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PROBLEMS OF 
 
 THE FAR EAST 
 
 JAPAN— CHINA— KOREA 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 PERSIA AND THE PERSIAN QUESTION 
 
 With 9 Maps, 96 Illustrations, Appendices, 
 and an Index. 
 
 2 vols. Svo, 42s. 
 
 London and New York : 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
(-1 
 
JUS MAJJiSTY LI IISI, KING OF KOliEA 
 
PROBLEMS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FAR EAST 
 
 BY THE RIGHT HON. 
 GEORGE N. CURZON, M.P. 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD, AUTHOR 
 OF 'RUSSIA IN CENTRAL ASIA' AND 'PERSIA,' AND GOLD 
 MEDALLIST OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 
 
 J A P A N— K O R E A— C H I N A 
 
 NEW AND REVISED EDITION 
 
 ' And first we must begin with Asia, to which the first 
 place is due, as being the place of the first Men, first Re- 
 ligion, first Cities, Empires, Arts ; where the most things 
 mentioned in Scripture were done ; the place where Para- 
 dise was seated, the Arke rested, the Law was given, and 
 whence the Gospell proceeded ; the place which did beare 
 Him in His flesh, that by His Wordbeareth up all things.' 
 PURCHAS, His P User i 111 cs 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 LONDON AND BOMBAY 
 
 iSIDCCCXC.VI. 
 
 All rights rcsc 7-vcd 
 
1) S 5 1 'S 
 
/ 
 
 //' ro 
 
 ^(^ / ia 
 
 TO THOSE 
 WHO BELIEVE THAT THe(bRITISH EMPIRE^ 
 
 /^ 
 
 IS, UNDER PROVIDENCE, THE GREATEST INSTRU MENT FOR GOOD 
 
 THAT THE WORLD HAS SEEN 
 
 AND WHO HOLD, WITH THE WRITER, THAT 
 
 ITS WORK IN THE FAR EAST IS NOT YET ACCOMPLISHED 
 
 THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED 
 
PREFACE TO NEW AND REVISED 
 EDITION 
 
 The first edition of this work appeared in August 1894, 
 within a few weeks of the firing of the first shot in the 
 Far Eastern War. Of the three nations who had 
 furnished its subject matter, two were the protagonists, 
 and the third was the victim in that eventful struggle. 
 There was good fortune, therefore, in the moment of 
 publication. But if this coincidence was undesigned, it 
 was attended by a more than proportionate risk. For 
 the book itself was less a history, or a narrative, or a 
 criticism, than it was a forecast, entered into with only 
 so much confidence as was born of a patient examination 
 of facts upon the spot, but in ignorance of how soon it 
 would be subjected to the rough test of experience. The 
 fact that I am able to issue a fourth edition of the book 
 — after the conclusion of a war that was seismic both in 
 its character and consequences — in substantially the 
 same guise as it originally wore, with alterations and 
 additions that, while required to bring it up to date, 
 only confirm my former argument, is to me a consolatory 
 vindication of my venture then, and may, I hope, be 
 regarded by others as a sufficient ground for republication 
 now. For the causes that, during the intervening year, 
 have brought about the collapse of China, the sufferings 
 
viii PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 of Korea, and the victory of Japan, are the facts which 
 this volume originally endeavoured to set forth, and 
 which, so far from being rendered obsolete by the war, 
 have been endowed thereby with a fresh vitality. The 
 Far Eastern Question has not been closed, but, on the 
 contrary, has been reopened by its termination ; and so 
 much of my former prophecy as remains unfulfilled I 
 am encouraged once more to submit, though with less 
 trembling, to the hidden touchstone of the future. 
 
 The central theme of these pages, when first published, 
 was the utter rottenness of Chinese administration, and 
 the certainty of military disaster in the case of conflict 
 with a well-equipped foe ; the confident ambitions and 
 swelling power of Young Japan ; the corrupt though 
 picturesque imbecility of Korea ; and the onerous respon- 
 sibilities likely to be entailed upon Great Britain in the 
 inevitable readjustment of Eastern Asia. So little were 
 these conditions appreciated at the time that the most 
 thoughtful of English newspapers thus criticised my 
 argument : — 
 
 ''Though Mr. Curzon is a diligent collector of facts^ and 
 deserves every credit for his praiseworthy attempts to understand 
 tlie problems with which he is confronted, he does not show any 
 A'ery strong grasp either of the great issues at stake in the Far East, 
 or as to the relative power and capacity of the two nations -which 
 are now confronting each otlier. As Mr. Curzon's conclusions are 
 necessarily prophetic in their nature, it is not, of course, possible 
 as yet to prove him mistaken ; but it cannot be said that he shows 
 that instinctive appreciation of international affairs which is re- 
 (juisite for those who undertake to diagnose the conditions of three 
 such kingdoms as Japan, Korea, and China. ... In spite of Mr. 
 Curzon, we believe that the weight of opinion is on the side of those 
 who hold, as we do, that China could, if hard put to it, organise a 
 most formidable fighting force. Does Mr. Curzon remember what 
 
PREFACE TO NEW EDITION ix 
 
 Lord Wolseley has said on the subject? He has expi-essed his 
 opinion that the one dangei- of the Anglo-Saxon race was meeting 
 the Chinese in war, — and this is no abstract opinion, for Lord 
 Wolseley helped to beat the Chinese under the walls of Peking. 
 '' They possess every military virtue," said Lord Wolseley of the 
 Chinese. Mr. Curzon infers that the Chinese are a very unwarlike 
 people. The world will, we think, prefer the verdict of a soldier 
 who has met the Chinese in battle, to that of a civilian who has 
 done little but sniff the evil odours of Peking, and, as he would 
 doubtless be tlie first to admit, has nothing that can be called first- 
 hand knowledge of China.' 
 
 Somehow or other the evil odours of Peking seem, after 
 all, to have left a correct impression upon my civilian 
 nostrils ; and so fair-minded a critic as the Spectator will 
 not, I am sure, grudge to a writer who has dared to 
 prophesy the rare satisfaction of success. 
 
 In this New Edition, which has been carefully revised 
 throughout, I have corrected a few mistakes that had 
 crept into the first, and have introduced a good deal of 
 additional matter, supplied or suggested by the events 
 of the past year. The Revision Treaty between Great 
 Britain and Japan, and the Treaty of Peace between 
 Japan and China, are printed as appendices ; and in a 
 fresh chapter I have endeavoured to sum up the main 
 issues of the recent conflict, and to forecast its bearing 
 upon the Asiatic situation. I should add that the 
 greater part of this chapter was written before the late 
 change of Government in England, and that it has been 
 composed in entire independence of official information 
 or authority. 
 
 The Far East, which a year ago was an uncommon, 
 has since become a familiar phrase in the terminology of 
 International Politics. Its problems, which suggested to 
 
c 
 
 X PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 me the title of this book, are and will remain problems 
 for many a year to come. Just, however, as these pages, 
 in their original form, were the last description, in point 
 of time, of an era that has since irretrievably vanished ; 
 so in their revised sliape they may invite perusal as the 
 first account that has appeared since the war of the new 
 world that has been generated amid the clash of arms. 
 Not merely, therefore, do they relate the past, but they 
 relate to the future. In that future I am confirmed, 
 instead of shaken, by all that has occurred, in the belief 
 with which I before concluded, that a great part remains 
 to be played, if the energy and the courage and the 
 sagacity are still forthcoming, by the Government and 
 the people of my own country. 
 
 GEORGE N. CURZON. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 The work of which I here publish the first part, though the 
 outcome of two journeys round the world in 1887-88 and 
 in 1892-93, does not pretend to be a book of travel. Rather 
 is it an attempt to examine, in a comparative light, the 
 political, social, and economic conditions of the kingdoms 
 and principalities of the Far East. By this title I signify 
 the countries that lie between India and the Pacific Ocean. 
 They include both the best known and the least known of 
 Oriental nations — Japan and China in the former category ; 
 Korea, Tongking, Annam, Cochin China, Cambogia, and 
 Siam in the latter. In respect of race, religion, and habits, 
 Burma should fall within the same class; but since it is 
 now an integral portion of the Indian Empire, it will be 
 purposely excluded from this survey. 
 
 The above-mentioned counti-ies have each their special 
 features of climate, scenery, architecture, religion, and life, 
 diffex-entiating them from each other, and still more from 
 the rest of the world. To the traveller these idiosyncrasies 
 cannot fail to appeal ; nor can he be indifferent to the 
 atmosphere of romance in which those fanciful regions, when 
 once he has left them, appear ever afterwards to float. To 
 such aesthetic impressions I would profess no invulnerability ; 
 and the descriptions which will be found in these pages of 
 the capitals of Korea and China, and of other scenes, will 
 prove the completeness of my occasional surrender. On 
 the whole, however, I have relegated these aspects of my 
 
xii PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 journeys to the background, and have preferred to discuss 
 the problems, perhaps less superficially interesting, but 
 incomparably more important, and vastly more abstruse, 
 which are suggested by the national character, resources, 
 and organisation of those countries as affected by their 
 intercourse with foreign or Western Powers. What is the 
 part which they are now playing, or are capable of playing, 
 on the international stage ? What is the political future 
 that may, without foolhardiness of prediction, be anticipated 
 for the peoples and lands of the Far East ? 
 
 In preparing and comparing my observations upon these 
 countries, I very early found that to attempt to deal with 
 the political features of eight different States within the 
 compass of a single volume could only be achieved at the 
 expense both of unity and exactitude — a conviction which 
 was fortified by the natural subdivision of my subject into a 
 twofold heading. Japan, Korea, and China, suggest a 
 number of problems, substantially similar if not actually 
 interconnected. Their maritime outlook is towards the 
 Pacific Ocean. The remaining countries of the Far East are 
 in a different stage of evolution ; and partly owing to their 
 intrinsic weakness, partly to the degree in which they have 
 already been brought under European control, illustrate a 
 different argument. They are also alike in turning a back- 
 ward gaze upon the Indian Seas. Following this natural 
 classification, I have confined the present volume to the 
 examination of the three first-mentioned States, reserving for 
 a future work the territories of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. 
 
 In the case of Japan I must confess to having departed 
 widely from the accepted model of treatment. There will 
 be found nothing in these pages of the Japan of temples, 
 tea-houses, and bric-a-brac — that infinitesimal segment of 
 the national existence which the traveller is so prone to 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xiii 
 
 mistake for the whole^ and by doing which he fills the 
 educated Japanese with such unspeakable indignation. I 
 have been more interested in the efforts of a nation, still in 
 pupilage, to assume the manners of the full-grown man, in 
 the constitutional struggles through which Japan is passing, 
 in her relations with foreign Powers, and in the future that 
 awaits her immense ambitions. 
 
 Similarly in China I have been more concerned with the 
 internal structure of that mysterious archaism, with the 
 policy of its rulers, the strength or weakness of its resources, 
 and with the pulse that throbs so defiantly beneath the 
 bosom of its amazing people, than with the sights and scenes 
 of Treaty Ports, or the superficial features of native existence. 
 In Korea I hope that I may claim in some respects to 
 break almost new ground. In the few and singularly 
 inadequate accounts of that kingdom that have appeared 
 in Europe, and that have left it, next to Tibet, the least 
 known part of Asia, no serious endeavour has been made 
 to examine its political status — a question of great com- 
 plexity and of international importance — or to determine 
 its bearing upon surrounding States ; and I doubt whether 
 to most persons at home Korea is known except as a land 
 of white clothes and black hats. If a disproportionate space 
 may appear to have been allotted to its treatment, as com- 
 pared with that of China and Japan, it will be because of 
 an intrinsic novelty that is not yet exhausted, and of a 
 general ignorance that in view of present events deserves 
 to be appeased. 
 
 If, in spite of a good deal of descriptive matter that may 
 perhaps interest or assist both the reader and the traveller, 
 it be objected that the trail of politics is over all this work, 
 I answer that such is the principal claim that I venture to 
 make for it. Other writers of great ability have recorded 
 
xiv PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 their impressions of the social or artistic sides of Eastern 
 Ufe. But, in their interest in the governed, they have too 
 frequently forgotten the government; nor does the photo- 
 graph of a fleeting moment lend much assistance to the 
 forecast of a wider future. For myself, in essaying this 
 more ambitious task, I can honestly disclaim, on the several 
 occasions when I have travelled in the East, any a priori 
 prepossession for this or prejudice against that people. I 
 have no anterior theory to support, and no party interest, 
 unless the British Empire be a party interest, to serve. But 
 to my vision all the nations of the East seem to group them- 
 selves as sections or parts, of varying age and utility, in the 
 most wonderful piece of natural and human mechanism that 
 the world now presents, namely, the political evolution of 
 the Asiatic Continent. What function is fulfilled by each 
 in the movement of this vast machine, how far they in- 
 dividually retard its progress or contribute to the collective 
 thunder of its wheels, is to me the most absorbing of 
 problems. What will become of this great fabric in the 
 future, whether its minor atoms will break up and split 
 asunder, thereby adding to the already formidable strain 
 upon the larger units, whether the slow heart of the East 
 will still continue to palpitate beneath the superimposed 
 restraints of Western force or example, or whether, as has 
 been predicted, some tremendous cataclysm may be ex- 
 pected, in which the tide of human conquest shall once 
 more be rolled back from East to West, are speculations 
 to the solution of which I have no fonder wish than to 
 subscribe my humble quota of knowledge. 
 
 Finally, these volumes are part of that scheme of work, 
 now nearly half realised, which ten years ago I first set 
 before myself in the examination of the different aspects of 
 the Asiatic problem. What I have already endeavoured to 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xv 
 
 do for Russia in Central Asia, and for Persia, or the countries 
 on this side of India, i.e. the Near East — what I hope to be 
 able to do hereafter for two other little-known Asiatic 
 regions, directly bordering upon India, i.e. the Central East 
 — I attempt to do in this volume, and in that which will 
 follow it, for the countries lying beyond India, i.e. the Far 
 East. As I proceed with this undertaking, the true fulcrum 
 of Asiatic dominion seems to me increasingly to lie in the 
 Empire of Hindustan. The secret of the mastery of the 
 world, is, if only they knew it, in the possession of the 
 British people. 
 
 No Englishman need grudge the splendid achievements 
 and possessions of the mighty Power whose hand is out- 
 stretched over the entire north of Asia, from the Ural 
 Mountains to the Pacific. He need not be jealous of the 
 new-born Asiatic zeal of our next-door neighbour in Europe. 
 He may respect alike the hoary pride of China and the 
 impetuous exuberance of renascent Japan. But he will find 
 that the best hope of salvation for the old and moribund in 
 Asia, the wisest lessons for the emancipated and new, are 
 still to be derived from the ascendency of British character, 
 and under the shelter, where so required, of British 
 dominion. If in the slightest degree I succeed in bringing 
 home this conviction to the minds of my countrymen at 
 home, I shall never regret the years of travel and of writing 
 which I have devoted and hope still to devote to this con- 
 genial task. 
 
 My sincere thanks are due, for revision or advice in different 
 parts of this work, to Mr. Cecil Spring- Rice, of H.B.M's 
 Diplomatic Service, the delightful companion of my later 
 journeys; to Mr. W. C. Hillier, H.M. Consul- General in Korea; 
 and to Mr. J. N. Jordan, of the British Legation at Peking. 
 
 July 1894. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FAR EAST 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 The enchantment of Asia — Her products — Homogeneousness — Contact 
 with civilisation— Moral lessons — The Far East — Its idiosyncrasies 
 — India the pivot ....... 1 
 
 JAPAN 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 
 
 Japanese railways — The streets of Tokio — The Diet — Public opinion 
 —Parliamentary symptoms — Rocks ahead — The Ministers and 
 Parliament — The Ministry of All the Talents — Expectations — 
 Session of 1892-93 — Session of 1893 — The crisis — General Elections 
 of 1894 — Real points at issue —1. Clan government — Oligarchy v. 
 Democracy — 2. Position of the Sovereign — 3. Ministerial re- 
 siJonsibility — The issue — Jajjanese Navj^ — Army — ^ Corroborative 
 opinion — Finances — Trade — Manufacturing industries — Attitude 
 of Japanese towards foreigners — Schoolboy patriotism — Chances 
 of Christianity in Japan . . . . . .13 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 JAPAN AND THE POWERS 
 
 Treaty Revision — History of the Treaties — Postponement of Revision 
 — The case of Japan— The case of the Powers — Previous attemjits 
 at Revision. Count Inouye, 1882-87— Count Okuma, 1888-89— 
 Viscount Aoki, 1890 — Bases of settlement — Position of the Codes 
 — Fui'ther Postponement — Address to the Throne in 1893— Anti- 
 Mixed residence agitation — The Chinese Question — Agitation 
 against foreign ownership of property — Other demands— Prospects 
 of settlement— The Treaty of July, 1894 . . . .51 
 
 h 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I.— Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Great Britain and 
 
 Japan (July 1894) 70 
 
 II.— Protocol 79 
 
 KOREA 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 
 
 The fascination of Korea — Literature of the subject — The Treaty 
 Ports — Fusan — Gensan — Chemulpo — The Korean people — Total 
 l^opulation — Ethnology and language — National character — The 
 extremes of society — Necessities of travel — Visit to the Diamond 
 Mountains — Korean monks — Monastic life and habits — Buildings 
 —Korean religion — Spirit-worship and Confucianism — Conditions 
 of travel — Sport — Peasant life — Rural habits — Memorial tablets — 
 Tombs — Wayfarers — The Korean inn . . . .85 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 
 
 Name of the capital — AValls and gates of Soul — Its situation— Beacon- 
 fires — Population and streets — Dirt and ditches — Houses — Street- 
 life and costume — Dancing-girls — Hats — Amusements — The Big 
 Bell — Shojis — Stone pagoda and pillar — Temples — Red Arrow 
 Gate — The painted Buddha — Execution-place — Royal fortresses — 
 Sovereignty in Korea — Royal Palaces — East, or New Palace — 
 West, or Old Palace — Great Hall of Audience — Summer Palace — 
 The King of Korea— The Tai Wen Kun— The King's reign— His 
 character— The Queen — The Crown Prince — Theorj^ of monarch j- 
 — Audience with the Foreign Minister — Court dress and etiquette 
 — Audience with the King — Royal procession — Korean army — 
 State review ........ 118 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 
 
 An Asiatic microcosm — Korean administration — Revenue and debt — 
 Foreign Treaties — Foreign advisers — Projects and speculations — 
 The currency — New Mint and silver coinage — Banks — Obstacles to 
 commercial development — Means of communication — Roads — 
 River Navigation — Coast Navigation — Railways— Growth of trade 
 — Steamship service— Customs service— Smuggling — Native Stand- 
 
CONTENTS xix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 point— Mines and Minerals— Gold — Future prospects — Missionary 
 work in Korea — 1. Persecution — 2. Toleration — English Protestant 
 Mission — Native sentiment ...... 16.5 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 
 
 Anomalous ijolitical status of Korea— Connection with Japan — Tribute 
 Missions — Friction and rupture — Recovery of influence — Treaty 
 of 1876 — Convention of Tientsin in 1885 — Commercial ascendency 
 — Political bluster — True laolicy of Japan — Outbreak of war — 
 Connection with China — Existing evidences of Korean vassalage — 
 Death of the Queen Dowager in 1890 — Thread of Chinese policy. 
 1. Repudiation — 2. Neutralisation — Terms of the Treaties — 
 Question of envoys — Question of troops at Soul — 3. Practical 
 sovereignty — The Chinese Resident — Position of the King — 
 Justification of Li Hung Chang — Connection with Russia — 
 Aggressive designs — Ad interim plans — Attitude of Great Britain 
 — Occupation of Port Hamilton in 1885— The other Powers— The 
 carcase and the eagles . . . . . .18 
 
 CHINA 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 
 
 Transition to China — Tientsin — The Viceroy Li Hung Chang — Inter- 
 view— Journe}^ to Peking — Chinese rural life — Entrance to Peking 
 — Ground-plan — The three Pekings — Panorama of the streets — 
 Native practitioners — The Imperial Palace — The Emjjeror Tung 
 Chill — The two Emjjresses-Regent — The Empress Dowager — The 
 Emperor Kuang Hsu — Palace routine — The Temple of Heaven^ 
 Difficulty of admission — The Annual Sacrifice — The Observatory • 
 — Examination building — Drum and Bell Towers — Temple of 
 Confucius — Hall of the Classics — Great Lama Temple— Outside 
 the walls — The Great Bell — The Summer Palace— Yuan-ming- 
 yuan — Wan-shou-shan — The Great Wall — The Ming Tombs — 
 British Legation ....... 221 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHINA AND THE POWERS 
 
 Relations between Chinese and Europeans — The Tsungli Yamen— A 
 Board of Delay — Chinese diplomacy — The Right of Audieiice— 
 History — English embassies. Lord Macartney in 1793 — Lord 
 
PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Amherst in 1816— Interval— Audience with Tung Chih in 1873 
 and 187'4 — Audience with Kuang Hsu in 1891 — Subsequent 
 audiences — Summary of achievement — True significance of the 
 dispute — Foreign policy of China — Attitude towards Russia — 
 China and the Pamirs— Russia in 1895— Attitude towards Great 
 Britain — Anglo-Chinese Trade — Opium Question — Missionary 
 Question— Protestant Missions— Their good service— Sowing the 
 seed— Objections and drawbacks — 1. Religious and doctrinal. 
 Hostility to Chinese ethics— Disputes as to name of the Deity — 
 As to the form of religion — Unrevised translations of the Scriptures 
 — Christian dogma — Irresponsible itinerancy — 2. Political. History 
 of the Treaties— Subsequent understanding —Imperial Edict of 
 1891— Chinese sentiments— The appeal for gunboats— Privileges 
 claimed for converts — An imjxrium in imperio—'Plea, of Political 
 agitation— 3. Practical. Mission life— Employment of women- 
 Situation of ♦Buildings — Refusal of converts to subscribe — Belief 
 in witchcraft — Horrible charges — Summing up — Results — The 
 right policy. Respect for the Treaties — Stricter precautions — 
 Choice of material ....... 2(30 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 
 
 Is China awake? — A tactical surrender — Railways in China — Man- 
 churian Railway — Line to Peking — Great Trunk Line — Hankow 
 Line and factories — Formosa Railway — New Schemes — Other 
 communications — Military reform — The Manchu and National 
 Armies — Discipline — Native officers — European officers — Cost — 
 Alleged successes — General Gordon's opinion — General Prjevalski 
 — Colonel Bell — The Chinese Navy — The false and the real dangers 
 — The mercenaries of Europe — The Press in China — Native enter- 
 prise — The curse of officialism — The Mandarinate — The Chinese 
 standpoint — The picture of progress — The reality of standstill . 311 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 MONASTICISM IN CHINA 
 
 Chinese Buddhism — Its superstitious sanction — Contradictory opinion 
 of monks — Its explanation — Original conception of monasticisni 
 — Its inversion — A spiritual insurance — Ostracism of the cloister — 
 Popular odium — Common imposture — Different classes of recruits 
 — Means of subsistence — Monastic Temples — Entrance gateway 
 —Main temple — Service — Vox et prceterea nihil — Tenants of glass 
 houses — Procession — Reliquary — Domestic premises — Cremation . 343 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE PROSPECT 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 AFTER THE WAR 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Responsibility for the War — An Eastern Vendetta — Secondary motives 
 — Japanese patriotism and prei^arations — Japan on the battlefield 
 — Causes of Chinese disaster — Civil corruption — Military incapacity v 
 — The Chinese soldier — Effects of the war — 1. Upon China, The 
 possible — The jn'obable — 2. Upon Korea. Need for reform — 
 Japanese efforts — Proclamation of Korean Independence — A rain 
 of Reforms — Japanning all round — Pak and the Queen — Passive 
 Resistance — The King — Count Inouye's Confession — Japanese 
 Failure — The Power in the Background — 3. Upon Japan. The 
 revolt of Asia— Commercial and industrial expansion . . 361 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 ■^ 
 
 Summary — The future of Japan — The Great Britain of the Far East — 
 Futui-e of China — The Chinese as aliens— The theory of Chinese 
 resurrection — Mr. Pearson's arguments in its favour — The new 
 march of the Mongols— Lords of the future — Objection of un- 
 occupied area at home — Reasons for disputing Mr. Pearson — 
 Alleged successes of China — The Colonial question— Character of 
 Chinese colonists — Military weakness of China — Chinese recon- 
 quest impossible — The dream of social apotheosis — Influence of 
 national character — Lessons of history — Danger of rebellion — The 
 real destiny — Race and empire — Is Japan the enemy? . . 390 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 
 
 The role of Great Britain — Reflex influence upon England — Commercial 
 supremacy of Great Britain— Our rivals — Contraction of business 
 —Christian Missions— English life in the Far East— The Press — 
 Domestic life — English character — British diplomacy — British 
 representatives — Suggested libraries of si^ecial reference — Diplo- 
 matic anomalies — Future of Great Britain in the Far East — The 
 English language ,,..... "113 
 
xxii PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. — Treaty of Shimonoseki between Japan and China (April 1895) . 429 
 II.— Imperial Rescript (May 1895) . . . . .434 
 
 INDEX 437 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 HIS MAJESTY LI HSI^ KING OF KOREA . FrOntispiCCe 
 
 THE JAPANESE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT AT TOKIO . To faCB 14 
 
 JAPANESE HOUSE OF PEERS . . . ■ }, 16 
 
 JAPANESE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES . • }} 20 
 
 THE KING IN STATE PROCESSION . . ■ ,) 1^8 
 
 KOREAN CAVALRY AND ROYAL STANDARD . • a 1^2 
 
 MODERN-DRILLED KOREAN INFANTRY . . • }, 164 
 
 TEMPLE AND ALTAR OF HEAVEN . . ■ >, 244 
 
 GREAT WALL OF CHINA . . . • }> 256 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT 
 
 MARQUIS ITO ...... 
 
 PORT AND JAPANESE SETTLEMENT OF FUSAN . 
 
 GATE OF NATIVE TOWN^ FUSAN 
 
 PORT OF CHEMULPO ..... 
 
 KOREAN SCHOOLMASTER AND BOYS 
 
 A KOREAN MAGISTRACY 
 
 KEUM KANG SAN^ OR DIAMOND MOUNTAINS 
 
 MONASTERY OF CHANG AN SA IN THE DIAMOND MOUNTAINS 
 
 ABBOT OF A KOREAN MONASTERY 
 
 STREET IN A KOREAN VILLAGE 
 
 A KOREAN" PEASANT FAMILY . 
 
 SOUTH GATE OF SOUL . 
 
 EAST GATE AND WALL OF SOUL 
 
 21 
 
 89 
 91 
 93 
 95 
 99 
 102 
 104 
 106 
 113 
 114 
 119 
 121 
 
XXIV 
 
 PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 MOUNTAIN OF POUK HAN 
 
 BEACON TOWER ON NAM SAN . 
 
 GROUND-PLAN OF SOUL 
 
 THE CITY AND OLD PALACE^ SOUL 
 
 KOREAN SECRETARIES 
 
 KOREAN WAITING-MAID 
 
 THE king's BAND 
 
 KOREAN MOURNER 
 
 TEMPLE OF THE GOD OF WAR AT SOUL 
 
 ARCHWAY OF THE CHINESE COMMISSIONERS 
 
 THE CITY AND NEW PALACE^ SOUL 
 
 GATEWAY OF THE OLD PALACE 
 
 GREAT HALL OF AUDIENCE 
 
 INTERIOR OF THE OLD PALACE 
 
 THE TAI WEN KUN 
 
 THE CROWN PRINCE 
 
 A KOREAN ailNISTER 
 
 A KOREAN COLONEL 
 
 LI HUNG CHANG 
 
 WALLS AND GATES OF PEKING 
 
 STREET IN PEKING 
 
 SOUTHERN ALTAR OF HEAVEN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 122 
 123 
 125 
 127 
 128 
 129 
 131 
 132 
 138 
 139 
 143 
 144 
 145 
 147 
 149 
 153 
 157 
 160 
 224 
 231 
 234 
 246 
 
 MAPS 
 
 KOREA AND PEKING . 
 JAPAN^ KOREA^ AND CHINA 
 
 To face 216 
 At the end 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FAR EAST 
 
 The }'outli who daily farther from the East 
 Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended. 
 AVoitDswoRTH : Ode on Intimations of Immortalitij. 
 
 Asia has always appeared to me to possess a fascination 
 
 which no country or erapire in Europe, still less any part 
 
 of the Western Hemisphere, can claim. It is 
 
 ^ The en- 
 
 believed by many to have been the cradle of chantment 
 
 our race, and the birthplace of our language, just ° ^'^' 
 
 as it certainly has been the hearthstone of our religion, and 
 
 the fountainhead of the best of our ideas. Wide as is the 
 
 chasm that now severs us, with its philosophy our thought 
 
 is still interpenetrated. The Asian continent has supplied 
 
 a scene for the principal events, and a stage for the most 
 
 prominent figures, in history. Of Asian parentage is that 
 
 force which, more than any other influence, has transformed 
 
 and glorified mankind — viz. the belief in a single Deity, 
 
 Five of the six greatest moral teachers that the world has 
 
 seen — Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Mohainmed — 
 
 were born of Asian parents, and lived upon Asian soil. 
 
 Roughly speaking, their creeds may be said to have divided 
 
 the conquest of the universe. The most famous or the 
 
 wisest of kings — Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Timur, 
 
 Baber, Akbar — have sat upon Asian thrones. Thither the 
 
 A. 
 
2 THE FAR EAST 
 
 greatest conqueror of the Old World turned aside for the 
 sole theatre befitting so enormous an ambition. ' Cette vieille 
 Europe viennuie ' expressed the half-formed kindred aspira- 
 tion of the greatest conqueror of modern times. The three 
 most populous existing empires — Great Britain^ Russia, and 
 China — are Asian empires ; and it is because they are not 
 merely European but Asian, that the two former are 
 included in the category. From Asia also have sprung the 
 most terrible phenomena by which humanity has ever been 
 scourged — the Turki Nadir Shah, Sultan Mahmud of Ghuzni, 
 the Mongol Jinghiz Khan. 
 
 Yet for such crimes as these has Asia paid to us no 
 mean compensation. For to her we owe the noblest 
 
 product of all literature, in the Old Testament of 
 Droducts ^^® Hebrew Scriptures ; the sweetest of lyrics, in 
 
 the epithalamium of a Jewish king; the embryos of 
 modern knowledge, in the empiricism of Arabian geometers 
 and metaphysicians. In Asia the drama was born. There 
 the greatest writer of antiquity chose a scene for his 
 immortal epic. There, too, the mariner's compass first 
 guided men over the pathless waters. In our own times 
 alone it is with her aid that we have arrived at the evolution 
 of three new sciences — comparative mythology, comparative 
 jurisprudence, and philology. From Asia we have received 
 the architecture of the Moslem — that most spiritual and 
 refined of human conceptions — the porcelain of China, the 
 faience of Persia, Rhodes, and Damascus, the infinitely 
 ingenious art of Japan. On her soil were reared the most 
 astonishing of all cities, Babylon ; the most princely of 
 palaces, Persepolis ; the stateliest of temples, Angkor Wat ; 
 the loveliest of tombs, the Taj Mahal, There too may be 
 found the most wonderful of Nature's productions ; the 
 loftiest mountains on the surface of the globe, the most 
 
THE FAR EAST 3 
 
 renowned, if not also tlie lai'gest, of rivers, the most 
 
 entrancing of landscapes. In the heart of Asia lies to this 
 
 day the one mystery which the nineteenth century has still 
 
 left for the twentieth to explore — viz. the Tibetan oracle of 
 
 Lhasa. 
 
 Of course, in displaying this panorama of Asian wonders 
 
 or Asian charms, while claiming for her an individuality 
 
 which her vast extent, her historic antiquity, 
 
 and her geographical features go far to explain, I on^oge- 
 f^ o L- » f i neousness. 
 
 do not claim for her any absolute unity of product 
 or form. On the contrary, the distinctions of race, irre- 
 spective of climate, are perhaps more profound in Asia than 
 in any other continent. There is, on the whole, less 
 exterior resemblance between a Japanese and a Persian 
 than there is between a Prussian and a Spaniard. A 
 Dutchman is more like a Greek than a Turkoman is like a 
 Malay. There is a wider gap between the finest Aryan 
 type and the aboriginal barbarian in the recesses of Saghalin, 
 Formosa, or Laos, than there is, for example, between the 
 Egyptian and the Hottentot, or between the Frenchman 
 and the Lap. Not less marked are the distinctions of 
 language and habits, of caste and creed. The Western 
 world in the Feudal Ages was less sundered and split up 
 than is Hindustan at the pi'esent moment. And yet, after 
 visiting almost every part of Asia, I seem, as soon as I taste 
 her atmosphere or come within range of her influence, to 
 observe a certain homogeneousness of expression, a certain 
 similarity of character, certain common features of political 
 and still more of social organisation, certain identical strains 
 in the composition of man, that differentiate her structure 
 from anything in Europe or even in America, and invest her 
 with a distinction peculiarly her own. The sensation is 
 sti'engthened by the impression left upon most minds since 
 
4 THE FAR EAST 
 
 the days of childhood by the two best books that have ever 
 been written upon the East — viz, the Old Testament and 
 the Arabian Nights. If I strive still further to analyse it^ I 
 find that in scenery, as I have elsewhere endeavoured to 
 explain^i the dominant note of Asian individuality is contrast^ 
 in character a general indifference to truth and respect for 
 successful wile, in deportment dignity, in society the rigid 
 maintenance of the family union, in government the mute 
 acquiescence of the governed, in administration and justice 
 the open corruption of administrators and judges, and in 
 every-day life a statuesque and inexhaustible patience, which 
 attaches no value to time, and wages unappeasable warfare 
 against hurry. 
 
 The impact between this solid anaalgam of character 
 and habit, and the elastic and insinuating force which we 
 
 ^ denominate civilisation, is a phenomenon which 
 
 Contact ^ 
 
 with civi- now in many countries I have set myself to ex- 
 amine, and which, I venture to think, sui'passes 
 all others in human interest. In Asia the combat is between 
 antagonists who are fairly matched. It resembles one of 
 those ancient contests between the gladiator and the retiarius, 
 the man with the rude blade and the man with the supple 
 net, that filled with straining crowds the Imperial arena at 
 Rome. For though craft and agility and superior science 
 Avill, in the long run, generally get the better of crude force 
 and the naked weapon, yet there are moments when, in 
 the twinkling of an eye, the tables are turned, when the 
 swordsman slashes the netman in twain, when the un- 
 tutored Oriental makes short shrift with the subtleties and 
 sophistries of the West. If Japan, for instance, illustrates 
 the easy victory of the European, China so far registers an 
 equal triumph for the Asiatic. In Africa and America, 
 1 Vide Persia and the Persian Question, vol. i. jjp. 13-15. 
 
THE FAR EAST 5 
 
 where no serious contest has been possible, because of the 
 
 vast moral and intellectual disparity between the organisms 
 
 engaged, but where civilisation advances like the incoming 
 
 tide over the castles built by children with wooden spades 
 
 in the sand, the spectacle is devoid of any such interest. 
 
 The same train of reflection may lead us to avoid a 
 
 common pitfall of writers upon the East — viz. the tendency 
 
 to depreciate that which we do not ourselves 
 
 sympathise with or understand, and which we f^"""^^ 
 •^ ^ lessons. 
 
 are therefore prone to mistake for a mark of 
 inferiority or degradation. Mankind has built for its moral 
 habitation different structures in diiferent lands and times. 
 It has adopted many divergent styles of architecture, and 
 has entertained widely opposite views upon material, or- 
 nament, and design. Sometimes the fabric would seem to 
 have been erected all aslant, or even to have been turned 
 topsy-turvy in the course of construction. And yet, just as 
 there are certain common laws observed in all building that 
 has endured, so there are points of contact in all civilisations, 
 common principles which lie at the root of every morality, ■ 
 however contradictory its external manifestations. It is 
 among the ancient races of Central Asia and in China that 
 these reflections are chiefly borne home to the travellei-'s 
 mind. When he meets with civilisation as old as, nay older 
 than our own, when he encounters a history whose heroes 
 have been among the great men of all time, religions whose 
 prophets have altered the course of the world's progress, 
 codes of morals which have endured for centuries and still 
 hold millions within their adamantine grip, a learning which 
 anticipated many of the proudest discoveries of. modern 
 science, and a social organisation which has in places solved 
 the very problem of reconciling individual liberty with 
 collective foi'ce, whereupon the new-fledged democracies 
 
6 THE FAR EAST 
 
 of the West are expending their virgin energies — he feels 
 that it is absurd for him to censure, and impertinent in him 
 to condemn. The East has not yet exhausted its lessons for 
 us, and Europe may still sit at the feet of her elder sister. 
 
