Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin Part 24

Ample recognition of Consular jurisdiction and of the immunities of exterritoriality;

The opening to British subjects, at specified periods, of several of the most important ports and cities of j.a.pan;

Power to land and store supplies for the use of the British navy at Kanagawa, Hakodadi, and Nagasaki, without payment of duty;

Power to British subjects to buy from and sell to j.a.panese subjects directly, without the intervention of the j.a.panese authorities;

Foreign coin to pa.s.s for corresponding weights of j.a.panese coin of the same description;

Abolition of tonnage and transit dues;

Reduction of duties on exports from 35 per cent. to a general rate of 5 per cent. _ad valorem_.

The concessions obtained from the j.a.panese by the Treaty of Yeddo were not, in some important particulars, so considerable as those which had been made by China in the Treaty of Tientsin. It was, however, a material advance on all previous treaties with j.a.pan, and it opened the door to the gradual establishment of relations of commerce and amity between the people of the West and that of j.a.pan, which might become, as Lord Elgin hoped and believed, of the most cordial and intimate character, 'if the former did not, by injudicious and aggressive acts, rouse against themselves the fears and hostility of the natives.'

[Sidenote: Retrospect.]

_August 30th.--Eleven A.M._--We are again plunging into the China Sea, and quitting the only place which I have left with any feeling of regret since I reached this abominable East,--abominable, not so much in itself, as because it is strewed all over with the records of our violence and fraud, and disregard of right. The exceeding beauty external of j.a.pan, and its singular moral and social picturesqueness, cannot but leave a pleasing impression on the mind. One feels as if the position of a Daimio in j.a.pan might not be a bad one, with two or three millions of va.s.sals; submissive, but not servile, because there is no contradiction between their sense of fitness and their position.

[1] Not so, however, in the actual work of negotiating. In a despatch of later date he writes: 'I was much struck by the business-like manner in which they did their work; making very shrewd observations, and putting very pertinent questions, but by no means in a captious or cavilling spirit. Of course their criticisms were sometimes the result of imperfect acquaintance with foreign affairs, and it was occasionally necessary to remove their scruples by alterations in the text which were not improvements; but on the whole, I am bound to say that I never treated with persons who seemed to me, within the limits of their knowledge, to be more reasonable.'--See also _infra_, p. 270.

CHAPTER XI.

FIRST MISSION TO CHINA. THE YANGTZE KIANG.

DELAYS--SUBTERFUGES DEFEATED BY FIRMNESS--REVISED TARIFF--OPIUM TRADE--UP THE YANGTZE KIANG--SILVER ISLAND--NANKIN--REBEL WARFARE--THE HEN-BARRIER-- UNKNOWN WATERS--DIFFICULT NAVIGATION--HANKOW--THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL--RETURN-- TAKING TO THE GUNBOATS--NGANCHING--NANKIN--RETROSPECT--MORE DELAYS-- TROUBLES AT CANTON--RETURN TO HONG-KONG. MISSION COMPLETED--HOMEWARD VOYAGE.

[Sidenote: Delays.]

Arriving at Shanghae on the 2nd of September, Lord Elgin found that the Imperial Commissioners whom he came to meet had not yet appeared, and were not expected for four or five weeks. All this time, therefore, he was obliged to remain idle at Shanghae, hearing from time to time news from Canton which made his presence there desirable, but unable to proceed thither till the arrangements respecting the Treaty were completed.

_Shanghae.--Sunday, September 5th._--I wish to be off for England: but I dread leaving my mission unfinished.... I feel, therefore, that I am doomed to a month or six weeks more of China.

_September 6th._--It is very weary work staying here really doing for the moment little. But what is to be done? It will not do to swallow the cow and worry at the tail. I have been looking over the files of newspapers, and those of Hong-Kong teem with abuse;--this, notwithstanding the fact that I have made a Treaty which exceeds everything the most imaginative ever hoped for. The truth is, they do not really like the opening of China. They fear that their monopoly will be interfered with.

