the foreign community took advantage of the freedom of locomotion which they enjoyed. Newly arrived missionaries, no less than newly arrived sportsmen, were encouraged by the ease and safety with which they could prosecute their vocation in the towns and villages accessible from Shanghai. Within the radius authorised by treaty the foreigners soon became familiar objects in a district which is reckoned to support a population as dense as that of Belgium. Not only did friendly relations exist, but a wonderful degree of confidence was established between the natives and foreign tourists. It was not the custom in those days for foreigners to carry money, the only coinage available being of a clumsy and non-portable character. They paid their way by "chits" or orders upon their comprador, and it was not uncommon for them in those early days to pay for supplies during their excursions into the interior by a few hieroglyphics pencilled on a scrap of paper, which the confiding peasant accepted in perfect good faith, and with so little apprehension that sometimes a considerable interval would elapse before presentation of these primitive cheques—until, perhaps, the holder had occasion to make a journey to Shanghai.

But although the foreigner in his proper costume moved freely within the prescribed area, it was considered hazardous to venture beyond these limits. It was also, of course, a nominal contravention of the treaty, for the consequences of which the traveller must take the whole risk. Those, therefore—and they were exceedingly few—who could not repress the desire to penetrate into the interior adopted as a disguise the costume of the natives. It was thus that Fortune made his explorations into the tea districts of China. The notion that either difficulty or danger attended these distant excursions gradually disappeared, and about the year 1855 sportsmen and travellers began to explore the forbidden country without any disguise at all, to the great amusement of the populace, and to the profit of the priests of the temples where they found accommodation.

The consular authorities occupied a peculiar and highly responsible position in China. Their nationals being exempt from native jurisdiction, and subject only to the laws of their own country, promulgated, interpreted, and, when occasion arose, executed, by the consul, that functionary was morally answerable to the people and the Government of China for the good behaviour of his countrymen. On the other hand, it was his primary duty to defend them against all aggression of the Chinese. Between these two opposite duties the consul needed all the discretion, courage, and good judgment that he could command; and it was but natural that individual temperament or the pressure of local circumstances should cause diversity in the mode in which the consuls interpreted their instructions and balanced the different claims of their public duty. As has been said before, Captain Balfour had shown himself most judicious in all his arrangements for the protection and advancement of his countrymen in Shanghai. Foreseeing, notwithstanding the peaceable disposition of the natives, that risks might attend unfettered intercourse with the interior, he had thought it prudent to restrict the rambles of British subjects to the limits of a twenty-four hours' journey from Shanghai,—a limit which coincided with curious exactness with the "thirty-mile radius" of defence against the rebels which was laid down by Admiral Hope eighteen years later.

I. THE TSINGPU AFFAIR.

Attack on three missionaries—Redress extorted by Consul Alcock—Its lasting effect.

Affairs in Shanghai had followed a placid and uneventful course until an incident occurred which brought into sudden activity the latent forces of disorder. Within little more than a year after the arrival of Mr Alcock at his new post an outrage was perpetrated on the persons of three English missionaries, which led to the first and the last important struggle between the British and Chinese authorities in Shanghai. The assailants of Messrs Medhurst, Lockhart, and Muirhead, the three missionaries concerned, were not the peaceably disposed natives of the place, but the discharged crews of the Government grain-junks, who had been cast adrift by the officials and left to shift for themselves after the manner of disbanded soldiers. The attack took place at a small walled town called Tsingpu, within the authorised radius, and the three Englishmen came very near losing their lives. Mr Alcock lost not a moment in demanding full redress from the Chinese authorities, who instinctively sheltered themselves under the old evasive pleas which had proved so effective at Canton. It happened that the highest local official, the Taotai, had had experience of the southern port, and, entirely unaware that he was confronted in Shanghai with a man of very different calibre from any he had encountered before, he brought out all the rusty weapons of the Canton armoury, in sure and certain hope of reducing the consul's demands to nullity. Evasion being exhausted, intimidation was tried, and the consul and his interpreter were threatened with the vengeance of an outraged people, quite in the Canton manner. But intimidation was the very worst tactics to try on two Englishmen of the stamp of Alcock and Parkes, and when that card had been played the Chinese game was up.

The situation was one of those critical ones that test moral stamina, that discriminate crucially between a man and a copying-machine. It was also one which illuminated, as by an electric flash, the pivotal point of all our relations with China then as now, for the principle never grows old. It is therefore important to set forth the part played by the responsible officer, the support he obtained, the risks he ran, and the effective results of his action. An absolutely unprovoked murderous outrage had been perpetrated on three Englishmen; the Chinese authorities refused redress with insolence and evasion; acquiescence in the denial of justice would have been as fatal to future good relations at Shanghai as it had been in the previous decade in Canton. What was the official charged with the protection of his countrymen to do? He had no instructions except to conciliate the Chinese; there was no telegraph to England; communication even with the chief superintendent of trade at Hongkong, 850 miles off, was dependent on chance sailing vessels. Delay was equivalent to surrender. Now or never was the peremptory alternative presented to the consul, who, taking his official life in his hands, had to decide and act on his own personal responsibility. Had time allowed of an exchange of views with the plenipotentiary in Hongkong, we know for certain that nothing would have been done, for the first announcement of Mr Alcock's strong measures filled Mr Bonham (who had just succeeded Sir John Davis) with genuine alarm.

Fortunately for the consul and for the peaceful development of British trade, one of Palmerston's specific instructions had been obeyed in Shanghai. There was a British ship of war in port, the 10-gun brig Childers, and, what was of still more importance, a real British man on board of her, Commander Pitman, who shared to the full the Consul's responsibility for what was done.

