Chinese Empire

“ What an enormous and overgrown dominion is thus presented before us, extending over thirty-five degrees of latitude and seventy of longitude, and covering an area of upwards of 3,000,000 square miles.
The Chinese empire occupies no inconsiderable space in our map of the earth's surface, and fills up nearly the whole of their own; no wonder, then, that the Chinese should consider their country as the middle kingdom, including all within the four seas; and that, with them, the world and their empire should be synonymous terms. ”

“ The Chinese Empire, as it has existed since 1644, extends on the north, and west, far beyond the boundaries of ancient China, and is, probably, the largest Empire in the world. The whole number of persons in the Empire, who are enrolled as soldiers and make the art and practice of war their essential employment, is very great; amounting, probably, to two or three millions. Chinese Merchants have by no means that high character, and that influence, which the same class of men possess in Europe and America. ”

“ The Chinese Empire, which embraces near four hundred million human beings, has existed for five thousand years; yet the countless millions of China, springing up like tropical weeds and sinking back to dreamless dust, have contributed far less to civilization than the twenty thousand Athenians who in the brief Periclean age followed the footsteps of Plato and Socrates. ”

“ People generally disregard everything connected with China, considering the policy towards that empire, and its affairs, of but small moment to themselves or state. Unless engaged in the China trade, in a selfish and narrow-minded point of view it may be so; but if we reflect upon the immensity [281] of the Chinese empire, its direct population of one-third of the human race, and its indirect brotherhood with about one-half (including Malays, Tartars, Eluths, Mongolians, Thibetians, Cochin-Chinese, Anamese, &c.) ”

“ During the past two and a half centuries the great empire of China has been under foreign rule, its emperors, its state officials, its generals and trusted battalions, being of Tartar blood, and the whole nation being forced to wear, in the shaved head and pigtail of every man from the highest to the lowest, a badge of servitude. ”

“ Remove the enemies of the British empire and she will naturally divide, but force the Chinese empire apart and she will naturally return to one body. Chinese Christianity will, if it is truly Chinese, tend to one body. ”

“ Gibson translates the following passage from a Chinese historian as illustrative at once of China's haughty contempt of outsiders and of her reasons for it:
``The former kings in measuring out the land put the Imperial territory in the centre. Inside was the Chinese Empire, and outside were the barbarous nations. The barbarians are covetous and greedy of gain. Their hair hangs down over their bodies, and their coats are buttoned on the left side. They have human faces, but the hearts of beasts. They are distinguished from the natives of the Empire both by their manners and their dress. ”

“ It right reasonably be no more dominant or meddlesome than the military system of China has been during the last thousand years in comparison with the massive imperturbability of the great Chinese Empire itself. ”

“ The history of the empire has always been the fortunes of the dynasty, which has depended, in the first place, on the passive content of the subjects, and, in the second, on the success or failure of its external and internal wars. This condition of things may be disappointing to those who pride themselves on tracing the origin of a constitution and the growth of civil rights, and also would have a history of China a history of the Chinese people ”

“ The outer dependencies of the Chinese empire are comparatively sparsely populated, and in this work, when China, without specification, is mentioned, it is intended to refer to the eighteen provinces exclusively, which include the vast proportion of the population, intelligence and wealth of the empire. ”

“ It has a much more difficult task to achieve, and one which, on account of the size of the Empire, is likely to have a far greater importance for the world at large. The Chinese are strongly animated by the spirit of patriotism ”

“ China in particular became the prey of these warlike horsemen. We hear little of them in the early days, when the Chinese realm was narrow and the original barbarians possessed most of the land. We hear much of them in later days, when the empire had widened and grown rich and prosperous, offering an alluring prize to the restless and daring inhabitants of the steppes. ”

“ Thus the empire of China, even when deprived of its fabulous and traditionary periods, is still very ancient; the Chinese must have branched off from the great human family immediately after the dispersion, and travelling to the farther east, settled down on the borders of the Yellow River, coeval with the establishment of the Babylonian and Egyptian monarchies. ”

“ But there is another fact already mentioned that throws still stronger light on the high civilization of China—it is that at every period, when this empire has been conquered by the Moguls and Tartars, the conquerors, overcome in their turn by the ascendancy of Chinese civilization, have, within a short time, invariably adopted the manners, laws, and even language of China, and thus its institutions have remained, on the whole, unaltered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is a small Chinese book, studied by every schoolboy and entitled The Hundred Surnames, the word "hundred" being commonly used in a generally comprehensive sense. It actually contains about four hundred of the names which occur most frequently.
About two hundred and twenty years before Christ, the feudal system came to an end. One aggressive state gradually swallowed up all the others; and under the rule of its sovereign, China became once more an empire, and such it has ever since remained. ”

“ A Legation equal only to clerical routine suddenly called upon to play a part in a commotion which unhinged the policy of the world was totally inadequate to the strain, and as a consequence of the impotence of the Foreign Office and its agent in China, the interests of Great Britain and, what was only second in importance, the interests of the Chinese empire were allowed to go [367] by default. The Chinese were, and perhaps even still remain, unconscious of the reasons of the collapse of their empire. ”