 No introduction is needed in presenting the Far East to 
 an English audience,^ since, on the whole, it is better known 
 
 to them already than the Near East, or than the 
 i p Central East, if these geographical distinctions 
 
 may be permitted. Asia Minor, the Caucasus, 
 Persia, Beluchistan, and Transcaspia, are each a terra incognita 
 to the majority of our covuitrymen compared with the coasts 
 of China and the cities of Japan. The situation of these, 
 on or near to the ocean highways, and the advanced state 
 of civilisation to which their inhabitants have attained and 
 which has long attracted the notice of Europe, and the 
 extent to which they have in recent years been made ac- 
 cessible by steam-traffic by land and sea, have diverted 
 thither the stream of travel, and have familiarised men 
 with Tokio and Canton who have never been to Syracuse or 
 Moscow. Comfort too plays a great part in the discrimina- 
 tion of travel. Were there a railroad from the Caspian to 
 Teheran, more people would visit the capital of the Shah. 
 Were there an hotel at Baghdad, we might shortly hear of 
 Cook's parties to the ruins of Babylon. Nevertheless there 
 are portions of the Far East which the precise dearth of 
 those communications of which I have been speaking has 
 still left isolated and almost unknown. The number of 
 
 1 It may have been forgotten by most readers, but it is nevertheless the 
 fact, that the historical connection of England with the Far East was 
 antecedent to her connection with India. The East India Trading Companj- 
 had trading stations in the Malay Peninsula, in Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, 
 before they had opened a single factor3' in Hindustan, the sjjice trade being 
 the bait that drew them so far afield. The British advance of the past 
 century has therefore been merely a reappearance upon a scene where the 
 English flag first flew nearly three hundred years ago. 
 
THE FAR EAST 7 
 
 Englishmen who have travelled in the interior of Korea may 
 be comited upon the fingers of the two hands. I know of 
 none who have selected Annam as the scene of their explora- 
 tions. Perhaps, therefore, in including them in my survey 
 of the Far East, I may help to fill a gap, at the same time 
 that I subserve the symmetry of my own plan. 
 
 There are certain main distinctions which separate this 
 region from those parts of the Asian continent that border 
 upon the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea. 
 Much of it, comprising the whole of the Indo- ^ ^ ^°'. 
 Chinese peninsula, lies south of the Tropic of 
 Cancer, and accordingly presents us with a climate, peoples, 
 and a vegetation, upon which the sun has looked, and which 
 possess characteristics of their own. Greater heat has pro- 
 duced less capacity of resistance ; and just as in India all 
 the masculine races have their habitat above the 24th degree 
 of latitude, so in the B^ar East is there the greatest contrast 
 between the peoples of China, Korea, and Japan, lying 
 north of that parallel, and those of Burma, Siam, Malaysia, 
 and Annam, which lie below it. The one class has retained 
 its virility and its freedom, the second has already undergone 
 or is in course of undergoing absorption. Throughout the 
 Far East there is abundance of water, and the scorched 
 and sullen deserts that lay their leprous touch upon 
 Persia, Central Asia, and Mongolia, are nowhere reproduced. 
 In the Near East, i.e. west of the Indus and the Oxus, 
 there are absolutely only two rivers of any importance, the 
 Tigris and the Euphrates ; and the main reason of the back- 
 wai'dness of those countries is the dearth both of moisture 
 and of means of communication Avhich the absence of rivers 
 entails. A further striking difference, of incalculable im- 
 portance in its effect upon national development, is that of 
 religion. Western Asia is in the unyielding and pitiless 
 
8 THE FAR EAST 
 
 clutch of Islam, which opposes a Cyclopean wall of resistance 
 to innovation or reform. In Eastern Asia we encomiter only 
 the mild faith of the Indian prince, more or less overlaid 
 with superstition and idolatry, or sapped by scepticism and 
 decay; and the strange conglomerate of ethics and de- 
 monolatry which stands for religion in China and its once 
 dependent states. Neither of these agencies is overtly 
 hostile to Western influence, though both, when aroused, 
 are capable of putting forth a tacit weight of antagonism 
 that must be felt to be appreciated. Finally, whereas in 
 the Near East population is sparse and inadequate, in the 
 Far East it is crowded upon the soil, cultivating the well- 
 soaked lands with close diligence or massed behind city-walls 
 in seething aggregations of humanity. These conditions 
 augment the complexity of the problem which their political 
 future involves. 
 
 Midway between the two flanks of the continent whose 
 rival differences I have sketched lies India, sharing the 
 features, both good and evil, of both. She has wide, water- 
 less, and untilled plains ; but she also has throbbing hives 
 of human labour and life. Her surface is marked both by 
 
 mighty rivers and by Saharas of sand. Among 
 nc la le j^^^^. pg^p^gg jj^^.g Mohammedans of both schools, 
 
 mixed up with diverse and pagan creeds. Of her 
 races some have always subsisted by the sword alone ; to 
 others the ploughshare is the only known implement of iron. 
 She combines the rigours of eternal snow with the luxuriant 
 flame of the tropics. Within her borders may be studied 
 every one of the problems with which the rest of Asia 
 challenges our concern. But her central and commanding- 
 position is nowhere better seen than in the political influence 
 which she exercises over the destinies of her neighbours 
 near and far, and the extent to which their fortunes revolve 
 
THE FAR EAST 9 
 
 upon an Indian axis. The independence of Afghanistan, 
 the continued national existence of Persia, the maintenance 
 of Turkish rule at Baghdad, are one and all dependent upon 
 Calcutta. Nay, the radiating circle of her influence overlaps 
 the adjoining continents, and affects alike the fate of the 
 Bosphorus and the destinies of Egypt. Nor is the effect 
 less remarkable if examined upon the eastern side, to which 
 in this book I am about to invite attention. It is from 
 jealousy of India and to impair the position which India 
 gives to Great Britain in the Far East that France has again 
 embarked upon an Asiatic career, and is advancing from the 
 south-east with steps that faithfully correspond with those 
 of Russia upon the north-west. The heritage of the Indian 
 Empire has within the last ten years made us the land- 
 neighbours of China, and has multiplied threefold the area 
 of our diplomacy at Peking. Even the fortunes of I'emote 
 Korea are in a manner bound up with the politics of 
 Hindustan, seeing that it is by the same foe that, in the 
 last resort, both are threatened, and that the tactics which 
 aim at the appropriation of the smaller unit have as their 
 ulterior objective the detriment of the greater. Such and 
 so supreme is the position enjoyed in the Asian continent 
 by the Empire of the Kaiser-i-Hind. Towards her, or into 
 her orbit, a centripetal force, which none appears able to 
 resist, draws every wandering star. Just as it may be said 
 that the Eastern Question in Europe turns upon the dis- 
 memberment of Turkey, so the Eastern Question in Asia 
 turns upon the continued solidarity of Hindustan. In what 
 relation to that problem stand the countries and peoples of 
 the Far East, what is their present political condition, and 
 in what way they are engaged in constructing the history, 
 or reconstructing the maps of the future, it is my object in 
 these pages to determine. 
 
JAPAN 
 
 ' Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, 
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen, 
 Round many Eastern islands have I been.' 
 
 J, Keats. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 
 
 Me vestigia terrent, 
 Omnia te adversiim spectantia, nulla retrorsum. 
 
 Horace, Eji. I. i. 7-1-5. 
 
 During the five years that elapsed between my first and 
 second visits to Japan^ in 1887 and in 1892, I found that 
 many things had changed. The Europeanisation 
 of the country proceeds apace, though pei'haps Japanese 
 with a slightly less headlong rapidity than before. 
 In 1887 short lines of railway ran only in the neighbourhood 
 of the two capitals, Tokio and Kioto, and of the Treaty 
 Ports, Kobe and Yokohama. Now it is possible to travel 
 by rail within a single day from Tokio to Kioto, and also 
 from Tokio to Aomori on the northern coast; 1980 miles 
 of the iron road are recorded as already open to traffic ; and 
 a great programme of railway construction, according to 
 which a sum of £8,500,000 is to be spent upon further 
 extensions during the next twelve years, has received the 
 sanction of the Diet. In a few years' time those to whom 
 the discomforts of a marine voyage are inadequately com- 
 pensated by the fairy landscapes of the Inland Sea, will be 
 able to travel overland, without leaving their compartment, 
 from Kioto to Shimonoseki ; while there is a talk of bridging 
 the Straits that bear the latter name with a fabric that shall 
 excel in monstrosity even the Forth Bridge. From Tokio to 
 
 13 
 
14 JAPAN 
 
 Nagasaki it will then be as commonplace an incident to travel 
 by rail as it is from London to Wick ; and the. jinriksha will re- 
 lapse into the dusty limbo of the postillion and the stage-coach. 
 Where the ' ii'on horse ' has rushed in, it may be certain 
 that minor forms of Western invention will not fear to 
 tread. In Tokio tramways clatter along the 
 Y'^^l';^^'^^ streets; gas flames in some of the principal 
 highways ; and the electric light is uniformly 
 employed in the public buildings^ in many of the residences 
 of ministers and nobles, in the tea-houses which figure so 
 largely in the holiday life of the Japanese gentleman, and 
 in quite a number of stores and even small shops. Telephones 
 and telegraphs stretch a web of wires overhead. The long 
 picturesque lines of yashikis or fortified city residences of 
 the feudal lords and their sworded retainers, that covered 
 so great an area within the moats, have almost all dis- 
 appeared, and have been replaced by public offices of 
 showy European architecture and imposing dimensions. An 
 immense pile of scaffolding, surrounding a space much larger 
 than the Law Courts on the Strand in London, conceals 
 what will presently be known as the new Ministry and 
 Courts of Justice, where will be dispensed a jurisprudence 
 that has been borrowed, with a truly Japaijese eclecticism, 
 from the codes of half the nations of Europe. The perpetual 
 bugle-note, and the sight of neat figures in white cdtton 
 uniforms and black boots, are indicative of a national army, 
 whose mobilised strength in time of peace is 56,000, and 
 whose discipline, physique, and weapons are the admiration 
 of European critics. Out in Tokio Bay the smart white 
 hulls of gunboats, lying at anchor, represent a navy whose 
 creation has forcibly stirred the national ardoui', and which 
 is destined in the future to be no mean factor in the politics 
 of the Pacific. Finally, after a twenty years' travail, Japan 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 15 
 
 has given birth to a Parliamentary Constitution ; and an 
 unpi'etentious but roomy temporary structure, built of wood, 
 like its predecessor which was burnt down in 1891, and 
 with no trace of native art or architecture about it, accom- 
 modates the nominees of royalty or the representatives of 
 the people, who, in the two Chambers, created by the 
 Constitution of February 1889, and respectively entitled the 
 House of Peers and the House of Representatives', constitute 
 the Imperial Diet of Japan, and are swiftly introducing her 
 people to the amenities of Parliamentary existence — obstruc- 
 tion within the Chamber, platform oratory out of doors — to 
 the phenomena of Radical and Progressive parties, and to the 
 time-honoured jmlcestra of begging and refusing supplies.^ 
 
 In the five years of its existence, since its first meeting 
 in November 1890, the Japanese Diet has passed through 
 
 eiffht sessions and four General Elections. 
 
 *= The Diet. 
 
 The two Houses meet in Chambei'S identical 
 
 in size and design, almost the only difference being the 
 
 presence of the Imperial throne behind the President's 
 
 1 The Japanese Diet ajjproximates more closely to the Prussian than to 
 any other European or foreign model. The House of Peers is partly 
 hereditary, partly nominated, and partly elected. Under the first heading 
 come the Imjjerial Princes and the higher nobility sitting in their own right ; 
 the second category is composed of persons nominated by the Emperor for 
 meritorious services to the State, or for erudition. The members of both 
 these classes sit for life. Under the third heading are included the bulk 
 of the peerage, sitting only for a term of seven years, and consisting of a 
 number of counts, viscounts, and barons, elected by their own orders, and 
 of representatives of the various provinces, returned, subject to the approlja- 
 tion of the Emperor, by small electoral bodies composed only of the highest 
 taxpayers. The House of Peers, thus constituted, contains at the f)resent 
 time 270 members. The Lower House, which contains 300 members, and 
 sits for four years, being bound to assemble at least once every year for a 
 session of three months, is wholly elective, and is composed of the repre- 
 sentatives of the principal prefectures and towns, returned in the proportion 
 of one to every 128,000 of the people, uijon a taxpaying, residential, and 
 age franchise, the qualification for electors being the possession of land of 
 the taxable value of $600, or of an annual income of $1000, a twelve months' 
 residence, and the minimum age of twenty -five. 
 
16 JAPAN 
 
 chair in the House of Peers. Their ground-plan has 
 been borrowed from that of the bulk of foreign Legislative 
 Chambers, the seats and desks of the members being ranged 
 in the arc of a circle fronting a raised platform, upon 
 which are the presidential chair, the speaker's tribune, 
 the desk of the official reporters, and — a speciality of the 
 Japanese Diet — on either side of this centre a row of seats 
 occupied by the Ministers or delegated officials of the 
 various departments, who are in the Chamber, yet not of it, 
 and who sit there not compulsorily, but of their own option, 
 and without votes, to defend their departments, to make 
 speeches, or answer questions.^ The Japanese appear to 
 have acquired with characteristic facility the external 
 features of Parliamentary conduct. They make excellent 
 speeches, frequently of great length, and marked by graces 
 of style as well as by quickness of reasoning. On the whole, 
 considering how immature is the Lower House, and how in- 
 evitably, as I shall presently explain, it is by its constitution 
 afflicted with the vices of an irresponsible Opposition, it 
 succeeded till lately in conducting its operations with a 
 
 1 The merely optional attendance of ministers in the Lower House has 
 excited an already perceptible irritation among the champions of Parlia- 
 mentary omnipotence and ministerial responsibilitj'. For instance, the 
 published Report of the Proceedings during the session of 1892-93 contained 
 the following interesting passages. A motion was made by a private 
 member, and was carried, that the President be asked to inquire when the 
 Cabinet Ministers could be in their places. Subsequently, the Government 
 replied, with some curtness, that ministers having the power to attend 
 whenever they pleased, there was no necessity for members to put tliem- 
 selves to the trouble of asking them. On a later occasion a member said he 
 believed that some of the ministers were in an anteroom, and requested that 
 a secretary might be sent to see, as in that case he desired to make an 
 urgency motion. Finally the urgency motion, so moved, was carried, on 
 the ground that the Cabinet had ignored its responsibility to the Emperoi', 
 the country, and the Diet. The main reason, other than constitutional law 
 and j)ractice, for the absence of ministers, is that the House of Peers meets 
 between 10 and 11 a.m., and the House of Representatives at 1.1.5 p.m., i,e. 
 at hours when the ministers are at work in their offices. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 17 
 
 creditable decorum. Very full and accurate reports of the 
 speeches are published by a Government staff of reporters, 
 whose stenographic attainments are on a par with the most 
 highly-trained experts of Europe or Anmerica ; and a con- 
 densed version of the debates in English appears in the 
 columns of the Japan Daily Mail from the able pen of its 
 well-known editor, Captain Brinkley. 
 
 The new Parliamentary regime has developed a prodigious 
 mushroom growth of native journals, few enjoying at all an 
 extensive circulation, but each attached to the 
 creed of some party or section, or inspired by some "■ }^ 
 leader. In this way is being manufactured, with 
 almost bewildering haste, a body of public opinion whose 
 movements it is impossible to forecast, and with which 
 Japanese statesmen already find it difficult to grapple. In 
 the country we read of political clubs, of large meetings 
 held in theatres and public places, of eloquent speeches, of 
 cheering audiences, of the virtues and the wickedness of 
 public men ; and we realise that in Japan, as elsewhere. 
 Demos, having found belated articulation, is repeating, for 
 the comfort of the scientific historian, the familiar and 
 venerable accents. 
 
 There are other evidences that Japan is in the bondage 
 
 of a universal law. Though the level of political intelligence 
 
 in the Chamber is reasonably high, it does not 
 
 Parlia- 
 appear that that of character or prestige is equally mentary 
 
 so. The attraction of a salary (for each member sy^^P'^orns. 
 
 of both Houses ^ receives a compulsory yearly allowance of 
 
 $800, equivalent at the present rate of exchange to less 
 
 than £100 a year — no inconsiderable income in Japan) is 
 
 1 Except the ex officio and hereditary Peers, i.e. the Princes and Marquises. 
 The Imperial Princes are in receipt of iDersonal grants from the EJmperor ; 
 but tlie remaining Princes and Marquises have no salaries, and are in some 
 cases i^oor. 
 
18 JAPAN 
 
 not believed to add much to the popularity of a political 
 career, since it is estimated that, though a member receives 
 $800 annually, he has to spend $2000 at least, and since, 
 also, the strongest discredit attaches, theoretically, to any 
 suspicion of pecuniary motives. But the system of educa- 
 tion organised after the fall of Feudalism — a systein based 
 on the aspiration of bridging, with all possible rapidity, the 
 gulf that centuries of isolation had produced in Japanese 
 knowledge — proved disproportionate to the practical needs 
 of the nation, and called into existence a set of youths who 
 regarded official and political life as the only sphere befitting 
 their superior attainments. From the ranks of this class 
 there has gradually been formed a numerous body of pro- 
 fessional politicians, who find in platform and Parliamentary 
 publicity a compensation for the closed doors of rank or 
 office. These individuals are in a position of perpetual 
 freedom and no responsibility ; they can enjoy the luxury 
 of attacking and paralysing every Government in turn ; and, 
 whilst by their votes they can neither form nor oust a 
 Ministry, they can fetter its limbs with any number of 
 Lilliputian cords. The predominance of this class at first 
 deterred many of the older and more influential men from 
 offering themselves for election ; but there are signs that 
 their reluctance is yielding to the necessities of the situation. 
 It may be said, indeed, that the Parliamentary experiment 
 is being watched by the more stable elements of the 
 community from a suspicious though narrowing distance, 
 and that a sense of national obligation to the highest duties 
 of citizenship has not yet been at all widely aroused. 
 
 At the same time, charges of Government nepotism and 
 Rocks electoral tyranny are freely bandied about. It is 
 ahead. alleged that the Imperial nominations to Life- 
 peerages, which are reserved by the Constitution for the 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 19 
 
 reward of distinguished public service or erudition, are 
 distributed among Ministerial adherents. At the General 
 Election early in 1892 official interference appears to have 
 been openly and flagrantly exercised. At least, such vi^as 
 the declared opinion of both houses of the Diet ; for, 
 whilst the Lower House only failed to pass by three votes 
 a motion for a memorial to the Throne, declaring that in 
 the elections administrative officials had wantonly perverted 
 the authority of their office by tempting and inveigling 
 voters or by resorting to force for their compulsion — and 
 seeking to fix the responsibility upon the Government — a 
 motion which, if carried, would have amounted to a direct 
 direct vote of censure — both Houses passed by large 
 majorities a representation to the Government urging them 
 to punish the implicated officials ; and the new Cabinet so 
 far accepted the instruction as to dismiss five of these 
 offenders from their posts. The General Elections of 1 892 
 and I894 were also distinguished by a good deal of rioting, 
 and by a notable percentage of broken heads. We may 
 detect similar reproductions, as yet in miniature, of Western 
 forms, in the commencement of an agitation for the reduction 
 of the franchise, which is now based upon a high assessment 
 to direct taxation ; while the minimum age limit of members 
 of Parliament — viz. thirty years — implies a mistrust of pre- 
 cocious genius which is naturally distasteful to the self- 
 conceit of young Japan. 
 
 None of these ' Rocks ahead,' however, can be compared 
 for seriousness with the main question of the relations of 
 
 the Chamber with the Government, which re- 
 
 The Min- 
 produce in a different but not less acute form isters and 
 
 the controversial impasse that is from time to P^^^"^^'"^'^^- 
 
 time presented in England, not between the House of 
 
 Commons and the Ministry, but between a Radical majority 
 
20 JAPAN 
 
 in the House of Commons and a Conservative majority in 
 the House of Loi-ds. Japan, though governed by party 
 men, is not blessed or cursed with party government. The 
 Ministers in Japan, hke the President's Cabinet in America, 
 are the nominees and servants of the Emperor. They are 
 not responsible to the Diet, and can remain in office as long 
 as the Sovereign honours them with his confidence. But 
 whereas in America a majority hostile to the Executive in 
 both Houses is a phenomenon extremely rare in occurrence, 
 and certain to be terminated in a short period of time, in 
 Japan there is no a j^rioii reason why such a situation should 
 not exist in the first place, or be indefinitely prolonged. 
 The theory of the Japanese Constitution, therefore, being 
 the rule of a Government legislating through two Chambers, 
 but not responsible to either, and treating their representa- 
 tions with comparative indifference, it may readily be 
 understood that the popular Chamber at any rate, which 
 rests solely upon election, though on a narrow franchise, 
 becomes an almost automatic machine of opposition. There 
 is a more or less rough subdivision of parties, with supposed 
 supporters or adversaries of the Government. But these do 
 not in either or any case sit in groups ; nor can their votes 
 be relied upon with any certainty^ the ' Below the gangway ' 
 attitude being as popular in Tokio as it is in Northampton. 
 The largest combination in the House of 1892 only numbered 
 QQ out of a total of 300 ; and the two main sections of 
 the Radical party are irreconcilably opposed. So far the 
 Japanese House of Representatives has rendered itself as 
 disagreeable to successive Governments as it could, obstruct- 
 ing their measures, defeating their budgets, and generally 
 betraying an attitude that might have been studied in Irish 
 academies. Nor can I imagine a more fruitful occupation 
 for the student, be he partial or prejudiced, of representative 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 
 
 21 
 
 institutions, than a perusal of the proceedings of the Lower 
 House of the Japanese Diet during its last six sessions. 
 There will be much to interest and inform him ; some 
 things to reassure ; but not a little to dispirit and dismay. 
 
 At the time of my visit in September 1892, a new 
 Ministry had recently assumed the seals of office, and as I 
 
 MAItQUIS ITO 
 
 revise these pages (1895) is still in power. Count Ito, the 
 Minister President, or Prime Minister, is probably the best- 
 known Japanese statesman outside his own country: ^, ,^. . 
 
 ^ •' ' The Minis- 
 
 the adventurous exploit of his early career, when, try of All 
 
 with his life-long friend and colleague Count 
 
 Inouye, he was smuggled in disguise on board an English 
 
22 JAPAN 
 
 vessel for conveyance to England, there to study the 
 manners and institutions of the West, being as familiar to 
 most foreigners as is the part which he subsequently played 
 in the Restoration, and as a pioneer in the evolution of 
 Modern Japan. In his own country his experience, his 
 tact, and his individual responsibility for the new Parlia- 
 mentary Constitution,! render him the most respected and 
 influential of Japanese public men. Already once Prime 
 Minister and President of the Privy Council, and the first 
 President of the House of Peers, he now returned after an 
 interval in which he had seen other Ministers come and go 
 in the preliminary flux consequent upon a new order of 
 things, in order to mould into durable shape the offspring 
 of his own political creation, and to endeavour to give 
 something like stability to the administration of his country. 
 With him were associated in the Cabinet his old friend 
 Count Inouye, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, and, 
 perhaps, the most daring and original of Japanese states- 
 men ; 2 Count Yamagata, himself a former Premier, to whom 
 was entrusted the portfolio of Justice;'^ and Viscount Mutsu, 
 a travelled and highly-accomplished statesman, who had 
 represented his country at Washington before being trans- 
 ferred to the Foreign Office.* The only public man of the 
 
 1 Count Ito has himself published a learned commentary on the Japanese 
 Constitution, which has been translated into English and is published in 
 Tokio. Since the war he has been made a Marquis. 
 
 2 After the preliminary successes of Japan in the recent war, Count 
 Inouye was sent in the autumn of 1894 to Korea to organise the new 
 Government, and to superintend the introduction of the so-called reforms. 
 The experience of a year's dictatorshij) has left him a wiser, and probably a 
 sadder, man. But he is still engaged uj)on the hopeless task. 
 
 3 Count Yamagata, with the rank of Field-Marshal was invested with 
 supreme command of the Japanese forces in Korea after the victory of 
 Ping-yang in September 1894, and subsequently led the army corps that 
 invaded Manchuria. He was afterwards made a Marquis. 
 
 ■* In earlier life Viscount Mutsu was implicated in the Satsuma Rebellion, and 
 was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, before being pardoned and released. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 23 
 
 very first rank who was outside the new ministry was Count 
 Okuma, the author of the famous attempt at Treaty Revision 
 that cuhninated in an attempt upon his Hfe, and who, for no 
 very well ascertained reason other than that he is the acknow- 
 ledged leader of the Progressionist party in the House of 
 Representatives, was supposed to be more or less in opposi- 
 tion. The new Government might almost claim to be a 
 Ministry of All the Talents ; and, undoubtedly, the summons 
 of Count Ito by the Emperor upon the fall of the Matsukata 
 Cabinet in the summer of 1892, and the composition of his 
 Administration, had excited the liveliest satisfaction in 
 political circles in Japan. A few caustic censures on Clan 
 government scarcely broke the general consensus, on the 
 one hand, of congratulation that the true leaders had at 
 length consented to lead, on the other hand of judgment 
 held in suspense until they had shown of what stuff they 
 were made. I enjoyed the pleasure on several occasions 
 of meeting and conversing on the political situation with 
 Counts Ito and Inouye, and with Viscount Mutsu ; and a 
 foreigner may perhaps be allowed without impertinence to 
 compliment the country that can produce such public men. 
 
 The question of the hour was the attitude to be adopted by 
 the Government towards Parliament when it should meet that 
 body in November. In the Session of 1891-92, 
 the Budget had been so systematically opposed ^^^^^^ ^ 
 that it was never passed at all, and recourse had 
 to be made to an article in the Constitution, admitting in 
 such a case (with wise foresight of the idiosyncrasies of 
 Japanese character) of the readoption of the estimates of 
 the previous year.^ The repetition of such a rebuff could 
 
 ^ It is amusing, in the light of what has actually happened, to read 
 Count Ito's sanguine commentary upon this article of the Constitution (No. 
 Lxxi. ) ; ' When the Diet has not voted on the Budget, or the Budget has 
 not been brought into actual existence, the result will he, in extreme cases, 
 
24 JAPAN 
 
 not lightly be endured by the strongest Government that 
 modern Japan could produce ; and public opinion exhausted 
 itself in surmise as to the probable bearing of Count I to and 
 his colleagues towards this obstreperous nursling. How was 
 it to be controlled — by a policy of cuifs, or by a programme 
 of caresses ? Should the Ministry rule in despite of the 
 Chamber, or should it make terms with the latter, and treat 
 it with that assumption of deference that is so grateful to 
 injured pride ? The answer that was returned to these 
 questions by the experiences of the two Sessions of 1 892-93 
 and 1893 sheds so luminous a ray both upon the internal 
 polity of modern Japan, and upon the dangers by which it is 
 threatened, that I make no apology for referring to them. 
 
 The actual facts were as follows. The Government met 
 Parliament with a pi'ogramme whose two chief items were 
 
 a scheme for the reassessment of the Land- 
 c^!,^°f tax — a time-honoured grievance in Japan ever 
 
 since the Restoration ^ — which scheme would 
 involve a reduction of $3,750,000 in the revenue so 
 raised ; and a plan for the increase of the Navy by 
 
 the destruction of the national existence ; and, in ordinary ones, the 
 paralysis of the machinery of the Administration. BiU such a state of 
 affairs being possible only in countries ivhere democratic principles are taken 
 as the basis of their political institutions, it is incompatible with a polity 
 like ours.' 
 
 1 After the Revolution in 1868, the Japanese farmers, who were in theory 
 though not in practice tenants-at-will, received certificates of ownership, 
 with freedom of transfer and sale. Henceforward they jaaid tlieir rent as a 
 direct tax to the Government, which had resumed possession of the national 
 property. Since the days of the Shogunate the tax has been redviced by 
 one-half, while the ijrojjortion which it bears to the entire reveiiue has 
 largely diminished, owing to the increase of receipts from other sources of 
 taxation. Nevertheless the one great domestic question in Japan is the 
 reform of the land-tax, jiromised by every Government and introduced in 
 every Session. The assessment is said to be both obsolete and unequal ; the 
 State as rent-collector is not prone to mercy ; and the tax being paid, not, as 
 formerly, in kind, but in cash, is seriously affected by the fluctuations in the 
 price of grain. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 25 
 
 the expenditure of $16,000,000, to be spread over seven 
 years, the appropriation required for these two purposes 
 being raised by an increase of the tobacco-tax, the sake-tax, 
 and the income-tax. From the very first the House showed 
 its temper in the most uncompromising fashion. The two 
 sections of the Opposition, the Kaishinto or Progressionists, 
 under Count Okuma, and the Jiyuto or extreme Radicals, 
 under Count Itagaki, gleefully joined hands in order to 
 embarrass the Government. The new taxes were refused ; 
 a private bill for the immediate reduction of the land-tax, 
 independently of reassessment, was carried by the Lower 
 House; even the Upper Chamber passed a representation 
 in favour of the reduction of all official salaries (with the 
 exception of those in the military, naval, diplomatic, and 
 consular departments) from 12 per cent, to 7 per cent, of 
 the total revenue, and of the dismissal of superfluous officials ; 
 and when the Budget was finally introduced in the House 
 of Representatives its items were ruthlessly cut down, 
 wholesale reductions were made in official salaries, and the 
 appropriations for the new shipbuilding programme were 
 absolutely refused. Three times did the inexorable Opposi- 
 tion send back the amended Budget to the Government ; 
 three times the Government refused to accept it. Then 
 came the crisis. The leader of the Opposition moved the 
 adoption of a representation to the Throne, which was 
 tantamount to a vote of want of confidence in the Ministry. 
 But no sooner had he opened his speech than the President 
 had placed in his hands an Imperial Rescript, ordering 
 (under the terms of an article in the Constitution) a special 
 adjournment of the Diet for fifteen days. An attempt at 
 compromise in the interval resulted in failure; and when 
 the House met again, the same resolution was moved, and in 
 spite of a temperate and conciliatory speech from the Prime 
 
26 JAPAN 
 
 Minister was carried by a majority of 181 to 103. Three 
 days later an Imperial message was read out in both 
 Chambers, in which the Emperor pointed out, in language 
 of reproachful solemnity, that the spectacle of discord pre- 
 sented by the Parliamentary conflict was one by which the 
 spirits of his Ancestors were likely to be much disturbed ; ^ 
 and that to end the crisis and recall the nation to its duties 
 in the matter of the national defences, where ' a single day's 
 neglect might involve a century's regret/ he proposed to 
 surrender, during the space of six years, one-tenth of his 
 Civil List, or the sum of $300,000 annually ; at the same 
 time directing all military and civil officials to contribute a 
 similar proportion for the same period.- To this Rescript a 
 loyal reply was voted ; and a Committee of the Lower House 
 was appointed to confer with the Government. The latter 
 practically gave way on the main points, pledging them- 
 selves to sweeping administrative reforms, and to a large 
 reduction both of officials and of official salaries, as well as 
 to special reforms in the Naval Department. The Budget 
 was then passed, and the crisis was temporarily at an 
 end. From the conflict the Government had only emerged 
 
 1 The belief in an immemorial antiquity of the Imperial Throne, and an 
 immense and cerernoniovis respect for the Imperial Ancestors, supply an 
 archaic framework in which the brand-new Japanese Constitution sometimes 
 looks strangely out of place. The Preamble of the latter begins with the 
 words : ' Having, by virtue of the glories of Our Ancestors, ascended the 
 throne of a lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal.' Article i. repeats 
 the same consolatory fiction, while projecting it into an endless future : ' The 
 Emijire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors 
 unbroken for ages eternal.' In the Imperial oath, taken at the promulgation 
 of the new Constitution, the Emperor said : ' That we have been so fortunate 
 in our reign, in keeping with the tendency of the times, as to accomplish this 
 work, we owe to the glorious spirits of the Imperial Founder of our House, 
 and of our other Imperial Ancestors.' 
 
 - According to Article x. of the Constitution, 'The Emperor determines 
 the organisation of the different branches of the Administration, and the 
 salaries of all civil and military officials, and appoints and dismisses the 
 same.' 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 27 
 
 by the personal intervention of the Emperor, and by a 
 capitulation on many important points to their adversaries. 
 In the compromise the latter were the real victors. 
 
 In the ensuing Session, which opened in November 1893^ 
 the crisis arrived with even greater rapidity, and demanded 
 a more drastic solution. No sooner had the Diet assembled 
 than the Lower House proceeded to pass, by a large ma- 
 jority, a vote of want of confidence in its Speaker 
 or President, on the scarcely concealed ground j| 
 that, though originally appointed by the Radicals 
 as a Radical partisan, he had falsified expectations by showing 
 an unbecoming inclination to favour the Government. The 
 President, who had been elected for four years, declined to 
 resign; and the House accordingly voted an address to the 
 Throne on the subject and adjourned. In the end this 
 particular quarrel, the importation of the Emperor into 
 which was a symptom of the advanced state of Parliamentary 
 disoi-ganisation, terminated in the expulsion of the recalcitrant 
 official by the appointment of a successor in his place. Mean- 
 while the House of Representatives, having, so to speak, 
 tasted blood, proceeded to gratify an even more dangerous 
 appetite. Unable to wreak that personal vengeance upon 
 the Government which a majority of its members desired, 
 they addressed the Throne on two subjects — (1) on Official 
 Discipline and the Status of Ministers, practically demanding 
 the dismissal of the Cabinet ; and (2) on the strict enforce- 
 ment of the Foreign Treaties — a part of the petty and 
 vexatious policy recently instituted by the Opposition in 
 order to embarrass the Government and to force Treaty 
 Revision upon their own terms. After this step the 
 sittings of the House were again suspended ; and Count 
 Ito, in presenting the address to the Throne, requested, 
 as a matter of form, to be relieved of the discharge of 
 
28 JAPAN 
 
 duties which a inajority of the Chamber were bent upon 
 
 rendering impossible. 
 
 A few days later the Emperor replied, in a statesmanlike 
 
 Rescript, declining to dismiss his Ministers, a prerogative 
 
 which, he remarked, appertained, not to the Diet, but 
 
 to the Crown ; and refusing to depart from the policy 
 
 hitherto pursued towards foreigners, which had been liberal 
 
 and progressive. Anything tending to interrupt 
 The crisis. 
 
 the consummation of that policy would be contrary 
 
 to the Imperial wishes. Retrograde and vexatious pro- 
 posals such as those suggested would alienate Foreign 
 Powers, and were incompatible with the spirit of civilisation. 
 Upon the reassembling of the House, these views were 
 enforced in a singularly temperate and dignified speech by 
 the Foreign Minister, Viscount Mutsu; which however did 
 not prevent the occurrence of violent scenes, and the use of 
 opprobrious and disgraceful language. The Diet was forth- 
 with prorogued for a fortnight ; but it was obvious that 
 a repetition of adjournments was a palliative that had 
 already lost its efficacy ; and, on the last day but one of 
 the year appeared an Imperial Decree dissolving the Diet. 
 Like many European forerunners, the Japanese Govern- 
 ment had realised that the only purgative for a factious 
 and discredited Parliament is an appeal to the people. 
 Simultaneously they asserted and strengthened the authority 
 of the Executive by dissolving the Great Japan Society 
 — an anti-foreign Association that had been formed for the 
 purpose of agitating against the Revision of the Treaties 
 except upon terms inequitable to the foreigner — and pro- 
 hibited political societies. 
 
 The progress of the General Election, which lasted for 
 two months, was attended with scenes of violence and even 
 bloodshed, in which the sosM or professional rowdies, who 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 29 
 
 are ready, for a consideration, to let out their services to 
 
 either party in Japan, played a prominent part. On 
 
 March 1 the elections took place, the result being ^ 
 
 ■^ General 
 that the Government failed to better their con- Elections 
 
 dition, the aggregate of the various Opposition " 
 
 parties being sufficient to render them impotent in the 
 Diet, and to secure for Japan a continuance of those con- 
 stitutional struggles which, at a moment vs^hen all parties 
 should combine to lay firm the bases of the new polity, 
 threaten to jeopardise its very existence, and to convince 
 the world that the Japanese are at present in too feather- 
 headed and wayward a mood to be able to work out even 
 their own salvation. When the new session opened in May 
 the Ministry was vehemently assailed, its bills were rejected, 
 and a vote of want of confidence in the Government was 
 within five votes of being carried. Realising that with 
 such a Chamber legislation, or even government, was im- 
 possible, Count Ito again advised the Emperor to dissolve 
 the Diet. And thus, for the second time within a single 
 year, Japan was plunged in the throes of a General Election. 
 The outbreak of war in the summer of 1 894, and the sense of 
 national patriotism which it aroused in no ordinary degree, had 
 the effect for a time of stifling these dissensions ; and at the 
 General Election the Government strengthened its position, 
 though still remaining in a position of numerical inferiority to 
 the opposing groups. Now that the war is over, the con- 
 stitutional volcano may be expected again to become active. 
 