The measures adopted by Consul Alcock—when negotiation was exhausted—were to announce to the Chinese authorities that, until satisfaction had been obtained, no duties should be paid on cargo imported or exported in British ships: furthermore, that the great junk fleet of 1400 sail, laden and ready for sea with the tribute rice for Peking, should not be allowed to leave the port. The Childers, moored in the stream below the junk anchorage, was in a position to make this a most effective blockade. The rage of the Taotai rose to fever heat, and it was then he threatened, and no doubt attempted to inflame the populace and the whole vagabond class. The Taotai ordered some of the rice-laden junks to proceed; but though there were fifty war-junks to guard them, the masters dared not attempt to pass the ideal barrier thrown across the river by the resolute Captain Pitman.

The outrage took place on the 8th of March. On the 13th the consul presented an ultimatum to the Taotai giving him forty-eight hours to produce the criminals. This being disregarded, the measures above referred to were enforced, with the full approval, it may be mentioned, of the consuls of the two other treaty Powers. At the same time Vice-Consul Robertson, with Parkes for interpreter, was despatched to Nanking on board her Majesty's ship Espiègle to lay the whole case before the viceroy of Kiangnan. The matter was there promptly attended to, full redress was ordered, and the culprits punished exactly three weeks after the assault. The embargo on the rice-junks was removed, and affairs resumed their normal course.[15] The effect of this lesson has never been effaced, harmony having prevailed between British and Chinese officials and people in Shanghai and the province from that day to this.

The circumstances were of course very unusual which placed such ready means of bloodless coercion in the hands of the British consul. The fortuitous coincidence of the time of the outrage with the period of departure of the grain fleet placed a weapon in the consul's hands which of itself would have eventually brought the Chinese to terms, should the matter in the mean time not have been taken out of the hands of the consul and dealt with from Hongkong by the plenipotentiary, whose views have been given above. So soon as the detention of the grain fleet became known to the Government of Peking, orders of a very drastic nature would undoubtedly have been despatched to the viceroy of the province, and both he and his subordinate would have been made answerable for their incompetence in imperilling the supply of rice for the Government. But the pressure was doubly intensified by the appearance of a foreign ship of war under the walls of Nanking. Six years had not elapsed since a similar demonstration had brought the Government to its knees, and to have allowed such an invasion a second time would have drawn down the imperial wrath on the luckless provincial authorities. For Nanking differs from the other provincial capitals, such as Canton and Foochow, inasmuch as it is near the strategic centre of the empire, commanding the main artery of communication with the interior of the country, at the point of intersection of the Yangtze river by the famous Imperial Canal which connects the capital with the richest region in the Yangtze valley. A blockade of the sea-going grain fleet with a simultaneous blockade of these inland waters, so easily effected, would have throttled China. The viceroy, who sent a report on the transaction to the throne by special express, explained away his own hasty action by saying "that the appearance of the barbarian chiefs at the provincial city may have caused anxiety in the sacred breast."

The verdict of the Home Government on the episode was substantially the same as that on Sir John Davis's brilliant expedition on the Canton river the year before: "Gratified with your success, but don't do it again;" in other words, "Do it at your peril, leaving us to applaud or repudiate according to the event." Perhaps it would be more just to say that there were then, as always, conflicting views in the British Cabinet, the apparent vacillations of the Government depending a good deal on which of its members happened, for the moment, to have the parole,—whether the Foreign Secretary, the Colonial Secretary, or other Minister indited the despatch.

Commenting some years later on the general question of our relations with China, Mr Alcock wrote as follows: "A salutary dread of the immediate consequences of violence offered to British subjects, certainty of its creating greater trouble and danger to the native authorities personally than even the most vigorous efforts to protect the foreigners and seize their assailants will entail, seems to be the best and only protection in this country for Englishmen." Palmerston himself could not have laid down the law and common-sense of the case with greater precision.

II. REBELLION.

Taiping rebellion—Rebel occupation of Shanghai—Encroachment of investing force on foreign settlement—Driven off by Anglo-American forces—The French quarrel with insurgents—Consequent enlargement of French concession—The assumption of self-government by the Anglo-American community—Exemplary conduct of Chinese authorities after their defeat—French belligerency—Difficult question of neutrality—Treatment of native refugees.

Affairs went smoothly and prosperously in Shanghai for another five years, when the greatest calamity that has visited China in modern times cast its shadow on the province and on the city. The appalling ravages of the Taiping rebellion, which, originating in the southern province of Kwangsi, followed the great trade-routes to the Yangtze-kiang and down the course of that stream, leaving absolute desolation in its wake, reached the southern capital, Nanking, on March 8, 1853. The city was paralysed, and surrendered on the 19th, apparently without a struggle; the whole Tartar garrison, numbering 20,000, were put ruthlessly to the sword, not a soul being spared. The whole country, officials and people alike, was thrown into a state of abject fear. The ease with which such Government forces as there were succumbed to the onslaught of the rebel hordes may very well have prompted the rowdy element, which exists more or less everywhere, to make raids on their own account. Such a band, belonging as was supposed to certain secret societies, but without any connection with the main body of the Taipings, who were at the time applying fire and sword to the populous towns on the Yangtze, surprised and captured the walled city of Shanghai. "The news," says an eyewitness, "came like thunder from a clear sky;" there was no thought of the city being in danger either from within or without. The people were panic-stricken at first, but fear with them seemed near akin to criminality, and the scene enacted was what was repeated thousands of times and over a wide area—one of general pillage and destruction. "Several hundred of the usually innocent and simple country-folk—who must have scented their prey as the eagle does the carcass, for as yet it was early morning—fell upon the custom-house, whence they carried off chairs, tables, windows, doors, everything that was portable, leaving the floor littered with books and papers, which were being kicked about and trodden on in a most unceremonious way."