Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

TRADE AT CANTON.

47

merchants. Exceptionally heavy taxes on articles of commerce were hard enough to bear without murmur; but they sank into insignificance beside those that fettered the liberty of movement, and interfered with the relations of families.

When the dissatisfaction caused by this state of things was at its height, an English merchant, Mr.-long afterwards Sir James Matheson, the principal representative of one of the chief houses in the China trade, took upon himself to demand an interview with the mandarins, and succeeded in bringing the hardship of the regulation so clearly before their minds that its rigour was at once abated, and some of the most objectionable features were removed.* It was not until four years later that the further privilege was granted of allowing the English merchants to bring their wives and families up to Canton. The failure of some Chinese trading firms, or hongs, was the immediate cause of this further concession to the foreigner. The Hoppo and his agents were most anxious that the trade should not be in consequence suspended, and, while they were constrained to publish the Edicts of Pekin, they were fully resolved not to put an end to their own source of profit.

Although Taoukwang was in reality less disposed to cultivate relations with the outside peoples than any of his immediate predecessors, and notwithstanding that the antiforeign party had never been more active than it was at this period, still the first ten years of Taoukwang's reign witnessed a remarkable development in the trade of Canton, and a not less striking improvement in the relations between Chinese officials and the English merchants. There was a corresponding disadvantage to be taken into account as a set-off against this agreeable progress. The more the trade increased, the firmer the foot-hold of the foreigner on the soil became, the more did the transaction present a mark to and attract the indignation of the old-fashioned party at Court, which

The interview was not without a dramatic side. One of the mandarins present, catching hold of Matheson, passed his hand round his neck, signifying by this action that he deserved to be beheaded. Mr. Matheson was equal to the occasion, and, seizing the official, repeated the process on him, with the difference that he performed the operation twice!

regarded this growing outside intercourse in the light of an unmitigated misfortune, and which foresaw only the evils that its continuance might entail.

Even in this matter Taoukwang appears to have had no decided conviction and no settled views of his own. Personally he was too much given to reflect not to see that there were merit and strength in European knowledge; yet he was so swayed by his fears, and by the representations of his most intimate counsellors, that he banished all foreigners from the capital. Irresolute even in his new decision, he allowed the trade at Canton to go on assuming larger proportions, and, although the ultimate consequence of that course of proceeding was plain, he took no measures towards checking the development of or abolishing external commerce. Each year made the exclusion of the foreigner and the cessation of trade a matter of greater difficulty, but Taoukwang preferred to wait on the course of events rather than to take a bold initiative. He was at a later period of his life to find a counsellor whose boldness was equal to his ability; but at the period which we have been describing the Emperor had no adviser of the courage and capacity of Commissioner Lin. Had he possessed one, and struck as boldly in defence of China's right to remain a secluded country as he did in 1842, there is no saying but that the object might have been attained. If the Chinese had been as clear of vision in any of the years between the departure of the Amherst embassy and the close of Taoukwang's first decade on the throne, as they were resolute in action and unyielding in their lofty pretensions, they might have put a stop to the foreign commerce; whether they could have prevented smuggling on the very largest scale or not is quite an independent matter. The opportunity was not utilized, and, although the attempt was subsequently made, the attendant circumstances were never equally propitious. Never again was China as strong relatively as she was then, and never afterwards did the China trade appear of as little importance to the English people and Government as it did for a short time during this period, which witnessed the withdrawal of the East India Company's monopoly.

[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

THE Overthrow of the Eleuths and the conquest of Central Asia had been among the most remarkable of the military exploits of the great Keen Lung. During fifty years and more there was after that triumph complete tranquillity from the Kansuh borders across the great desert of Gobi to the plateau of Pamir. The people had not the power to revolt, and with the loss of vigour they seemed to have forfeited the inclination; and even the nomad tribes of Kokonor on the one side and of Kobdo on the other, forgot to pursue their accustomed avocations at the expense of their neighbours. The Chinese had, therefore, every reason to feel gratified with the results of their most extensive conquest, and, so far as there was any indication of popular feeling, the great mass of the subject people appeared to appreciate the benefits conferred on them by their rulers, and to have no desire for change.