 These events are interesting, and I have narrated them, 
 less as incidents in a Parliamentary drama than because of 
 the explanation that lies behind. They are 
 
 symptoms of the threefold problem bv which ^. P°^"*^s 
 •' ^ ^ •' at issue. 
 
 Japanese statesmen and the Japanese nation are 
 
 now confronted, and which will not, in all likelihood, be 
 
30 JAPAN 
 
 solved without a great strain^ if not actual jeopardy to the 
 Constitution itself. The principles involved, or the questions 
 at issue, are these : the ancestral conflict between democratic 
 and oligarchical ideas in government ; the part to be played 
 in a so-called Constitutional regime by the Sovereign ; and 
 the relation of ministerial responsibility to a Parliamentary 
 system. They are problems about which European States 
 have been fighting (and in some cases are still fighting) for 
 hundreds of years; and now that our own analogous con- 
 flicts are for the most part over, we may contemplate, with 
 the sententious satisfaction of maturity, the almost identical 
 struggles of impetuous youth. 
 
 In refusing the appropriations asked for the shipbuilding 
 programme in 1893, the Opposition speakers were careful to 
 explain that it was from no stint of patriotism or 
 govern- disbelief in the need of a powerful navy that they 
 "^^" ■ took that step. The administration of the Naval 
 Department they held to be corrupt and bad, but, as one 
 speaker said, ' the head and front of all the reforms needed 
 was to free the navy from the dominant influence of the 
 Satsuma clan.' On another occasion another speaker 
 remarked : ' A man could not become head of the Home 
 Office, or of the Railway Bureau, unless he were of Choshiu 
 origin, or head of the War Department, or the Navy, unless 
 he were of the Satsuma clan.' These observations introduce 
 us to a curious feature in the Japanese system, rarely 
 noticed by European writers, but nevertheless exercising a 
 predominant and conservative force in the midst of a welter 
 of change, viz. the continued dominion of the old Clan 
 system, which has prevailed in Japan ever since, just as 
 it had done for centuries before, the Revolution. leyasu, 
 the founder of the last or Tokugawa family of Shoguns in 
 l603, was practically the head of a northern confederacy, 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 31 
 
 which defeated and held in subordination the clans of the 
 south and south-west. Two and a half centuries later the 
 decline of the Tokugawa Shogunate gave to these the 
 chance of a long-postponed revenge. Raising the cry of the 
 restoration of the legitimate Sovereign and the expulsion of 
 foreigners, they rallied around themselves all the disaffected 
 and patriotic elements in the country^ and carried their 
 purpose. Satsuma, Choshiu, Tosa^ and Hizen were the four 
 principal clans concerned in this successful revolution, which 
 re-established the ascendency of the South over the North. 
 In their hands the new government, though outwai-dly 
 based on European ideas, was in reality administered on the 
 old Japanese system, namely, by a territorial clique. The 
 Satsuma rebellion showed that one great section of the 
 victorious clan cared only for the old system, and not at all 
 for the new principles. It was defeated, and the Progressive 
 policy prevailed. Nevertheless^ under a Western exterior 
 the victors have always clung tightly to the traditional 
 methods, and have retained an almost unchallenged supre- 
 macy, alike in the formation of Cabinets and the distribution 
 of patronage. In the old days, no doubt^ this was due to 
 the importance of powerful princes or nobles backed by 
 formidable aggregations of armed men. It is now the 
 triumph, not of tex'ritorial influence, but of a civil and 
 military hierarchy, largely organised upon the privilege of 
 birth. The army, and still more the navy, which in the 
 background play a very important part in the politics of 
 modern Japan, and which are the real mainstay of the 
 Government against the subversive tendencies of Parlia- 
 mentary majorities or demagogic Radicalism, are principally 
 officered by men belonging to the chief clans ; the present 
 Cabinet is mainly recruited from the same sources ; and the 
 cry of the Opposition is to a large extent well founded, 
 
32 ' JAPAN 
 
 that to be a clansman is to possess the key to the doors of 
 
 official promotion. 
 
 In reality the conflict is only a Japanese version of the 
 
 familiar duel between a powerful and disciplined oligarchy 
 
 and an ambitious but as yet imperfectly organised democracy. 
 
 It is essentially the same historical phenomenon that was 
 
 presented by the contest of the Gracchi with 
 Oligarchy 
 V. Demo- the Senate in the expiring century of the Roman 
 
 cracy. Republic ; and that was reproduced in our own 
 
 country in the popular struggle against what is commonly 
 called Whig ascendency in the first quarter of the present 
 century. The Cabinet of Count Ito is in English political 
 terminology a Whig Cabinet, composed of members of the 
 great Whig families, the Cavendishes and Russells of modern 
 Japan (though without their pedigrees), and sustained by 
 the patronage which the Japanese equivalents to rotten 
 boroughs afford. The system possesses that desperate 
 tenacity which is the result of inherited ability and con- 
 scious worth. It has the authority which prescription and 
 possession unite to confer, and it is undoubtedly in conformity 
 with the history and the most cherished traditions of the 
 people. A long time may yet elapse before it disappears ; 
 but ultimately, in face of an opposition which complains with 
 some truth that it is being deluded by the mere semblance 
 of liberty and outward form of change, it seems destined to 
 perish, as did the influence of the Whig oligarchy in England. 
 It will have been noticed that in each of the three 
 . Parliamentary sessions of which I have spoken, 
 tion of the the majority of the Lower House, profiting by 
 overeign. ^^^ liberty conceded by an article in the Con- 
 stitution, ^ addressed frequent representations to the Throne, 
 
 1 Article xmx. 'Both Houses of the Imperial Diet may respectively 
 present addresses to the Emperor.' 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 33 
 
 in a sense hostile to the Government of the day ; and 
 further, that in the Session of 1892-93 a settlement of the 
 political deadlock was only obtained by the direct intervention 
 of the Emperor. This habit of erecting the Sovereign into 
 an outside court of appeal against the Executive is both in 
 open divei'gence from the spirit, even though permitted by 
 the letter, of the Constitution, and, if persisted in, cannot 
 fail to cause trouble in the future. Count Ito in his Com- 
 mentary on the Constitution evidently never contemplated 
 such an abuse of the prerogative of memorial when he thus 
 explained its application : — 
 
 ' The meaning of the word " addresses " includes the reply to an 
 Imperial speech in the Diet, addresses of congratulation or of 
 condolence, i*epresentations of opinion, petitions and the like. In 
 transmitting the writing, proper forms of respect must be observed. 
 The dignity of the Emperor must not be infringed by any pro- 
 ceeding implying coercion. ' 
 
 Still more serious however in its consequences, if too 
 frequently repeated, must be the personal descent of the 
 Sovereign, as a sort of Attic deus ex muchina, on to the 
 Parliamentary stage. The Emperor cannot perpetually be 
 extricating his Ministers from difficulty, and the Diet from 
 a deadlock, by a surrender of part of his Civil List; nor 
 should his interposition in the disputes of the Chambers 
 come to be regarded as the sole possible exit from a cid 
 de sac, carefully prepared in advance by an Opposition 
 ostentatiously devoid of any sense of responsibility. The 
 Throne occupies a very singular and unique position in the 
 polity of modern Japan. Still enveloped in the dignity of a 
 limitless past, and not yet wholly stripped of the halo of a 
 once divine sanction, it stands out in the breathless turmoil 
 of Japanese evolution as the single element of unshaken 
 stability, the rallying-point of all pai'ties, the common oracle 
 
 c 
 
34 JAPAN 
 
 of warring social and political creeds. To the Japanese the 
 Emperor is the personification of that intense and perfervid 
 spirit of patriotism which, alone of Eastern peoples, they 
 appear to feel. He is identified with their beautiful islands, 
 with their immemorial language, with their ancestral religion. 
 He represents the triumph of no conquering race, of no alien 
 caste, and of no compulsory creed. His forefathers created 
 Japan for the Japanese to inhabit, and for their descendants 
 to rule. So little in Japan are men predisposed to question 
 the Imperial sanctity, that it may be said to be almost 
 independent of the personality of the Sovereign. Just, 
 however, as the Gods of Olympus, when they descended 
 from their misty heights, were found to be men of like 
 passions with men, and ended by becoming the personifica- 
 tions merely of exaggerated human attributes or lusts, so 
 will the prestige that still clings to the Mikado's authority 
 and name be rapidly dissipated by their employment on the 
 battle-ground of parties . or iiT the strife of factions. The 
 strength and safeguard of the Throne lies in its entire 
 severance from the political arena. For centuries, while 
 his practical authority was a figment, the Emperor never 
 lost his hold upon the public imagination, because of the 
 mysterious and awe-inspiring background in which he lived. 
 Rival combatants used his name while they fought, and his 
 prerogatives after they had conquered. The clans rose 
 and fell, but the Imperial power, though held in suspense, 
 remained. Whilst this is no longer either possible or wise, 
 yet the attitude of reserve and withdrawal is still, under a 
 Parliamentary regime, the true secret of Imperial strength. 
 The Emperor's function is to support his Cabinet, who, 
 under the Japanese Constitution, are his own servants and 
 nominees, and to entertain no address that brings him 
 down, so to speak, from the throne, or that touches his 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 35 
 
 prerogatives as fixed by law. Any modification or alteration 
 of them should proceed from his own initiative, and not at 
 the dictation of the Diet. Nor should such a course be 
 attended by any insuperable difficulty, seeing that this is the 
 theory of the Imperial prerogative plainly contemplated by 
 the fraraers of the new Constitution, and that the latter is 
 guarded with the peculiar jealousy attaching to a writteJd 
 instrument by a people who claim to see in it the embodiment 
 of all constitutional wisdom, and who are sensible enough 
 to recognise the danger of beginning to tamper with so 
 delicate a fabric. 
 
 A more imminent and less easily soluble problem is that 
 presented by the open combat between the Executive and 
 
 the Parliamentary majority. It is obvious from 
 
 ^ •> ^ 3. Minis- 
 
 recent experience that the Government, except terial re- 
 under the strain of national danger, has little hold sponsibihty. 
 over the Diet, and but slight control over public opinion. 
 Weekly it has seen itself flouted, insulted, and crippled by a 
 combination of parties powerless to eject it, and incapable of 
 replacing it if ejected. The Address to the Throne 
 presented by the majority of the House of Representatives in 
 February 1893 contained the following definition of the 
 situation and account of its origin : — 
 
 'Humble reflection leads your Majesty's servants to conclude 
 that the chief object of representative government is to promote 
 concord between high and low, and to secure their co-operation in 
 aid of the State. Hence there can be no profounder or greater 
 desideratum than that the Legislature and the Administration 
 should occupy towards each other an attitude of thorough sincerity, 
 and should achieve the reality of harmonious co-operation. But 
 ever since the opening of the Diet, the Legislature and the 
 Administration have been wanting in concord, all their projects 
 have been impeded, all their capabilities marred, so that in the 
 sequel they have failed to secure for tlie country the benefits of 
 progressive development in concert with the advance of the age. 
 
36 JAPAN 
 
 Your Majesty's servants acknowledge that the insufficiency of their 
 own zeal is in part responsible for these things, but they believe that 
 the chief cause is to be sought in the Cabinet's failure to discharge 
 its functions. . . . The origin of the friction between the Govern- 
 ment and the Diet, and of the discord between officials and people, 
 extends to a remote time. Unless accumulated abuses be removed, 
 and the reality of representative government achieved, the nation 
 will lapse into a state of decline. . . . Your Majesty's servants 
 gave expression to the desire of the people, but the Cabinet utterly 
 declined to listen, and thus prevented us from discharging our 
 legislative function of consent. Such is not the proper course to 
 adopt in adjusting the finances of the Empire and carrying out the 
 administration of the State. Your Majesty's servants apprehend 
 that, so long as they are associated with such a Cabinet, it will be 
 impossible for them to discharge the trust reposed in them by your 
 Majesty above, and to give expression to the desires of the people 
 below. ' 
 
 Here is a sufficiently plain statement, though couched in 
 
 somewhat circumlocutory language, of the demand by the 
 
 popular Chamber for Party Government upon the accepted 
 
 European lines. Such a demand is wholly inconsistent with 
 
 both the spirit and the letter of the new Constitution. 
 
 Ministerial responsibility is there defined as existing towards 
 
 the Emperor alone, and is thus explained by Count Ito in 
 
 his Commentary : — 
 
 ' Who is it except the Sovereign, that can appoint, dismiss, and 
 punish a Minister of State ? The appointment and dismissal of 
 them having been included by the Constitution in the sovereign 
 power of the Emperor, it is only a legitimate consequence, that the 
 power of deciding as to the responsibility of Ministers is withheld 
 from the Diet. But the Diet may put questions to the Ministers 
 and demand open answers from them before the public, and it may 
 also present addresses to the Sovereign setting forth its opinions. 
 Moreover, although the Emperor reserves to himself in the 
 Constitution the right of appointing his Ministers at his pleasure, 
 in making an appointment the susceptibilities of the public mind 
 must also be taken into consideration. This may be regarded as an 
 indirect method of controlling the responsibility of Ministers.' 
 
 What the 'susceptibilities of the public mind' demand in Japan 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 37 
 
 is not however a remote and indirect voice in the appoint- 
 ment of Ministers, but a direct voice in their dismissal ; and 
 the chasm that separates the two parties is one that no 
 concessions on either side appear hkely to fill. Prior to the 
 opening of the second Session of 1893 the Government 
 testified their recognition of this fact by publishing an 
 announcement that until a party (not an accidental or 
 momentary combination of parties) appeared in the House 
 with an absolute majority on its side, they would neither 
 surrender their power nor share it with any section, however 
 influential ; and that they would regard no vote of censure 
 or rejection of their proposals, but would remain in office 
 until men appeared with authority to take it from them. 
 
 This bold acceptance of the challenge to war a outrance 
 might seem to some an impolitic defiance of the enemy ; and 
 in any country where the Parliamentary system . 
 
 was more developed, or political training more 
 widely diff'used, it might be the premonitory symptom of 
 ultimate defeat. In Japan itself there exists a strong party 
 who see in the so-called popular demand a movement which 
 will not lose, but will, on the contrary, gain force until it 
 has secured its object and revolutionised the Constitution. 
 But there are opposing considerations that may justify 
 a more sanguine forecast. First of these is the respect, 
 before spoken of, for the written Constitution. Further, 
 the prominent men in Japan are almost unanimously in 
 favour of the existing law, and the cohesion of the Clan 
 and Court party will not easily be broken down. Thirdly, 
 the Japanese are as yet too ignorant of Party Government to 
 be able to work any such system as is demanded without 
 risk of total collapse; the Opposition is so split up by 
 personal animosities as to render the creation of a working 
 majority out of its ranks highly improbable; whilst the 
 
38 JAPAN 
 
 Radical party in particular is so far much too wanting in 
 dignity or prestige to justify the granting of concessions that 
 might transform the intemperate filibusters of the ballot-box 
 and the tribune into portfolio politicians. Finally, the analogy 
 of foreign States suggests that a modus vivendi will ultimately 
 be established in the Chamber itself, by an organised Govern- 
 ment party less amenable than now to the shifting currents 
 of popular caprice. In the meanwhile, however, we may 
 expect a period of political fermentation, and even of chaos^ 
 by which such an issue may be for some time retai'ded, and 
 from which the Constitution itself may not escape unscathed. 
 Among the respects in which the advance of modern 
 Japan has been most rapid, though until the recent war 
 scarcely appreciated by foreigners, is the development of the 
 Japanese military and naval forces of the Empire, Aspiring 
 Navy. to play a predominant part in the politics of 
 
 Eastern Asia, she has spared no effort and shrunk from no 
 sacrifice to place herself in the matter of armed equipment 
 Mpdn a level with her possible competitors. The Japanese 
 are born sailors ; and a country with so extensive and 
 vulnerable a seaboard could in no case afford to neglect its 
 maritime defences. About their Navy the patriotism of the 
 Japanese is as easily aroused as is our own in Great Britain ; 
 and although the administration of the Naval Department is 
 the subject of acrimonious party conflict, there is no disagree- 
 ment upon the broad Imperial policy of a largely increased 
 naval outlay. When in 1893 the strength of the Japanese 
 Navy amounted to 40 vessels and 50,000 tons, and the 
 Government laid down the standai'd of national requirement 
 as 120,000 tons, there were some among the extreme Radical 
 party who would have preferred to see this figure raised to 
 150,000. The sums contributed by the Emperor in the crisis 
 of 1893, and ordered to be deducted from the salaries of all 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 39 
 
 military and civil officials, were specially ear-marked from 
 
 the start for the construction of new battleships of the first 
 
 rank. An order amounting to £2,000,000 was placed in 
 
 England ; and now that the war is over, it is in contemplation 
 
 very largely to increase that branch of the national forces to 
 
 which in the main Japan owed her decisive victory ; and 
 
 Count Ito's boast to me that the Japanese fleet was the next 
 
 strongest to that of China in the Northern Pacific, and was 
 
 far more serviceable for action, was more than justified by 
 
 events. It is largely by the offer of the alliance of her Navy 
 
 that Japan hopes in the future to control the balance of 
 
 power in the Far East. Simultaneously the maritime 
 
 defences of the country, which have been executed under 
 
 the superintendence of a distinguished Italian engineer, have 
 
 reached a formidable state of proficiency ; and we are not 
 
 likely'to have any ' Shimonoseki bombardment ' in the future. 
 
 Not less satisfactory or admirable is the spectacle presented 
 
 by the reorganised Army of modern Japan. With a 
 
 mobilised peace-footinsr of between 50,000 and 
 
 ^ Army. 
 
 60,000 men, with a first reserve of 89,000, and a 
 
 second reserve of 104,500, armed, equipped, and drilled 
 according to the highest standard of nineteenth-century 
 requirement, and moreover economically and honestly ad- 
 ministered, the Japanese Army need not shrink from the 
 test of comparison, in point of efficiency, with the forces of 
 European States. Lest, however, my appreciation should be 
 attributed to the uninstructed partiality of the civilian eye, 
 let me quote an English military authority. Colonel E. G. 
 Barrow, who visited Japan shortly before the war. Confess- 
 ing that he Avas ' fairly astonished by the marvellous picture 
 which military Japan presents,' he amplifies this statement 
 as follows : — ^ 
 
 1 United Service Magazine, September 1893. 
 
\j 
 
 40 JAPAN 
 
 ' The officers of the Japanese Army have mostly passed through 
 the Imperial Military School^ and may therefore be held to be of 
 much the same stamp professionally as the generality of officers of 
 European armies. The barracks are two-storeyed wooden build- 
 ings, with airy, well-ventilated rooms, and scrupulously clean. 
 The store-rooms are, however, the really striking feature of the 
 Japanese military system. In completeness and in arrangement 
 there is nothing better to be found in Europe. ... As regards 
 the troops, the infantry are very good — better even than some 
 European infantry I could name ; the artillery good, or at least 
 fair ; and the cavalry indifferent. This is scarcely to be wondered 
 at. The Japanese are not an equestrian race ; their horse possesses 
 neither of the charging qualities of speed or weight ; and, finally, 
 the jihysical aspect of the country is not one that could ever hope 
 for the development of good cavalry, . . . The army is not a 
 paper sham, but a complete living organisation, framed on the 
 best models, and as a rule thoroughly adapted to the requirements 
 of the country. . . . Here we have an army of 75,000 men, 
 capable of being trebled in war, which costs only about $17,000,000, 
 or, approximately, i;2,500,000. . . . The Japanese soldier has dis- 
 cipline, perseverance, and great endurance. Has he valour also } ' 
 
 To the latter question no one who is acquainted with the 
 many striking pages in Japanese history can hesitate to 
 return an affirmative answer. There is no nation in the 
 world, of anything like comparable antiquity, whose annals 
 exhibit a more brilliant record of personal valour and 
 patriotic devotion. For over a thousand years there have 
 been sung in Japan some verses that fitly express the high 
 ideal of feudal and national loyalty that has always been 
 entertained by the Japanese soldier : — 
 
 ' Is my path upon the ocean yonder ? 
 
 Let the waves my shipwrecked body hide ! 
 Must I over plain and mountain wander } 
 Let my slain corpse 'neath the grass abide ! 
 Where'er I cease, 
 For me no peace 
 Of last release, 
 I shall perish by my liege-lord's side ! ' 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 41 
 
 Nor could any people have enacted the tragedy of the 
 Forty-seven Ronins, or maintained for centuries the strange 
 but heroic code of honour involved in hm-a kiri, without 
 possessing a superlative though misdirected form of human 
 courage.^ 
 
 A still more recent work by an English military critic 
 contains an equally discriminating but not less laudatory 
 verdict upon the Japanese Army.- The author 
 describes the cavalry as poor, for the reasons rative 
 before-mentioned, but the infantry as quite op'mon. 
 excellent, the drill as smart and efficient, the armament as 
 good, and the barrack accommodation as admirable. He 
 supplies figures, dei-ived from official sources, of the numerical 
 strength of the various battalions, regiments, brigades, and 
 divisions ; and he gives the total strength of the Territorial 
 Army and Reserves combined as 228,850 men. If his views 
 of what the Japanese Army may be expected to do in the 
 field of international action are in excess of all probability, 
 his testimony to its practical efficiency as a fighting machine 
 is sufficiently authoritative to merit quotation. 
 
 Finally, there is the experience of the recent war, in 
 which, though the Japanese never encountered a serious 
 resistance nor fought a critical battle, there is a general 
 consensus of opinion that they displayed the highest 
 qualities of organisation, discipline, and courage, qualities 
 indeed which merited a more worthy foe. 
 
 1 For many instances of such courage, vide A. B. Mitford's Tales of Old 
 Jajxm. "With them may be compared the comparatively recent incident 
 that conchided the sanguinary Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. Old Saigo, with 
 a band of devoted adherents, made his wa}^ from the East, where his army 
 had been cut off, to his native place, Kagoshima. There, entrenched on a 
 hill above the town, he and his men fought till they perished. When he 
 fell, wounded, he prayed his devoted friends to cut off his head. They com- 
 plied, and then committed sviicide. The dead bodies were found together. 
 
 - On Short Leave to Jajxtn. By Captain G. J. Younghusband. London, 
 1894. Chap. xvii. 
 
42 JAPAN 
 
 To a sympathiser with Japan not the least gratifying 
 among the evidences of her progress are the signs of a quite 
 uncommon financial prosperity. Money is plenti- 
 ful in the country. There is a great circulation 
 in notes, and a large reserve in specie in the banks. The 
 Government has a handsome surplus at its command ; and, 
 inasmuch as the bulk of the taxes are levied by fixed laws, 
 the economies resulting from the recent administrative 
 reforms, which have already produced an annual reduction 
 of $8,000,000, will considerably swell this total. In con- 
 sequence of the profitable year's trade in 1892, all good 
 stocks rose in value from 20 to 30 per cent. There has 
 further been a very rapid development of Government 
 credit, as illustrated by the conditions of the National Debt. 
 Bonds paying a high rate of interest have either been 
 converted into 5 per cent, bonds or have been paid off 
 without option of conversion. The only portion of the 
 Debt which is still located outside of Japan is a sum of 
 £750,000, which was raised in 1873 and will mature in 1897. 
 Upon this 7 per cent, interest is paid in gold, equivalent to 
 Japan to 13 per cent, on the original capital. The interest 
 on the remainder of the Debt is paid in silver. The total 
 internal debt amounts to $252,000,000, to the payment of 
 pi'incipal and interest upon which $22,000,000 are applied 
 annually. Japanese statesmen have fortunately formed a 
 very high conception of the value both of national credit 
 and of financial retrenchment ; and the suspicion of ex- 
 travagance or corruption is one that arouses an immediate 
 furore in the Chamber. It is to be regretted that in 
 their dealings with foreigners the standard of commercial 
 morality that is commonly observed by Japanese merchants 
 is neither so blameless in theory nor so inflexible in 
 practice. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 43 
 
 As regards the Trade of Japan, I will not here reproduce 
 
 statistics that may be found in Consular publications, but 
 
 will merely notice certain salient characteristics. 
 
 Trade. 
 Her foreign trade has increased so I'apidly that 
 
 its total sterhng value, which in 1892 stood at £23,800,000, 
 is nearly double that of 1884, and five and a half times as 
 much as that of 1867. The share in this total that is 
 claimed by the British Empire (i.e. Great Britain, India, and 
 the Colonies) is by far the largest, amounting to over 
 £8,250,000 ; although these figures represent a steady 
 recent decline, the proportion, which in 1890 was 41 per 
 cent, of the whole, having, mainly owing to the greatly 
 increased export of silk and tea to the United States, fallen 
 to 35 per cent, in 1892. In shipping, however. Great 
 Britain easily retains her predominance ; the total tonnage 
 of British vessels trading with Japan exceeding that of all 
 other countries, including Japan itself, put together. Of 
 the total merchandise imported into and exported from 
 Japan in 1892, 58 per cent, was carried in British bottoms. 
 The German proportion in the same year was 10 per cent. ; 
 while the figure that is held to justify the lofty com- 
 mercial aspirations of France in the Far East was only 
 13 per cent. 
 
 A more remarkable development of Japanese commerce 
 is the advance of her own manufacturing industries. Japan 
 is rapidly becoming her own purveyor, particularly 
 of cotton clothing. The simultaneous process is turing 
 observed in her Custom Returns of a great increase ^"""^tnes. 
 in the import of raw material, and a corresponding decrease 
 in that of manufactured goods. In 1892 she imported 
 eleven times the quantity of raw cotton imported in 1887 ; 
 while since 1888 her import of manufactured cottons has 
 decreased 44 per cent. In the last five years her expoi't of 
 
44 JAPAN 
 
 goods manufactured in her own looms has been quadrupled. 
 That this process has been very much accelerated by the 
 recent changes in Indian currency there can be no doubt. 
 Just as India has hitherto profited in her competition with 
 Lancashire^ so will Japan now profit in her competition with 
 Bombay. She is rapidly extending her plant, and in the 
 course of last year had doubled her number of spindles. 
 Especially will she profit in her export of manufactured 
 cottons to China. Both are silver-standard countries, and 
 in both wages are paid in silver ; and when her superior 
 proximity, her low rate of wages, and the cheapness of coal, 
 are taken into account,^ Manchester and Bombay alike 
 should find in her a most formidable competitor. There is 
 even a talk in Japan of still further stimulating this natural 
 movement by abolishing both the import duty on raw 
 cotton and the export duty on the manufactured article. 
 European merchants are for the moment somewhat non- 
 plussed by this Japanese development. But it may be 
 pointed out to them that any falling off in foreign imports 
 which may result from native competition should be more 
 than compensated by the increased purchasing power of 
 Japan in respect of foreign articles, such as machinery, which 
 she cannot provide herself. Among the other resources 
 which Japan is turning to good account in her industrial 
 expansion is her coal. Japanese coal is now exported 
 everywhere throughout the Far East, the total export 
 having been estimated at over 1,000,000 tons in the year ; 
 it is burned on the majority of steamers between Yokohama 
 and Singapore, and it may be said to have driven the 
 Australian product from the Eastern market. 
 
 1 The wages of a cotton oioerative in Japan are from 10 to 20 cents {i.e. 3d. 
 to 6d.) a day. Japanese coal is delivered at the mills for $2^ (i.e. 6s. 3d.) a 
 ton. 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 45 
 
 Among the questions which are much discussed, alike by 
 
 foreigners and residents^ and about which very contrary 
 
 opinions are expressed, not merely at different 
 
 times, but by different writers at the same time, Japanese 
 
 is the general attitude of the Japanese people, towards 
 
 foreigners. 
 and particularly of the rising generation, towards 
 
 foreigners. It should not be inferred, because Japan has 
 
 recognised that Europe is ahead of herself in many branches 
 
 of knowledge and resources of civilisation, and that she 
 
 must go to Germany for her guns, to France, Germany, 
 
 and England for her law, to England for her railways — that 
 
 she is therefore an indiscriminate admirer of that which 
 
 she imitates, or that the Western man is an idol in her social 
 
 pantheon. On the contrary, the more she has assimilated 
 
 European excellences the more critical she has become of 
 
 European defects ; whilst the at times precipitate rapidity 
 
 of her own advance has produced a reactionary wave, which 
 
 occasionally assumes serious proportions. The existence of 
 
 such a feeling is by no means surprising when we remember 
 
 the forces by which it is recruited. Among these may be 
 
 counted the latent Consei'vatism in the national character, 
 
 which, though but little expressed, still smoulders with an 
 
 internal combustion that, like those sudden shocks of nature 
 
 that wreck the Japanese landscape, now and then breaks 
 
 forth in a passionate vendetta of outrage or assassination ; 
 
 the inordinate vanity of the people, fostered at once by 
 
 their illustrious antiquity and by the ease M'ith which they 
 
 seem to have planted themselves in the forefront of the 
 
 files of time ; the indiscreet rapidity with which they have 
 
 been asked to swallow, almost in the same gulp, a foreign 
 
 dress, a foreign language, and a foreign religion ; and a 
 
 consciousness of national strength that resents the suspicion 
 
 of having bartered its birthright to aliens. Political in- 
 
46 JAPAN 
 
 cidents — a proposal of Treaty Revision on terms at all 
 derogatory to the national dignity, the not too sensitive 
 and sometimes brutal candour of the European Press, the 
 resolutions passed at a meeting of foreign merchants — may 
 excite this feeling to a white heat of fury. At other times 
 it slumbers. 
 
 In 1891 it seemed for a time to have experienced a sharp 
 inflammation, but afterwards to have subsided. Towards 
 the close of 1893 it underwent a brisk revival, in con- 
 sequence of the judgment of the British Supreme Court 
 at Shanghai, reversing the decision of the inferior Court at 
 Yokohama in the case of the collision of the P. and O. 
 steamship Ravenna with the Japanese cruiser Chishima in 
 Japanese waters. This judgment, which was adverse to 
 the Japanese claims, was criticised as though it were a 
 deliberate exhibition of foreign malevolence, directed against 
 the expanding ambitions of Young Japan. Foreigners, in- 
 cluding some old and well-known residents, were openly 
 insulted in the streets of the capital, while the native police 
 made not the slightest effort to interfere ; and a sharp 
 reminder required to be addressed to the latter of their 
 elementary duties. Another manifestation is the boycotting 
 of foreign manufactures, even when the corresponding native 
 articles are of greatly inferior quality. In 1892 an attempt 
 was actually made upon the life of a well-known native 
 merchant, because he had advocated the use of foreign 
 pipes for the Tokio water-works. These emotions find their 
 chief exponents among the student class, many of whom, 
 under the tuition of American missionaries, have imbibed 
 American notions of democracy, and whose smattering of 
 universal knowledge seems likely to create a considerable 
 element of danger. Perhaps the most innocent form is 
 the continuous dismissal of foreigners from posts in the 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 47 
 
 public service, or in the employ of business firms, their 
 places being filled by Japanese specially educated, though 
 not vmiformly fitted, for tlie pm'pose.^ Serious though these 
 individual ebullitions undoubtedly are, the best authorities 
 do not seem to anticipate any very perilous developments 
 of this phase of national resuscitation ; and it may probably 
 be regarded as the best safety-valve for humours that might 
 othei'wise require a more tempestuous outlet. 
 
 A collateral illustration of the same thoughtless and some- 
 times foolish patriotism is the passionate excitement dis- 
 played by the Japanese at any assertion, however 
 
 extravagant or ridiculous, of the national spirit. '^^ (polboy 
 ° ' ^ patriotism. 
 
 In this respect they may be termed the French- 
 men of the Far East. In the course of 1 893 there occurred 
 three illustrations of this unseasonable ardour. A young 
 lieutenant organised a project for forming a fishing and 
 marauding colony on one of the Kurile Islands ; and when 
 he started from Tokio with thirty volunteer companions in 
 a number of open row-boats upon this scatterbrained quest, 
 the populace crowded the wharves of the Sumida, and gave 
 an ovation to the departing hero as though he were Nelson 
 embarking at Portsmouth to take command of the Medi- 
 terranean Fleet. Presently came the retributory sequel. 
 The lieutenant encountered a storm. Two of his boats wei'e 
 swamped, and seventeen of the would-be colonists were 
 drowned. The second instance was that of a Japanese 
 military attache at St. Petersburg, who rode overland from 
 that place to Vladivostok. When he landed in Japan he 
 was received with as much honour as though he were Moltke 
 returning from the Franco-German campaign. One trembles 
 
 1 In July 1893 the total number of foreigners in the employ of the 
 Japanese Government, which a few years ago stood at several hundreds, was 
 only 7", of whom 33 were British, 14 C4ermans, 10 Americans, and 5 French. 
 
48 JAPAN 
 
 to think what will be the fate reserved for a genuine 
 Japanese hero^ should such a one ever appear. The third 
 example was even more puerile. In pursuit of a forward 
 policy as regards Korea, the Government was persuaded in 
 1892 to send a new Minister to that Court. This individual, 
 having insulted the King of Korea, and quarrelled with 
 his Ministers, was very shortly recalled ; but, owing to his 
 name being popularly associated with a policy of so-called 
 courage and energy, in other words with the daring 
 diplomacy of gunboats and bounce, he was entertained and 
 toasted at a great banquet at Tokio upon his return. 
 How widespread and indeed universal these feelings were, 
 was shown by the spirit with which the war with China, 
 as soon as declared, was taken up, by the public con- 
 tributions that at once flowed in, and by the cheerful alacrity 
 with which even the severest sacrifices were submitted to 
 in the vindication of what was conceived to be the national 
 honour. The strain involved by the campaign, and the 
 reaction following upon profound exertion, coupled with the 
 check subsequently imposed upon .Japanese ambitions by 
 the combined pressure of France, Russia, and Germany, 
 may have exercised a sobering influence upon Japanese 
 statesmen. But upon the public it is doubtful whether 
 any such effect has been produced ; and the national 
 temperament, elated with the pride of conspicuous achieve- 
 ment, will be liable at intervals to sudden outbreaks of 
 impetuous Chauvinism. 
 
 It is probable that these pyrotechnics of a somewhat 
 schoolboy patriotism, which are not unnatural in the case, 
 either of a country like Japan that is tentatively winning 
 its way to greatness, or of one like France that is smarting 
 under the memory of a great national humiliation, will 
 diminish in proportion as Japan secures the i*ecognition at 
 
THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN JAPAN 49 
 
 which she is aiming, and acquires the self-control that is 
 
 born of conscious strength. At present they bring a smile 
 
 to the lip even of the most impassioned apologist for 
 
 national delirium. 
 
 A further question, much agitated by foreigners, and 
 
 especially by English and Americans, is the likelihood of 
 
 Christianity being adopted as the national re- 
 Chances 
 ligion of Japan. A combination of circumstances of Chiis- 
 
 — the disestablishment of Buddhism in the present y ^"^ ^ ^^ 
 reign, the reasonable character and general free- 
 dom from superstition of the people, the admitted indifference 
 to older creeds of the upper classes, and the unhampered 
 field opened to the labours of the foreign missionary societies 
 — has led many to suppose that here, at least, the Church 
 of Christ is sure of a magnificent spoil, and that Japan is 
 trembling on the brink of a mighty regeneration. If I do 
 not share these anticipations it is not from any denial either 
 of the strenuous exertions of the reapers, or of the intrinsic 
 richness of the harvest. But, though the State in Japan 
 has withdrawn its sanction from Buddhism, the stream of 
 the common people does not appear to have been one whit 
 diverted from its crumbling, but still hallowed, shrines ; 
 and in the clapping of hands and short prayer before the 
 gilded altar, and the practical sermons of the bonzes, the 
 lower classes still find what is to them an adequate salvation. 
 At the old capital, Kioto, there had been building for many 
 years, out of private subscriptions only, and there has since 
 been completed and opened, what is by far the largest 
 Buddhist temple in all Japan. Nor can a people be described 
 as without faith who yearly send forth tens of thousands of 
 pilgrims to climb the sacred summits of Fuji, 12,300 feet 
 high, and of Nantaisan. 
 
