Alexander Michie

“ 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. ”

“ What, then, could she do to be saved but to take herself entirely to pieces like a house that has to be rebuilt on a new plan, and so fit herself for the companionship and competition of the worldly Powers, from whose pressure she could by no means escape? She had to put away the wisdom of ages, the traditions of a civilisation unbroken for thousands of years, and convert herself into a mechanical, scientific, and military Power. Something more radical than reform is involved in such a root-and-branch change: it was not improvement but transformation that was demanded. ”

“ There is no need to carry hypothesis further than this in order to appreciate the good fortune not only of Great Britain herself, but of Japan and the world, in having as pioneer representative a man so alert, so capable, so clear, and with such unshakable nerve as Sir Rutherford Alcock; for it is the man on the spot in distant countries who shapes the policy of his Government, if it is to have a policy at all, and this historic service the first Minister sent to Japan did effectually render to his country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The crisis has been sufficiently prolonged to enable the world to perceive what the Chinese mean by the term negotiation. To them it signifies what it has always done, a palaver to gain time, to hoodwink an opponent, to escape from a threatened danger, to purchase immunity by promises; a device to manage, or, as they themselves express it, "to soothe and bridle barbarians." As little now as at any former period can they conceive the idea of a fair bargain between equals. They but temporise as with a savage or a dangerous beast. ”

“ The task from which the mass of Chinese statesmen have recoiled, and which has only been attempted in a persistent manner by Li Hung-chang himself, was probably beyond the power of any man and of any party.
But here the inquiry suggests itself, why a strong-headed and practical-minded man should have devoted a lifetime to impossible achievements, and why in a nation of great intellects the task should have been virtually relegated to one man? The Chinese are not fools; their mental capacity is second to that of no other race. ”

“ Ships were good, officers and men in themselves were passable, but without organisation, while the whole force was governed by other than militant principles. The attempted military reorganisation could, in fact, have no vitality except as a branch of a general reform of the administration, the keystone of which was fiscal. Of this, however, the Chinese rulers seemed to take no heed, contenting themselves with snatching at what was superficial and conspicuous to the eye. ”

“ Contrary to all Chinese tradition he laid himself out for personal intercourse with foreigners, from whom he was never weary of learning, and in doing so he braved the odium of his peers, and incurred the charge of treason as a truckler to barbarians. Living in the eyes of the world, both of his own and foreign countries, for a period of nearly forty years, he has been the one familiar figure in modern China. His accessibility has afforded to travellers and visitors endless opportunities of delineation, so that if ever a Chinese of rank was known throughout the world it must be Li Hung-chang. ”

“ But if toleration be the note of Chinese polity—concerning not religion alone, but almost every matter affecting government—it may be asked, What is it in the propagation of Christianity that excites the hostility of people and rulers? It is that the missionaries present themselves to Chinese view as the instruments of powerful nations bent on the ruin of the empire. They enter the country with a talisman of extra-territoriality; their persons are sacred; the law of the land cannot lay hands on them. ”

“ Russia alone has a policy independent at once of accidents, autocrats, shifting governing bodies, and of all personalities, weak or strong. With the accumulated force of past achievements, an unbroken tradition, and great military forces massed on a frontier which is no frontier, Russia among the other Powers now masquerading in the Far East is as the iron vessel floating among the earthenware pots. ”

“ And Korea was a vassal to China, if ever one State did occupy such a relation to another. By old tradition, by effective conquest, by solemn engagement, by regular tributary missions, by the prerogative of investiture, by the obeisance of the sovereign before the Chinese envoys sent on great occasions, by every kind of acknowledgment which the servant could render to the master, was the suzerainty of China established. ”

“ To return to the Tycoon and the governors of the early middle ages, with its suzerain and feudatories, its fiefs and a phantom king, with hereditary mayors of the palace and chiefs with 10,000 retainers, each one holding himself as good as the Tycoon, who must live in constant dread of open revolt or secret assassination, what a pleasant state of existence for all parties it reveals! ”

