Alexander Michie

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Intercommunion between bodies so alien was as the welding of heterogeneous metals, contact without fusion. From one point of view, indeed, circumstances were highly favourable to a sympathetic attachment, for there is no safer medium of intercourse between nations than the commerce which blesses him that buys and him that sells. It was the pursuit of commerce alone that drew men from afar to the Asiatic coasts, and the reciprocal desire on the part of the natives which opened for the strangers, be it ever so little, the gates of the Chinese empire. ”

“ It is no question here whether opium should be classed in the category of medicines, stimuli, or fatal poisons; the Chinese have decided that for themselves, and regard it only as a poison, and the British as the great producers, carriers, and sellers of the drug, to our own great profit and their undoubted impoverishment and ruin. Nor does their conviction end here: they believe to maintain this traffic we made war and dictated a humiliating peace, and that we are prepared to do so again, if they ventured on any interference to its prejudice. ”

“ In their intercourse with the Chinese, certain points stood out like pillars of adamant to fix the principles by which the foreign residents were obliged to regulate their bearing towards the natives. In the first place, the strangers formed units hemmed in and pressed upon by thousands; therefore they must magnify themselves by maintaining an invincible prestige, they must in the eyes of that alien world always be heroes, and they must present a united front. ”

“ The national vanity of the French leading them to an absurd and useless acquisition, the love of exercise of the British leading the equestrians to press an ill-advised and impracticable scheme for a three-mile racecourse, and the national susceptibilities of the Americans leading them to dispute the land tenure which hitherto had been the condition of their own security,—all have been adroitly turned to the greatest advantage, to the profit of the Chinese and the serious detriment of the foreigner.
The progress made in creating obstacles to our commerce has been not less worthy of remark. ”

“ It was not, however, till 1861 that the great river was formally opened by Admiral Sir James Hope. Trade then at once burst upon the desolate scene like the blossoms of spring. On the admiral's voyage up to Hankow, on the 600 miles of stream scarcely a rag of sail was to be seen. Within three months the surface 224 of the river was alive with Chinese craft of all sorts and sizes. The interior of China had for years been dammed up like a reservoir by the Taipings, so that when once tapped the stream of commerce gushed out, much beyond the capacity of any existing transport. ”

“ In characterising the relations then subsisting between the Chinese and foreigners as lawless, it is not meant that China is a country governed without law, although it is true that even in the purely domestic administration of the State legality is systematically travestied. But in connection with foreign relations, and almost as a necessity of the case, every trace of legality was obliterated in practice, and the merchants were constantly entangled in a labyrinth of illusions and pitfalls. ”

“ The Company was a standing example of that not uncommon phenomenon, the progressionist become obstructionist, blocking the door which it opened. For many years it had played the part of dog-in-the-manger, keeping individual traders out while itself deriving little if any benefit from its monopoly. Whenever independent merchants succeeded—under great difficulties, of course—in gaining a footing, they invariably proved the superiority of their business methods; and it is to them, and not to the Company, that the development of trade in the Far East is due. ”

“ China and Japan have seldom been without such fatalistic obstacles to commerce. For many years the rebellion was the bête noire of merchants, then the mandarins, and smaller rebellions; the scarcity of specie at one period, at another the superabundance of cheap silver. In Burma the King of Ava stood for long as the root of all commercial evil. In Japan the Daimios and the currency served their turn. India is never without calamities sufficient to account for perhaps more than ever happens there. ”

“ Of all the materials of commerce silk is perhaps the most classical. A fibre so lustrous, so pure, and so durable, has been the desire of all nations ancient and modern, and the peculiar interest excited by its humble origin enveloped the subject in myths and legends during the earlier intercourse between Europe and Asia. China was known to the ancients as the cradle of sericulture, deriving, in fact, from its most famous product the name Serica, by which it was known to the Greeks and Romans. ”

“ But no special penetration is needed to discover the falsity of a policy of allowing an organised government to plead its inability to control its own populace. Once admit such a plea and the security of the stranger is gone, for he has relinquished his hold on the Government without being compensated by any alternative security. Such was the state of things which had been allowed to grow up in Canton, producing the only fruit possible—outrage, ever increasing in violence and ending in massacre. ”