 On the other hand, with the upper and lettered classes, 
 
 D 
 
50 JAPAN 
 
 the advance of knowledge has bi-ought a widespread 
 scepticism, and a reluctance to accept a dogma that eludes 
 the test of material analysis. Neither can I think that the 
 missionary army, though it enters the field with banners 
 waving and soldiers chanting, utilises its strength to the 
 best advantage by dividing its host into so many conflicting 
 and sometimes hostile brigades. I find in the directory 
 that at Tokio alone there are represented thirty-one different 
 missionary churches^ societies, sects, or denominations, with an 
 aggregate of 300 male and female missionaries. When Epis- 
 copalians, Presbytei'ians, Baptists, Evangelicals, Lutherans, 
 Church of England, Methodists, Reformed, Russian Orthodox, 
 Quakers, Unitarians, and Universalists appear simultaneously 
 upon the scene, each claiming to hold the keys of Heaven 
 in their hand, it cannot be thought surprising if the Japanese, 
 who have hardly made up their minds that they want a 
 Heaven at all, are somewhat bewildered by the multiplicity 
 of volunteer doorkeepers. Were the ethical teachings of 
 the Bible to be offered to them in a systematised body of 
 precept and of prayer they might turn a willing ear. Nay, 
 I doubt not that a committee of Japanese experts would 
 undertake to-morrow the codification of the moral, just as 
 they have already done that of the civil and criminal law ; 
 and that they would turn out for the edification of their 
 fellow-countrymen an admirable synthesis of the ethics of 
 all time. Who shall say whether the new Japan may not 
 yet undertake this momentous task } In the meantime the 
 omens appear to be against the official or popular selection 
 of any professed branch of Christian theology. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 JAPAN AND THE POWEllS 
 
 And statesmen at her council met 
 "Who knew the seasons when to take 
 Occasion by the hand and make 
 
 The bounds of freedom wider yet. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 Ever since the Restoration^ and with a progress that has 
 advanced by leaps and bounds during recent years, as the 
 nation has increased in stature and acquired no 
 modest or shrinking estimate of its own im- Revhfon 
 portance, the biggest political question in Japan 
 has been Treaty Revision. For a long while dwarfed by the 
 more serious imminence of domestic problems, and retarded 
 by the immaturity and inexperience of the new regime, 
 sinking at times into a complete background, but at others 
 sweeping all before it on a tide of popular emotion, it has 
 exercised much the same disturbing and seismic influence 
 upon Japanese politics as has the Home Rule question in 
 Great Britain. It has made and it has upset Ministries, and 
 might even do so again. At the time of my visit it con- 
 fronted the strongest Government that Japan could produce 
 with a problem which even its strength, it was feared, would 
 prove unequal to solve ; and although these expectations 
 were belied by events, and the first Treaty with a European 
 Power conceding Revision was signed with England in July 
 1894, yet this Treaty, under the terms of agreement, not 
 having yet come into operation, and depending for its 
 
 61 
 
52 JAPAN 
 
 ultimate enactment upon the future proceedings of other 
 Powers, this question cannot be considered as finally settled ; 
 and it may not therefore be inopportune to reprint in these 
 pages the discussion which appeared in the original edition, 
 the more so as the argument therein contained may supply a 
 test by which the actual Treaty (printed as an appendix) may 
 be judged in the interval that will precede its coming into 
 actual operation. 
 
 The Treaties which until superseded by the English and 
 similar Treaties, now in course of negotiation with the other 
 yr. Powers, still regulate the commercial relations of 
 
 of the Japan with foreign countries, and which provide 
 
 for the residence in the Treaty Ports, and for the 
 separate jurisdiction there of foreign subjects, were concluded 
 at various periods with no fewer than eighteen signatory 
 Powers,^ since the first American Treaty was signed by 
 Commodore Perry in 1855. Roughly speaking, the contract 
 between the two parties was in each case as follows. Japan 
 consented to open a limited number of ports to foreign trade 
 and residence.- There only were the subjects of the con- 
 tracting Powers permitted to live, to trade, to buy or sell 
 property, or to engage in industrial enterprise. Outside the 
 narrow limits of the settlements all these privileges were 
 forbidden ; nor was travel or movement permitted without a 
 passport. On the other hand, inside the pale the subjects 
 of foreign Powers were exempted from Japanese jurisdiction, 
 
 1 These are Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, 
 Belgium, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, America, 
 Peru, Mexico, Hawaii, and China. 
 
 - The Open Ports are Yedo (Tokio), Kanagawa (Yokohama), Hiogo (Kobe), 
 Osaka, Hakodate, Nagasaki, and Niigata. The following ports were subse- 
 quently opened in 1890 to Japanese exporters of grain, rice, flour, sulphur, 
 and coal : — Shimonoseki, Moji, Hakata, Karatsu, Kuchinotsu, Misumi, 
 Yokkaichi, Fushikij Kushiro, Naba, Mororan, and Otaru. The numbers of 
 resident foreigners in the,Treaty Ports, on January 1, 1894, were as follows : — 
 British 1458, Americans 700, Germans 41(5, French 349. 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS 53 
 
 except, of course^ when suing Japanese subjects, and were 
 amenable only to their own Consular Courts — a prerogative 
 commonly described as the Extra-territorial system ; while 
 the Customs tariff on foreign trade was fixed at a nominal 5 
 per cent, ad valorem, on the majority of foreign imports, to- 
 gether with a duty of 5 per cent, on exports. Such is the 
 system under which Japanese association with the outer 
 world has been conducted, at least upon Japanese soil, for 
 nearly forty years ; from which for years she made so many 
 abortive efforts to escape ; and under which she proclaimed, 
 with yearly increasing insistence, that it was incompatible 
 with her national dignity to continue. 
 
 Conscious that the terms of original agreement could not 
 be permanently stereotyped, a clause in the English Treaty, 
 
 concluded by Lord Elgin in 1858, provided for „ 
 
 -' ^ ^ Postpone- 
 
 future revision, upon the notice of either of the ment of 
 high contracting Powers, in 187^.^ But when 
 1872 arrived neither party was in a position to move; and 
 on the various occasions later, when revision was seriously 
 attempted, the endeavour resulted in failure owing to the 
 difficulty of reconciling the conflicting claims of the foreign 
 Powers, who were avei'se to stepping down from their 
 pinnacle of vantage without either a definite qtiid pro quo, or 
 at least a guarantee that they would not suffer by the sur- 
 render ; and of Japan, who, with a natural consciousness of 
 her steadily improving position and of the obligations of what 
 she termed her ' sovereign rights,' whittled away one by one 
 the counter concessions which she was at first prepared to 
 make, and even talked about exacting conditions herself. 
 Hence the deadlock in which, sooner or latei', negotiations 
 
 1 Art. XXII. — 'It is agreed that either of the high contracting parties, on 
 giving one year's notice to the other, may demand a revision on or after July 
 1, 1872, with a view to the insertion of snch amendments as experience shall 
 prove to be desirable.' 
 
54 JAPAN 
 
 were always involved. For my own part I never shared 
 the feelings of either of those schools between which public 
 opinion^ as represented in books and newspapers about Japan, 
 seems to have been divided— namely, those, on the one hand, 
 the sentimental side of whose nature, inflamed, if they were 
 Japanese, by patriotism, if they were foreigners, by contact 
 with an engaging people and a pretty country, revolted 
 against what they described as a great national wrong, 
 whereby Japan was cheated out of her birthright, and was 
 kept in perpetual exile in the tents of Edom, or, on the 
 other hand, those who argued for the strict letter of the 
 treaties ad ceternum, and declined to make the smallest 
 concession to the vast change that forty years had effected 
 in the status of modern Japan. The former attitude was 
 adopted — naturally enough — by Japanese writers ; foolishly, 
 as it seemed to me, by the majority of English and American 
 tourists in Japan, who, without an inkling of what was going 
 on behind the scenes, or of the labours of those whom they 
 condemned, pronounced ex cathedra upon a situation of which 
 they really knew as little as, for example, they might do of 
 the difference between old and modern lacquer. The second 
 or ultra-Conservative attitude was and still is taken up by 
 many of the merchant class in the Treaty Ports, who, for 
 perfectly honourable but selfish reasons, would like to main- 
 tain the status quo as long as they can. As a matter of facb 
 there was quite sufficient justice on both sides of the con- 
 troversy to admit of temperate discussion and of amicable 
 agreement; and the energies of the true friends of Japan 
 were properly directed to minimising the points of friction 
 and broadening the basis of possible compromise, instead of 
 sharpening their blades for a further barren encounter. 
 
 With approximate fairness the two cases may be thus 
 stated. Japan demanded Judicial autonomy and she de- 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS 55 
 
 manded Tariff autonomy, from both of which, as ah-eady 
 explained, she was excluded by the Treaties. She de- 
 manded the foi'mer, because it was derogatory 
 to the dignity of a civilised Power to have alien . j ^^^^ 
 courts of justice sitting within her territories, and 
 because she claimed to have acquired a jurisprudence based 
 upon the best European models. She demanded the latter, 
 because she was precluded from utilising her imports and 
 exports, except upon certain narrowly prescribed lines, as an 
 expanding source of Imperial revenue. Upon her imports 
 she has hitherto made an average of about 4^ per cent, in 
 customs, and has been compelled in consequence to fix her 
 export duties at a higher figure than she would wish. She 
 desired to raise the former with a view to reducing the latter, 
 and the Land-tax in addition, Extra-territoriality being 
 abolished, the foreign settlements and municipalities would 
 lose their present character and would, so to speak, ' fall in ' 
 to the Japanese Government, which would probably issue 
 new leases for the land held by foreigners therein, similar to 
 the leases held by Japanese. If she could get these main 
 concessions (she would, of course, like a few more thrown in), 
 Japan was prepared to open the entire country to foreigners. 
 She took her stand, therefore, ignoring the existing Treaties, 
 upon the solid facts of her attained position and prestige, 
 and upon an appeal to the enlightened sympathies of foreign 
 nations. 
 
 The merchants, on the other hand, for whom the Powers, 
 through their ministers, are the official spokesmen, have not 
 been particularly keen about the opening up of the , 
 country, in which they do not see the prospect of of the 
 great mercantile advantage to themselves ; they 
 are averse to the conditions under which they hold land in 
 the settlements (as the result of a covenant with the Japanese 
 
56 JAPAN 
 
 Government) being altered or assimilated to native custom 
 without their consent; and they are genuinely alarmed at 
 the pi'oposed abolition of Consular jurisdiction and the 
 settlement of all cases, in which they may be concerned as 
 litigants, in Japanese courts and before Japanese judges. 
 They point to the admitted facts that the reorganised courts 
 have not been long established, and that the bench, though 
 occupied by Japanese who have been partially educated in 
 Western Universities, lacks alike the tradition and the 
 distinction of European judiciaries. They contend that mis- 
 carriage of justice would result, in the main from the igno- 
 rance, sometimes, perhaps, from the prejudice, of native 
 judges. They fear the risk and complexity of processes 
 before a strange court in a strange language ; and they 
 resent the possible subjection of their lives and homes to the 
 domiciliary visits of native policemen. Moreover, they have 
 a very well-founded distrust, not merely of the administration 
 of Japanese law, but of the law itself, particularly in such 
 points as the law of evidence and the law of contract, which 
 are interpreted in Japan in a manner little in harmony with 
 European ideas. Finally, they can point in support of their 
 alarms to the constant diplomatic troubles arising out of 
 'miscarriage of justice ' in the small independent States of 
 the New World. Some of their papers have published vei'y 
 wild and silly articles about the inherent incapacity of the 
 Japanese for the exercise of judicial authority of any kind ; 
 although I suspect that many of the British merchants who 
 may be involved as litigants in the courts of the petty South 
 American Republics would not so very greatly object to a 
 change of venue to the courts of modern Japan. But though 
 these more extravagant diatribes may be disregarded, there 
 is undoubtedly a solid substratum of truth in the apprehen- 
 sions of the foreign trading community, and any attempt to 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS 57 
 
 precipitate too hasty a solution could only involve the 
 Japanese Government itself in difficulties which it had not 
 contemplated. 
 
 In what quarter, then, did the solution lie ? The answer 
 was to be found in a brief examination of the various pro- 
 posals for Treaty Revision that had so far been 
 
 Previous 
 made by Japanese statesmen to the foreign repre- attempts 
 
 sentatives, or vice versa. Their history had been ^. ^J^' . 
 
 one of unbroken disappointment and failure ; Inouye, 
 , ; , . . n 1882-87. 
 
 but it was also marked by certam signs 01 pro- 
 gressive development in which there was hope for the 
 future. Three times in the last twelve years had Japanese 
 Foreign Ministers made overtures to the Treaty Powers. 
 The first of these was Count Inouye, the present Minister for 
 Home Affairs, who in 1882 originally suggested the viltimate 
 abolition of Consular jurisdiction and the ad interim discussion 
 of terms. A preliminary conference was summoned in 1882, 
 and memoranda, prepared by the British and the Japanese 
 Governments, were successively submitted. The negotia- 
 tions continued till, in 1886, the actual conference of all the 
 Treaty Powers met in Tokio, when a definite scheme, 
 initiated by the British and German Governments, was pro- 
 pounded, and passed through many of the preliminary stages 
 both of examination and acceptance. There were to be a 
 large number of foreign j udges on the Japanese bench, the 
 conditions of whose appointment and removal evoked much 
 hostile criticism in the native Press. The promised codes 
 and future amendments therein were to be submitted to the 
 Foreign Powers — an additional source of national irritation. 
 It was not surprising that upon these points the negotiations 
 at length broke down in 1887, although it was to be regretted 
 that the opportunity was lost of effecting a settlement on 
 conditions even a contracted edition of which was far more 
 
58 JAPAN 
 
 favourable to the scruples of foreigners than any later treaty 
 was likely to be. 
 
 Undeterred by the failure of his predecessor^ Count Okuma 
 resumed negotiations in 1888 ; but, having learned by ex- 
 p perience the mistake of dealing with a Round 
 
 Okuma, Table at which the representatives of eighteen 
 nations, with conflicting interests, were seated in 
 conclave, he approached the Powers individually, offering, 
 in place of an elaborate scheme of courts with foreign 
 judges, the presence of a majority of foreign assessors in the 
 Supreme Courts in cases where foreigners were concerned. 
 A space of three years was to elapse between the promulga- 
 tion of the promised codes and the final abolition of Consular 
 jurisdiction. Upon these lines the United States, Germany, 
 and Russia had already signed treaties ; and Great Britain, 
 the vast preponderance of whose commercial interests in 
 Japan renders her in every case the arbiter of the situation, 
 was within measurable distance of the same end, the nature 
 and extent of the securities to be given for the administration 
 of justice to foreigners being one of the few points still 
 undetermined, when, public opinion having been already 
 gravely excited in Japan at the proposed appointment of 
 alien judges, and being further inflamed by the promulgation 
 of the new Parliamentary Constitution and the impending 
 elections for the first Diet, an attempt was made with a 
 dynamite bomb upon the life of Count Okuma in October 
 1889. The statesman escaped, though seriously mutilated. 
 The would-be assassin killed himself. But his ulterior object 
 had already been gained, for, at the very Cabinet Council in 
 leaving which the bomb was thrown at Count Okuma, a 
 decision had been arrived at, on the advice of Count 
 Yamagata, who had just returned fi'om a special mission to 
 Europe, to suspend negotiations. Once more, accordingly. 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS 59 
 
 was Treaty Revision dropped like a hot coal from the baffled 
 fingers of the plenipotentiaries at Tokio. Nor could this 
 renewed failure be fairly set down to cowardice, seeing that 
 public sentiment, though not behind the assassin, was in 
 open sympathy with the motives that had actuated him to a 
 deed which was the more significant that it by no means 
 stands alone in the annals of modern Japan. 
 
 Since that date the opening of the Japanese Diet^ and 
 the rapid growth both of national self-respect and of ill- 
 marshalled but powerful public opinion which it 
 has produced, combined to render a settlement a^^u°"'o 
 not more easy, while they have provided Japanese 
 statesmen with an armoury of defensive pleas which a purely 
 irresponsible Government could not previously employ. 
 Nevertheless, Viscount Aoki, Foreign Minister in the suc- 
 ceeding Government, gallantly re-entered the lists in 1 890 ; 
 and his overtures, which were naturally directed in the first 
 place to the removal of the lingering vestiges of British 
 opposition, were met in the most favourable spirit by the 
 administration of Lord Salisbury ; since which it only rested 
 with the Japanese Government itself, by the fulfilment of 
 conditions which it had more than once admitted to be 
 reasonable, to enter upon the fruition of the long struggle 
 for complete national autonomy whose successive stages I 
 have described. 
 
 What would be the leading features of any such solution 
 
 will have been manifest from what has already been said. 
 
 In the first place, the full text of the entire Civil 
 
 and Commercial Codes under which it is proposed tff^ ° . 
 
 " ^ settlement. 
 
 that foreigners shall in future reside and conduct 
 their business, must be promulgated, translated, and put into 
 satisfactory operation. No nation could with justice call 
 upon the subjects of another, even within its own teiTitories, 
 
60 JAPAN 
 
 to exchange a position of judicial security, established by 
 treaty and ratified by long and successful experience, for the 
 dubious protection of an inchoate, an imperfect, or an ill- 
 comprehended body of law. Secondly, a period must elapse 
 in which the new codes thus promulgated should be tested 
 by practical operation, the judges becoming accustomed to 
 the exposition of rules which involve in many cases a com- 
 plete revolution in Japanese customary law, and the new 
 law itself acquiring public respect by pure and consistent 
 interpretation. Not until after such a probationary period 
 could foreigners reasonably be expected to yield to the 
 Japanese demand for complete judicial autonomy.^ Thirdly, 
 these conditions having been realised, the final abandonment 
 of extra-territorial jurisdiction might fitly be made to syn- 
 chronise with the entire opening up of the country. Other 
 points might well become the subject of diplomatic pour- 
 parlers and of intermediate agreement. Such, for instance, 
 were an ad interijn extension of the present passport system 
 in return for a revision of the tariff; and the novel but 
 intelligible Japanese demand, of which I shall presently 
 speak, that foreigners shall not be allowed to own real 
 property or to buy shares in Japanese banks, railways, or 
 shipping companies. 
 
 There were a multitude of obstacles, however, that 
 required to be overcome before any such settlement could 
 
 1 The problem that has already arisen in Japan was anticipated by Sir 
 Harry Parkes in his Treaty with Korea^ where it is hardly likely ever to 
 arise ; for a protocol to the Treaty (which was signed November 26, 1883) 
 contains these words: — 'It is hereby declared that the right of extra- 
 territorial jurisdiction over British subjects in Korea, granted by this treaty, 
 shall be relinquished when, in the judgment of the British Government, the 
 laws and legal procedure of Korea shall have been so far modified and re- 
 formed as to remove the objections which now exist to British subjects being 
 placed under Korean jurisdiction, and Korean judges shall have attained 
 similar legal qualifications and a similar independent position to those of 
 British judges.' 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS^ 6l 
 
 be arrived at. The first of these was the Parliamentary 
 
 position of the Codes themselves. Though the process 
 
 of Japanese iudicial reform has been conducted „ . . 
 
 ^ •' rosition 
 
 with commendable rapidity, the goal of even of the 
 approximate finality is yet far distant. It was in 
 1872 that the modern judicial system was first organised 
 and courts and judges established; both being subjected to 
 a thorough reorganisation in 1890. In the interval the 
 Codes have one by one been evolved. The Criminal Code 
 and the Code of Criminal Procedure were promulgated in 
 1880, and have now for some time been in operation. The 
 Code of Civil Procedure was promulgated in 1890, and 
 came into operation in 1891. As regards the Civil and 
 Commercial Codes, however, the situation is less advanced. 
 When I was in Japan in 1892 the Commercial Code had 
 already been promulgated, but not yet translated ; and the 
 date of its operation, originally fixed for January 1, 1890, 
 stood postponed till January 1, 1893. Those portions of 
 the incomplete Civil Code that had been published stood 
 similarly postponed. In the Session of the Diet of 1892, 
 however, the drift of popular opinion was clearly indicated 
 by the passing with much enthusiasm by both Houses of a 
 bill, introduced by a private member, for further postponing 
 the operation of both codes till December 1896, in order 
 to submit them in Japanese interests to a thorough over- 
 hauling It was with little effect that Viscount Enomoto, 
 then Minister for Foreign Affairs, pointed out the intimate 
 connection between the Codes and the subject of Treaty 
 Revision, and urged the Chamber not once more to slam 
 the door in the face of those who had at length shown 
 such a temperate willingness to open it. Conservative 
 alarm at the innovations introduced by the new Codes, 
 particularly in the law of inheritance and in other matters 
 
62 JAPAN 
 
 affecting family life^ and at the subversion of the imme- 
 morial religious traditions of the country, joined hands with 
 the Radical aspirations of Young Japan to settle the question 
 of Treaties^ not as the Powers like^ but upon her own terms 
 and on a footing of absolute equality ; and the bill was 
 carried by majorities of more than two to one in both 
 Chambers. 
 
 This bill had not received either the assent or veto of 
 the Emperor when Count Ito's Cabinet was formed, and 
 much speculation was indulged in as to the advice which 
 he would give to the Sovereign. As it turned out, the 
 postponement was accepted by the Government on the 
 
 ffround that the Codes stood greatly in need of 
 
 Further * b J 
 
 postpone- amendment, but with a proviso that such parts 
 
 of them as were amended to the satisfaction of 
 
 a Special Commission appointed for the purpose and of the 
 
 Diet, might come into operation at any time. Subsequently, 
 
 early in 1893, a large portion of the Commercial Code, 
 
 dealing with the law of partnership and companies, of bills 
 
 of exchange, promissory notes, and cheques, and with the 
 
 law of bankruptcy, was passed, and came into force in July 
 
 1893. It will be seen, therefore, that the Codes are only 
 
 slowly, and by piecemeal, coming into operation, and that 
 
 the test of the practical working of the entire revised law 
 
 is one whose possible application still lies in the future. 
 
 In the same Session (February 1893) the attitude of the 
 
 Lower House on the whole question of Treaty Revision was 
 
 shown by an address to the Throne, which, after 
 
 to the being debated in secret session, was voted by 
 
 Throne 135 to 121. It contained these words, which 
 in 1893. ' 
 
 are significant as showing not the wisdom, but the 
 
 temper of the Assembly : — 
 
 'The unfair Treaties remain unrevisecl. The consequence is 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS 63 
 
 that our jurisdiction does not extend to foreigners living within 
 our borders, nor do we possess tariff autonomy. No trespasses on 
 our national rights can be greater than these ; and whenever our 
 thoughts dwell upon the subject we are constrained to bitter 
 regrets. The exercise of the extra-territorial system enables 
 foreigners to obey only their own laws and to be subjected to 
 their own judiciary within the territories of this Empire. Yet we, 
 in their countries, are compelled to obey their laws and submit 
 to their jurisdiction. Further, the restrictions imposed in respect 
 of customs tariff disable us from exercising our natural right to 
 tax imported goods, whereas foreign coimtries impose heavy duties 
 on goods exported by us. Thus our judicial and fiscal rights 
 being alike impaired, foreigners are enabled to behave in an 
 arbitrary maimer. The result must be that our commerce and 
 industries will daily deteriorate, that the national wealth will 
 decrease, and that in the end there will be no means of recuperat- 
 ing our resources. 1 The fault of concluding such treaties must 
 be attributed to the fact that the people of your Majesty's realm, 
 both high and low, were basking in tranquillity and peace,^ and, 
 as the country had been isolated for a long time, the Ministers of 
 State were entirely ignorant of foreign conditions. . . . The right 
 of concluding treaties belongs to the prerogatives of your Majesty ; 
 and we, your jMajesty's servants, are not permitted to interfere 
 with it. But since your Majesty has made oath to the gods in 
 heaven above and in the earth beneath, to manage all the affairs 
 of the nation and to administer the Empire in accordance with 
 popular opinion, we, your Majesty's servants, representing the 
 Lower House of the Diet and the opinion of the people of the 
 realm, may be permitted humbly to express our opinions. They 
 are : — Firstly, that the extra-territorial system be abolished ; 
 secondly, that the Empire's tariff autonomy be recovered ; thirdly, 
 that the privilege of taking part in the coasting trade be reserved ; 
 and, fourthly, that all foreign interference in our domestic 
 administration be removed.' 
 
 Such then was the attitude of the Popular Chamber. But 
 a far more serious obstacle to successful negotiation consisted 
 in the ill-digested but forinidable body of public opinion 
 
 1 Of course this is quite fantastic, the Treaties having so far had a pre- 
 cisely oijposite effect, in building up the commercial prosperity and wealth 
 of modern Japan. 
 
 - Equallj' absurd and untrue. 
 
64 JAPAN 
 
 that was called into existence and organised throughout 
 
 the country by the reactionary party, and which threatened 
 
 by the irrational extravagance of its demands to 
 
 Mixed 1**^"^ *^^ prospects of Treaty Revision altogether. 
 
 Residence Although it must have been obvious that Re- 
 agitation. 
 
 vision could only I'esult from mutual concessions, 
 
 Japan recovei'ing her judicial and tariff autonomy at the price 
 of freely opening the country to foreigners, an association 
 named the Great Japan Union was started in 1892, and, 
 until its suppression at the end of 1893, conducted a furious 
 agitation against what is called Mixed Residence in any form 
 in the interior. In other words, foreigners were to surrender 
 everything now guaranteed to them by the Treaties, but to 
 get nothing whatever in return. In the settlements they 
 were to be subject to Japanese laws and jurisdiction, while 
 outside their borders they were not to be permitted to live 
 or move or have their being. A milder party existed which 
 proposed to sanction mixed residence in all other parts of 
 the country except Yezo (the Northern Island) and certain 
 other specified islands ; but this compromise, which was quite 
 illogical and indefensible in itself, did not satisfy the patriots 
 of the Great Japan Union, who were bent upon making their 
 country and cause ridiculous in the face of mankind. For, 
 on the one hand, their agitation, which was based upon an 
 unreasoning dread of foreign competition, involved a confes- 
 sion of weakness in ludicrous contrast to the vanity by which 
 its authors were inspired. Secondly, it showed a complete 
 ignorance of and indifference towards all that foreigners have 
 done for Japan under the Treaties, in creating its trade, ill 
 teaching it the secrets of manufacture and industry, in con^ 
 Verting swampy hamlets or fishing villages into magnificent 
 and flourishing towns, in pouring daily wages into Japanese 
 pockets, and in leaving the lion's share of the profits of 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS 65 
 
 commerce in Jajianese hands. Thirdly, it proposed to deprive 
 foreigners of the very privileges which in the dominions of 
 their respective governments the Japanese already enjoy. 
 Fourthly, it was inconsistent with the example set by Japan 
 herself, when, in order to acquire a convenient precedent for 
 Treaty relationship with a foreign State without extra-terri- 
 torial jurisdiction, she concluded, in 1888-89, a treaty with 
 Mexico (although there were no Mexican subjects in Japan), 
 conceding the privilege of Mixed Residence without any 
 restrictions,^ and containing also a raost-favoured-nation 
 clause, extending the same privileges to any nation willing to 
 accept the same conditions. Finally, this policy was one of 
 midsummer madness, since, if persisted in, its only effect 
 could have been to stiffen the backs of the Treaty Powers 
 (whose subjects it was proposed to subject to this puerile in- 
 equality), and so to postpone the Revision to the Greek 
 Kalends. A certain section of the extreme party was, how- 
 ever, so well aware of this that they proposed to seize the 
 opportunity thus deliberately manufactured, in order to 
 repudiate the Treaties altogether, ignoring the ignominy that 
 would attach to their country if she started upon her inde- 
 pendent career with the brand of repudiation upon her bi'ow, 
 as well as the humiliating results of a probable naval demon- 
 stration of the Foreign Powers who had been so rashly 
 insulted. 
 
 It should be added that the Mixed Residence question 
 was somewhat complicated by the inclusion among the Treaty 
 Powers of Japan's most formidable industrial rival, China. 
 
 1 Article iv. of the Treaty granted to the Mexicans 'the privilege of 
 coming, remaining, and residing in all parts of Japanese territories and 
 possessions, of there hiring and occupying houses and warehouses, of there 
 trading by wholesale and retail in all kinds of j^roducts, manufactures, and 
 merchandise of lawful commerce, and, finally, of there engaging and pursu- 
 ing all other lawful occupations.' 
 
66 JAPAN 
 
 Were the privileges of free residence and trade in the 
 interior extended without reserve to the frugal and laborious 
 _,, subjects of the Celestial Empire, there might be 
 
 Chinese some ground for alarm on the part of Japan at the 
 ' competition of so powerful an antagonist.^ On the 
 other hand, the Chinese Treaty with Japan contained no 
 most-favoured-nation clause ; so that privileges conceded to 
 other foreigners could not be claimed as a right by her, and 
 revision, if desired, need only be effected as a matter of 
 separate arrangement. 
 
 A further agitation sprang up, in 1891-92, against the 
 ownership by foreigners, as a condition or consequence of 
 . . . Treaty Revision, of real or personal property out- 
 
 against side the pale of the settlements. The forms of 
 
 ownership investment commonly specified under this would- 
 of property. \^q prohibition were lands, mines, railways, canals, 
 waterworks, docks, and shares. This particular outcome of 
 native susceptibilities was due to a not unfounded alarm that 
 the superior wealth of foreigners might enable them, unless 
 carefully guarded by law, to acquire a commanding hold 
 upon the national resources, and that Japan might some day 
 find herself in the disastrous position of an Asiatic Peru. It 
 was not impossible that in the first instance there might be 
 some danger in the speculative rush of foreign capital for a 
 new form of investment ; although, in the long run, natives 
 would enjoy an advantage with which no foreigner could 
 compete. It was clear, however, that means ought to be 
 found without great difficulty of reconciling these apprehen- 
 sions with the reasonable demands of foreign residents pos- 
 sessing a large stake in the fortunes of the country, and 
 capable of rendering it increased service in the future. 
 
 1 There are at present in the Treaty Ports of Japan, where alone they are 
 J)erinitted to reside, 4500 male and 1050 female Chinese, or three-fifths of 
 the entire foreign population. 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS 67 
 
 The prohibition of the coasting trade to foreigners was 
 another of the conditions that were suggested by the alarms 
 of the new school that combined in such equal 
 proportions timidity with bravado. In the event V ^"^ ^i 
 of their extreme demands not being conceded^ and 
 of the Government continuing to shrink, as it was bound to 
 doj from a policy of repudiation, they further proposed a 
 warfare of petty revenge upon the subjects of the recalcitrant 
 Powers, which was to take the form of a refusal of passports, 
 minute restrictions upon the issue of game licenses, limita- 
 tions upon the facilities of railroad and steamboat traffic, up- 
 on the postal and telegraphic services, and upon the foreign 
 Press, and a strict enforcement of the existing laws as regards 
 tenure of property and industrial investment in the interior, 
 which had occasionally been eluded by foreigners sheltering 
 themselves under Japanese names. 
 
 These were the main difficulties with which the path of 
 
 Treaty Revision was beset. Arranging them side by side 
 
 and observing, on the one hand, the ignorance 
 
 Prospects 
 and vanity of the extreme Reactionaries in Japan, of settle- 
 
 the pretensions of the Diet, the openly avowed '"^n'^- 
 
 desire of the Opposition to embarrass the Government, and 
 
 the difficulty experienced by the latter in placing any curb 
 
 upon public opinion ; on the other hand, the genuine alarm 
 
 of the foreign merchants, the mutual jealousies of the various 
 
 Treaty Powers, and the unfortunate enmity which the 
 
 postponement of revision was likely to create between 
 
 natives and foreigners ; it was obvious that here was a 
 
 problem requiring on both sides the exercise of great tact 
 
 and statesmanship. On some points, concessions to Japanese 
 
 sentiment were clearly possible. But on the broad questions 
 
 of the Codes and of Mixed Residence no settlement that 
 
 attempted an unnatural or patchwork compromise was 
 
68 JAPAN 
 
 feasible, or, even if feasible, was likely to be permanent ; 
 
 while to expect foreigners, with the best will in the world 
 
 towards Japan, voluntarily to strip themselves of all the 
 
 safeguards which Treaty enactments have given them, and 
 
 to hand themselves over as a corpus vile for the experiments 
 
 of Japanese Jacobins or neophytes in political economy^ was 
 
 to presuppose an innocence on their part to which previous 
 
 history would afford no parallel. Fortunately neither the 
 
 leading statesmen of Japan, nor the most responsible organs 
 
 of the native Press, showed any real sympathy with the 
 
 Extremists. Count Ito's plan was to approach the several 
 
 Governments with separate and confidential communications, 
 
 hoping to extract from the complacency or the needs of one 
 
 a concession which should act as a precedent for similar 
 
 terms with the others. Nevertheless Great Britain remained, 
 
 as she had all along been, the pivot of the situation — no 
 
 slight proof of her commanding influence on the destinies of 
 
 distant Asia. And it was to secure her assent to a definite 
 
 plan of Revision that the efforts of the Japanese Ministers 
 
 were in the main directed. The announcement on the very 
 
 day that these pages originally left my hand (July 30, 1 894) 
 
 that Lord Rosebery's Government had concluded a Revision 
 
 Treaty with Japan, which was shortly afterwards ratified, 
 
 and has since been followed by a Supplementary Convention 
 
 regulating the future tariff, was a proof of the conciliatory 
 
 and generous spirit in which the Japanese advances had been 
 
 met, and of Great Britain's desire to welcome into the 
 
 comity of nations a Power with whom we share so many 
 
 common relationships, and whose ambitions present such 
 
 striking features of analogy to our own deeds. 
 
 Upon the Treaty itself, which is printed below, and which 
 has been variously described by the two parties previously 
 distinguished as an act of statesmanlike magnanimity and 
 
JAPAN AND THE POWERS 69 
 
 of pusillanimous surrender, I will not here comment, pre- 
 fei'ring that its contents should be judged in the light of the 
 reasoning already displayed in this chapter. At 
 least, however, this credit must, without dispute, be of July 
 conceded to Great Britain, and should never be ^ ^^' 
 forgotten by Japan, that, first of all the Great Powers, at a 
 period anterior to the Chino-Japanese war of 1894-95, and 
 consequently under no stress of expediency, emulation, or 
 self-seeking, but of her own free-will and with ungrudging 
 hand, England assisted Japan to strike off from herself the 
 shackles of a past to which she had proved herself superior, 
 and which is every day fading into a more rapid oblivion. 
 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III 
 
 I. Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between Great 
 Britain and Japan. (Signed at London, July l6, 1894; 
 ratified at Tokio, August 9,5, 1894.) 
 
 Article I. — The subjects of each of the two High Contracting 
 Parties shall have full liberty to enter, travel, or reside in any part 
 of the dominions and possessions of the other Contracting Party, 
 and shall enjoy full and perfect protection for their persons and 
 property. 
 
 They shall have free and easy access to the Courts of Justice in 
 pursuit and defence of their rights ; they shall be at liberty equally 
 with native subjects to choose and employ lawyers, advocates, and 
 representatives to pursue and defend their rights before such 
 Courts, and in all other matters connected with the administration 
 of justice they shall enjoy all the rights and privileges enjoyed by 
 native subjects. 
 
 In whatever relates to rights of residence and travel ; to the 
 possession of goods and effects of any kind ; to the succession to 
 personal estate, by will or otherwise, and the disposal of property 
 of any sort in any manner whatsoever which they may lawfully 
 acquire, the subjects of each Contracting Party shall enjoy in the 
 dominions and possessions of the other the same privileges, liberties, 
 and rights, and shall be subject to no higher imposts or charges in 
 these respects than native subjects, or subjects or citizens of the 
 most favoured nation. The subjects of each of the Contracting 
 Parties shall enjoy in the dominions and possessions of the other 
 entire liberty of conscience, and, subject to the Laws, Ordinances, 
 and Regulations, shall enjoy the right of private or public exercise 
 of their worship, and also the right of burying their respective 
 countrymen according to their religious customs, in such suitable 
 and convenient places as may be established and maintained for 
 that purpose. 
 70 
 
APPENDIX 71 
 
 They shall not be compelled^ under any pretext whatsoever^ to 
 pay any charges or taxes other or higher than those that are, or 
 may be, paid by native subjects, or subjects or citizens of the most 
 favoured nation. 
 
 Article II. — The subjects of either of the Contracting Parties 
 residing in the dominions and possessions of the other shall be 
 exempted from all compulsory military service whatsoever, whether 
 in the army, navy, National Guard, or militia ; from all contribu- 
 tions imposed in lieu of personal service ; and from all forced loans 
 or military exactions or contributions. 
 
 Article III. — There shall be reciprocal freedom of commerce 
 and navigation between the dominions and possessions of the two 
 High Contracting Parties. 
 
 The subjects of each of the High Contracting Parties may trade 
 in any part of the dominions and possessions of the other by whole- 
 sale or retail in all kinds of produce, manufactures, and merchan- 
 dise of lawful commerce, either in person or by agents, singly, or in 
 partnerships with foreigners or native subjects ; and they may there 
 own or hire and occupy the houses, manufactories, warehouses, 
 shops, and premises which may be necessary for them, and lease 
 land for residential and commercial purposes, conforming them- 
 selves to the Laws, Police and Customs Regulations of the country 
 like native subjects. 
 