_September 11th._--I am amused with the confident way in which the ladies here talk of going home after five years with fortunes made.

They live in the greatest luxury,--in a tolerable climate, and think it very hard if they are not rich enough to retire in five years.... I do not know of any business in any part of the world that yields returns like this. No wonder they dislike the opening of China, which may interfere with them.

[Sidenote: Arrival of Commissioners.]

It was not till the 4th of October that the arrival was announced of the Imperial Commissioners, including among their number his old friends Kweiliang and Hwashana. While they were on the road, circ.u.mstances had come to Lord Elgin's knowledge which gave him reason to fear that they might be disposed to call in question some of the privileges conceded under the Treaty, and that they might found on the still unsettled state of affairs in the South a hope of succeeding in this attempt. He thought it better to dispel all such illusions at once, by taking a high and peremptory tone upon the latter subject. Accordingly, when his formal complaint against Hw.a.n.g, the Governor-General of the Two Kiang, for keeping up hostilities in spite of the Treaty, was met by a promise to stop this for the future by proclamation, he refused to accept this promise, and demanded the removal of Hw.a.n.g and the suppression of a Committee which had been formed for the enrolment of volunteers; intimating at the same time, through a private channel, that unless he obtained full satisfaction on the Canton question, it was by no means improbable that he might return to Tientsin, and from that point, or at Pekin itself, require the Emperor to keep his engagements. This had the desired effect. The Commissioners at once undertook, not only to issue a pacific proclamation couched in becoming terms, but also to memorialise the Emperor for the recall of the Governor- General, and the withdrawal of all powers from the Committee of Braves. It may be added, that the immediate success which attended the proclamation afforded striking confirmation of what Lord Elgin had always said, that the best way of suppressing provincial disturbances was by bringing pressure to bear on the Imperial power.

[Sidenote: Subterfuges,]

[Sidenote: defeated by firmness.]

_Shanghae.--Sunday, October 10th._--We have not done much yet, which is the cause of my having written less than usual during the last few days. I have reason to suspect that the Commissioners came here with some hope that they might make difficulties about 'some of the concessions obtained in the Treaty, with a kind of notion perhaps that they might continue to bully us at Canton. If I had departed, I think it probable enough that everything would have been thrown into confusion, and the grand result of proving that my Treaty was waste paper might have been attained. I have thought it necessary to take steps to stop this sort of thing at once, so I have sent some very peremptory letters to the Commissioners about Canton, refusing to have anything to say to them till I am satisfied on this point, &c. I have also, through a secret channel, had the hint conveyed to them, that if they do not give me full satisfaction at once I am capable of going off to Tientsin again,--a move which would no doubt cost their heads to both Kweiliang and Hwashana. I have already extorted from them a proclamation announcing the Treaty, and I have now demanded that they shall remove the Governor-General of the Canton provinces from office, and suppress the War Committee of the gentry.

_October 16th._--Yes, the report of the conclusion of a Treaty which was conveyed so rapidly overland to St. Petersburg was true, and yet I am not on my way home!... Do not think that I am indifferent to this delay. It is however, for the moment, inevitable. Everything would have been lost if I had left China. The violence and ill-will which exist in Hong-Kong are something ludicrous.... As it is, matters are going on very fairly with the Imperial Commissioners, and I expect an official visit from them this day at noon. The English mail arrived yesterday.... The visit of the Commissioners went off very well. I think that they have accepted the situation, and intend to make the best of it.

_October 19th_.--Yesterday I returned the visit of the Commissioners, going in state, with a guard, &c., into the city. We had a Chinese repast--birds'-nest soup, sharks' fins, &c. I tried to put them at their ease, after our disagreeable encounters at Tientsin. They seemed disposed to be conversable and friendly. The Governor-General of this province, who is one of them, is considered a very clever man, and he appears to have rather a notion of taking a go-ahead policy with foreigners.

[Sidenote: The tariff.]

The chief matter that remained to be arranged was the settlement of certain trade-regulations, supplemental to the Treaty, involving a complete revision of the tariff.

