Alexander Michie

“ The life history of Sir Rutherford Alcock is that of the progressive development of a sterling character making in all circumstances the most of itself, self-reliant, self-supporting, without friends or fortune, without interest or advantage of any kind whatsoever. From first to last the record is clear, without sediment or anything requiring to be veiled or extenuated. Every achievement, great or small, is stamped with the hall-mark of duty, of unfaltering devotion to the service of the nation and to the interests of humanity. ”

“ As the sun rose higher the mist was dispersed, and the bold rugged outline of the Shantung coast was unveiled before us. The clear blue water was alive with Chinese coasting craft, small and large, of most picturesque appearance. The heavy, unwieldy junks of northern China lay almost motionless, their widespread sails hanging idly to the mast, for there was just wind enough to ripple the surface of the water in long patches, leaving large spaces of glassy smoothness untouched by the breeze.
The crews of the northern junks are hardy stalwart fellows, inured to labour, and zealous in their work. ”

“ The functionaries of the custom-house, with whom alone the foreign lay community had contact, also wore swords as part of their official uniform, which they placed with delicate ceremony on a rack in front of them as they sat on their mats at the receipt of custom,—for there were no chairs, and the habitual posture was squatting on the hams and heels. To the aristocratic caste the Japanese people were as absolutely submissive as if every two-sworded man wielded the power of life and death, which, so far as the common people were concerned, was not far from the simple truth. ”

“ Never was I more grateful than when we gained admission to the hotel "Russia" at Nijni-Novgorod, at four o'clock next morning. Under the genial influence of a warm room and a dry bed, our miseries were soon forgotten, and the horrible experiences of the night dissolved into a dream that helped to intensify present enjoyment. "Sweet is pleasure after pain." There is no rest without labour, and happiness itself would be insipid without a seasoning of misery. Life, to be really enjoyed, must be chequered with light and shadow. ”

“ The traffic adjusts itself with little friction. China employs no police,—things arrange themselves by their own interaction, as the pebbles do on the sea-shore; and for most of the purposes of life the people are their own law-makers and their own executive. The Chinese system of government is to govern as little as possible—to let the country rule itself. So when a strange element demanded accommodation in the busy streets and congested gateways of Peking, without rules or supervision, it had to find its level among the rest by friction and concussion. ”

“ The trade was not made for Government policy, but the policy for the trade, whose life-blood was absolute liberty of action and a free course for individual initiative. The success of British trade as a whole could only be the aggregate of the separate successes not otherwise attainable than by each member of the mercantile fraternity performing his own part with singleness of purpose. Nothing certainly could ever justify any trader in foregoing a chance of gain for the sake of an ideal benefit to the community, even if it were likely to be realised. ”

“ A man who frequently passes days and nights with no society, except the howling waste below, and the deep blue sky above, has his imagination set free from the trammels of the world of fact. He has no resources but in the spirit-world, and it is not unnatural that his fancy should people the air with superior intelligences, whose voices are heard in the desert winds or the rustling leaves of the forest. ”

“ The foreign Powers have been openly and persistently defied—their people massacred throughout the empire. Yet the nations so hated and flouted assume that they have a mission to fulfil in setting up a stable Government in China, a Government to be created for their own convenience, with which they may in future negotiate,—a puppet Government, therefore, yet one which is to maintain peace and good order throughout a vast empire by the prestige of its authority over a loyal and devoted people. ”

“ It is most instructive to mark, as the key to many failures, how, like successive generations of youth, successive British agents in China have failed to profit by the experience of their predecessors, and have had in so many cases to buy their own at the expense of their country; for we see still the same thing indefinitely repeating itself, like a recurring decimal. Even at this the end of the nineteenth century we seem as far off as ever from laying hold of any saving principle, though it stares at us out of the whole panorama of our intercourse. ”

“ Whether we consider the vast numbers of men and women whose destiny was involved, the radical character of the change effected, the formidable opposition which had to be borne down, or the germs of expansion which it implanted into the Russian people, moulding the whole future history of the nation, this act of the Emperor of Russia stands unrivalled as a measure of reform in the history of the world. Many other reforms have been introduced during the present reign, but the emancipation of the serfs is an achievement in itself worthy of a lifetime. ”