 They shall have liberty freely to come with their ships and 
 cargoes to all places, ports, and rivers in the dominions and pos- 
 sessions of the other which are or may be opened to foreign com- 
 merce, and shall enjoy, respectively, the same treatment in matters 
 of commerce and navigation as native subjects, or subjects or 
 citizens of the most favoured nation, without having to pay taxes, 
 imposts, or duties, of whatever nature or under whatever denomi- 
 nation, levied in the name or for the profit of the Government, 
 public functionaries, private individuals. Corporations, or establish- 
 ments of any kind, other or greater than those paid by native 
 subjects, or subjects or citizens of the most favoured nation, subject 
 always to the Laws, Ordinances, and Regulations of each country. 
 
 Article IV. — The dwellings, manufactories, warehouses, and 
 shops of the subjects of each of the High Contracting Parties in 
 the dominions and possessions of the other, and all premises apper- 
 taining thereto destined for purposes of residence or commerce, 
 shall 1)6 respected. ^ 
 
72 JAPAN 
 
 It shall not be allowal)le to proceed to make a search of, or a 
 domiciliary visit to, such dwellings and premises, or to examine or 
 inspect books, papers, or accounts, except under the conditions and 
 with the forms prescribed by the Laws, Ordinances, and Regula- 
 tions for subjects of the country. 
 
 Article V. — No other or higher duties shall be imposed on the 
 importation into the dominions and possessions of Her Britannic 
 Majesty of any article, the produce or manufacture of the dominions 
 and possessions of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, from what- 
 ever place arriving ; and no other or higher duties shall be imposed 
 on the importation into the dominions and possessions of His 
 Majesty the Emperor of Japan of any article, the produce or manu- 
 facture of the dominions and possessions of Her Britannic Majesty, 
 from whatever place arriving, than on the like article produced or 
 manufactured in any other foreign country ; nor shall any pro- 
 hibition be maintained or imposed on the importation of any article, 
 the produce or manufacture of the dominions and possessions of 
 either of the High Contracting Parties, into the dominions and 
 possessions of the other, from whatever place arriving, which shall 
 not equally extend to the importation of the like article, being the 
 produce or manufacture of any other country. This last provision 
 is not applicable to the sanitary and other prohibitions occasioned 
 by the necessity of protecting the safety of persons, or of cattle, or 
 of plants useful to agriculture. 
 
 Article VI. — No other or higher duties or charges shall be im- 
 posed in the dominions and possessions of either of the High 
 Contracting Parties on the exportation of any article to the 
 dominions and possessions of the other than such as are, or may 
 be, payable on the exportation of the like article to any other 
 foreign country ; nor shall any prohibition be imposed on the 
 exportation of any article from the dominions and possessions of 
 either of the two Contracting Parties to the dominions and posses- 
 sions of the other which shall not equally extend to the exportation 
 of the like article to any other country. 
 
 Article VII. — The subjects of each of the High Contracting 
 Parties shall enjoy in the dominions and possessions of the other 
 exemption from all transit duties, and a perfect equality of treat- 
 ment with native subjects in all that relates to warehousing, bounties, 
 facilities, and drawbacks. 
 
APPENDIX 73 
 
 Article VIII. — All articles which are or may be legally im- 
 ported into tlie ports of the dominions and possessions of His 
 Majesty the Emperor of Japan in Japanese vessels may likewise be 
 imported into those ports in British vessels^ without being liable to 
 any other or higher duties or charges of whatever denomination 
 than if such articles were imported in Japanese vessels ; and re- 
 ciprocally, all ai'ticles which are or may be legally imported into 
 the ports of the dominions and possessions of Her Britannic Majesty 
 in British vessels may likewise be imported into those ports in 
 Japanese ^'essels, without being liable to any other or higher duties 
 or cliarges of whatever denomination than if such articles were 
 imported in British vessels. Such reciprocal equality of treatment 
 sliall take effect without distinction, whether such articles come 
 directly from the place of origin or from any other place. 
 
 In the same manner there shall be perfect equality of treatment 
 in regard to exportation, so that the same export duties shall be 
 paid and the same bounties and drawbacks allowed in the dominions 
 and possessions of either of the High Contracting Parties on the 
 exportation of any article which is or may be legally exported 
 therefrom, whether such exportation shall take place in Japanese 
 or in British vessels, and whatever may be the place of destination, 
 whether a port of either of the Contracting Parties or of any third 
 Power. 
 
 Article IX. — No duties of tonnage, harbour, pilotage, lighthouse, 
 quarantine, or other similar or corresponding duties of whatever 
 nature or under whatever denomination, levied in the name or for 
 the profit of the Government, public functionaries, private in- 
 dividuals. Corporations, or establishments of any kind, shall be 
 imposed in the ports of the dominions and possessions of either 
 country upon the vessels of the other country which shall not 
 equally and under the same conditions be imposed in the like cases 
 on national vessels in general or vessels of the most favoured nation. 
 Such equality of treatment shall apply reciprocally to the respective 
 vessels, from whatever port or place they may arrive, and whatever 
 may be their place of destination. 
 
 Article X. — In all that regards the stationing, loading, and un- 
 loading of vessels in the ports, basins, docks, roadsteads, harbours, 
 or rivers of the dominions and possessions of the two countries, no 
 privilege shall be granted to national vessels which shall not be 
 equally granted to vessels of the other country ; the intention 
 
74 JAPAN 
 
 of the High Contracting Parties being that in this respect also the 
 respective vessels shall be treated on the footing of perfect equality. 
 
 Article XI. — The coasting trade of both the High Contracting 
 Parties is excepted from the provisions of the present Treaty, and 
 shall be regulated according to the Laws, Ordinances, and Regula- 
 tions of Japan and of Great Britain respectively. It is, however, 
 understood that Japanese subjects in the dominions and possessions 
 of Her Britannic Majesty, and British subjects in the dominions 
 and possessions of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, shall enjoy 
 in this respect the rights which are or may be granted under such 
 Laws, Ordinances, and Regulations to the subjects or citizens of 
 any other country. 
 
 A Japanese vessel laden in a foreign country with cargo, 
 destined for two or moi-e ports in the dominions and possessions of 
 Her Britannic Majesty, and a British vessel laden in a foreign 
 country with cargo destined for two or more ports in the dominions 
 and possessions of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan, may dis- 
 charge a portion of her cargo at one port, and continue her voyage 
 to the other port or ports of destination where foreign trade is 
 permitted, for the purpose of landing the remainder of her original 
 cargo there, subject always to the Laws and Custom-house Regula- 
 tions of the two countries. 
 
 The Japanese Government, however, agrees to allow British 
 vessels to continue, as heretofore, for the period of the duration of 
 the present Treaty, to carry cargo between the existing open ports 
 of the Empire, excepting to or from the ports of Osaka, Niigata 
 and Ebisu-minato. 
 
 Article XII. — Any ship of war or merchant- vessel of either of 
 the High Contracting Parties which may be compelled by stress of 
 weather, or by reason of any other distress, to take shelter in a port 
 of the other, shall be at liberty to refit therein, to procure all 
 necessary supplies, and to put to sea again, without paying any 
 dues other than such as would be payable by national vessels. 
 In case, however, the master of a merchant-vessel should be 
 under the necessity of disposing of a part of his cargo in order to 
 defray the expenses, he shall be boiuid to conform to the Regula- 
 tions and Tariffs of the place to which he may have come. 
 
 If any ship of war or merchant-vessel of one of the Contracting 
 Parties should run aground or be wrecked upon the coasts of the 
 other, the local authorities shall inform the Ct)nsul-General, Consul, 
 Vice-Consul, or Consular Agent of the district of tlie occurrence, 
 
APPENDIX 75 
 
 or if there be no such Consular officer, they shall inform the 
 Consul-General, Consul, Vice-Consul, or Consular Agent of the 
 nearest district. 
 
 All proceedings relative to the salvage of Japanese vessels 
 wrecked or cast on shore in the territorial waters of Her Britannic 
 Majesty shall take place in accordance with the Laws, Ordinances, 
 and Regulations of Great Britain, and reciprocally, all measures of 
 salvage relati^^e to British vessels wrecked or cast on shore in the 
 territorial waters of His Majesty the Emperor of Japan shall take 
 place in accordance with the Laws, Ordinances, and Regulations of 
 Japan. 
 
 Such stranded or wrecked ship or vessel, and all parts thereof, 
 and all furnitures and appurtenances belonging theretinto, and all 
 goods and merchandise saved therefrom, including those which may 
 ha-\'e been cast into the sea, or the proceeds thereof, if sold, as well 
 as all papers found on boai'd such stranded or wrecked ship or 
 vessel, shall be given up to the owners or their agents, when claimed 
 by them. If such owners or agents are not on the spot, the same 
 shall be delivered to the respective Consuls-General, Consuls, Vice- 
 Consuls, or Consular Agents upon being claimed by them within 
 the period fixed by the laws of the country, and such Consular 
 officers, owners, or agents shall pay only the expenses incurred in 
 the preservation of the property, together with the salvage or other 
 expenses which would have been payable in the case of a wreck of 
 a national vessel. 
 
 The goods and merchandise saved from the wreck shall be 
 exempt from all the duties of the Customs unless cleared for con- 
 sumption, in which case they shall pay the ordinary duties. 
 
 When a ship or vessel belonging to the subjects of one of the 
 Contracting Parties is stranded or wrecked in the territories of the 
 other, the respective Consuls-General, Consuls, Vice-Consuls, and 
 Consular Agents shall be authorised, in case the owner or master, 
 or other agent of the owner, is not present, to lend their official 
 assistance in order to afford tlie necessary assistance to the subjects 
 of the respective States. The same rule shall apply in case the 
 owner, master, or other agent is present, but requires such assis- 
 tance to be given. 
 
 Article XHL — All vessels which, according to Japanese law, are 
 to be deemed Japanese vessels, and all vessels which, according 
 to British law, are to be deemed Britisli vessels, shall for the 
 purposes of this Treaty be deemed Japanese and British vessels 
 respectively. 
 
76 JAPAN 
 
 Article XIV. — Tlie Consuls-General^ Consuls^ Vice-Consuls, and 
 Consular Agents of each of the Contracting Parties, residing in the 
 dominions and possessions of the other, shall receive from the local 
 authorities such assistance as can by law be given to them for the 
 recovery of deserters from the vessels of their respective countries. 
 
 It is understood that this stipulation shall not apply to the 
 subjects of the country where the desertion takes place. 
 
 Article XV. — The High Contracting Parties agree that, in all 
 that concerns commerce and navigation, any privilege, favour, or 
 immunity wliich either Contracting Party has actually granted, or 
 may hereafter grant, to the Government, ships, subjects, or citizens 
 of any other State, sliall be extended immediately and uncon- 
 ditionally to the Government, ships, subjects, or citizens of the 
 other Contracting Party, it being their intention that the trade 
 and navigation of each country shall be placed, in all respects, by 
 the other on the footing of the most favoured nation. 
 
 Article XVI. — Each of the High Contracting Parties may 
 appoint Consuls-General, Consuls, Vice-Consuls, Pro-Consuls, and 
 Consular Agents in all the ports, cities, and places of the other, 
 except in those where it may not be convenient to recognise such 
 officers. 
 
 This exception, however, shall not be made in regard to one of 
 the Contracting Parties without being made likewise in regard to 
 every other Power. 
 
 The Consuls-General, Consuls, Vice-Consuls, Pro-Consuls, and 
 Consular Agents may exercise all functions, and shall enjoy all 
 privileges, exemptions, and immunities which are, or may hereafter 
 be, granted to Consular officers of the most favoured nation. 
 
 Article XVII. — The subjects of each of the High Contracting 
 Parties shall enjoy in the dominions and possessions of the other 
 the same protection as native subjects in regard to patents, trade- 
 marks, and designs, upon fulfilment of the formalities prescribed 
 by law. 
 
 Article XVIII. — Her Britannic Majesty's Government, so far 
 as they are concerned, give their consent to the following arrange- 
 ment : — 
 
 The several foreign Settlements in Japan sliall be incorporated 
 with the respective Japanese Communes, and shall thenceforth form 
 part of the general municipal system of Japan. 
 
 The competent Japanese authorities shall thereupon assume all 
 
APPENDIX 77 
 
 municipal obligations and duties in respect thereof, and the 
 common funds and property, if any, belonging to such Settle- 
 ments, shall at the same time be transferred to the said Japanese 
 authorities. 
 
 When such incorporation takes place the existing leases in 
 perpetuity under which property is now held in the said Settle- 
 ments shall be confirmed, and no conditions whatsoever other than 
 those contained in such existing leases shall be imposed in respect 
 of such property. It is, howevei', understood that the Consular 
 authorities mentioned in the same are in all cases to be replaced by 
 the Jajianese authorities. 
 
 All lands which may pre\'iously have been granted by the 
 Japanese Government free of rent for the public purposes of the 
 said Settlements shall, subject to the right of eminent domain, be 
 permanently reserved free of all taxes and charges for the public 
 purjjoses for which they were originally set apart. 
 
 Article XIX. — The stipulations of the present Treaty shall be 
 applicable, so far as the laws permit, to all the Colonies and foreign 
 possessions of Her Britannic Majesty, excepting to those hereinafter 
 named, that is to say, except to India, the Dominion of Canada, 
 Newfoundland, The Cape, Natal, New South Wales, Victoria, 
 Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Avistralia, New 
 Zealand. 
 
 Provided always that the stijjulations of the present Treaty shall 
 be made applicable to any of the above-named Colonies or foreign 
 possessions on whose behalf notice to that effect shall have been 
 given to the Japanese Government by her Britannic Majesty's 
 Representative at Tokio within two years from the date of the 
 exchange of ratifications of the present Treaty. ^ 
 
 Article XX. — The present Treaty shall, from the date it comes 
 into force, be substituted in place of the Conventions respectively 
 of the 23rd day of the 8th month of the 7th year of Kayei, corre- 
 sponding to the 14th day of October, 1854, and of the 13th day of 
 the 5th month of the 2nd year of Keiou, coi-responding to the 25th 
 day of June, 1866, the Treaty of the 18th day of the 7th month of 
 the 5th year of Ansei, corresponding to the 26th day of August, 
 1858, and all Arrangements and Agreements subsidiary thereto 
 
 1 To this Article was attached a note, signed by the Japanese Pleni- 
 potentiary, and containing an assuiance that any of the above-mentioned 
 British Colonies and foreign possessions, upon acceding to the Treaty, should 
 not be bound by the stipulations of Article ii. 
 
78 JAPAN 
 
 concluded or existing between the High Contracting Parties ; and 
 from the same date such Conventions^ Treaty;, Arrangements, and 
 Agreements shall cease to be binding, and, in consequence, the 
 jurisdiction then exercised by British Courts in Japan, and all the 
 exceptional privileges, exemptions, and immunities then enjoyed 
 by British subjects as a part of or appurtenant to such juris- 
 diction, shall absolutely and without notice cease and determine, 
 and thereafter all such jurisdiction shall be assumed and exercised 
 by Japanese Courts. 
 
 Article XXI. — The present Treaty shall not take effect until at 
 least five years after its signature. It shall come into force one 
 year after His Imperial Japanese Majesty's Government shall have 
 given notice to Her Britannic Majesty's Government of its wish to 
 have the same brought into operation.^ Such notice may be given 
 at any time after the expiration of four years from the date hereof. 
 The Treaty shall remain in force for the period of twelve years from 
 the date it goes into operation. 
 
 Either High Contracting Party shall have the right, at any time 
 after eleven years shall have elapsed from the date this Treaty takes 
 effect, to give notice to the other of its intention to terminate the 
 same, and at the expiration of twelve months after such notice is 
 given this Treaty shall wholly cease and determine. 
 
 Article XXII. — The present Treaty shall be ratified, and the 
 ratifications thereof shall be exchanged at Tokio as soon as possible, 
 and not later than six months from the present date. 
 
 In witness whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed 
 the same and have affixed thereto the seal of their arms. 
 
 Done at London, in dujilicate, this sixteenth day of July, in tlie 
 year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four. 
 
 KIMBP^RLEY. 
 AOKL 
 
 ^ in a svipplementary note, the Japanese Plenipotentiary gave an assurance 
 that the Japanese Government would not issue this notice until those portions 
 of the Codes which are at present in abeyance should be brought into actual 
 force. 
 
APPENDIX 7.q 
 
 II.— f*! 
 
 The Government of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain 
 and Ireland and Empress of India^ and the Government of His 
 Majesty the Emperor of Japan, deeming it advisable in the 
 interests of both countries to regulate certain special matters of 
 mutual concern, apart from the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation 
 signed this day, have, through their respective Plenipotentiaries, 
 agreed upon the following stipulations : — 
 
 1. It is agreed by the Contracting Parties that one month after 
 the exchange of the ratifications of the Treaty of Commerce and 
 Navigation signed this day, the Import Tariif hereunto annexed,^ 
 shall, subject to the provisions of Article xxiii. of the Treaty of 
 1858 at present subsisting between the Contracting Parties, as long 
 as the said Treaty remains in force and thereafter, subject to the 
 provisions of Articles v. and xv. of the Treaty signed this day, be 
 applicable to the articles therein enumerated, being the growth, 
 produce, or manufacture of the dominions and possessions of Her 
 Britannic Majesty upon importation into Japan. But nothing con- 
 tained in this Protocol, or the Tariff hereunto annexed, shall be 
 held to limit or qualify the right of the Japanese Government to 
 restrict or to prohibit the importation of adulterated drugs, 
 medicines, food, or beverages ; indecent or obscene prints, paintings, 
 books, cards, lithographic or other engravings, photographs, or any 
 other indecent or obscene articles ; articles in violation of patent, 
 trade-mark, or copyright laws of Japan ; or any other article which 
 for sanitary reasons, or in view of public security or morals, might 
 offer any danger. 
 
 The ad valorem duties established by the said Tariff shall, so far 
 as may be deemed practicable, be converted into specific duties by 
 a Supplementary Convention, which shall be concluded between the 
 two Governments within six months from the date of this Protocol ; 
 the medium prices, as shown by the Japanese Customs Returns 
 during the six calendar months preceding the date of the present 
 Protocol, with the addition of the cost of insurance and trans- 
 portation from the place of purchase, production, or fabrication, to 
 the port of discharge, as well as commission, if any, shall be taken 
 as the basis for such conversion. In the event of the Supplementary 
 Convention not having come into force before the expiration of the 
 
 1 This Tariff was printed as an annex to the Protocol, but is not here 
 reproduced. 
 
80 JAPAN 
 
 period fixed for the said Tariff to take effect^ ad valorem duties in 
 conformity with the rule recited at the end of the said Tariff shall, 
 in the meantime, be levied. 
 
 In respect of articles not enumerated in the said Tariff, the 
 General Statutory Tariff of Japan for the time being in force shall, 
 from the same time, apply, subject, as aforesaid, to the provisions 
 of Article xxiii. of the Treaty of 1858 and Articles v. and xv. of the 
 Treaty signed this day respectively. 
 
 From the date the Tariffs aforesaid take effect, the Import Tariff 
 now in operation in Japan in respect of goods and merchandise im- 
 ported into Japan by British subjects shall cease to be binding. 
 
 In all other respects the stipulations of the existing Treaties and 
 Conventions shall be maintained unconditionally until the time 
 when the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation signed this day comes 
 into force. 
 
 2. The Japanese Government, pending the opening of the country 
 to British subjects, agrees to extend the existing passport system in 
 such a manner as to allow British subjects, on the production 
 of a certificate of recommendation from the British Representative 
 in Tokio, or from any of Her Majesty's Consuls at the open ports in 
 Japan, to obtain upon application passports available for any part 
 of the country, and for any period not exceeding twelve months, 
 from the Imperial Japanese Foreign OiRce in Tokio, or from the 
 chief authorities in the Prefecture in which an open port is 
 situated ; it being understood that the existing Rules and Regula- 
 tions governing British subjects who visit the interior of the Empire 
 are to be maintained. 
 
 3. The Japanese Government undertakes, before the cessation 
 of British Consular jurisdiction in Japan, to join the International 
 Conventions for the Protection of Industrial Property and Copy- 
 right. 
 
 4. It is understood between the two High Contracting Parties 
 that, if Japan think it necessarj'^ at any time to levy an additional 
 duty on the production or manufacture of refined sugar in Japan, 
 an increased customs duty equivalent in amount may be levied on 
 British refined sugar when imported into Japan, so long as such 
 additional excise tax or inland duty continues to be raised. 
 
 Provided always that British refined sugar shall in this respect be 
 entitled to the treatment accorded to refined sugar being the pro- 
 duce or manufacture of the most favoured nation. 
 
 5. The undersigned Plenipotentiaries have agreed that this 
 Protocol shall be submitted to the two High Contracting Parties at 
 
APPENDIX 81 
 
 the same time as the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation signed 
 this day, and that when the said Treaty is ratified the agreements 
 contained in the Protocol shall also equally be considered as 
 approved, without the necessity of a further formal ratification. 
 
 It is also agreed that this Protocol shall terminate at the same 
 time the said Treaty ceases to be binding. 
 
 In witness whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed 
 the same, and have affixed thereto the seal of their arms. 
 
 Done at London, in duplicate, this sixteenth day of July, in the 
 year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four. 
 
 KIMBERLEY. 
 AOKI. 
 
KOREA 
 
 ' L'Orient ! L'Orient ! qu'y voyez-vous, iDoetes ? 
 
 Tournez vers I'Orient vos esprits et vos yeux ! 
 Helas ! ont repondu leurs voix longtemps muettes, 
 
 Nous voyons bien la-bas un jour mysterieux.' 
 
 Victor Hugo : Chants de Crepuscule. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 
 
 Where upon Apennine sloj)es with the chestniit the oak-trees immmgle, 
 AVhere amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind, 
 • Where under mulberry -branches the diligent rivulet sf)arkles, 
 Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works jjly. 
 
 A. H. Clough : Amours de Voyage. 
 
 From the best known and most visited I pass to the least 
 known and least visited of the countries of the Far East. 
 
 The name of Korea ^ is one that, until the recent ^, ^ . 
 
 I he fasci- 
 
 war, was still wrapped in so much mystery to the nation of 
 bulk of Englishmen at home, and the phenomena 
 that it presented were at once so interesting, and, for so 
 weak and ill-developed a country, so relatively important, 
 that there were but few places at that time appealing more 
 strongly to the traveller's thirst for the novel. The spectacle 
 of a country possessing an historical antiquity, contempo- 
 raneous, as alleged, with that of Thebes and Babylon,^ but 
 owning no ruins ; boasting a separate, if not an independent 
 national existence for centuries, and yet devoid of all external 
 symptoms of strength ; retaining latest of all the kingdoms 
 
 ^ The name Korea, the veritable form of which is Kori or Koryo (Chinese 
 Kaoli, Japanese Korai), was originally the name of one of the three sovereign- 
 ties into which, before its union, the peninsula was divided. The Portuguese 
 transferred this name to the whole country, and called it Coria. Later, the 
 French Jesuits called it, in French, La Coree ; whence has arisen the 
 ignorant and detestable habit of speaking of 'The Korea.' The native and 
 official name of the country since 1392 a.d. is Chosen [lit. Tsio-sien, Chinese 
 Chao-sien), i.e. 'Freshness, or serenity, of the morning.' 
 
 2 The Koreans claim as their first king Ki Tsze, who emigrated from China, 
 and founded a dynasty at Pvong-yang in 1122 b.c. 
 
 85 
 
86 KOREA 
 
 of the East the title to successful exclusion of the foreigner^ 
 and yet animated by no real hostility to aliens ; containing 
 beautiful natural scenery still virgin to the traveller's foot ; 
 claiming to have given to Japan her letters^ her science, her 
 religion, and her art, and yet bereft of almost all vestiges of 
 these herself; inhabited by a people of physical vigour but 
 moral inertness ; well-endowed with resources, yet crippled 
 for want of funds — such a spectacle is one to which I know 
 no counterpart even in Asia, the continent of contrasts, and 
 which from a distance had long and powerfully affected my 
 imagination. A bridge between Japan and China, Korea is 
 nevertheless profoundly unlike either. It has lacked the 
 virile training of the Feudal System in Japan, and the 
 incentives to industry supplied by the crowded existence of 
 China. Its indifference to religion has left it without the 
 splendid temples that adorn the former country, without the 
 stubborn self-sufficiency of character developed by Confucian- 
 ism in the latter. Japan swept it clear of all that was 
 beautiful or ancient in the famous invasion of Hideyoshi (or 
 Fidejosi, commonly called Taikosama) three centuries ago — 
 an affliction from which it has never recovered. China's 
 policy, until interrupted by recent events, has been to keep it 
 in a state of tutelage ever since. Placed in an unfortunate 
 geographical position midway between the two nations, 
 Korea has been, like Issachar, the strong ass couching 
 between two burdens. Suddenly, at the end of the nine- 
 teenth century, it wakes up from its long sleep to find the 
 alarum of the nations sounding at its gates ; the plenipoten- 
 tiaries of great Powers appear in its ports to solicit or to 
 demand recipi'ocal treaties ; it enters the comity of civilised 
 peoples ; and, still half stupefied by its long repose, relaxes 
 but slowly beneath the doubtful rays of Western civilisation. 
 In the examination of this country and its people, the 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 87 
 
 traveller or student has not the advantage, open to him in 
 
 most other parts of the world, of an adequate literature 
 
 composed by competent writers. Owing to the long and 
 
 absolute seclusion of Korea, no foreigners beyond ^ . 
 
 ° -^ Literature 
 
 a few heroic Roman Catholic missionaries, who, in of the 
 
 the latter part at any rate of their sojourn, carried ^ J ^ • 
 their lives in their hands, had penetrated into the interior of 
 the peninsula or become domiciled there, anterior to the first 
 opening of the country twenty years ago.^ A French com- 
 pilation by Pere Dallet, in whose hands were placed the 
 materials thus acquired, appeared in 1874, and has almost 
 ever since provided the substance of European knowledge 
 about Korea, of whose people, and institutions, and life, it 
 presents a minute and absorbing picture ;2 although, being 
 based upon documents extending over the previous half- 
 century, it relates to a time and describes customs which have 
 
 1 The single notable exception was Hendrik Hamel, a Dutchman, and 
 supercargo of the ship /S29erfcer, or 'Sparrow-hawk,' who was wrecked, with 
 thirty -five of the crew (including a Scotchman, John Bosket), upon the island 
 of Quelpart, while making for the Dutch factory at Nagasaki, in 1653. They 
 were conveyed to Soul in 1654, and were imprisoned in different parts of the 
 country till 1666, when a few of the survivors succeeded in making their 
 escajje by sea to the island of Goto, and thence to Jaj)an. Hamel wrote an 
 account of their experiences, which was first published in 1668, at Rotterdam, 
 and was then translated into French and English, and included in Astley's, 
 Pinkerton's, and Churchill's Collections of Voyages. For a long time doubt 
 was cast upon its authenticity ; but, though the author was a man of no great 
 education, and might have told us much more, his narrative, such as it is, has 
 been amply confirmed by later knowledge, and is highly interesting. It is 
 curious that, when Hamel's party were wrecked, there was already in Soul 
 another Dutchman, Jan Janssoia Weltervree, who, with two of his fellow- 
 countrymen, had been ke23t jirisoners by the Koreans since 1627, when they 
 had been sent ashore from the Jacht Oudekerke, to get water and provisions. 
 Not even these, however, were the first Europeans to set foot iii Korea. 
 This distinction belongs to a Portuguese Jesuit, Gregorio de Ces]3edes, who 
 was sent over by Hideyoshi, in 1594, as chaplaiii to his second exiDedition 
 against Korea, which was commanded by a Jaj^anese Christian, Dom 
 Augustin Konishi Yukinaga, and contained many Christians in its ranks. 
 The only relics of the Dutch captives that have, so far, been discovered were 
 two Dutch vessels, unearthed at Soul in 1886. 
 
 2 Histoire de VEglise de Coree. 2 vols. Paris, 1874. 
 
88 KOREA 
 
 now passed out of recollection or have ceased to prevail ; 
 whilst, being compiled by a writer who had not himself set 
 foot in Korea, it lacks the advantage of first-hand editorial 
 revision. Since 1876, the date of the first Treaty, the two 
 most useful works on the country have also been the pro- 
 ductions of authors who have never set foot within its borders. 
 The Het'tnit Nation, by Mr. W. E. Griffis, an American, is 
 a scholarly compilation of its past history, mainly fi'om 
 Japanese sources, and a careful, though frequently obsolete 
 description of its habits and customs. The other work, by a 
 Scotch Presbyterian missionary. Rev. J. Ross, who lived long 
 at Newchwang, is also in the main historical.^ The narratives 
 of the few foreign travellers who have explored the country 
 since its opening are as a rule scattered in the journals of 
 Geographical Societies, in Government reports, or in publica- 
 tions neither easily accessible nor generally known. By 
 far the most meritorious of these, and, within a narrow 
 space, the most vivid and accurate account of Korean life 
 life and character that I have seen, is a report written by 
 Mr. C. W. Campbell, of the British Consular Service, and 
 printed as a Parliamentary paper in 1891.^ The earlier 
 work by one of his predecessors, Mr. W. R. Carles, contains 
 much interesting information, but is on the whole dis- 
 appointing.^ Much more so is the rhapsodical production 
 of an American writer, Mr. P. Lowell.* The recent war 
 gave birth to a plentiful crop of literature dealing with the 
 country. But of this much was second-hand and the greater 
 part ephemeral. 
 
 The foreign visitor to Korea will naturally first land upon 
 its shores at one of the three Treaty Ports of Fusan, Gensan, 
 and Chemulpo. As I visited and stayed at each of these, 
 
 1 History of Corea, Ancient and Modern. Paisley, 1880. 
 
 2 China. No. 2. (1891). s Life in Korea. London, 1888. 
 ^ Chosen, The Land of the Morning Calm. London, 1886. 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 89 
 
 I may append a paragraph upon theirj characteristics. 
 Fusan is upon the south-east coast^ opposite to and 
 within sight of the Japanese islands of Tsushima jj^^ Treaty 
 (The Twins). Gensan is upon the east coast^ Ports. 
 about half-way between Fusan and Vladivostok, Chemulpo 
 is upon the west coast, and is the port of the capital, Soul. 
 A greater variation can hardly be imagined than between 
 
 PORT AND JAPANESE SETTLEMENT OF FUSAN 
 
 the eastern and western shores of the peninsula. The 
 former are mountainous, the spurs of the Korean Apennines 
 reaching down in many places to the water's edge, and are 
 pierced by a few fine harboui-s, in which thei*e is but a 
 weak tide, and which are open all the year round. On the 
 west coast, which is laved by the Yellow Sea of China, 
 there are, on the contrary, only shallow and tortuous inlets, 
 shielded by an archipelago of islands, and either filled or 
 
90 KOREA 
 
 bared by a tide that rises from 25 to 40 feet, and is 
 
 frequently frozen in winter. 
 
 The harbours of Fusan and Gensan are ahke in being 
 
 situated at the bottom of deep and sheltered bays, which 
 
 could provide anchorage for immense armadas, 
 Fusan. , 7 , f 
 
 and which are visited by a yearly increasing 
 
 mercantile marine, flying the Japanese, the Chinese, and 
 the Russian flags. Fusan,^ as the port nearest to Japan, 
 has retained for centuries a more than nominal connection 
 with the neighbouring Power, having been from early times 
 a fief of the daimio or lord of Tsushima,^ until, in 1876, it 
 became a trading port constituted by treaty between the 
 two Powers. A flourishing Japanese community containing 
 over 5000 Japanese subjects (exclusive of a floating popula- 
 tion of 6000 Japanese fishermen) is the modern heir of the 
 former military and trading colony, and is settled round the 
 base of a knoll, crowned with a clump of cryptomerias — 
 an obvious importation from over the sea — and with two 
 dilapidated Japanese temples, just opposite to the large 
 
 1 Fusan is the Japanese, Piisan the Korean name, signifying pot or kettle 
 mountain, presumably from the outline of the knoll upon the shore. 
 
 2 It was in the year 1443 that, by an agreement between the Prince of 
 Tsushima and the Prefect of Tongnai (near Fusan), the first Japanese 
 settlement was made at the latter port. The tribute-embassies from Korea 
 to Japan always sailed from Fusaii when starting for the Shogun's court at 
 Kamakura, and there also landed the two successive invading armies of 
 Hideyoshi, in 1592 and 1593. Even after the evacuation of the country 
 by the Japanese, it remained in their hands, a garrison of 300 men being 
 permanently quartered there behind a stockade, the only Japanese colony 
 in the world ; until, after the Revolution in 1868, it passed, with the other 
 feudal properties of Japan, into the hands of the Mikado. Its formal 
 oj)ening as a Treaty Port in 1876 was a recognition of the resumption of 
 Korean ownership, although the Jajjanese settlement, for which a nominal 
 head-rent of $50 is supposed to be paid, remains practically a Japanese 
 possession, being administered by the Japanese Consul, and a municij)al 
 council. In 1894 part of the Japanese expeditionary force landed at Fusan, 
 but was recalled, before proceeding far into the interior, there being no 
 necessity for a southern advance. 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 
 
 91 
 
 hilly island called by the Europeans Deer Island, which 
 shelters the southern side of the bay.i A little to the 
 north of this town is a new Chinese settlement, the latter 
 people having recently broken ground in Fusan, though 
 handicapped as yet by the superior start and numbers of 
 their rivals. Northward again is the original Japanese 
 settlement, known as Kuk-wan ; while a little beyond lies 
 
 GATE OF NATIVE TOWN, FUSAN 
 
 the Korean town surrounded by a stone wall and possessing 
 the ruins of a castle, outside whose gates are a squalid 
 native hamlet and bazaar. The background is formed by 
 wild and desolate hills, with a thin fringe of firs bristling 
 on the skyline, and bright red terraces of cultivated soil 
 below. 
 
 ^ The Koreans call this island Tetsuye, the Isle of Enchanting View, or 
 Maki, the Isle of Green Pastures (because it was linvb^aTos, or a horse- 
 rearing place). 
 
^2 KOREA 
 
 Gensan ^ is situated in the southern hollow of the remark- 
 able inlet in the eastern coast, called, from the British 
 navigator who first surveyed it in 1797, Broughton 
 
 ensan. g^y 2 j^ deeper, and even finer indentation of 
 the same bay, sheltered by the NakimoiF peninsula, is the 
 well-known Port LazarefF, first surveyed and named by the 
 Russians in 1854, and ever since believed to have been 
 regarded by that people, from their ice-bound quarters at 
 Vladivostok,^ with a more than envious eye. The entire 
 bay is fourteen miles in length, from two to six in width, 
 and has a depth of from six to twelve fathoms. Seawards 
 its entrance is masked by an archipelago of islets. As we 
 steam up the bay, the Japanese settlement founded in 1879^ 
 and now containing over 700 colonists, may be seen clustered 
 at the base of a hill upon the right. Some mile and a half 
 to the south, and a little way inland, a cloud of smoke 
 indicates the situation of the native town, which contains 
 13,000 inhabitants. Wooded hills frame a picturesque back- 
 ground, and vapour-caps hide the mountains inland. A less 
 vigorous trade is here conducted by both Japanese and 
 Chinese (the latter having only recently entered the field) 
 with the northern provinces, the populous towns in which 
 are more easily reached from the western coast, and will 
 ultimately be more naturally served from the river-port of 
 Pyong-yang (or Ping-yang), as soon as the latter is opened 
 to foreign commerce, or as the Korean coasting marine be- 
 comes equal to its supply. 
 
 1 Gensan is the Japanese, Yuensan the Chinese, and Wonsan the Korean 
 version of the name ; the difference arising from the different pronunciation 
 by the three peoples of the same Chinese ideographs. 
 
 2 Vide Captain W. R. Broughton's Voyage of Discovery to the North 
 Pacific Ocean. London, 1804. 
 
 3 During 1893 an attempt was made with a steam ice-crusher to keep the 
 harbour of Vladivostok open the whole year round ; but only met with 
 qiialified success. 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOEEA 
 
 93 
 
 Chemulpo ^ has few natural aptitudes as a port beyond its 
 situation on the estuary of the southern branch of the river 
 Han, or Han-kiang, upon which stands the Korean 
 capital, and its consequent proximity to the main 
 centre of population. The river journey is fifty-four miles 
 in length to Mapu, the landing-place for Soul, which lies 
 
 Chemulpo. 
 
 PORT OF CHEMULPO 
 
 three miles farther on. The land-march to Soul is an 
 uninviting stretch of twenty-six miles. In 1883, when 
 Chemulpo was first opened to foreign trade, there was only 
 a fishing hamlet with fifteen Korean huts on the site, where 
 now may be seen a prosperous town containing over 3000 
 foreigners, of whom 2500 are Japanese, 600 Chinamen, and 
 over twenty Europeans, as well as a native population of 
 
 1 Chemulpo (signifying 'Various-articles-river-bank') is the name of the 
 settlement formerly known and spoken of in the Treaties, from the name of 
 the nearest magistracy, five miles away, as Japanese Jinsen or Ninsen, 
 Chinese Jenchuan, Korean Inchiun or Inchon, signifying 'Benevolent streams.' 
 