“ Not only in private adventures have foreigners in their heat of competition let themselves down to the level of Chinese tactics, but great financial syndicates have immersed themselves in intrigues which either did not tempt the men of the previous generation or tempted them in vain; and even the Great Powers themselves have descended into the inglorious arena, where decency is discarded like the superfluous garments of the gladiator, and where falsity, ultra-Chinese in quality, masquerades in Christian garb. ”

“ The moral ascendancy of Christendom has been in a hundred ways shamelessly prostituted, leaving little visible distinction between the West and the East but superior energy and military force.
Take them for all in all, the China merchants have been in their day and generation no unworthy representatives of their country's interests and policy, its manhood and character. Their patriotism has not been toned down but expanded and rationalised by cosmopolitan associations, and by contact with a type of national life differing diametrically from their own. ”

“ If it be the traditional policy of the Tartar dynasty to keep foreigners at the outer confines of the empire and in a degrading position, it may with better justice be the policy of Great Britain to obtain a direct action upon their centre, and freedom from idle and vexatious restrictions. The right of a nation to interdict intercourse and commerce, and therefore to determine upon what conditions it shall exist, is but an imperfect right, and subject to such modifications as the rights of other nations to the use of innocent objects of utility dictate ”

“ Thus, if a man embarks the whole or greater part of his means in speculations which do not succeed, he becomes instantly embarrassed with the Government, and, with no incomings to relieve him, may perhaps not succeed in recovering his first failure. Most of the merchants being men who are selected merely on account of their capital, the management of their business is entirely in the hands of those they employ, for whose honesty or capacity they are mainly dependent for success. ”

“ On the other hand, a protracted and serious insurrection in the southern provinces has drained his treasury, weakened his authority, and now threatens, unless he finds means by force or bribery to put the insurgents down, at no distant period to affect the stability of his throne. If the arrogance of youth in the new sovereign should therefore dispose him on the one side to venture on a crusade against Western Powers, his perilous position in regard to his own provinces cannot fail to impress upon him the prudence of at least temporising until a more convenient season. ”

“ The administration of purely Chinese affairs by native committees, with a firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to fulfil every purpose of government. The aim has been throughout to ascertain and to gratify, when practicable, the reasonable wants of the Chinese, who have responded to these advances by an exhibition of public spirit which no society could excel. It is doubtful whether in the wide dominion of the Queen there are 250,000 souls more appreciative of orderly government than the denizens of the whilom nest of pirates and cut-throats—Hongkong. ”

“ The magnitude and extreme importance of our interests in the East—in commerce and revenue (for, as I have shown, the China trade is the connecting-link between Great Britain and India, and necessary to complete the circle of trading operations) —suggest on the one hand the necessity of avoiding all measures that may rashly jeopardise such interests, yet nevertheless make it imperative on the other to adopt firmly and unhesitatingly whatever steps may be necessary to prevent loss or deterioration. ”

“ To crown all, there is to be noted, as the highest condition of successful trade, the evolution of commercial probity, which, though no monopoly of the Chinese merchants, is one of their distinguishing characteristics. It is that element which, in the generations before the treaties, enabled so large a commerce to be carried on with foreigners without anxiety, without friction, and almost without precaution. ”

“ They are so much the embodiment 101 of common-sense that they might sometimes be considered commonplace; practical, true, clear as a bugle-note. He had been barely six months in office when one of his terse despatches to Sir John Davis turned that cautious official for the time being into a hero. The astonishment of Sir John may be imagined when, in reply to his placid report of the outrage on the two seamen, he received a curt communication from the Foreign Office in which his attention was directed to the punishment, not of the victims, but of the perpetrators, of the outrage. ”

“ But as perpetual coercion on the part of Great Britain was not to be thought of, the establishment and maintenance of satisfactory working relations demanded on the part of the British agents responsible for the execution of the treaty a rare combination of personal qualities. They had, in fact, to assume a power which they did not possess, to trade upon the prestige which their country had gained by the success of its arms, trusting that their pretensions might be tacitly acquiesced in. ”