“ With the approach of winter an antediluvian rival is introduced upon the scene, in the shape of the well-known two-humped camel, which is then shaggy, dignified, and in really grand form. Intolerant of heat, but impervious to cold, the camels, after passing the summer on the grass-lands of the Mongolian plateau, are brought down in droves to the great fair held on a large open space outside the Northern Wall. The coming of the camels with their bronzed and heavily booted riders is like a whiff of the free air of the desert. ”

“ The influence of Lord Palmerston on Chinese affairs during his long public career was so remarkable, that the ebb and flow of British prestige may be traced as closely by his periods of office as the course of the oceanic tide by the phases of the moon. Let any patriotic Englishman ransack the records of the sixty odd years of that statesman's full activity, and he will find no despatch or speech on the subject of China, even down to our own day, that will afford him such genuine satisfaction as those emanating from Lord Palmerston. ”

“ The hairy, greasy, drunk-when-he-can Russian moujik; the small-eyed cunning Russian shop-keeper; a sprinkling of fine, dirty, rough-looking Bouriats, a Tartar tribe subject to Russia; a few Mongols who have business,—for their authorities, instigated by the Chinese government, are jealously watchful of their crossing the frontier,—and a few astute Chinese, the most business-like of the whole crowd.
The merchants of Kiachta are mostly reported to be enormously wealthy—several millions of roubles are not considered too much to ascribe to the most prosperous of them. ”

“ For the weaker the Chinese Government becomes the greater will be its need of correction and guidance. But we have only to imagine half-a-dozen Powers, each aspiring, and some of them fully resolved, to exercise their special veto over the proposals of the others, to realise the tragic complexity of the international problems which now present themselves for solution. A government holding together three hundred millions of people ripened for rebellion, potentially at war with the rest of the world, and yet governing under multiple tutelage—such is the prospect before us. ”

“ Sir F. Bruce was much too wise a man not to be perfectly conscious of the negative result of foreign diplomacy in Peking. His private letters, some of which were published by Mr Lay in 1864, are more emphatic on the point than his public despatches. He saw it was a case for desperate remedies, but unfortunately he had no remedy except such as aggravated the disease. Like a drowning man, Sir Frederick Bruce clutched at one straw, then another—first at the inspectorate of customs, then at the collective body of his colleagues—to redress the balance which lay so heavily against him. ”

“ China was in the position of a powerful, wealthy, populous, and civilised nation, dealing with barbarians. If men were wanted, the warlike Manchus were ready at call. If money was wanted, the resources of China, with her vast producing population, were immeasurably superior to those of Russia, and perhaps to any country in the world at that time. The Chinese were acting on the defensive, and near home. The government was vigorous and intelligent, and naturally confident of its own superiority. The Russian people were, on the other hand, ignorant, servile, and degraded. ”

“ These simple-minded herdsmen, chaffering with shrewd Chinese hucksters, or sitting, where they seem to have been born, between the high humps of their slow-moving beasts, form picturesque groups in the imperial city, the more interesting that their appearance is pathetically suggestive of an order which is passing away. The Grand Khan, dispensing favours to his loyal tributaries, has come ominously near to being a mere tradition. These very sheepskin-coated camel-drivers are the only buffer remaining between the receding empire and the advancing tide of foreign encroachment from the north. ”

“ Sir Charles Shaw was himself a typical soldier by nature and by practice. Circumstances alone would determine whether it should be as a soldier of fortune, a patriot defending hearths and homes, or as an Ishmaelite adventurer, that his sword would be unsheathed. The sporting and adventurous instinct scents danger afar, like the war-horse in the book of Job which laughs at the spears. ”

“ The peasant in Siberia, on the other hand, is absolutely free in all things to follow the bent of his own will. He has no master to dread and serve, and owes obedience to nothing but the law of the land. The Siberian peasantry are treated with every liberality by the government, whose ruling purpose with respect to that country is to colonise it with industrious communities, who will turn its natural wealth to account, and become an arm of support to the state. ”

“ These fierce struggles, the sudden arousing to intensity of dormant passions, the dislocation of the whole structure of Japanese polity, represented to the foreign nations merely the risks and sacrifices incidental to the expansion of their commerce. In order to compel the Government to permit the people to exchange the products of their soil for the merchandise of the strangers within their gates, the labour, anxiety, and expense which we have only faintly indicated were voluntarily incurred by the Western treaty Powers, and by them in turn forced on the reluctant rulers of Japan. ”