94 KOREA 
 
 about equal numbers. Thei'e are a European club^ several 
 
 billiard-saloons and restaurants, and some excellent Chinese 
 
 stores. The outer anchorage is some two miles from the 
 
 shore, for the tide runs out here for miles (with a rise and 
 
 fall of 25 to 30 feet), leaving an exposed waste of mud-flats 
 
 and a narrow channel, in which steamers of light draught 
 
 rest upon the ooze. The busy streets and harbour are 
 
 indications of a rapidly-advancing trade, which promises 
 
 further expansion in the near future. 
 
 The first glimpse of the Korean coast, at or near any of 
 
 these ports, which is mountainous, but little wooded, and 
 
 relatively bare, gives no idea of the timbered 
 The -^ ' ^ 
 
 Korean heights and smiling valleys which may be en- 
 
 psop ^- countered in the interior ; but the first sight of 
 
 its white-robed people, whose figures, if stationary, might be 
 
 mistaken at a distance for white mileposts or tombstones, it 
 
 ^^ moving, for a colony of swans, acquaints us wth a national 
 
 -T type and dress that are quite unique. A ,clirty people who 
 
 insist upon dressing in white is a first peculiarity ; a people 
 
 inhabiting a northern, and in winter a very rigorous latitude, 
 
 who yet insist upon wearing cotton (even though it be 
 
 wadded in winter) all the year round, is a second ; a people 
 
 who always wear hats, and have a headpiece accommodated 
 
 to every situation and almost every incident in life, is a third. 
 
 But all these combine to make the wearers picturesque ; 
 
 while as to Korean standards of comfort we have nothing to 
 
 do but to wonder. As to their physique, the men are 
 
 stalwart, well-built, and bear themselves with a manly air, 
 
 though of docile and sometimes timid expression. The hair 
 
 is worn long, but is twisted into a topknot, protected by the 
 
 crown of the aforementioned hat.^ The women, of whom 
 
 1 This is the old Chinese fashion under the Mings,which was copied, with other 
 Chinese habits, in Korea, but which was abolished by the Manchus in China. 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 95 
 
 those belonging to the upper classes are not visible, but the 
 poorer among whom may be seen by hundreds engaged in 
 manual labour in the houses, streets and fields, cannot be 
 described as beautiful. They have a peculiar arrangement 
 of dress by which a short white bodice covers the shoulders, 
 but leaves the breasts entirely exposed ; while voluminous 
 petticoats, very full at the hips, depend from a waist just 
 below the armpits, and all but conceal coarse white or brown 
 
 KOREAN SCHOOLMASTER AND BOYS 
 
 pantaloons below. Their hair is black, and is wound in a 
 big coil round the temples, supplying a welcome contrast to 
 the greasy though fascinating coiffure of the females of Japan. 
 Indeed, if the men of the two nations are unlike — the tall, 
 robust, good-looking, idle Korean, and the diminutive, ugly, 
 nimble, indomitable Japanese — still more so are the women 
 — the hard-visaged, strong-limbed, masterful housewife of 
 Korea, and the shuffling, knock-kneed, laughing, bewitchino- 
 Japanese damsel. The Korean boy, indeed, might more 
 
96 KOREA 
 
 easily be taken to represent the gentler sex, since, until he 
 is engaged to be married, he wears his hair parted in the 
 middle and hanging in a long plait down his back. 
 
 Of this people, the males among whom exceed the females, 
 there are believed to be about 11,000,000 in Korea, an area 
 very similar in extent to Greab Britain. ^ I give 
 ! . this total as a mean, possessing a probable approxi- 
 mation to truth, between the two extremes of 
 7,000,000 and 28,000,000, both of which have figured in 
 recent publications,^ and which illustrate the prevailing 
 ignorance about a country and a population that have not as 
 yet passed through the mill of the statistician. Marrying at 
 an early age, prone to large families, and undiminished for 
 many years by war or famine, the Korean population ought 
 to be on the increase were it not that the infant mortality 
 is enormous, and that the death-rate from epidemics, against 
 which no precautions are taken, and which sweep over the 
 country every third or fourth year, is certainly high. On 
 the other hand, the large tracts of uncultivated and almost 
 uninhabited country that still await the ploughshare and the 
 peasant will accommodate an expansion that cannot fail to 
 disappoint the Malthusian enthusiast for many years to 
 come. 
 
 The Koreans belong unmistakably to the Mongolian stock, 
 
 1 The best estimate appears to be 80,000-90,000 square miles. But some 
 place it as high as 100,000-120,000. 
 
 2 Ev^que Daveluy, in 1847, gave 3,598,880 males, 3,745,481 females ; total 
 7,344,361. Oppert, in 1867, gave 15,000,000-16,000,000. Pere Dallet, in 
 1874, gave 10,000,000. Japanese statistics, in 1881, gave 16,227,885. Griffis, 
 in 1882, gave 12,000,000. Sir H. Parkes, in 1883, gave 8,000,000-10,000,000. 
 An obviously supposititious census, in 1884, is quoted as having given 
 28,007,401. The latest Government census, cited in the Statesman's Year- 
 Booh, is 10,528,937. Varat, the most recent foreign writer, names 16,000,000- 
 18,000,000. On the other hand, the Chinese figures, in a work entitled 
 Important Facts relating to the Eastern Stockade, are 3,310,704 males, 
 3,259,401 females ; total 6,570,105. 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA y? 
 
 occupying a sort of intermediate stage between the Mongo- 
 lian Tartar and. the Japanese. It is impossible to confound 
 
 them either with the latter or with the Chinese ; ^ , , 
 
 Ethnology 
 
 and a Korean would, to any one who has travelled and 
 in the country, be a known man in any city in the "^ 
 
 world. It has been supposed by some writers, who have ob- 
 served a different variety with blue eyes and fair hair in Korea 
 itself, that there is also a Caucasian element in the stock ; but 
 I am not aware that this hypothesis has found any scientific 
 confirmation.^ Their language is of the Turanian family, 
 with the addition of many Chinese words ; and they may be 
 said to possess two syllabaries or alphabets — the Nido or 
 Korean syllabary, which gives a phonetic value to some 250 
 Chinese ideographs in common use, and which was invented 
 by Syel Chong, a famous scholar and priest, 1100 years ago ; 
 and the popular Korean alphabet, or script, which was first 
 promulgated by royal decree in 1447 a.d., and is still used 
 by the lower orders.^ If one does not either speak or under- 
 stand Korean oneself, it is always possible to communicate 
 with a Korean by using the Chinese symbols, which he 
 equally employs. On the other hand, among the upper and 
 lettered classes, Chinese itself is the invariable vehicle both 
 of speech and correspondence, just as it is also the official 
 language employed in Government publications, proclama- 
 tions, examinations, and decrees. 
 
 Of the people so constituted there appears to be but 
 one opinion as to the national character and physique. 
 While an invigorating climate has made them naturally 
 
 1 May it not, ijerhaps, be attributable to the twelve years' residence in 
 Korea of the Dutchman Hamel and his companions, two centuries ago ? 
 
 2 The most interesting evidence of the early develo23meut of Korea is Sir E. 
 Satow's demonstration that the Koreans jjrinted from movable metallic types 
 two centuries before they were known in Europe. He possesses a Korean 
 reprint of the Chinese Confucian Table-Talk, which was printed in 1317 a.d. 
 in this fashion. 
 
 G 
 
98 KOREA 
 
 long-lived and strong, their habits of life and morals ^ have 
 
 rendered them subject to many forms of ailment and disease ; 
 
 while their want of contact with the world and 
 
 National \}iQ[y servitude to a form of government which 
 character. ° 
 
 has never either encouraged or admitted of 
 
 individual enterprise, but which has reduced all except the 
 
 privileged class to a dead level of uncomplaining poverty, 
 
 have left them inert, listless, and apathetic. As individuals 
 
 they possess many attractive characteristics — -the upper 
 
 classes being polite, cultivated, friendly to foreigners, and 
 
 priding themselves on correct deportment ; while the lower 
 
 orders are good-tempered, though very excitable, cheerful^ 
 
 and talkative. Beyond a certain point, however, both 
 
 classes relapse into a similar indifference, which takes 
 
 the form of an indolent protest against action of any kind. 
 
 The politician in Soul remains civil, but is wholly deaf 
 
 to persuasion. The coolie works one day and dawdles 
 
 away his wages upon the two next. The mapu, or ostler, 
 
 takes his own time about his own and his pack-pony's meals, 
 
 and no reasoning or compulsion in the world would disturb 
 
 him from his complacent languor. These idiosyncrasies may 
 
 only be interesting to the unconcerned student of national 
 
 character, but they are of capital importance in their bearing 
 
 upon national life. When, further, they ai-e crystallised into 
 
 hardness and ai-e inflamed by the habits of an upper and 
 
 official class — which subsists by extortion, and prohibits, 
 
 outside its own limits, either the exercise of surplus activity 
 
 or the accumulation of wealth — they explain how it is that 
 
 the Korean people remain poor amid stores of unprobed 
 
 wealth, lethargic where thei'e should otherwise be a hundred 
 
 ^ Polygamy may be said to prevail ) for Whilst most Koreans only have 
 one wife, they keep as many concubines as their circumstances i^ermit. 
 Among the lower orders there is neither cleanliness nor decency, and many 
 vices prevail. 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 
 
 99 
 
 incentives to diligence, nerveless in the face either of com- 
 petition or of peril. I have seen a Korean coolie carrying a 
 weight that would make the stoutest ox stagger, and yet I 
 have seen three Koreans lazily employed in turning up the 
 soil with a single shovel, by an arrangement of ropes that 
 wasted the labour of three men without augmenting the 
 strength of one. 
 
 A KOREAN MAGISTKACY 
 
 So it is in every department of the national existence. 
 
 An immense reserve of masculine force is diverted from the 
 
 field of labour and is lost to the nation bv beinff 
 
 •^ ^ The 
 
 absorbed into the ijamens, or offices of the local extremes 
 
 magistrates and prefects, where their function, °f society. 
 
 instead of invigorating the blood of the country, is to suck 
 
 that of their fellow-countrymen.^ The population of Korea 
 
 1 Mr. Carles, in one of his Reports (Corea, No. 2, 1885), mentioned the 
 province of Pyong-an-do as having 44 magistracies, with an average of 400 
 official hangers-on in each, having nothing to do bnt to police the district and 
 to collect taxes — in all, a total of 17,000 men. 
 
100 KOREA 
 
 may, indeed, be roughly divided into two classes — the upper 
 or official, entitled yanghaji} whose position or gentility is a 
 bar to work, and who, therefore, must subsist upon others ; 
 and the great residuum, whose business it is to be subsisted 
 upon, and to filch from the produce of their labour the 
 slender necessities of existence for themselves. Poverty in 
 the sense of destitution there is not ; but poverty in the 
 sense of having no surplus beyond the bare means of livelihood 
 and of the paralysis of all enterprise is almost universal. 
 Any less indolent people might be expected to rebel ; and 
 occasional magisterial encroachments beyond the limits of 
 practice or endurance result in short-lived spasms of mutiny, 
 in the course of which an offending official is seized and, 
 perhaps (as happened once in 1891) is burned alive. But 
 ordinarily this implies too great an exertion; the people 
 are unarmed and very helpless, and the system is mutely 
 acquiesced in, unless pushed to intolerable extremes. 
 
 For travelling in the interior of Korea it is advisable to 
 invoke some sort of official assistance. Otherwise the poverty 
 
 1 Literally Nyang-pan, or Two Orders (civil and military), who constitute 
 the aristocracy of birth, descending from an aristocracy of office. Mr. 
 Camjibell, in his Report, gives the best account of them: — 'The nyang-pan 
 enjoys many of the usual privileges of nobility. He is exemjjtiifiiiiiirrest, 
 except by command of theTting or the governor of the province in which he 
 resides, and then he is n^ liable to personal punishment, except-for the 
 graxest^crimes, such as treason or extortion. He wields an autocratic sway 
 over the inmates of his house, and has full license to resent any real or 
 fancied insult levelled at him by the ha-in, i.e. ' low men,' the proletariat, 
 just as he pleases. At the same time, the nyang-pan lies under one great 
 obligation, noblcsse-obligj; ; he carmot— perform any menial work, or engage 
 in any trade or industrijil^occiipation. Outside the public service, teaching 
 is the drdyT-Oxm of employment open to him. If he seeks any other, he 
 sinks irrevocably to the level of his occupation. There is no law-laid^down 
 , on the f)oint. The penalty is enforced socially, and is i^art of the unwritTeii 
 code of nyang-pan etiquette. These privileges and obligations have naturally 
 influenced the character of the class, so that the officeless nyang-pan, no 
 matter how poor, is proud and punctilious as a Spanish hidalgo, not above 
 negotiating a loan with the most shameless effrontery, yet keen to resent the 
 slightest shade of disresi^ect from an inferior.' 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 101 
 
 of the country renders it difficult in parts for the stranger 
 
 to procure either beasts of burden, lodging, or food. The 
 
 Foi'eign Office at Soul issues a document known 
 
 as a kuan-choiv, which authorises the bearer to ecessi les 
 ' 01 travel. 
 
 employ Government couriers and ponies, and to 
 
 put up at Government inns and yamens, and which calls for 
 
 fodder, chickens, and torches at night, to be forthcoming. 
 
 The natives frequently endeavour to circumvent this order 
 
 by hiding away everything in their possession, and protesting 
 
 the entire nakedness of the land. Its production at a 
 
 magistracy is consequently very often necessary, since it is an 
 
 imperative mandate to the local official to bestir himself in 
 
 the interests of the bearer, who may otherwise report his 
 
 indifference at Soul. Without a kuan-chow I might never 
 
 have started from Gensan, where there was a conspiracy 
 
 among the owners of ponies to refuse all their animals, 
 
 except at preposterous rates, that was only overcome after a 
 
 two days' delay and a somewhat stormy interview, kuan-chow 
 
 in hand, with the locum tenois at the local yamen. 
 
 Travel in the heart of a country brings the stranger into 
 
 contaeb with a type of humanity more primitive, but also 
 
 more representative of the national character, 
 
 ^ Visit to the 
 
 than that encountered in the capital or in large Diamond 
 
 cities, whilst it also discloses features of natural ' °^^^ ^"^^" 
 scenery of which the residents in towns or the frequenters of 
 high routes alone may remain permanently ignorant. Both 
 these advantages were derivable from the circuitous joui'ney 
 which I took from Gensan to the capital. The familiar 
 route between these places is 550 li, or 170 miles, in length, 
 and, with the exception of one splendid mountain-crossing, 
 traverses a landscape never without interest, though lacking 
 in the higher elements of grandeur or romance. A diver- 
 gence, however, of a few days from the track brought 
 
102 KOREA 
 
 me into a region which less than half-a-dozen Europeans 
 have yet visited, and which contains some of the most 
 renowned sceneiy in Korea, as well as the picturesque and 
 venerable relics of the disestablished Buddhist religion, which 
 for 1000 years before the foundation of the present dynasty, 
 in about 1400 a.d., was the official and popular cult of the 
 
 KEUM KANG SAN, OB DIAMOND MOUNTAINS 
 
 country. This region is known as the Keum Kang San, or 
 Diamond Mountains ; and there — amid mountain valleys and 
 recesses whose superb forest mantle rivals in amplitude, while 
 it excels in autumnal tints of maple and chestnut, the garniture 
 of Californian caiions, where rushing, crystal-clear torrents 
 dance through every glen, and far skywards bare splintered 
 crags lift their horns above the foliage — are scattered a 
 number of monasteries, whose buildings are in some cases 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 103 
 
 many centuries old^ and whose dwindling congregation of 
 inmates perform in these secluded retreats, secure from any 
 intrusion save that of the itinerant pilgrim, the stereotyped 
 devotions before gilded images of Buddha and his disciples, 
 in which they themselves, in common with the mass of their 
 countrymen, have long ceased to believe. By lovers of the 
 picturesque nothing more enchanting than these monastic 
 retreats can anywhere be found ; nor will the discovery 
 that, while every prospect pleases, man alone is vile — even 
 though his depravity assume, as is credibly alleged of the 
 Korean bonzes, the most profligate expression, or, as it did 
 in my own experience, the more modest form of larceny of 
 one's personal effects — deter the traveller from keen ap- 
 preciation of surroundings so romantic. 
 
 Surprise may be felt that in a country where the cloister 
 is so generally and not unjustly despised, it should yet 
 succeed, in spite of popular scepticism and official 
 neglect, in attracting to itself a sufficient number j^Q^j^g 
 of recruits. The answer lies in the incurable 
 laziness of the people. The monks, who do but little in the 
 way of manual labour, beyond occasionally tilling the plots 
 of ground attached to the monasteries, or making sandals, 
 subsist in the main upon the charity of others — an occupation 
 in which the Korean finds an enchantment that personal 
 exertion can never supply. Hither, therefore, retire those 
 who have nothing to do, or still more, who want to do 
 nothing ; bachelors who cannot marry or widowers who do 
 not want to marry again ; children of whom their families 
 want to get quit, or who want to get quit of their families ; 
 sometimes fugitives from justice to whom the Buddhist 
 monastery is like the Jewish City of Refuge ; perhaps, here 
 and there, though not once in a hundred times, an individual 
 who desires to forsake the world, and to surrender himself 
 
104 
 
 KOREA 
 
 wholly to study and devotion. Hither also comes the Korean 
 sight-seer^ the local equivalent to the English Bank Holiday 
 young man on a bicycle — a character very common among 
 the Koreans, who cultivate a keen eye for scenery, and 
 who love nothing better than a kukyeng, or pleasure-trip in 
 the country, where they can shirk all business and dawdle 
 along as the humour seizes them ; living upon and, where 
 possible, abusing the hospitality of others, and halting as 
 
 MONASTERY OF CHANG AN SA IN THE . DIAMOND MOUNTAINS 
 
 they mount each successive crest, and a new outlook opens 
 before them, to expatiate upon its beauty, to deposit a stone 
 or hang up a rag in the little wayside shrine erected to 
 the local genius or deity, and, if they be sufficiently educated, 
 either to quote the rhapsodies of some previous poet or to 
 compose a stanza themselves. How deeply ingrained in the 
 people is this semi-aesthetic, semi-superstitious nature-worship 
 may be illustrated by the case of Paik-tu-San (White Peak 
 Mountain), the celebrated mountain on the northern frontier, 
 with its gleaming white crown, and with the unfathomed 
 lake in the hollow of its crater. Every year an official 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 105 
 
 deputation starts forth from Hamheung^ the nearest seat 
 of provincial government, and when it arrives at a point 
 beyond Unchong, near the Yalu River, from whence the first 
 view of the sacred crest is obtained, makes genuflexions, 
 lays out its offerings, and retires. That the monasteries 
 have for long been visited far more for pleasure's sake 
 than for duty is also evident from the remark of Hamel 
 240 yeai'S ago : — 
 
 ' The Nobles frequent the Monasteries very much to divert them- 
 selves there with common Women or others they carry with them, 
 because they are generally deliciously seated, and very pleasant 
 for Prospect and fine Gardens. So that they might better be "I'tJiA? 
 
 called Pleas ure-houses _j}i>"'ii Tpmplps^ which is to be iiuderstood p^''^'|y 
 of the common monasteries, where the religious men love to drink ^.jf^^^C^-c, l'^ 
 
 e^v^/ ■ 
 
 A full night's sleep is not easy of attainment in a Korean 
 monastery, even though one's bed be spread on the floor of '■^^^^'^'^ 
 
 one of the sacred halls, and at the foot, as often ,, 
 
 •" ' Monastic 
 
 happens, of the high altar. Before the first life and 
 glimmer of dawn some pious monk, anxious to 
 anticipate his fellows, begins to walk roimd the courts, 
 tapping a drum, and singing the most lugubrious and dis- 
 cordant of chants. Then somebody else begins to clap, clap, 
 upon a brass gong. Next the big drum on the platform 
 over the entrance is beaten to a frantic tune ; and finally 
 every bell, gong, and drum in the establishment are set 
 going at once. This is the common experience of all who 
 sojourn in Buddhist monasteries, where a scrupulous ad- 
 herence to ritual prevails, and where the outside of the cup 
 and platter is much more thought of than the character of 
 the inward parts. 
 
 The internal arrangements of these monasteries, of which 
 there are said to be nearly forty, along with a few nunneries. 
 
 ^(7C6^»A-e^wir)V 
 
106 
 
 KOREA 
 
 Buildings. 
 
 in the Diamond Mountains^^ and of which I also visited 
 the chief or metropolitan monastery of Sak Wang Sa, 
 about twenty miles from Gensan, are com- 
 monly the same. Adjoining^ sometimes over, the 
 entrance, is a roofed platform or tei*race, the pillars and 
 sides of which are thickly hung with the votive or sub- 
 scription tablets of former pilgrims. Here is usually placed 
 
 ABBOT OF A KOREAN MONASTERY 
 
 a gigantic drum, reposing upon the back of a painted 
 wooden monster. Hard by a big bronze bell hangs behind 
 a grille. The central court, into which one first enters, 
 contains the principal shrine or temple, usually at the 
 upper end, and subsidiary shrines or guest-chambers on 
 either side. All are of the same pattern — low detached 
 
 1 The accompanying photographs of scenery iii the Keixm Kang San were 
 taken by Mr. C. W. Campbell. 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 107 
 
 buildings, with heavy tiled roofs and overhanging eaves, 
 
 closed by screens, or shutters, or doors along the front. 
 
 Inside is a single gloomy chamber or hall, the richly-carved 
 
 and painted ceiling of which is sustained by large red 
 
 pillars. Opposite the entrance is the main altar, a green 
 
 or pink gauze veil hanging in front of which but half 
 
 conceals the gilded figures of seated or standing Buddhas 
 
 behind, while all round the sides are ranged grotesque 
 
 and grinning images, usually in painted clay, of other 
 
 demigods, saints, or heroes. A low stool stands in front 
 
 of the main altar, and supports a copy of the liturgy and 
 
 a small brass bell. Thereat, when the hour strikes for 
 
 morning or evening prayer, a monk, hastily pulling a grey 
 
 robe and red hood over his white dress, kneels down on a 
 
 mat, intones a prayer in a language which he does not 
 
 understand, touches the ground with his forehead, and 
 
 strikes the brass bell with a small deer's horn. Smaller 
 
 replicas of the same sanctuary, dedicated to different 
 
 deities, stand in the neighbouring courts. 
 
 The Korean form of Buddhism is, it will thus be seen, 
 
 closely akin to the Chinese, and is widely divorced from 
 
 that which found favour in the more artistic 
 
 atmosphere of Japan. Its hideously bedaubed ^"^p."^^.^" 
 ^ ^ J religion. 
 
 temples, which only become tolerable with age, 
 and its multiform, grotesque, and barbarous images have 
 little in common with the beauty of Ikegami or the glories 
 of Nikko, or even with the less aesthetic attractions of 
 Asakusa. Essentially Chinese, too, is the manner in which 
 the original faith has been overlaid with anthropomorphic 
 or demonolatrous superstitions, and has had grafted on to it 
 an entire pantheon of semi-deified heroes. Nevertheless, it 
 is a welcome relief to alight upon the shrines even of a 
 dishonoured and moribund faith in a country where no 
 
108 KOREA 
 
 popular cult appears to exist save that of spirits^ dictated 
 
 in most cases by nervous apprehension of the forces of 
 
 nature, and where, as the old Dutch navigator put itj ' as 
 
 for Religion, the Coresians have scarcely any,' 
 
 To these superstitions is the Korean peasant peculiarly 
 
 prone. Outside his villages are seen wooden distance-posts 
 
 carved into the hideous and grinning likeness of 
 
 P^'^V'. a human head, in order to propitiate the evil 
 
 worship ' r r 
 
 and Con- spirits.^ Of similar application are the bronze 
 figures of monsters that appear upon the roofs of 
 palaces and city gates, the rags and ropes that are tied to 
 the boughs of trees (supposed, in Korean demonology, to be 
 the particular abode of spirits), and the stones that are 
 heaped together on the summits of hill-roads, in passing 
 which our native camp-followers would invariably bow and 
 expectorate. Female sorceresses and soothsayers, to cast 
 horoscopes, and to determine the propitious moment for 
 any important action, are also in great request.- In 
 
 1 These images are commonly from 4 to 8 feet in height. Their lower 
 part consists of a ronghly-hewn log or post, on the front of which is an 
 inscription in Chinese characters, while the upper part is carved into the 
 likeness of a grotesque head, with features besmeared with red jjaint, white 
 ej-e-balls, and huge grinning mouth. Their original purpose appears to have 
 been that of mile-stones to record distances, in which case they are called 
 Chang or Jang-sung ; but when planted in rows at the entrance and exit of 
 villages they are also called Syong-sal-mak, and are regarded as tutelary 
 guardians against evil spirits. Chang-sung is said to have been the name of 
 a notorious Korean criminal in bygone days. This individual was a general 
 or official of high rank, who, according to dififerent versions of the same 
 legend, murdered his wife and daughter, or married his own daughter, who, 
 for her part, committed suicide. Detected and seized, he was put to death 
 by the King, and the likeness of his head was carved as a warning upon the 
 distance-posts throughout the country. A somewhat analogous idea is 
 represented in the Korean practice, at certain seasons of the year, of making 
 little straw effigies, about Ih foot in height, in the likeness of some disliked 
 individual, inserting a few loose cash inside, along with a short prayer, and 
 then burning the whole thing as a scape-goat', or presenting it to a beggar, 
 who will gladly appropriate the gift for the sake of the coins. 
 
 ■'' Outside the walls of Soul I visited the house of a sorceress — a big black 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 109 
 
 Soul I heard a story of a sick man who was supposed to be 
 possessed by a devil, but was successfully cured by an 
 English mission doctor, who affected to drive out the evil 
 spirit, which was forthwith pursued down the street by a 
 large crowd and 'run to ground' in the mission compound. 
 Among the upper classes the only vital form of religion is 
 ancestor worship, developed by familiarity with Confucianism 
 and by long connection with the Chinese. A man has no 
 higher ambition than to leave male descendants who may 
 worship his maiies and offer sacrifice at his grave. An 
 outcome of the same ethical system is the sense of filial 
 piety, which would have rendered ^neas a typical China- 
 man, of unquestioning obedience to the sovereign, and of 
 duty to the aged and to friends. No Buddhist monks are 
 allowed inside the cities — a prohibition which is said to have 
 oi'iginated in the Japanese invasion 300 years ago, when the 
 invaders crept into some of the towns in monastic disguise — 
 although the King, in the neighbourhood of the capital, has 
 one or more secure mountain retreats, whither, in time of 
 danger, he flees to the protection of a monkish garrison. 
 
 Travelling in Korea is best undertaken in the autumn 
 months of the year. The climate is then perfect — a warm 
 sun by day and refreshing coolness at night. In 
 the winter deep snow falls and the cold is exces- of't^a.vej'"^ 
 sive. The summer heats are equally unpleasant. 
 There are no made roads in the country, and the tracks are 
 mere bridle-paths, of greater or less width, according to the 
 extent to which they are trodden. In a country that is as 
 
 woman with a forbidding countenance and an enormous black hair wig, 
 which she put on and off, at the same time that she donned different 
 coloured robes, waltzing slowly round the while to the sound of drums and 
 gongs, and droning a horrible chant, much to the consternation of the large 
 crowd who had come to consult her, bringing big tables piled with sweet- 
 meats, but who were evidently very much frightened hy her incantations, 
 and plied her with anxious and tearful entreaties. 
 
no KOREA 
 
 plentifully sprinkled with mountains as a ploughed field is 
 with ridges, these are frequently steep and stony in the 
 extreme, and in the out-of-the-way parts which I visited the 
 track was not unfrequently the precipitous and boulder- 
 strewn bed of a mountain torrent, amid and over the jagged 
 rocks of which none but a Korean pony could pick his way. 
 A wonderful little animal indeed is the latter. With the 
 exception of the ox, which is the beast of heavy burden, and 
 the donkey, which is much affected by the impecunious 
 gentry, no other pack or riding animal is known. Rarely 
 more than eleven hands high, combative and vicious, always 
 kicking or fighting when he can, he will yet, with a burden 
 of 150 lbs. or 200 lbs. upon his back, cover a distance of some 
 thirty miles per diem ; and provided he has his slush of beans 
 and chopped straw, boiled in water, three times a day, before 
 starting, at noon, and in the evening, he emerges very little 
 the worse at the end of a lengthy journey. Each pony is 
 attended by its own mapu, or driver, and the humours of 
 these individuals, who sing and smoke and crack jokes and 
 quarrel all the day long, are among the alleviations of travel. 
 If the destination be not reached before nightfall the bearers 
 of official passports have the right to torchbearers from each 
 village. Long before reaching the latter, tremendous shouts 
 of ' Usa, usa ! ' (torch), are raised by the mapus or yamen- 
 runners; and if upon arrival the Government linkmen are 
 not forthcoming with their torches — made of a lopped pine- 
 log or a truss of straw — they are roused from their slumbers 
 or hiding with cuffs and violent imprecations. In a few 
 moments half-a-dozen torches are ignited, and amid waving 
 banners of flame the cavalcade disappears into the night. 
 
 Sport is a further and agreeable concomitant of journeying, 
 although, as in every country in the world, not much game 
 can be seen except by divergence from the hurried track of 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 111 
 
 travel. Pheasants abound in the undergrowth on the moun- 
 tains. In the winter months every variety of wild-fowl, 
 from wild geese and swans to wild duck, teal, water- 
 hen, plover, and snipe, swarm along the coast and 
 rivers or in the soaking rice-plots. The natives either snare 
 them or shoot them sitting ; and the spectacle of a rocketing 
 mallard brought down from a great height in the air is 
 greeted by them with frantic shouts of admiration and 
 delight. Turkey bustards, cranes, herons, pink and white 
 ibis are also encountered, and there is a large eagle, whose 
 tail-feathers are much prized by the Chinese for fans. But 
 the richness of the Korean covert lies rather in fur and 
 skin than in feather. Hares, foxes, badgers, wild cat, wild 
 boar, bears, sables, ermin, and otter in the far north, and 
 different kinds of deer (which are hunted for the medicinal 
 properties supposed in China to belong to the horns of the 
 young buck) are to be found in the scrub on the mountains. 
 Leopards are quite common, and in the winter months 
 sometimes venture even inside the walls of Soul. Their 
 skins, costing about $10 each, are part of the official insignia 
 of the court. But the tiger is the king of Korean quan-ies. 
 He is of great size ; and I saw, while in Korea, some splendid 
 skins.^ His haunt is the wooded mountain-slopes near the 
 east coast, and the entire belt of country northwards as far 
 as the forests on the Yalu, where man-eaters are not un- 
 common. In winter time tigers have more than once come 
 down into the settlement at Gensan and carried off a 
 victim ; I even heard there of a European who, going out to 
 dine, met a tiger walking down the middle of the road ; and 
 when I was at Chang An Sa (the Hall of Eternal Peace), the 
 principal of the Keum Kang San monasteries, one was said to 
 
 1 Only some 30-40 of these are exported in each year. The price rose in 
 1893 from $22 to |44, i.e. £4, 4s. 
 
112 KOREA 
 
 patrol the quadrangle every night, and we came across their 
 spoor and droppings. The King maintains a body of royal 
 tiger-hunterSj who captm*e them by means of pits and traps, 
 the commonest of these being a sort of big wooden cage con- 
 structed of timbers and stones, rather like a gigantic mouse- 
 trap. A pig is tied up inside, and the entrance of the tiger 
 releases the door and confines the beast, who is then 
 despatched with spears. The natives, however, regard the 
 animal with an overpowering apprehension, and there is an 
 old Chinese saying that ' The Koreans hunt the tiger during 
 one half of the year, while the tiger hunts the Koreans during 
 the other half.' They will not travel singly at night, but go 
 abroad in company, brandishing torches and striking gongs. 
 They are also most reluctant to act as beaters ; whence, per- 
 haps, it arises that, common as the tiger is in Korea, I have 
 rarely heard of a European who has bagged one to his own 
 rifle. I am sometimes asked by sportsmen as to the charms or 
 chances of a Korean expedition. As regards wild-fowl shoot- 
 ing, the great nuisance is that there is no means of disposing 
 of the slain, and after a time mere slaughter palls ; while, as 
 regards big game, the difficulties and hardships of travel, 
 accommodation, food, and following will probably send 
 back the sportsman with a much worse appetite than when 
 he started. 
 
 Thus wayfaring through the country one sees much of 
 peasant life and agriculture. The villages are collections of 
 
 mud-huts, thatched with straw (over which, as a 
 easan xvX^, runs a climbing gourd), warmed by flues 
 
 running beneath the floors, and surrounded for 
 protection or seclusion by a wattled fence of branches or 
 reeds. On the clay floor outside are usually seen drying a 
 matful of red chillies, or of millet and rice grains fresh 
 threshed by the flail ; long strings of tobacco leaves, sus^ 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 
 
 113 
 
 pended in festoons, have been picked from the garden plot 
 hard by, from which also a few castor-oil plants are rarely 
 absent. A small stye of black and abominable little pigs 
 usually fronts the road, on which the children are disporting 
 themselves in a state of comparative nudity. Inside, the 
 dour-visaged females are performing the work of the house- 
 hold, or are grinding, threshing, or winnowing the grain on 
 
 STREET IN A KOREAN VILLAGE 
 
 the open threshold. The men are away in the rice-fields or 
 among the crops of millet, beans, and buckwheat, which are 
 the staple cereal pi-oduce of the country. Cultivation is 
 assiduous, but not close. Hundreds of acres of cultivable 
 but uncleared soil alternate with the tilled patches ; and 
 coarse grasses wave where the yellow grain should be ripen- 
 ing for the garner. 
 
 I saw no carts or wagons on my journeys, although they 
 are used in the north, near Ham-heung, and in a few other 
 
 H 
 
114 
 
 KOREA 
 
 places. The ox^ which is the famihar beast of burden, 
 sometimes drags after him a rude wooden sled. More com- 
 monly a sort of wooden rack is fitted on to his 
 back^ and is packed with firewood for fuel. Men 
 do not, as in Japan and China, carry burdens on 
 bamboo poles, but in wooden racks, called chi-Jcai, upon their 
 backs. They rest themselves by sitting down, in which 
 
 Rural 
 habits. 
 
 A KOREAN PEASANT FAMILY 
 
 position the rack, having a wooden peg or leg, stands upright 
 upon the ground. The long thin pipe of the country, be- 
 tween two and three feet in length, when not between the 
 lips of its owner, is stuck in his collar at the back of his neck, 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 115 
 
 and protrudes sideways into the air. When a pony is shod 
 
 it is thrown down upon its back, and its legs tied together at 
 
 the fetlock by a rope. 
 
 Outside towns of any size may commonly be seen a number 
 
 of stones, or tablets (sometimes of iron or copper), bearing 
 
 inscriptions in Chinese characters. These are 
 
 erected either in connection with some historical ^ eimona 
 
 tablets. 
 
 event, or more frequently in honour of a local 
 governor, who has earned the gratitude of the people, not 
 for justice or clemency, which are not expected, but for 
 wielding with no more than ordinary severity his prerogative 
 of squeeze ; or of a successful local candidate at the literary 
 examinations, or of some public benefactor, or of a virtuous 
 wife who has found in suicide the sole consolation for the 
 loss of her spouse. 
 
 Chinese influence is visible everywhere, notably in the 
 disposition of the dead. The Royal Tombs are at a distance 
 of ten miles from the east gate of Soul ; but they 
 are on a modest scale compared with the mauso- Tombs. 
 leums of Peking and Hue. Mandarins' graves are 
 frequently marked by a stone table or altar for offerings, and 
 a stele or pillar, bearing the epitaph of the deceased. Some- 
 times, after the Chinese fashion, stone effigies of warriors or 
 animals are added, or a saddled stone horse, in case the spirit 
 of the defunct should care to take a ride, or a small column 
 in case it should have been metamorphosed into a bird and 
 should require a perch. The commonest form of grave, how- 
 ever, is a large, circular, grassy mound, usually placed upon 
 the side of a hill or summit of a little knoll, and surrounded 
 with Scotch firs. The site is selected after consultation with 
 a soothsayer, is visited every year on fixed days, and is ever 
 afterwards kept inviolate from the spade or plough. The 
 environs of Soul are sprinkled with thousands of such graves. 
 