[Sidenote: The opium trade.]

A tariff is not usually a matter of general interest; but this tariff is of more than mere commercial importance, as having for the first time regulated, and therefore legalised, the trade in opium.[1] Hitherto this article had been mentioned in no treaty, but had been left to the operation of the Chinese munic.i.p.al law, which prohibited it altogether. But the Chinese would have it; there was no lack of foreign traders, chiefly British and American, ready to run the risk of smuggling it for the sake of the large profits to be made upon it; and the custom-house officials, both natives and foreign inspectors, hardly even kept up the farce of pretending to ignore the fact. At one port, indeed, the authorities exacted from the opium traders a sort of hush-money, equivalent to a tax about 6 per cent.

_ad valorem_. It might well be said that 'the evils of this illegal, connived at, and corrupting traffic could hardly be overstated; that it was degrading alike to the producer, the importer, the official, whether foreign or Chinese, and the purchaser.'

To remedy these evils two courses were open. One was effective prohibition, with the a.s.sistance of the Foreign Powers; but this, the Chinese Commissioners admitted, was practically hopeless, mainly owing to the inveterate appet.i.te of their people for the drug. The other remained: regulation and restriction, by the imposition of as high a duty as could be maintained without giving a stimulus to smuggling. It was not without much consideration that Lord Elgin adopted the latter alternative; and it was a great satisfaction to him that his views on this subject were ultimately shared by Mr. Reed, the Envoy of the United States, who had come to the country with the intention of supporting the opposite opinion.

In the course of the conferences on these points, which were carried on in the most friendly spirit, Lord Elgin induced the Commissioners to make a separate agreement that he should be permitted, irrespectively of the conditions imposed by the Treaty, to make an expedition up the great river Yangtze Kiang; a permission of which he gladly availed himself, not only for the sake of exploring a new and most interesting country, but even more with the view of marking how entirely and cordially his Treaty was accepted.

_Shanghae.--November 2nd._--You will, I am sure, see how necessary it has been for me to protract my stay to this time. The systematic endeavour to make it appear that my work was a failure could be counteracted only by my own presence. The papers, &c., from England are complimentary enough about the Treaty, but some of the accounts which have gone home are somewhat exaggerated, and perhaps there will be a reaction.... More particularly, I find a hope expressed that we have plundered the wretched Chinese to a greater extent than is the case.... Meanwhile, I have achieved one object, which will be, I think, the crowning act of my mission. I have arranged with the Imperial Commissioners that I am to proceed up the river Yangtze. The Treaty only provides that it shall be open when the Rebels have left it. I daresay this will give rise to comments. If so, I shall have antic.i.p.ated them, by going up the river myself. I shall take with me my own squadron (what I had in j.a.pan). The weather is beautiful; quite cool enough for comfort. We shall visit a region which has never been seen, except by a stray missionary. I shall lose by this move some three weeks, but I do not think they will be really lost, because it will give so very complete a demonstration of the acceptance of the Treaty by the Chinese authorities, that even Hong-Kong will be silenced.

_November 6th._--I hoped to have started to-day, but am obliged to put off till Monday, as the tariff is not yet ready for signature. I grieve over every day lost, which protracts our separation. I see that in the very flattering article of the _Times_ of September 7th, which you quote, it is implied that when I signed the Treaty, I had done my work, and that the responsibility of seeing that it was carried out rests with others. If this be true--and you will no doubt think so--I might have returned at once, at least after j.a.pan. But is it true?