“ This multiple responsibility to Powers by no means at one in their aims, and each assuming over her a status of superiority, could have no other effect than to reduce to nullity any efforts China might make either to improve herself or please the Powers. It was impossible to please them all. Decades before the Japanese war, more than one of them had offered her armed assistance in thwarting the designs of a third,—which things Chinese statesmen pondered in silence. ”

“ Guns, ships, explosives of the latest type, are worse than dummies without the organised human force that gives them life. The element which would have infused vitality into the new organisation was the one thing beyond their imagination, and so far as they did comprehend it, it inspired them with aversion and awe, for it meant in their eyes delivering the keys of power into the hands of strangers. What was needed to regenerate the army, to create a navy, to reform the finances, was the liberal importation of men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of the statesmen who have appeared since the opening of Peking in 1860, it would probably be fair to consider the two emperors as negligible quantities. The potent personage in the empire during that period is no doubt the Empress-dowager, who has, in so far as any one can be said to have done so, ruled China for forty years. Apart from ethical considerations, which have less to do with matters of government than could be wished, the empress's characteristics are clearness of purpose, strength of will, a ready accommodation of means to ends, and frank acceptance of the inevitable. ”

“ To explain them would be quite impossible, for to say that there are wheels within wheels, intrigue within intrigue, the whole revolving round a pivot of sordid corruption, is perhaps the only general account that can be given of the state of the Government and of its official hierarchy. But the conflict between China and Japan held on its way through the labyrinth of local intrigue, and eventually produced a result which, strange to say, seems never to have been anticipated by any one outside the Government circles of Japan. ”

“ His pacific tendencies were no proof of pusillanimity, but rather of a deep consciousness, derived from personal experience, of the incapacity of China to resist foreign attack. Li Hung-chang's external policy, therefore, may be defined as the strengthening of the country to meet invasion, and the avoidance, while such preparations were being made, of every cause of collision with foreigners. These cardinal points had to be kept in view, like guiding stars, amid the exigencies of daily affairs, which alone were sufficient to fill up the measure of one man's capacity. ”

“ Great Britain having not only the preponderating interest, but being still the leading Power in the Far East, it was obviously a great advantage for the Chinese that it should be that Power which came particularly under the influence of the inspector-general. To tie the hands of the British Government for a whole generation was, indeed, an achievement worthy of a master of policy; but it was by no means the only service which might be rendered to China even by an Inspector-General of Customs. ”

“ Foreigners of all nations applied force to China, not to defend person or property, but to divide up the empire in disregard of the Government and the people, both assumed to be moribund. The partition of China was discussed in the Western press as a matter in which the Government and natives of the country had no concern. Open doors, spheres of influence, concessions, protectorates—the various modes in which the Chinese oyster was to be cooked and served—were treated solely as questions of rivalry and preponderance between the Western Powers. ”

“ The effect of the revolution was to concentrate the whole strength of the State under the government of the Mikado, and thus enable it to give free play to the widest ambitions. With incredible rapidity the nation made itself efficient for every enterprise of peace or war. The best that the Western world had to teach was eagerly appropriated by a people just aroused from a long sleep, and anxious to make up lost time. They went so fast, indeed, that onlookers shook their heads, and their best friends would have applied the brake had it been possible. ”

“ Being the only man who did anything, he was naturally made responsible for all, and critics, both foreign and native, have had an easy task in laying bare his failures, which his contemporaries have escaped by confining themselves to official routine and playing for their own safety. Though the burden of the State has fallen upon the shoulders of Li Hung-chang more than upon any other individual, he has never flinched from the responsibility. ”

“ Those who have observed the condition of China with a sympathetic eye have been for years labouring under the deepest apprehension for the peace of the country. The Japanese war accentuated this feeling, and the subsequent ruthless proceedings of the Western Powers deepened the apprehension. As the forces of aggression could in nowise be restrained, anxious, but inadequate and altogether ineffectual, attempts were made to avert their worst effects. ”