Xl6 KOREA 
 
 Officialism, which is the curse of the country, is not with- 
 out its effect even upon the fortunes of travel. Such an 
 incubus is the travelling mandarin, who quarters 
 Wayfarers, himself where he pleases and exacts rations for 
 which he never pays, that the villagers flee from 
 an official passport as from the pest. Though I paid for 
 everything, chickens and eggs were constantly refused me, 
 on the plea that none were forthcoming, but really, I suppose, 
 from fear that, on the strength of the hian-chow, I should 
 appropriate without payment whatever was produced. Under 
 these circumstances, it is necessary to carry almost everything 
 with one, in the form of tinned provisions. In the out-of- 
 the-way parts few wayfarers are encountered ; but near the 
 capital the road will be crowded with officials, tucked up in 
 small and comfortless sedans, with candidates going up to or 
 returning from the examinations, with pilgrims, traders, pro- 
 fessional players or mountebanks, beggars, picnickers, and 
 impecunious vagabonds of every quality and style. 
 
 These are the picturesque sides and spectacles of Korean 
 travel. There are some who would find in the Korean inn, 
 
 ^, which is the unavoidable resting-place at night, a 
 
 Korean more than compensating pain. There are no 
 — -^^ good inns in the country, because there is no class 
 to patronise them. The officials and yanghans, as I have 
 shown, quarter themselves on the magistracies. The peasant 
 accepts the rude hospitality of his kind, and the village inn 
 is only the compulsory resort of the residuum. Surrounding 
 a small and filthy courtyard, to which access is gained by a 
 gateway from the street, is on one side a long shed with a 
 wooden trough, from which the ponies suck their sodden 
 food ; on another side is the earthenware vat, and the furnace 
 by which it is cooked ; opening off in a single, small, low- 
 roofed room, usually 8 feet square, vniadorned by any furni- 
 
LIFE AND TRAVEL IN KOREA 117 
 
 ture save one or two dilapidated straw mats and some wooden 
 blocks to serve as pillows. There the traveller must eat, 
 undi'ess, dress, wash and sleep as well as he can. He is 
 fortmiate if the surrounding filth is not the parent of even 
 more vexatious enemies to slumber. Nevertheless, I have 
 wooed and won a royal sleep in the Korean inn ; wherefore 
 let me not unduly abuse it. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOllEA 
 
 Beautiful for situation is Mount Zion. On the side of the north is the city 
 of the Great King. Walk abotit Zion, and go rovmd about her : tell the 
 towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces ; that ye 
 may tell it to the generations following. Psalm xlviii. 2, 12, 13. 
 
 Among the unexpected features of Korea is the possession of 
 a capital that, as regards size and population, may fairly be 
 
 counted one of the great cities of the East. I 
 Name of jj^ve spelled the name Soul ; ^ but I should say in 
 
 advance that I have never met two persons, even 
 scholars, who pronounced the name in exactly the same way. 
 Seoul, Syool, Sawull, Sowul, are among the more popular 
 phonetic transliterations. That the word is a dissyllable 
 seems to be certain ; but not even on the lips of Koreans 
 does the precise equivalent to the vowel-sounds employed 
 make itself apparent. Perhaps to an English ear the true 
 pronunciation is best conveyed by saying that the way in 
 which an Irishman pronounces the immortal part of him 
 fairly represents the sound. 
 
 To those who bear in mind the Chinese connection of 
 Korea, upon which I shall so frequently have to insist, it 
 will be no surprise to learn that Soul is in most exterior 
 respects a Chinese city. Indeed, it was first made the 
 
 1 The name signifies 'capital city.' Compare the Chinese Pe-king and 
 Nan -king, i.e. northern and southern capitals, and the Jaj)anese Tokio and 
 Saikio (Kioto), i.e. eastern and western capitals. Soul is the Sior of Hendrik 
 Hamel, 
 
 lis 
 
The capital and court of korea 119 
 
 capital of the Korean kingdom exactly five centuries ago 
 by Ni Taijo, the founder of the reigning house,^ a monarch 
 who in everything aped the Chinese models at ^ ., , 
 that timCj andj we may also say now, the sole stan- gates of 
 dard of majesty or fashion to the petty surrounding 
 States. He built the stone wal]^ over twenty feet high, with 
 battlements and loopholes for archers, by which the city is 
 
 SOUTH GATE OF SOUL 
 
 surrounded ; and he made the eight great gates, consisting 
 of a tunnelled passage in the wall, surmounted by a single 
 or a double-storey ed projecting tiled pavilion, by which 
 access is still gained to the interior.'- Like the gates of 
 
 1 The regalia and robes of state of Ni Taijo are still preserved in the 
 metropolitan monastery of Sak Wang Sa, which he founded in memory of 
 his 'call' to rule from this spot. The monastery is superbly situated in a 
 romantic wooden gorge, about twenty miles from Clensan. 
 
 ^ They are situated two on the north, one on the north-east, one on the 
 east, one on the south-east, two on the south-west, and one on the west. 
 The main gates are the east and west. 
 
120 KOREA 
 
 Peking, these have names of swelHng import — the Gate of 
 Elevated HmTianity, the Gate of High Ceremony, and the 
 Gate of Bright Amiability. As at Peking, also, the heavy 
 wooden doors, sheathed and clamped with iron, are shut 
 soon after sunset, the keys being taken to the King's Palace, 
 and deposited with His Majesty, or, when the Chinese 
 Commissioners are in Soul, with the latter.^ No bribe can 
 then open them, and the only method of ingress is by 
 climbing, with the aid of a friendly hand with a rope, a 
 dilapidated portion of the wall. Just before my visit a 
 British admiral, being a few minutes too late, had been com- 
 pelled to enter in this not unnautical fashion ; whereat the 
 Korean dignitaries could not make up their minds whether 
 to be more shocked or amused. 
 
 The entire space circumscribed by the wall is not built 
 over, for the latter climbs with antelope-like facility the 
 scarp of the various rocky hills and mountains by which 
 
 the city proper is surrounded, and includes much 
 Its situa- ground which could by no possibility admit of 
 
 human dwelling. In fact, the wall may be said 
 merely to embrace a defensible area, in the midst and low- 
 lying portions of which has been placed a great human hive. 
 The situation of the city, thus nestling in a trough between 
 high hills, is therefore picturesque in the extreme, and would 
 appear to have been specially designed for the purpose, were 
 it not that the confined atmosphere in summer operating 
 upon a densely-crowded mass of dwelUngs where the most 
 contemptuous disregard of sanitary law prevails, renders it 
 at that time a nursery of pestilence and sickness. Unlike 
 the scenery which I have described in the last chapter as 
 prevailing in the more northerly and eastern parts of Korea, 
 the hills surrounding Soul are bare, arid, and uninviting. 
 ^ An interesting collateral admission of Chinese suzerainty. 
 
THE CAPITAL ANID COURT OF KOREA 121 
 
 The disintegrated granite of which they are composed does 
 not admit of much vegetation, while such verdure as once 
 adorned their slopes has in large measure been swept away. 
 A scanty growth of timber clothes the north hill, called Pouk 
 San, which, very much like Lycabettus at Athens, rises to 
 a sharp elevation behind the Royal Palace. But the other 
 
 EAST GATE AND WALL OF SOUL 
 
 hills are almost treeless, with the exception of Nam San, 
 which is splendidly timbered up to its summit, 800 feet above 
 the city on the south. Further away on the northern side 
 the nearer elevations are dominated by the imposing mass of 
 the Mountain of Pouk Han, whose gleaming grey pinnacles 
 protrude themselves from sterile lower slopes. 
 
 It is worth while to climb Nam San ; for from there is 
 a wild and gloomy outlook over mountains rolling like grey 
 billows on every side; while along the widening valley 
 
122 KOREA 
 
 between them the river Han pushes its broad and shining 
 coils to the sea. On the top of Nam San^ too^ are four 
 
 beacon-towers — circular structures built of big 
 fires stones, in whose interior tall piles of leaves and 
 
 brushwood are nightly set ablaze, to signal to the 
 capital the message of peace and security or the reverse, which, 
 like the bale-fires of Troy, is supposed to have been passed 
 
 MOUNTAIN OF POUK HAN 
 
 from peak to peak from the southern confines of the 
 kingdom. On the noi'th-west side another tall and three- 
 pointed hill — known as Sam Kok San, or Three-peaked Hill, 
 which the French in their expedition of 1866 called the 
 Cock's Comb, because of the fiery red which it blushed at the 
 early dawn — flashes an answering gleam from the opposite 
 quarter; nor has this primitive form of telegraphy been 
 nominally abandoned (though it is believed to have fallen into 
 practical disuse), except on the lines where it has been 
 replaced by the electric wire. A special code of signals 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 123 
 
 depending on the numberj position, and sequence of the 
 beacon-fires, is employed in times of danger to annomice to 
 the capital the scene or moment of invasion and the fortunes 
 of combat in the provinces. Towards nightfall the eye of 
 the visitor, unaccustomed to the novelty, insists on turning 
 
 
 if ^_ 1 
 
 
 
 BEACON TOWER ON NAM SAN 
 
 skywards, and is not satisfied till the reassuring spark 
 glimmers brightly from each sentinel peak. 
 
 Within the space thus enclosed and built over is contained 
 a population, the various estimates of whose numerical total 
 range from 150,000 to 300,000. An official 
 calculation has placed the number of houses at °T^^ ^°^ 
 30,000, and we may accept 200,000 as a probable 
 total for their inmates. ^ The bulk of these are crowded in 
 
 1 On the other hand, the Chinese publication, Iiiiportant Facts rclatin{/ to 
 the Eastern Stockade, gives the number of houses as 46,565, and of inhabitants 
 as 202,639. 
 
lU KOREA 
 
 thatched hovels^ linmg narrow and fetid lanes ; but in 
 singular and truly Oriental contrast are the main streets, 
 three in number, one of which runs from the Palace to meet 
 the second, which intersects the city from east to west, 
 while the third strikes off from the latter to the south gate. 
 Each of these is of a breadth and amplitude that would 
 dignify a European capital, being at least fifty yards wide 
 and smoothly gravelled; but even here the native love of 
 crowding and squalor is allowed to assert itself, for the 
 roadway is encroached upon by rows of rude straw-thatched 
 shanties that have been erected by poverty-stricken squatters, 
 on either hand, encumbering the passage, and reducing the 
 space available for locomotion to a narrow strip in the middle. 
 When the King goes out, or when any state function of 
 great solemnity takes place, all these improvised tenements 
 are pulled down beforehand (but re-erected directly after- 
 wards) ; and I own that I was far from sorry to see a large 
 block of them blazing merrily one night, both because the 
 street for a brief space resumed its proper dimensions, and 
 from the insight which the spectacle afforded into the 
 manners of the natives. Some of them sat on the neigh- 
 bouring housetops, praying to the spirits to arrest the 
 conflagration, which they made no effort to retard ; others 
 adopted a remedy by one stage more practical, seeing that 
 they ran about with small pots, bowls, and even teacups, 
 filled with water, which they dashed with sanguine futility 
 upon the flames. But had it not been for the privately 
 organised fii*e-brigade maintained by the Chinese Resident 
 for the protection of the Chinese quarter, in or near to which 
 the burning houses lay, there seemed no plausible reason 
 why the conflagration should ever have stopped until it had 
 reduced the entire city to ashes. 
 
 In the maps Soul is made to stand upon the river Han ; 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 125 
 
 and when I had read in history-books of the French and 
 American frigates steaming up the river to threaten or attack 
 it, I had pictured to myself a scene and a site not 
 
 unhke the Nile at Khartum. But, as a matter of j.!'^, 
 
 ' ditches. 
 
 fact, the river is between three and four miles 
 
 away ; and the only local substitute for it is a narrow canal, 
 
 which may be an Abana or a Pharpar in the rainy season. 
 
 1. Palace 
 
 2. Old Palace (residence of King) 
 
 3. Big Bell 
 
 4. House of Tai Wen Kun 
 g. New Palace 
 
 6. Palace 
 
 7. Russian Legation 
 
 GROUND PLAN OP SOUL 
 
 8. American Legation 
 
 . 9. Customs . 
 
 10. British Legation 
 
 11. Chinese Residency 
 
 12. French R.C. Mission and Church 
 
 13. Japanese Legation 
 
 14. Nam San 
 
 but which, when I saw it, was merely a filthy and shallow 
 sewer, in which the Korean urchins appeared to find pleasure 
 in paddling. Each street or alley, moreover, has an open 
 gutter running upon either side, and containing all the 
 refuse of human and animal life. Soul is consequently a 
 noisome and malodorous place ; and exploration among its 
 labyrinthine alleys is as disagreeable to the nostril as it is 
 bewildering to the eye. A few elevations spring up from 
 the general level of the city basin ; and these have been 
 
126 KOREA 
 
 opportunely occupied by foreigners with a superior apprecia- 
 tion of site, the British, Russian, and Japanese Legations and 
 the French Cathohc Estabhshment being from any altitude 
 the most conspicious objects in the town. A settlement of 
 1000 Japanese is in acute competition with an even larger 
 and increasing colony of Chinamen. Nearly 100 Europeans 
 and Americans represent the remainder of the foreign 
 community; but this admixture makes little superficial 
 impression upon the white-coated, white-trousered, white- 
 socked mass of humanity that swarms to and fro in the 
 thronged thoroughfares of the city. 
 
 The public buildings of Soul are remarkable for their 
 paucity and insignificance. With the exception of the great 
 hooded roofs of the Audience Halls in the Palaces, 
 the whole city, when seen from above, presents an 
 almost even level of tiled roof-tops, packed so closely 
 together that it looks as though a man might step from one 
 to the other. The narrow alleys between them cannot be 
 discerned, and only the white riband of the three principal 
 streets, rendered whiter still by the white dresses of the 
 Koreans, strutting up and down by the hundred, breaks the 
 brown monotony. Even when we descend into the town, 
 we find no beauty in the exterior of the houses ; for they are, 
 as a rule, constructed of a mixture of mud, paper, and wood ; 
 although those which are more strongly built have walls made 
 of round stones, which are tied round and held together by 
 plaited straw in lieu of the too expensive luxury of mortar. 
 There are no windows in the housefronts — only lifting or 
 sliding screens ; and whatever of neatness or elegance exists 
 in the abode is concealed in the interior, where the private 
 dwellings, unseen from the street, are ranged round small 
 courts. The houses of all classes are uniformly built either 
 on platforms or on raised floors, for the purpose of warming 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 157 
 
 by means of flues running underneath from a single fui-naoe 
 that serves the entire building. At the other end the smoke 
 escapes by a blackened hole in the wall;, usually into the 
 street, where it adds to the aesthetic pains of perambulation. 
 There is nowhere in the city anything in the least resembling 
 the elaborate carved and gilded woodwork that adorns the 
 shop-fronts in Peking, or even the monumental painted sign- 
 
 THE CITY AND OLD PALACE^ SOUL 
 
 boards of Canton. Another obstacle to street embellishment 
 has been the existence of crude and foolish sumptuary laws, 
 prohibiting the erection of houses of more than a certain size 
 or beyond a fixed outlay. 
 
 For these drawbacks, however. Soul does its best to atone 
 by two properties of unquestioned and more creditable 
 individuality — viz. a singular and picturesque 
 street-life, and a Court which is alternately life and 
 dignified and comic, and sometimes both at the *^°^ ""^^' 
 same time. Why the Koreans should all dress in white 
 
128 
 
 KOREA 
 
 cotton no one seems able to say. It is not a fashion imposed 
 by conquest, like the pigtail in China ; nor by smartness, like 
 the Albanian petticoat ; nor by dignity, like the Roman toga ; 
 nor by serviceableness, like the Highland kilt; not even by 
 the vulgar criterion of comfort, like the European trouser. 
 The colour cannot have been designed to resist the sun, be- 
 cause in winter there is not too much sun to resist ; nor can 
 
 KOREAN SECRETARIES 
 
 the material have been selected for its lightness, since in the 
 cold weather it is only rendered wearable by being thickly 
 wadded with cotton-wool. I can only attribute the pheno- 
 menon, therefore, to one of those inexplicable freaks of 
 fortune, which have endowed the world, for instance, with 
 the crinoline and the top-hat ; although, whatever the cause 
 of its original introduction, I harbour a secret suspicion that 
 the white cotton garments of the men are now maintained 
 by them for the excellent purpose they serve in keeping the 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 129 
 
 women busy. All day long, as you are walking in the streets 
 of Soul, you will hear a mysterious tap, tap, tap, emerging 
 from the closed shutters of the houses. This is the house- 
 wife who is at work indoors with a wooden cylinder with 
 which she beats, beats, beats, her husband's white cotton 
 clothes, in order to give them the peculiar gloss which 
 
 KOREAN WAITING-MAII) 
 
 masculine fashion affects in Korea. The clothes ai'e always 
 taken to pieces in advance, and after the washing are either 
 loosely stitched with thread, or are pasted together with 
 starch. Over their white cotton drawers, which terminate 
 in a kind of padded stocking, the men of the middle classes 
 wear an outer tunic or skirt of similar material, which is 
 split up at the sides, and looks veiy much like a nightshirt. 
 
 I 
 
130 KOREA 
 
 Secretaries and persons in civil employ wear over this a 
 similar semi-transparent garment in black. The women of 
 the lower orders are also as entirely clad in white as a class 
 of English girls going to a Confirmation Service ; but in the 
 upper classes a gown of green^ or crimson^ or purple, instead 
 of hanging fi'om the shoulders, is drawn up over the head, with 
 the sleeves hanging down in two long lappets behind, and is 
 held closely together in front, admitting only a fugitive glimpse 
 of black eyes behind. The most astonishing Korean coiffure 
 is that of the Abigail or waiting-maid, and of all female atten- 
 dants in the Palace, who wear a colossal erection upon their 
 heads made of greasy black hair twisted in plaits, bigger by 
 far than the artificial head-dress of an old Egyptian Pharaoh, 
 or the wig of an English Lord Chancelloi*. This adornment is 
 made up from the clippings or combings of boys' pigtails, 
 which are dyed black, and sold in tresses at the cost of about 
 3s. a coil, each coil being one yard long and of the thickness 
 of a finger. Upon the summit of this an enormous tray 
 reposes as safely as vipon a four-legged table. 
 
 Another peculiar coiffure is that of the King's dancing- 
 girls, or corps de ballet, who are a regular feature at every 
 
 Korean entertainment. These girls, who are 
 Dancing- called ' Ki-saing,' correspond to the Geisha of 
 
 Japan. Companies of them exist in every town 
 of any size, combining prostitution with the pursuit of their 
 profession. Many of them are far from bad-looking, the 
 type of feature being much more regular, even if wanting in 
 the feminine attractiveness of the Japanese girl. The 
 national dance, which is performed to the strains of a slow 
 plaintive music evoked by a seated band, is monotonous in 
 character and interminable in length. ^ Like all the dances 
 
 1 The photograph of the King's band was taken by Captain Castle, of 
 H,M,S. Leander, in 1893, 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 131 
 
 of the Far East, it consists of a series of postures free from 
 indelicacy, and some of them not without grace, and has 
 been described as 'a not unpleasing mixture of minuet and 
 quadrille, with a dash of the reel towards the finish.' The 
 Koreans will sit and gaze at it in rapt ecstasy for hours at a 
 stretch. 
 
 TIIK KING S HAND 
 
 Hats. 
 
 It is as a country of hats that Korea has attained the 
 widest external fame, and in the course of a single stroll the 
 streets of Soul will afford material for an extensive 
 classification. The ordinary headpiece is a twofold 
 structure ; for the outer hat, broad-brimmed and with slightly 
 conical crown, not unlike the old market-hat of the Welsh- 
 woman — though made of a material more delicate than 
 Wales ever saw — namely, among the upper classes split 
 bamboo fibres, woven together and lacquered black, and 
 among the lower orders a cheaper variety of the same, or 
 horsehair — is only the exterior covering or supersti'ucture of 
 
132 
 
 KOREA 
 
 a skull-cap and fillet of the same material, which is pressed 
 ai'omid the temples, in order to hold in place the uncut hair 
 of the men, drawn upwards and tied in a knot upon the 
 crown. The exterior hat is kept on by a riband or string of 
 amber and cornelian beads beneath the chin. Then there 
 are hats for every rank, occupation, and even phase of life. 
 The youth, when he is betrothed, wears, till his marriage, a 
 smart fabrication of straw. 
 
 The successful candidate at one of the literary examinations 
 is distinguished by two wires adorned with coloured rosettes, 
 which project like hoops or antetmce over the summit of his 
 
 hat. Peasants and bull-drivers 
 are remarkable for colossal pent- 
 houses of plaited straw, which 
 almost conceal the features, and 
 whose circumference embraces 
 the full width of the shoulders. 
 
 Perhaps the mourner has the 
 worst time ; for, not only must 
 he wear a somewhat similar ex- 
 tinguisher, hexagonal at the brim, 
 but for a period of one, two, or 
 three years, according to his re- 
 lationship with the deceased, he 
 is compelled to don a hempen 
 robe, tied by a cord round the 
 waist, and to carry in front of his 
 mouth a small hempen screen 
 between two sticks, in order, I 
 believe, to keep at a proper distance the spirit of the 
 departed.^ During the period of mourning, prescribed 
 
 1 This dress was worn for disguise by the Roman Catholic missionaries 
 during the Christian persecution. 
 
 KOREAN MOUKNER 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 133 
 
 by an inflexible regulation, he is further! /forbidden to 
 marry, or indulge in any of the lighter occupations of 
 life ; and instances have occurred of ill-starred bridegrooms, 
 a continuous mortality among whose relations has left them 
 stranded high and dry for years on the sad sands of 
 celibacy, their €ancees meanwhile growing grey and ill- 
 favoured before their eyes. Monks have a hat peculiar 
 to their order, made of rush-matting, with a hexagonal 
 brim, and terminating in a conical apex ; while there 
 is a separate long narrow straw fabric for nuns. The 
 Korean soldiers also have a distinguishing hat, made of 
 black horsehair felt, tied on with coloured tape ribands ; 
 a superior variety of the same article, adorned with plumes, 
 makes of their officers a wondrous sight. It is only, 
 however, when we reach the grades of court and official 
 society that the Korean hatmaker achieves his greatest 
 masterpieces. Thus, for the governor of a province he 
 supplies a sort of mitre of gilt pasteboard ; while for 
 ministers and officials generally are prescribed various 
 degrees of headpiece, constructed with receding stages, like 
 a Doge's cap of state, and fitted with wings or paddles pro- 
 jecting from the back. Even the royal lackeys have a 
 headpiece, consisting of a small bamboo structure, stuck on 
 sideways, with a huge bunch of artificial flowers at the back, 
 which is only less fantastic than the harlequin's cap of the 
 Shah's runners at Teheran. 
 
 With nine out of every ten persons clad in white, and 
 with the entire ten adorned with these astonishing varieties 
 of headgear, it may readily be imagined that \\ t 
 
 street- life in Soul is not exactly the same, for n^^^g^' WkJ 
 instance, as in London or New York. Nor are ' 
 
 there any carriages or wheeled vehicles, of whatsoever 1 9 J 
 description, to suggest a Western parallel. Locomotion is 
 
134 KOREA 
 
 entirely pedestrian, save for such persons, usually of high 
 
 estate, as are perched upon the backs of the diminutive 
 
 Korean ponies, clinging with difficulty to the pommel of a 
 
 saddle, which lifts them almost as high above the back of 
 
 the animal as the latter is above the ground ; or as are 
 
 borne along by shouting attendants in open chairs or sedans. 
 
 Next to ponies the most familiar animals encountered in the 
 
 streets of Soul are magnificent bulls, marching along under 
 
 vast stacks of brushwood, and behaving themselves with a 
 
 docility that is quite extraordinary. They are the only other 
 
 beast of burden known to the country, are highly prized, ;<f-' 
 
 and fetch comparatively heavy prices. Children abound 
 
 everywhere, and derive a peculiar gratification from sporting 
 
 in the gutters. They are frequently clad in pink or some 
 
 other bright coloui', and are usually engaged in flying small 
 
 rectangular painted kites, made of the wonderful oiled paper 
 
 of the country .1 Kite-fighting consists in drawing one kite 
 
 sharply across another when at a great height in the air, so 
 
 as to sever the rival string. Another popular urban amu,sfiz_j 
 
 ment is stone-throwing. Different parts of the capital, 
 
 ^ The Korean paper is the most remarkable native manufacture. It is 
 made from more than one material, though usually from the inner bark of 
 a mulberry-tree ; bvit there is hardly an3'thing in Korea that cannot be made 
 of it. After it has been soaked in oil of sesame it becomes both exceedingly 
 durable and waterproof. As such it is used instead of carpets on the floors, 
 instead of paper on the walls, instead of glass in the windows, and instead of 
 white-wash on the ceilings. Clothes, hats, shoes, tobacco-pouches, and fans 
 are made of it ; so are umbrellas, lanterns, and kites. Rooms are divided by 
 paper screens ; clothes are kept in paper chests ; men travel with j)aper 
 trunks ; children play with paper toys. Then there are the ordinary pur- 
 poses of writing and jjrinting ; and so frugal are the Koreans, that even the 
 examination-papers of the candidates in the literary examinations, instead of 
 being thrown away, are disposed of for a few coppers, and subsequently do 
 duty as improvised macintosh capes on the shoulders of the coolies, who go 
 marching along in the rain, innocently parading the maxims of Confuciu.s on 
 their backs. The principal manufactory is in a valley watered by a stream 
 outside the north gate of Soul ; and a steam paper-mill, with foreign 
 machinery, has just been erected at Yang-hwa-chin on the Han, four miles 
 below the capital. 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 135 
 
 which is divided into five quarters or wards, or different 
 villages, wage fierce warfare on an open space of ground, 
 driving each other backwards and forwards with showers of 
 missiles. These contests are conducted with great ferocity, 
 and frequently result in loss of life. Even Avith the advance 
 of civilisation their savagery has scarcely abated ; though 
 the sport, which has nothing to recommend it, is said to be 
 less popular than of yore. It is not unlike the custom, still 
 prevailing in one or two English places, of an aiinual foot- 
 ball^ jiatch in the inain street_ betweenL-two parts of a tow n, 
 in which every one who likes may take part. 
 
 A history of sack and siege has left very few relics of 
 antiquity either in the capital or in its neighbourhood ; but, 
 such as they are, I will describe them. At the 
 junction of the two main streets, under a roofed g ^ ^^ 
 pavilion, known as the Choji g__ Kak. or _Bell 
 Kiosque, and behind wooden bars, hangs a famous old bronze 
 bell, which is reported, with a modesty that I cannot think 
 remarkable, since I have found it shared by at least half a 
 dozen rival competitors in the course of my travels, to be 
 the third largest in the world. It is in no respect an 
 astonishing bell, being without ornament, save for an in- 
 scription, which relates that it was erected in a.d. 1468 by 
 Taijo Tai Woang. But the Americans are said to have tried 
 to get hold of it for Chicago ; and it never allows its own 
 presence to be forgotten by strangers, for it is banged with 
 a swinging wooden beam every evening for some minutes 
 between 7 and Q^ f^m. before the gates are shut, and also 
 before sunrise, between 3 an d 5 a.m., as well as on other 
 occasions, when there is a fire. The roads diverging from 
 the Chong Kak are known as Cliqng Ro.yOr Bell Roads. 
 
 It was close to the Bell Kiosque that the stone was placed 
 in 1866 by the old Regent, the Tai Wen Kun, who I'eigned 
 
136 KOREA 
 
 before the present King had attained his majority, with an 
 inscription calling upon the Koreans to kill all Christians ; 
 
 nor was it till 1883 that it was finally removed. 
 Shops. Adjoining the same site are the only two-storeyed 
 
 shops, or warehouses, in SouK They: belong t o 
 the Jf^ng; and are leased to the merchants of the six great 
 trailing guilds of Korea, who p^y him a substantial price for 
 the privilege of controlling the sale af Chinese and native 
 silk, of cotton goods, of hemp and grass, cloth, and of 
 Korean paper. The shops open on to a narrow central 
 court, but the goods there displayed, consisting of silk and 
 cotton and figured gauze fabrics, Chinese shoes, native paper, 
 and brass utensils,^ do not greatly attract the foreigner. 
 He is more likely to pick up something amid the old 
 rubbish lying upon the open stalls in the main street 
 outside. 
 
 In the back court of a mean hovel, at no great distance, 
 stands a small and exquisite, though much defaced, white 
 cj^ granite pagoda, whose ascending tiers are richly 
 
 pagoda and carved with images of the seated Buddha. The 
 
 topmost tier has been broken off — it is said by the 
 Japanese during their invasion .SOO years ago — and is lying 
 upon the ground hard by. This monument was variously 
 reported to me as having been brought over from China by 
 the Chinese wife of a Korean monarch some seven centuries 
 ago, and as marking the site of what was once an important 
 Buddhist monastery in the heart of the city. Not far away 
 stands a Chinese stele or tall granite pillar, with wreathed 
 dragons at the top, and an undecipherable inscription on the 
 
 1 Among these it is unfair to pass without notice the national implement 
 of Korea, a circular brass pot, with a lid, but no handle, which is carried 
 about by the attendant of every respectable citizen, and serves alternately as 
 pillow, candlestick, ash-plate, sjaittoon, and jjot de chambre. 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 137 
 
 face, reposing upon an immense granite tortoise.^ There are 
 a similar pillar and tortoise outside Soul, about 7^ miles 
 from the east gate, with an inscription in Chinese and 
 Manchu upon the opposite faces, commemorating the insti- 
 tution of the Korean king, who kowtowed at this spot to the 
 Manchu conqueror, upon his second invasion of Korea in 
 1637, and renounced allegiance to the Mings in his favour. 
 Under the philo-Japanese administration of the Korean 
 ministers Pak and So, the Japanese attempted to destroy 
 this monument in February 1895, with a body of police. 
 But the villagers defended it so stoutly that the police had 
 to retire re infeda. Between this pillar and the city is passed 
 the Sen Kuang Kio, an old bridge of white stone slabs, rest- 
 ing upon twenty-one stone piers. 
 
 Religion at present has but few altars in or near to the 
 capital. There is an altar to the Spirits of the Land (some- 
 times miscalled the Temple of Heaven), consisting 
 of a bare open platform, upon which annual sacri- Temples. 
 fices are offered by the King, as on the She Chi 
 Tan in China and in Annam. Inside the walls on the north- 
 east is the Temple of Confucius, where there is the customary 
 sanctuary containing the tablet of that philosopher, and a 
 large building for students and literati. I also visited the 
 Temple of the God of War, outside the southern gate, one 
 of those semi- heroic additions to the Chinese pantheon (the 
 god being reported to have been a real historical personage 
 or distinguished general, who was canonised by Imperial 
 edict) which are familar to the traveller in the Celestial 
 Empire. The images in the temple are hideous beyond 
 words, but in one of the courts is an interesting sun-dial in a 
 basin ; and two side galleries contain a curious collection of 
 
 ^ The tortoise in Chinese mythology is one of the nine offspring of the 
 dragon, and is placed below memorial pillars and gravestones as an emblem 
 of strength. 
 
138 
 
 KOREA 
 
 genuine old helmets and armom*, exactly like those which I 
 shall shortly describe in the Royal Procession, and a number 
 of wall-paintings, representing battle-scenes by land and sea 
 from the famous Chinese historical novel San Kuo Chih, or 
 Record of the Three Kingdoms. 
 
 TEMPLE OF THE GOD OF WAR AT SOUL 
 
 One of the most conspicuous objects in Soul at the 
 time of my visit was the Hong Sal Mun, or Red Arrow 
 Gate, erected at some distance from the Palace. 
 Ga?e^"°^^ This was a lofty wooden arch, some 30 feet high, 
 painted red — the royal colour — and consisting of 
 two perpendicular posts, united at the top by two horizontal 
 traverses, through which a number of red arrows were 
 fixed with their points upwards. This archway, which was 
 of Tartar origin, and somewhat resembled the torii (or 
 so-called bird-rests) which precede both Shinto and Bud- 
 dhist temples in Japan, as well as the commemorative arch 
 or pailotv in China, is a symbol of majesty and govern- 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 139 
 
 ment in Korea^ and is accordingly erected in front of royal 
 palaces. Government buildings, and temples or monasteries 
 (as at Sak Wang Sa) under royal patronage. In Soul it 
 marked the approach to the Nam Piel Kung, or Palace of the 
 Chinese Imperial Commissioners. A not dissimilar but far 
 
 ARCHWAY OF THE CHINESE COMMISSIONERS 
 
 more elegant and purely Chinese stone archway, called the 
 Geo Mun, stood about a mile outside the western gate on the 
 road to Peking, and marked the point to which the King 
 went forth to meet the Imperial Envoys. Near to it was the 
 Bokakan, or mansion in which he awaited their arrival. 
 
 Both the Hong Sal Mun, as symbolising Korean sovereignty, 
 and the Geo Mun, as illustrating former Chinese suzerainty, 
 have been destroyed by the Japanese since the termination 
 of the war, in a spirit of iconoclasm as stupid as it is dis- 
 creditable. 
 
140 KOREA 
 
 Continuing past this gate to a point about three miles 
 from the city on the north-west, one arrives at a gigantic 
 _,. image of Buddha, 15 feet high, which has been 
 
 painted painted upon the upright surface of a huge fallen 
 granite boulder. The figure is all white, but the 
 eyes, mouth, ears, and head-dress have been coloured ; and a 
 gaudily painted temple-roof has been erected as a shelter 
 over the whole. One hand of the image is uplifted, the 
 other reposes at his side. 
 
 The place of execution used to be near the southern gate, 
 
 where, after decapitation, the headless trunk and trunkless 
 
 head of the criminal lay exposed for three days. 
 
 Execution- j^^ introduction of the foreign element, with its 
 
 place. * ' 
 
 scruples, has removed the scene of operations to a 
 site some miles from the city, where a friend of mine wit- 
 nessed an execution of several culprits — the head never 
 falling till after several slashes from a big sword — and even 
 painted a picture of the gruesome scene. 
 
 Among the other environs of Soul, the only ones worthy 
 of mention are the two royal retreats or fortresses in the 
 
 mountains of Pouk San and Sam Kok San, which 
 
 voya ^^,^ surrounded by walls and fortified, and are 
 
 fortresses. •' ' 
 
 held by monkish garrisons.^ To one or other 
 of these, in times of invasion, revolution, or danger, the 
 King escapes, provisions being stored there in anticipation 
 of a long siege. The nearest of them is eleven miles 
 distant, and is called Hokanzan, the walled enclosure 
 being five miles in circuit. The larger is sixteen miles 
 
 1 This clerical militia is a legacy from the days when the Buddhist hier- 
 archy was a great power in the land, and produced statesmen and warriors 
 as well as devotees and students. The monasteries were then fortified build- 
 ings, and were garrisoned by their inmates. It was from one of these fortified 
 monasteries that the French met with their disastrous repulse on Kanghwa 
 Island in 1866. 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 141 
 
 distant, and its wall is seven miles round. It is called 
 Nankanzan.i 
 
 I next turn to the Royal Palaces. Just as the capital is 
 the centre of the kingdom^ to which everybody and every- 
 thing — society, officials, candidates, merchants, 
 business, employment, relaxation — gravitate, so ^°ye^ign- 
 does the entire life of the capital revolve round 
 the centre of the Palace and the King. The latter niay be 
 a small personage to the outer world — perhaps a large 
 majority of mankind may be unaware even of his existence 
 — but to his subjects he is something overwhelmingly great, 
 while to these attributes is added, in the case of China and 
 of its once dependent States, the prestige of a rank that is 
 held divine, and entitles its wearer to be called the Son of 
 Heaven. No celestial scion in the world in all probability 
 exercises less influence upon its destinies than His Majesty 
 the King of Korea; but that does not in the least detract 
 from his titular eminence in the eyes of Koreans, which an 
 ancient and inflexible etiquette maintains in a becoming 
 atmosphere of mysteiy and isolation. Fortunately in the 
 case of Korea, the hedge of royal dignity, still unimpaired 
 in the case of the suzerain Power and of the Court at 
 Peking, has been sufficiently broken through by the force 
 of circumstances during the past twenty years, to admit of 
 audiences being readily conceded by a monarch, whom close 
 contact reveals as an amiable personage, not less human — 
 perhaps in certain respects rather more so — than the bulk 
 of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 There is quite a number of palaces in Soul. One of 
 these, the Nam Kung, near the south gate, is employed for 
 
 1 This must be the ' Fort of Numma Sansiang ' of Hendrik Hamel, where 
 the King retired in war, which was six to seven leagues, or three hours, 
 from Sior, was stored with three years' provisions, and Avas garrisoned by 
 'religious.' 
 
142 KOREA 
 
 marriage ceremonies, and has sometimes been the residence 
 
 of the Commander - in - Chief. Another, the Nam Piel 
 
 Kung, near the west gate, was, until the war, 
 
 ^°7 reserved for the accommodation of the Imperial 
 
 Palaces. ^ 
 
 Envoys from Peking. A third, the Un Pyon 
 
 Kung, in the northern quarter, was formerly occupied by 
 
 the Tai Wen Kun, or Regent, the father of the reigning 
 
 King, who practically usurped the throne during his son's 
 
 minority, persecuted the Christians, tortured and killed the 
 
 missionaries, and by his savage and reactionary policy forced 
 
 upon foreign Powers the first opening of the country. 
 