The Chinese, none the less for these satisfactory results, had undertaken a most difficult task, and one in which success becomes more difficult as the method of performing it approaches a higher ideal of perfection. They had accepted the responsibility of providing a people more numerous by far than their garrison, of a different religion, and of military habits, with a wise and provident administration, having as its foremost objects the promotion of trade and the maintenance of order. They made it their object, as it might have been their boast, to associate the natives with themselves in the work of government. The civil administration, the

VOL. II.

E

dispensation of justice, and even the collection of taxes, were left to the Mahomedan peoples; and the Celestials trusted to the presence of a small army to preserve their rights, and to keep the conquered pacified. When will Governments learn that there is no way of popularizing a foreign dominion, and that the search for a model method of giving the law to subject peoples by raising them to a position of equality and independence can only end in making their own overthrow easier and more simple?

The reputation of China-which seemed to the States of Asia, who are here to-day and gone to-morrow, and whose stability is no more certain than that of mounds of sand on a seashore, to be a thing past comprehension among Empires, and built on the rocks of enduring Time-served her lieutenants in Ili and Altyshahr in such good stead that they were able to maintain their master's authority undisputed throughout all the dark hours of Kiaking's reign. During that period the Chinese, who had placed their ambans, or military governors, in all the chief towns, and who had constructed outside them forts, or gulbaghs, were left in undisputed possession of the vast region lying on both sides of the Tian Shan range, and their relations with their neighbours were conducted on the basis of conscious power and undoubted superiority. The people prospered, trade increased, the population multiplied, and no sign was perceptible of any popular dissatisfaction until outside ambition interfered to make an opportunity of aggrandizing itself.

Even then the machinations of a jealous neighbour, and the personal motives of a ruling family, would not have availed to produce any result, but that the Chinese had abated somewhat of the vigour necessary to the effectual maintenance of their dominion. For the preservation of an Empire it is incumbent that the vigilance of the ruler shall never be relaxed, and that the infallible and unchanging law should never be forgotten or lost sight of, which tells us in the clearest characters that a foreign dominion can never be popular, and that to overthrow it is the first and bounden duty of every child of the soil. The Chinese were well aware of the fact; they had only allowed themselves to forget some

[blocks in formation]

of its attendant circumstances. Their military power had been suffered to fall to a low ebb, and a momentary sense of weakness, or a diplomatic blunder, had allowed the introduction of an alien element into the southern portion at least of their Central Asian jurisdiction.

The former circumstance arose from the natural tendency of Empires which, having overcome every adversary and enjoyed a long period of good fortune, acquire a habit of believing that success is for them assured, and that the violent principles of superior might may be safely discarded, although in no case have they any better sanction for their position than the law of the stronger. But the origin of the latter cause of weakness claims more careful consideration and elaborate elucidation. The nearest neighbour of the Chinese was the Khanate of Khokand, a State with which, from olden times, the Kashgarians had been intimately connected both in commerce and in politics. Khokand had felt the force of Chinese valour when Fouta led the Celestial armies over the Pamir, and when Keen Lung's troops withdrew from Tashkent it was on the understanding that the Khan would acknowledge himself the dependent of China, and send tribute to the Emperor of Pekin. For fifty-two years that arrangement was strictly observed in the letter and the spirit; and during that period the intercourse between the two neighbouring States increased in proportion as commerce was fostered by the Chinese governors. Although the peoples were Mahomedans, and consequently antipathetic to the Confucian or Buddhistic Chinese, no restrictions were placed upon trade or travellers, and in all essential matters no difference could be detected to show whether the country was ruled by a Celestial Viceroy or by a Khan of its own.

This state of things continued uninterrupted until 1812, when Mahomed Ali, the Khan of Khokand, a man of capacity and ambition, came to the resolution to pay tribute no longer; and the Chinese, seeing that they had not the force to compel his obedience, acquiesced in his refusal. A first concession has soon to be followed by others. The Khokandian prince next obtained the right to levy a tax on all Mahomedan merchandise sold in the bazaars of Kashgar and Yarkand,

« AnteriorContinua »