Could I, in fairness to my country, or, in what I trust you believe comes second in the rank of motives with me, to my own reputation, leave the work which I had undertaken unfinished?... Besides, I own that I have a conscientious feeling on the subject. I am sure that in our relations with these Chinese we have acted scandalously, and I would not have been a party to the measures of violence which have taken place, if I had not believed that I could work out of them some good for them. Could I leave this, the really n.o.blest part of my task, to be worked out by others? Anyone could have obtained the Treaty of Tientsin. What was really meritorious was, that it should have been obtained at so small a cost of human suffering. But this is also what discredits it in the eyes of _many_, of _almost all_ here. If we had carried on war for some years; if we had carried misery and desolation all over the Empire; it would have been thought quite natural that the Emperor should have been reduced to accept the terms imposed upon him at Tientsin. But to do all this by means of a demonstration at Tientsin! The announcement was received with a yell of derision by connoisseurs and baffled speculators in tea. And indeed there was some ground for scepticism. It would have been very easy to manage matters here, so as to bring into question all the privileges which we had acquired by that Treaty. Even then we should have gained a great deal by it; because when we came to a.s.sert those rights by force, we should have had a good, instead of a bad _casus belli_. But I was desirous, if possible, to avoid the necessity for further recurrence to force; and it required some skill to do this. This has been my motive for protracting my stay.

[Sidenote: The tariff signed.]

_H.M.S. 'Furious.'--November 8th_.--I write a line to tell you that I got over the signature of my tariff, &c., very satisfactorily this morning, and set off in peace with all men, including Chinese Plenipotentiaries, and colleagues European and American, on my way up the Yangtze Kiang. We are penetrating into unknown regions, but I trust shortly to be able to report to you my return, and all the novelties I shall have seen.

[Sidenote: Afloat on the Yangtze Kiang.]

This morning at ten, I went to a temple which lies exactly between the foreign settlement and the Chinese town of Shanghae, to meet there the Imperial Commissioners, and to sign the tariff. We took with us the photographs which Jocelyn had done for them, and which we had framed.

They were greatly delighted, and altogether my poor friends seemed in better spirits than I had before seen them in. We pa.s.sed from photography to the electric telegraph, and I represented to them the great advantage which the Emperor would derive from it in so extensive an empire as China; how it would make him present in all the provinces, &c. They seemed to enter into the subject. The conference lasted rather more than an hour. After it, I returned to the consulate, taking a tender adieu of Gros By the way. I embarked at 1, and got under weigh at 2 P.M.... The tide was very strong against us, so we have not made much way, but we are really in the Yangtze river.

We have moored between two flats with trees upon them; the mainland on the left, and an island (Bush Island), recently formed from the mud of the river, on the right. Though the earth has been uninteresting, it has not been so with the sky, for the dark shades of night, which have been gathering and thickening on the right have been confronted on the left by the brightest imaginable star, and the thinnest possible crescent moon, both resting on a couch of deep and gradually deepening crimson. I have been pacing the bridge between the paddle-boxes, contemplating this scene, until we dropped our anchor, and I came down to tell you of this my first experience of the Yangtze. And what will the sum of those experiences be? We are going into an unknown region, along a river which, beyond Nankin, has not been navigated by Europeans. We are to make our way through the lines of those strange beings the Chinese Rebels. We are to penetrate beyond them to cities, of the magnitude and population of which fabulous stories are told; among people who have never seen Western men; who have probably heard the wildest reports of us; to whom we shall a.s.suredly be stranger than they can possibly be to us. What will the result be? Will it be a great disappointment, or will its interest equal the expectations it raises? Probably before this letter is despatched to you, it will contain an answer more or less explicit to these questions.

_Sunday, November 14th.--Six P.M._--We have just dropped anchor, some eighty miles from Woosung. I wish that you had been with me on this evening's trip. You would have enjoyed it. During the earlier part of the afternoon we were going on merrily together. The two gunboats ahead, the 'Furious' and 'Retribution' abreast, sometimes one, sometimes the other, taking the lead. After awhile we (the 'Furious') put out our strength, and left gunboats and all behind. When the sun had pa.s.sed the meridian, the masts and sails were a protection from his rays, and as he continued to drop towards the water right ahead of us, he strewed our path, first with glittering silver spangles, then with roses, then with violets, through all of which we sped ruthlessly. The banks still flat, until the last part of the trip, when we approached some hills on the left, not very lofty, but clearly defined, and with a kind of dreamy softness about them, which reminded one of Egypt. Altogether, it was impossible to have had anything more charming in the way of yachting; the waters a perfect calm, or hardly crisped by the breeze that played on their surface. We rather wish for more wind, as the 'Cruiser' cannot keep up without a little help of that kind.