“ Yet this present was addressed in Chinese: "To His Excellency the Great English Devil, Consul X."
The Chinaman may love you, but you are a devil all the same. It is most natural that he should think so. For generation upon generation China was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world. The people of her vast empire grew up under influences unchanged by contact with other peoples. ”

“ The Chinese empire, consisting of China proper and Manchooria, with its dependencies of Mongolia, I-li and Thibet, embraces a vast territory in eastern and central Asia, only inferior 100in extent to the dominions of Great Britain and Russia. ”

“ SEVERAL outside forces have pressed steadily and heavily upon the exclusiveness and conservatism of the Chinese, and though they have not yet succeeded in changing the essential character of the nation, they have set in motion vast movements which have already convulsed great sections of the Empire and which are destined to affect stupendous transformations. ”

“ All these struggles raged round the capital, for each of the princes wanted to secure full power and to become emperor. Thus the border regions remained relatively undisturbed. Their population suffered much less from the warfare than the unfortunate people in the neighbourhood of the central government. For this reason there took place a mass migration of Chinese from the centre of the empire to its periphery. ”

“ So far as our knowledge enables us to speak, the Chinese of the present age are in all essential points identical with those of the time of Confucius, and there is no reason to doubt that before his time the Chinese national character had been thoroughly formed in its present mold. The limits of the empire have varied from time to time under circumstances of triumph or disunion, but the Middle Kingdom, or China Proper, of the eighteen provinces has always possessed more or less of its existing proportions. ”

“ MAP OF CHINA Showing the locality of the different rebellions in that Empire, the line of retreat taken by the Ti-pings from their settled territory, and their present position Spring of the year 1866.
The only policy which could have benefited China would have been, either an energetic protectorate established by England, and maintained with [795] energy until the evil Government had been thoroughly and radically reformed in every branch; or, what would have been far better, the Chinese should have been left to themselves and allowed to choose their own rulers. ”

“ Commercially, politically and religiously, the Chinese empire now presents a most interesting spectacle, and the experiment of regenerating it and introducing it into the family of nations, without completely disorganizing its present form of government and society, will constantly go on and attract still more and more the notice of Christendom. ”

“ They are keenly alive to what is taking place in the empire, and they may almost be said to be the only Chinese in it who are so. China will never have patriotic subjects until she has Christian subjects, and in China as elsewhere Christianity and patriotism will be found to advance hand in hand. ”

“ The laws of the empire allowing them full power to dispose of their wives and children, instances have happened when these have been put to the hazard of a throw; and it should be mentioned, that in all their games, whether for amusement or avarice, the Chinese are very noisy and quarrelsome. ”

“ But the country generally, with its vast extent and its large population, has gone on its way very little troubled by the change of rulers. Those military conquerors have in fact been themselves conquered by the higher civilisation in which they have found themselves.
The Chinese themselves appear to have come into the country from the west. Although they always have been a people who held soldiers and the military caste in very low esteem, they gradually pushed out the original natives until their empire had boundaries even more extensive than its present wide limits. ”

“ In fifty years the population was nearly doubled, and the empire on the whole enjoyed peace and prosperity. In 1750 a Portuguese embassy reached Peking; and was followed by Lord Macartney's famous mission and a Dutch mission in 1793. Two years after the venerable emperor had completed a reign of sixty years, the full Chinese cycle; whereupon he abdicated in favour of his son, and died in 1799.
CHAPTER XI—CHINESE AND FOREIGNERS
A virtue which the Chinese possess in an eminent degree is the rather rare one of gratitude. A Chinaman never forgets a kind act ”

“ Garrisons, accorded honourable terms, ruthlessly butchered; princes, who threw themselves on their mercy, deported to Pekin to be hanged or tortured out of life: these are frequent occurrences in the history of China, and of her career in Central Asia the tale is identical. Yet, while drawing a veil over these blots on an otherwise brilliant surface, should we not desire to conceal them wholly from the view. It is necessary that they should be stated to understand what Chinese domination means as a whole; of its great benefits there can be no doubt, if the people will remain quiescent. ”

“ In Marco Polo's time the middle door of the great portal was never opened save to admit the emperor, and that was still true a few months ago, but last winter a day came when the bars rolled back, and there entered no emperor, no ruler, but the representative of the People's Assembly, and then a placard was posted announcing that hereafter the door was open to every one, for all China belonged to the people. For a matter-of-fact man the Chinese has a very dramatic way of doing things. ”

“ But that theory of the decline of China does not hold good. The mass of the people have not degenerated; they are as fresh and vigorous as ever they were. It is the government only that has become old and feeble; and a change of dynasty may yet restore to China the lustre which legitimately belongs to so great a nation.
The indestructible vitality of Chinese institutions has preserved the country unchanged through many revolutions. ”

“ Send emissaries throughout the city, shout far and wide that China needs patriotic multitudes. All true men are to rally at once to their Emperor's aid. We will flee temporarily by the Great Shu Road to Chengtu. There we will gather an army from all quarters of the Empire, so large that An Lu-shan will tremble at its approach and sue for peace. ”