[Sidenote: Aground.]

[Sidenote: Silver Island.]

_November 16th.--Noon_.--A bad business. We were running through a narrow channel which separates Silver Island from the mainland, in very deep water, when all of a sudden we were brought up short, and the s.h.i.+p rolled two or three times right and left, in a way which reminded me of a roll which we had in the 'Ava' immediately after starting from Calcutta. On that occasion we saw beside us the tops of the masts of a s.h.i.+p, and were told it had struck on the same sand- bank, and gone down about an hour before. Our obstacle on this occasion is a rock; a very small one, for we have deep water all around us. However, here we are. I hope our s.h.i.+p will not suffer from the strain. It is curious that in this narrow pa.s.s, where fifty s.h.i.+ps went through and returned in 1842, this rock should exist and never have been discovered. _Six P.M._--The sun has just set among a crowd of mountains which bound the horizon ahead of us, and in such a blaze of fiery light that earth and sky in his neighbourhood have been all too glorious to look upon. Standing out in advance on the edge of this sea of molten gold, is a solitary rock, about a quarter of the size of the Ba.s.s, which goes by the name of Golden Island, and serves as the pedestal of a tall paG.o.da. I never saw a more beautiful scene, or a more magnificent sunset; but alas! we see it under rather melancholy circ.u.mstances, for after six hours of trying in all sorts of ways to get off, we are as fast aground as ever. We are now lightening the s.h.i.+p. Silver Island is a kind of sacred island like Potou, but very much smaller.[2] I went ash.o.r.e, and walked over it with a bonze, who conversed with Lay. He told us that the people in the neighbourhood are very poor, and will be glad that foreigners should come and trade with them. The bonzes here are much like their brethren of Potou, the most wretched-looking of human beings. Our friend told us that they have no books or occupation of any kind. Four times a day they go through their prayers. He had twelve bald spots on his head, which, were the record of so many vows he had taken to abstain from so many vices, which he enumerated. I gave them five dollars when I left the island, which seemed to astonish them greatly. I asked him what would happen if he broke his vows. He said that he would be beaten and sent away. If he kept them he hoped to become in time a Buddha.

_November 17th.--Six P.M._--After taking 150 tons out of the s.h.i.+p, we have just made an attempt to get her off--in vain. The glorious sun has again set, holding out to us the same attractions in the west as yesterday, in vain! Here we remain, as motionless as the rock on which we are perched. I have not been quite idle, however. I landed about noon on the sh.o.r.e opposite Silver Island, and walked about three miles to the town of Chin-kiang. It was taken by us in the last war, and sadly maltreated, but since then it has been captured by the Rebels and re-captured by the Imperialists. I could hardly have imagined such a scene of desolation. I do not think there is a house that is not a ruin. I believe the population used to be about 300,000, but now I suppose it cannot exceed a few hundreds. The people are really, I believe, glad to see us. They hope we may give them free trade and protection from the Rebels. A commodore and post-captain in the Chinese navy came off to us this afternoon. They were very civil, offering to do anything for us they could. They tell us we can go in this s.h.i.+p to Hankow and the Poyang Lake. We have found another rock beside us, and only think that this should not have been known by our Navy!

[Sidenote: Afloat again.]

_November 18th.--Eight P.M._--At about 6 P.M. I was crossing on a plank over a gully, on my return from an expedition to Golden Island, when three rounds of cheers from the 'Furious,' about a mile off, struck my ear. Three rounds of cheers, followed by as many from the other s.h.i.+ps. She was off the rock! Some 250 tons were taken out, and when the tide rose she came off--nothing the worse! and our time has not been quite lost, for this is an interesting place, if only because of the insight which it gives into the proceedings of the Rebels.

Golden Island is about five miles from here. It was a famous Buddhist sanctuary, and contained their most valuable library. Its temples are now a ruin.