 The principal residence of royalty has usually been in one 
 
 of two palaces of much greater size than those hitherto 
 
 ,, , mentioned. Accounts vary as to the respective 
 
 East, or •' '^ 
 
 New antiquity of the pair, the one that is temporarily 
 occupied by the Sovereign being commonly 
 denominated the New Palace, presumably because repairs 
 have recently been required in order to render it habitable. 
 The two together occupy an enormous space, surrounded 
 by walls, and entered by great gates, in the northern part 
 of the city; and in their precincts are included several 
 hundreds of acres of enclosed but uncultivated ground, 
 extending to the summit of the north hill, a conical eleva- 
 tion covered with low scrub, that rises to a sharp and lofty 
 point just behind. As a matter of fact, the more easterly 
 of the two palaces is the newer, having been erected for 
 the Heir Apparent about 400 years ago. It has thirteen 
 gates and covers an enormous space of ground, much of 
 which is laid out in gardens and walks, and is adorned with 
 lotus-ponds, bridges, and summer-houses. It was occupied 
 by the King in the early years after his accession, was 
 partly burned down in 1882, was rebuilt and re-occupied, 
 but again deserted after the Rebellion of 1884, and, when 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 143 
 
 I was in Soul in 1892, was without a tenant; though it 
 was reported that the King was going back there, because 
 a snake had fallen from the ceiling of the Crown Prince's 
 room in the other palace. Shortness of supplies, however, 
 interfered with the execution of this desien : but the Kins' 
 had already connected the grounds of this palace by an 
 
 THE CITY AND NEW PALACE, SOUL 
 
 enclosed passage-way at the back with the other palace in 
 which he was then residing-. 
 
 o 
 
 The latter, which is the more westerly and now the 
 principal, is also the older building, having been erected 
 500 years ago. It stands at the head of the 
 broad thoroughfare known as Palace-street, the 
 end of which is entirely filled by its massive 
 stone gateway, surmounted by a heavy, double-roofed 
 pavilion, Outside the gate are two grotesque stone lions 
 
 West, 
 or Old 
 Palace. 
 
144 
 
 KOREA 
 
 
 upon stone pedestals^ and a ramp with eighteen low stone 
 pillars on either side. In the base of the gate-tower are 
 three arched doorways, closed with wooden doors, adorned 
 with painted figures. Of these the middle door, or Thoi 
 Hwa Mun, is only opened for the ingress or egress of the 
 King, or of a Minister Plenipotentiary going to present 
 his credentials from his Sovereign ; but the others are the 
 
 GATEWAY OF THE OLD PALACE 
 
 regular passage-way to the multitude of interior courts, 
 which are crowded with officials, retainers, soldiers, 
 ministers, secretaries, lackeys, runners, and hangers-on of 
 every description. Five hundred guards protect the royal 
 person, the remainder of the garrison of 4000 ^which 
 represents, under normal circumstances, the entire standing 
 army of Korea) being stationed in barracks outside. There 
 are further reported to be about 2000 retainers in the 
 Palace enclosure. 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 145 
 
 First come two immense paved courts, surromided by low 
 buildings, and terminating in great gateways. The second 
 of these conducts to a further quadrangle, also of „ 
 great size, at the upper end of which, on a two- 
 fold terrace or platform, surrounded by white 
 granite balustrades, and ascended by triple flights of steps, 
 the middlemost of which are reserved for the palanquin in 
 
 Hall of 
 Audience. 
 
 GREAT HALL OP AUDIENCE 
 
 which is borne the I'oyal person — stands the Great Hall of 
 Audience, wherein is held the imposing pageantry of the 
 annual levees on the King's birthday, on New Year's Day, 
 and on other festive anniversaries. The building consists of 
 a great twin-roofed hall, constructed entirely of wood, the 
 richly carved and reticulated ceiling of which, painted red, 
 blue, and green, is supported by immense circular pillars, 
 coloured red above and white at the base. It is empty 
 except for a lofty scarlet dais facing the entrance, and 
 
 K 
 
146 KOREA 
 
 ascended by six steps^ upon which, in front of a beautifully 
 carved scarlet and black screen of pierced woodwork, is 
 placed the chair of state of the King. From this position 
 he looks down upon the matted floor of the hall, through 
 the open doors on to the double terrace outside, and thence 
 to the paved quadrangle, where twelve inscribed pillars on 
 either hand indicate the various positions taken up by the 
 different ranks of nobles and officials at the royal levees. 
 The furthest of these is so distant as barely to render visible 
 the august form of the Sovereign. The idea of this splendid 
 Audience Hall, grandiose in its massive simplicity, is curiously 
 analogous to the talars, or throne-rooms, of the Persian kings 
 from the days of Darius to those of Nasr-ed-din Shah ; and 
 the spectacle which it presents on the great days of audience, 
 like that which I shall describe in my succeeding work at 
 Hue, is one of the few surviving and intact pageants of the 
 Far East. 
 
 In an adjoining court is the Summer Palace, a large hall 
 or pavilion raised upon forty-eight pillars of stone, twelve 
 
 feet high, in the middle of a lotus-pond. Hard by 
 PakS^' may also be seen the Chin Chang Hall, or Hall 
 
 of Diligence, the Yun Hall, or Hall of Departed 
 Spirits, which is used in the funeral celebrations of royalty, 
 and the Chai Hall, or Hall of Fasting. The rear part of the 
 building, where the King and his seraglio reside, consists of 
 a number of smaller courts, kiosques, and pavilions, adorned 
 with a good deal of bright painting, and possessing a certain 
 fantastic elegance. The electric light was installed in this 
 part of the Palace by order of the King, who has the 
 Oriental's fondness for any new and expensive invention ; 
 but it very soon came to grief. Another contract was given 
 in 1893 to an American engineer, who imported the entire 
 plant from the United States. It was in one of the smaller 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 147 
 
 edifices that I was admitted to an audience with His 
 Majesty. 
 
 INTERIOR OF THE OLI) PALACE 
 
 Li Hsi, King of Korea (whose original Korean name was 
 Mong Pok-i)^ is the twenty-eighth sovereign of the reigning 
 dynasty. He was the nephew of Li Hwan^, the last 
 king but one, who^ having no children, had been ^^ Koiea^ 
 succeeded by his uncle Li Ping, who also died 
 childless in 1864. Thereupon the young boy, at that time 
 twelve years of age, was selected as heir by the Royal 
 Council, and was adopted by his great-grandmother, the 
 Queen Dowager Chao, the widow of the Crown Prince Li 
 Ying, who had never succeeded to the throne. This old 
 lady died in 1890. 
 
 The young Sovereign being a minor, the royal authority 
 was vested in a Council of Regency, one of whom, Li Cheng 
 Ying, the father of the boy and a man of great strength 
 
148 KOREA 
 
 of character, took advantage of his position to usurp the 
 chief power. Nominally as Regent, with the title of Tai 
 
 Wen Kun, Lord of the Great Court, he ruled the 
 We^n Kun kingdom with great severity from 1864 to 1873. 
 
 He it was who was responsible for the furious 
 persecution of the Christian missionaries that brought the 
 unsuccessful French expedition of 1866 into Korea, and for 
 the frantic anti-foreign crusade which eventually broke down 
 under the combined pressure of the foreign Powers. He 
 was once aptly described by a native writer as having 
 ' bowels of iron and a heart of stone.' Upon the assumption 
 by the King of full sovereignty in 1873, and the subsequent . 
 opening of the country, the Tai Wen Kun headed the Con- 
 servative or Reaction ary^ party, against all treaties and all 
 foreignei's, while from time to time he ' kept his hand in ' 
 at conspiracy, for which he has a unique genius, by arranging 
 plots to depose the King and Queen, and to replace the 
 former by some more flexible member of his own family. 
 One such attempt to plant another son upon the throne was 
 detected in 1876, and the unhappy youth was invited to 
 drink a cup of poison. Upon this the Tai Wen Kun, with 
 an ability greatly in advance of his times, despatched some 
 boxes of choice bonbons, concealing explosive bombs, to his 
 successful adversaries, whom he thus triumphantly removed. 
 After a short lull he is believed to have instigated the first out- 
 break against the Japanese Legation in 1882, when an attempt 
 was made to kidnap the King and to kill the Queen,^ and 
 
 1 So universally were both the Queen and the Crown Prince believed 
 to have been killed, that their death was printed as a fact in Mr. W. E. 
 GrifSs' Hermit Nation, which was ijublislied shortly afterwards. It being 
 undesirable for a while to reveal the truth, national mourning for a year was 
 even ordered, and was observed for the full period. It subsequently trans- 
 pired that the Queen had been smuggled out in disguise as the wife of a 
 soldier, and that one of the Court ladies had been killed in her place. 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 149 
 
 when the Japanese Minister^ Hanabusa^ and his following had 
 to retreat fighting to Chemulpo, where they were picked 
 up by a British man-of-war. Very shortly the Japanese 
 Minister reappeared with demands for immediate and 
 ample reparation ; but, while the negotiations still lingered. 
 
 THE TAI WEN KUN 
 
 tlie sky was suddenly cleared by a thunderbolt launched by 
 Li Hung Chang, the great Chinese Viceroy, who had seized 
 the opportunity to reassert the compromised suzerainty of 
 his Imperial master. The Tai Wen Kun was himself kid- 
 napped and deported to China, where he was kept a prisoner 
 at Paoting Fu. 
 
 During his absence in 1884, a second revolution, of some- 
 what similar character, broke out in the capital/ from which 
 
 1 The leader of this revolution, Kim Ok Kiun, who escaped at the time and 
 lived for some years as a refugee uiider Japanese protection at Kioto, having 
 
150 KOREA 
 
 the King only escaped by jumping on to the back of a 
 eunuch, in which not too dignified position he was carried 
 into the Chinese camp outside Soul. After matters had 
 been somewhat composed, the King began to think that the 
 abilities of the old Regent might perhaps after all be more 
 usefully employed at home ; and accordingly he himself 
 applied to China for his restoration. It cannot be said that 
 the experiment was a success, so far as the relations of the 
 pair were concerned, for in the summer of 1892 a determined 
 attempt was made by the political opponents of the Tai Wen 
 Kun to blow him up with gunpowder, though the misdirection 
 of the explosive, which blew out the side of the room which 
 he occupied, instead of the floor, saved the old gentleman's 
 life. It could not fail to be remarked that the King evinced 
 no solicitude at the miraculous escape of his parent— a 
 callousness which was the more extraordinary in a country 
 where Confucianism has inculcated filial respect as the 
 highest duty. The Tai Wen Kun, now seventy-four years 
 of age, is still living, and continues to give proofs of a vitality 
 which neither age nor disappointment can impair. Just 
 before the commencement of hostilities between Japan 
 and China in July 1894, the Japanese appear to have con- 
 templated making use of his influence in their own in- 
 terest, and appointed him Commissioner or Regent for the 
 discussion of reforms. Very soon, however, the Tai Wen 
 Kun developed the most violent anti-Japanese inclinations, 
 and was accordingly shelved. He seems to have utilised his 
 
 incautiously proceeded to Shanghai, was murdei'ed there in the spring of 1894 
 by a fellow-countryman, it is said at the direct instigation of the King. Any- 
 how, his remains, upon being taken back to Korea by order of the Govern- 
 ment, were there subjected to mutilation and jjublic exj)osure : the remaining 
 members of his family were put to death, and the murderer was loaded with 
 honours. Korea never so sviccessfuUy vindicated her claim to exclusion from 
 the pale of civilisation. The murder of Kim Ok Kiun, however, was one of 
 the events that precipitated the late war. 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 151 
 
 liberty to embark in a fresh conspiracy against the King and 
 Queen^ for which^ though he escaped scot-free himself, his 
 grandson was arrested, tried, and sentenced in 1895 to ten 
 years' banishment. The old man, after a short spell of 
 retirement, has again, as these pages go to press in October 
 1895, asserted his indomitable spirits by a renewed plot, 
 in which, after the King's Korean Guard, duly bribed in 
 advance, and a number of Japanese, had penetrated into 
 the Palace, and successfully atoned for the many previous 
 failures on his part by killing the Queen outright, he once 
 more usurped the supreme power, the King managing to 
 escape with his life. This scandalous event, in which it is 
 alleged that the Japanese were implicated, is not unlikely to 
 mark a turning-point in Korean fortunes. To the remarkable 
 experiences which I have related the Tai Wen Kun also adds 
 the accomplishments of an artist; and I am the possessor 
 of an excellent signed pen-and-ink drawing by his hand. 
 
 With the exception of the two above-mentioned revolts in 
 1882 and 1884, which were in both cases the result of 
 political and Court intrigue, rather than of any 
 popular movement, the King had until 1894 yeign 
 occupied the throne for twenty years without 
 menace or peril. Upon both those occasions, though the 
 external symptom of the outbreak was an attack upon the 
 Japanese Legation, who invariably represent the least 
 popular element of society in Soul, the real object of the- 
 conspirators was to capture, without injuring, the person 
 of the King, whose seal and signature lent a much-coveted 
 sanction to the successful faction.^ It was not the life of the 
 
 1 The person of the Sovereign is held, sacred and inviolable— his real safe- 
 guard against assassination ; but it is the roj^al seal that is the coveted object. 
 Till recent j'cars a change of party in Korean government (which there is no 
 machinery for eifecting by a general election) was invariably carried out as 
 follows : — The conspirators gathered in sufficient numbers in the Palace, 
 
152 KOREA 
 
 Sovereign that was aimed at in either case, but the influence 
 of those under whose control he was supposed to be. In 
 February 1894 a plot was discovered for blowing up with 
 gunpowder the King, Crown Prince, and chief Ministers of 
 State while on a visit to the Royal Ancestral Temple ; but 
 what the exact object of this Korean Guy Fawkes may have 
 been, or who were the real instigators of the design, did not 
 transpire. It was generally supposed to have been the old 
 Regent's reply to the attempt upon himself two years earlier. 
 Then followed the second conspiracy before alluded to ; and 
 finally, the ignominy of the Japanese occupation, which, after 
 subjecting the King to every variety of humiliation, has left 
 him a monarch only in name, and, probably, the most dis- 
 consolate living occupant of a throne. 
 
 His Majesty is a man of much amiability of character ; and 
 
 many instances are related of his personal charm of disposition 
 
 and bearing. If he does not share the bigotry. 
 
 His char- neither has he inherited the determination of his 
 
 acter. 
 
 father ; and placed as he has been in difficult cir- 
 cumstances, for which, by training and tradition, he was 
 equally unprepared, there are many excuses to be made alike 
 for volatility of purpose and irresolution of action. Until the 
 Japanese came, he took a keen zest in any new discovery or 
 invention, though he was not free from the superstition of 
 his race and country. It will be accounted a remarkable 
 fact in history that both Japan and Korea should have under- 
 gone in the second half of the present century the greatest 
 revolution in their annals, under the sceptre of sovereigns 
 whose personality struck in neither case a very definite or 
 individual note. 
 
 seized and assassinated the leaders of the Government, laid hold of the King 
 and of the seal of State, and compelled him to sign the warrants for the 
 execution of the murdered oflBcials, as well as their own commissions. 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 153 
 
 The most powerful influence in the Palace, and indeed in 
 
 the country, has for long been that of the Queen, the 
 
 members of whose family, known as Min, were, 
 
 J , . The Queen. 
 
 under the old regime, introduced into nearly every 
 
 position of importance or emolument about the Court and in 
 
 the Government, and thereby acquired an ascendency which 
 
 THE CROWN PRINCE 
 
 was the cause of great political jealousy and intrigue. The 
 Queen's informants and spies were said to be everywhere, 
 and nothing was done without her knowledge. It was 
 against this omnipotent influence that the Tai Wen Kun 
 directed all the forces at his disposal ; and, though the 
 Japanese could not depose her as long as they kept the 
 
154 KOREA 
 
 King, one of their first acts was to evict the entire Min 
 faction, who have since been in disgrace, and have been 
 replaced by more accommodating poHticians. It is alleged 
 that the Queen retaliated by making advances to Russia ; in 
 which, if true, we may perhaps find an explanation of the 
 dramatic violence of her recent removal. 
 
 The King's eldest son by the Queen, Li Hsia by name, is 
 the Heir Apparent, or Crown Prince, and was born in 1873. 
 His abilities, however, are so much below the 
 P "nc ^^"^^ average, and there is so little chance of his found- 
 ing a family, that his position in the State is less 
 important than it might otherwise be. Attention has some- 
 times been directed to another and elder son of the King by 
 a concubine, of whom more may be heard in the future ; but 
 in the meantime the Crown Prince continues to exist, an 
 even more troubled phantom than his sire. 
 
 The KoreanrTnona^hy is, in theory, absolute, hereditary, 
 and divine. The King is master of the lives and property of 
 his subjects and of the entire resources of the 
 mon°'-ch° kingdom. All offices are held at his pleasure. His 
 word is law. In his person is concentrated every 
 attribute of Government. If in relation to China he was, 
 till recently, a humble vassal, in his own dominions he was 
 supreme. The opening of Korea to the world was, however, 
 not accomplished without dealing many and inevitable blows 
 at the peculiarly sacrosanct character of the royal authority, 
 upon which stress has been laid by so many writers.^ This 
 
 1 Dallet, and Griffis, in the main copying from him, describe several 
 features of Coiu't ceremonial, and of the Korean theory of kingship, which 
 were probably derived from the ancient statutes of the kingdom, but which 
 have long been, or are now, obsolete. These fictions have attained a wide 
 poiHilarity, mainly owing to their repetition in works of comparative sociology 
 such as TJiejGrolden Bough, by J. G. Frazer (2 vols. 1890). The latter, in 
 vol. i. j)p. 164, 172, says that the Kings of Korea are shut up in their palaces 
 from the age of twelve or fifteen ; that if a suitor wishes to obtain justice 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 155 
 
 had been effected beyond repair even before the experiences 
 
 of the past year^ and was ah'eady contracting into the more 
 
 modest conception of kingship that has been evolved by 
 
 Western experience. 
 
 Before proceeding to the royal audience, I enjoyed an 
 
 interview with the President of the Korean Foreign Office,^ 
 
 an old gentleman with a faultless black hat, a 
 
 benign and sleepy expression, plump cheeks, and v^'!u^^ 
 
 a long thin grey moustache and beard. I remem- Foreign 
 1 n T . ,. 1 TT • Minister. 
 
 ber some oi his questions and answers. Having 
 
 been particularly warned not to admit to him that I was only 
 
 thirty-three years old, an age to which no respect attaches in 
 
 of the King he sometimes lights a great bonfire on a moimtain facing the 
 Palace ; that when the King goes out of the Palace, all doors must be shut, 
 and each householder must kneel before his threshold with a broom and a 
 dust-pan in his hand, whilst all windows, especially the upper ones, must be 
 sealed with strips of j^aper, lest some one should look down upon the King ; 
 that no one may touch the King ; and that, if he deigns to touch a subject, 
 the spot touched becomes sacred, and the person thus honoured must wear a 
 visible mark (generally a cord of red silk) for the rest of his life. Not one of 
 these observances is now maintained. Suitors wishing to obtain a hearing 
 from the King do not light a bonfire, but sit outside the Palace-gate with 
 their i^etition placed on a table in front of them, until the fact is reported to 
 the King, and the petition is taken in and considered. "When the King goes 
 out of the Palace in procession, the shops along the route are closed, but no 
 restriction is placed upon the spectators, who crowd the streets, and even the 
 rooftoj)s, coming in from the country in thousands to see the pageant ; nor is 
 any obeisance required from them. Red girdles, which are quite common, 
 have also ceased to bear the alleged significance. Other statements popularly 
 repeated {e.g. in the Enclycopcedia Britannica), that it is sacrilege to utter 
 the King's name, and high treason to touch him with iron, and that every 
 horseman must dismount when passing the Palace, are equally erroneous. 
 Only those officials dismount who propose to enter the Palace. Similarly, 
 the oft-quoted rule forbidding any Korean subject to go out at night in Soul, 
 except women, officials, and blind persons, has fallen into desuetude since 
 the number of Chinese and Japanese in the city, and of servants in the em- 
 ploy of foreigners, has rendered its enforcement imi^ossible. 
 
 1 There were in 1892 three principal Ministers of State in Korea, denomi- 
 nated Councillors of the Middle, Left, and Right. There were also six 
 Government Departments, namely, the Officers of (i) Civil Affairs or Public 
 Employ ; (ii) Finance, i.e. the Treasury ; (iii) Rites or Ceremonies and 
 Public Instruction ; (iv) "War ; (v) Justice ; (vi) Public Works. To these, 
 
 /^ 
 
156 KOREA 
 
 Korea, when he put to me the straight question (invariably 
 the first in an Oriental dialogue), 'How old are you?' I un- 
 hesitatingly responded, 'Forty.' 'Dear me/ he said, 'you 
 look very young for that. How do you account for it ? ' 
 ' By the fact/ I replied, ' that I have been travelling for a 
 month in the superb climate of His Majesty's dominions.' 
 Hearing that I had been a Minister of the Crown in England, 
 he inquired what had been my salary, and added, ' I sup- 
 pose you found that by far the most agreeable feature of 
 office. But no doubt the perquisites were very much larger.' 
 Finally, conscious that in his own country it is not easy for 
 any one to become a member of the Government, unless he is 
 related to the family of the King or Queen, he said to me, 
 ' I presume you are a near relative of Her Majesty the Queen 
 of England.' ' No,' I replied, ' I am not.' But, observing 
 the look of disgust that passed over his countenance, I was 
 fain to add, ' I am, however, as yet an unmarried man,' with 
 which unscrupulous suggestion I completely regained the old 
 gentleman's favour. 
 
 In the Palace everything — dress, deportment, movement, 
 gait — is regulated by a minute and uncompromising etiquette. 
 Upon one occasion a British Consul was not admitted to 
 audience with the King, because, having packed up his 
 
 since the opening of the country, had been added two new departments — the 
 Nai-mu-pu, or Home OfHce, which had a President, two native Vice- 
 Presidents, two foreign Vice-Presidents (namely, the Foreign Advisers), one 
 Councillor, and a staff of twenty-five clerks, and which had virtually super- 
 seded the old six boards ; and the Oi-a-mun, or Foreign Office, with a similar 
 organisation, which was formerly under the Minister of Ceremonies, there 
 having been in those days j)ractically no Foreign Affairs. The entire hier- 
 archy here mentioned has, however, been superseded since the war by the 
 Jajjanese, who have set up the Cabinet system, as described in the chapter 
 'After the War,' and have instituted nine Ministries or Departments, with 
 Ministers and Vice-Ministers at fixed salaries (so far unpaid), viz. : (i) Royal 
 Hovisehold ; (ii) Prime Minister's Department ; (iii) Foreign Ofiice ; (iv) 
 Home Ofiice ; (v) Law and Justice ; (vi) War ; (vii) Exchequer ; (viii) 
 Agriculture and Commerce; (ix) Education. 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 157 
 
 uniform, he came only in evening dress. The middle and 
 lower officials wear brightly-coloured robes of scarlet, blue 
 and yellow ; but the ministers and chief notables „ 
 affect a richer and more sober hue, usually dark dress and 
 blue or puce, the material being of figured silk.i On ^ 
 the bosom is fixed a plastron or panel of coarse embroidery, 
 representing a tiger, or stalk, or some other symbolical 
 
 A KOREAN MINISTER 
 
 creature ; while round the waist is worn a broad belt, 
 variously adorned with gold, silver, jade, ivory, or horn, 
 which projects several inches from the person, like the hoop 
 
 1 This has been superseded since the war bj^ the Jajjanese, who have 
 compelled the Korean officials to adopt a more sombre style of dress 
 manufactured in Japan, in place of the particoloured silks of China. 
 
158 KOREA 
 
 of a beer-baiTcl that has started from its place. On the 
 head reposes one of the winged tiaras which I have before 
 described. There is also a peculiar struts which is known as 
 the ' yanghan walk/ and which all ministers or nobles affect 
 when they appear in public. It is a slow and measured 
 movement^ with the feet planted rather wide apart, and an 
 indescribable but unmistakable swing of the body that is 
 most comic. The main attribute or manifestation of dignity 
 in Korea seems, however, to be that its possessor is incapable 
 of moving without support. Unsustained he would, I suppose, 
 fall to the ground from the sheer weight of his own importance. 
 Accordingly, a minister, if seen walking on the streets, is 
 invariably supported by one, sometimes by two attendants, 
 who deferentially prop him up under the arm or arms, as he 
 slowly and consequentially struts along. If he be mounted, 
 the same theory presci'ibes that he shall be held on to his 
 saddle by retainers running on either side. Thus upheld, 
 the Minister for Home Affairs and the President of the 
 Foreign Office were solemnly escorting me to the presence 
 of royalty, when I suddenly seemed to observe a vacuum. 
 The supporters had disappeared, and the ministers had 
 hurled themselves, forehead forward, on the ground. My 
 old friend, who was far advanced in years, must have found 
 it extremely trying. 
 
 The King was standing in a small, brightly- painted 
 pavilion, which opened on to one of the minor courts of the 
 
 . _. Palace. His hands rested upon a table, on which 
 
 Audience ^ 
 
 with the a hideous Brussels table-cloth half concealed a 
 gorgeous piece of Chinese embroidery. Behind 
 and around him were clustered the Palace eunuchs in Court 
 dresses. At the side stood the intei'preter, with his shoulders 
 and head bowed in attitude of the lowest reverence, repeating 
 the words which the King whispered in his ear. On either 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA 159 
 
 side stood the two sword-bearers of State^ and at a little 
 distance the two Ministers, who had resumed an erect 
 position. Upon the royal brow was a double-tiered violet 
 headpiece. His robe was of scarlet figured silk — the royal 
 colour — with panels of gold embroidery upon the shoulders 
 and breast, and a gold-studded projecting belt. Li Hsi is a 
 man of small stature and sallow complexion, with hair drawn 
 tightly up from the forehead beneath the Korean skull-cap, 
 very slight eyebrows, small, vivacious black eyes, teeth 
 discoloured from chewing the betel, a piece of which he 
 continued to masticate throughout the interview, and a sparse 
 black moustache and tuft below the chin. The King's 
 countenance wears a singularly gentle and pleasing expression; 
 and in the course of the audience, which lasted about twenty 
 minutes, and was entirely conducted by His Majesty in 
 person, he evinced the most lively interest in the friendship 
 and consideration of Great Britain, and a personal regard for 
 the services of Mr. W. C. Hillier, the capable officer by 
 whom the Queen was at that time represented in Soul. 
 After the audience with the King I was conducted to another 
 pavilion, where I was similarly received by the Crown Prince. 
 But his questions or remarks, which were dictated to him by 
 his chief eunuch, were of no interest, and the interview was 
 one of mere ceremony. 
 
 The tru^ comicality however, of the Korean Court can 
 only be properly estimated upon one of the occasions, 
 somewhat rare in occurrence, when the King goes 
 
 in state through the city to visit some temple or °^^ . 
 
 o J r procession. 
 
 tomb. Of one such function I was the interested 
 witness. From an early hour in the morning the streets were 
 guarded by militaiy, of a species unique in the world. The 
 infantry lined the roadway, and were for the most part lying 
 asleep upon the ground. They had almost as many flags as 
 
160 
 
 KOREA 
 
 men; and their muskets, which I examined as they stood 
 piled together, were commonly destitute either of hammer, 
 trigger, or plate, sometimes of all three, and were frequently 
 only held together by string ; while the bayonets were bent 
 and rusty. Infinitely more remarkable, however, were the 
 
 A KOREAN COLONEL 
 
 cavalry. These were clad in uniforms probably some 300 
 
 years old, consisting of a battered helmet with a spike, and 
 
 of a cuirass of black leather studded with brass bosses^ and 
 
 worn over a heavy jerkin of moth-eaten brocade.^ Enor- 
 
 1 Compare the account of Hamel, 240 years ago: — 'Their Horse wear 
 Cuirasses, Headpieces, and Swords, as also Bows and Arrows, and Whips 
 like ours, only that theirs have small iron Points. Their Foot as well as they 
 wear a corselet, a Headpiece, a Sword, and Musket or Half-pike. The 
 Officers carry nothing but Bows and Arrows.' 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA l6l 
 
 mous jack-boots completed the costume^ and rendered it 
 difficult for the men to momit their steeds, even although 
 these were rarely more than eleven hands high. Banners 
 of yellow, red, and green, with a tuft of pheasant-feathers 
 at the top, and stacks of arrows, were carried in front of the 
 officers, who were with difficulty supported by squires upon 
 their pyramidal saddles. The middle of the roadway was 
 supposed to be kept clear, and was strewn with a riband of 
 sand, about a foot and a half in breadth ; but this was 
 trampled upon and scattered almost as soon as sprinkled. 
 
 Throughout the morning processions of ministers, courtiers, 
 and officials passed along on their way to or from the Palace. 
 The majority of these were borne by shouting retainers in 
 open chairs, on the back of which rested a leopard-skin. In 
 some cases the sedan was also supported by a single leg 
 underneath, terminating in a wheel, which ran along the 
 middle of the roadway, easing the burden and increasing the 
 pace of the bearers in front and behind. Soine of the 
 officials wore gilt helmets of pasteboard, with Chinese 
 characters upon the back. The Chinese Resident, the 
 principal personage in the city, as representing the suzerain 
 power, dashed past in a black velvet sedan, swiftly borne by 
 stalwart Celestials with red tassels. Upon either side of the 
 street the white-robed crowd were pressed back against the 
 house-fronts, and were prodded by the soldiers with their 
 muskets, or spanked by active runners, who laid- about them 
 liberally with long wooden paddles. On the occasion of the 
 previous procession the mob had been suffered to approach 
 too nearly to the person of royalty ; and a notification had 
 in consequence appeared in the Official Ga::ette, docking the 
 Minister of War of three months' salary for his faulty 
 arrangements. 
 
 At length, after hours of waiting, the Palace doors were 
 
 L 
 
162 KOREA 
 
 thrown open, and there issued forth the most motley pro- 
 cession ever seen outside of London on Lord Mayor's Day, or 
 in the Christmas pantomime at Drury Lane. The soldiers 
 snatched up their venerable muskets, or climbed on to their 
 njicroscopic steeds. The banners were plucked up, and 
 danced in lines of colour along the streets. First from the 
 Palace gates emerged a company of men in red mitres, 
 carrying scarlet lacquered chairs ; then a similar band in 
 blue. Presently appeared the Royal Standard, on which 
 was emblazoned a mighty dragon upon a ground of yellow 
 silk. The sound of drums succeeded ; and there was a shout 
 to keep silence. In the centre of a running crowd there 
 followed upborne a single empty sedan, coloured the royal red. 
 I heard two explanations given of this episode. One was that 
 in former days, when etiquette had not been sufficiently 
 relaxed to admit of any portion of the royal person being 
 seen, two identical chairs were used in the processions, no 
 one knowing which of the pair contained the King, much in 
 the same way as an empty train frequently precedes or 
 follows that containing tbe Russian Czar, with a view to 
 frustrate the possible designs of conspirators. The other 
 theory was that the first_chair is kept intentionally empty^ 
 in order to hoodwink the evil spirits who would be likely to 
 assault it in the idea that they had got hold of the royal 
 person. I have also heard it suggested that the empty 
 litter may contain the ancestral tablets of jthejx)yal. family. 
 Next came a long procession of the King's valets^ in yellow 
 robes and tiny straw hatsj with worsted rosettes, perched 
 sideways on their heads ; the corps of royal drummers, beat- 
 ing with frantic flourish the royal drums ; a medley of 
 cavalry, shambling along without the least attempt at order ; 
 a small detachment of artillery, dragging after them two 
 Rmall Gatling guns; files of runners, in alternate blue and 
 
THE CAPITAL AND COURT OF KOREA l63 
 
 green gauze^ stretching across the street ; a company of 
 flute-players, blowing a lusty monotone on a shrill note ; 
 then a rush of feet and shouting of voices to make way, and 
 a phalanx of sturdy bearers, clad in red, with double mitres 
 on their heads, running swiftly, and supporting in a canopied 
 chair of state, with red silk screens and tassels, the uplifted 
 person of the King. As he passed along he looked to right 
 and left, and the movement of the bearers made him bob 
 up and down. At a little distance behind followed the 
 Crown Prince, in spectacles, in a similar scarlet palanquin, 
 carried by men in green mitres ; and then came a hetero- 
 geneous jumble of courtiers, generals, colonels, matchlock- 
 men, and tottering cavaliers ; the procession being closed by 
 the European-drilled troops, who made some attempt to 
 march in step, and whose commander, heralded by stentorian 
 cries, carried an immense banner on his own shoulder. 
 Later on, towards dusk, I met the same procession returning. 
 Everything and everybody had got thoroughly mixed up 
 in the narrower streets : soldiers and citizens, colonels and 
 chamberlains, wei-e all wedged together in inextricable 
 confusion ; but, above the heads of the crowd, ever oscil- 
 lated the scarlet palanquin of the King, lit up by lanterns 
 of blue and crimson silk, tossing at the pikeheads of the 
 infantry soldiers. 
 
 It will have been gathered from the above description 
 that the Korean Army was not the least rotten adjunct of 
 the unreformed Korean monarchy. Those infantry 
 regiments that had been taught by foreigners and o''^^'^ 
 that constituted the garrison of the capital, 4000 
 strong, were said to show a capacity for drill and discipline. 
 Up till the rebellion of 1884 they were officered by Japanese ; 
 but after that date they were placed in the hands of two 
 American drill-instructors, who possessed the high-flown 
 
164 KOREA 
 
 titles of Vice-President and Councillor of the Board of War, 
 but who exercised no command,- and did not accompany 
 their men on to the field. This force was divided into three 
 battalions, arid was armed with rifles of a great variety of 
 pattern. Its native officers were beneath contempt. There 
 is an arsenal (Ki-ke-kuk) in Soul with foreign machinery; 
 but it is only used for the repair of arms. As for the purely 
 native regiments, they were and are not a standing army but 
 a standing joke ; while in Europe the cavalry would with 
 difficulty secure an engagement as supers in the pantomime 
 of a second-rate provincial stage. 
 
 Once every twenty or thirty years a review is held of the 
 entire force on a parade-gi'ound outside the city, the ex- 
 periment being so costly that it cannot be more 
 
 .^ frequently repeated. As a spectacle it is more 
 review. i ^ r r 
 
 unique even than the royal procession. One such 
 review was held during the summer of 1894. It was 
 announced to begin at 9 a.m., but from that hour till 5 p.m. 
 were the 30,000 spectators on the ground compelled to wait 
 before the vanguard of the royal cortege appeared. This 
 consisted of no fewer than 10,000 persons, in the midst of 
 whom the King and Crown Prince rode on horseback. The 
 troops, 7000 to 8000 in number, then marched past the 
 saluting-point, saluting by bowing their bodies to the ground. 
 So unsatisfactory, however, was the display held to have 
 been that there was great fluttering in the military dove- 
 cots, and the Commander-in-Chief was forthwith degraded 
 from his post. It was then contemplated to hold a review 
 of the ti'oops drilled upon the modern system. But before 
 this event could take place, the thunderbolt had fallen, and 
 Korea, instead of providing a playground for the nursery- 
 games of her own troops, had become a battle-field for the 
 passions of others. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 POLITICAL AXD COMMERCIAL SYJIPTOMS IN KOREA 
 
 Diogenes Alexandro roganti ut dicei'et si quid oj)us esset, ' Nunc quidem 
 paullulum,' inquit, 'a sole.' Cicero: Tusc. Disput. 
 
 If the people^ the scenery, the capita], and the Court of 
 Korea have each an individuahty that distinguishes them 
 
 from similar phenomena in other countries, there . ... 
 
 ^ . . . An Asiatic 
 
 were yet in the (Korean polrEy, viewed as a form of micro- 
 government, before the war, features inseparably 
 "associated with the Asiatic^ystem and recognisable in every 
 unreformed Oriental State from Teheran to Soul. A royal 
 figurehead enveloped in the mystery of the palace and the 
 harem, surrounded by concentric rings of eunuchs^ Ministers, 
 of State, officials, and retainers, and rendered almost in- 
 tangible by the predominant atmosphere of intrigue ; a 
 hierarchy of office-holders and office-seekers, who were 
 leeches in the thinnest disguise ; a feeble and insignificant 
 army, an impecunious exchequer, a debased currency, and an 
 impoverished people — these are the invariable symptoms of 
 the fast vanishing regime of the older and unredeemed 
 Oriental type. Add to these the first swarming of the flock 
 of foreign practitioners, who scent the enfeebled constitu- 
 tion from afar, and from the four winds of heaven come 
 pressing their pharmacopoeia of loans, concessions, banks, 
 mints, factories, and all the recognised machinery for filling 
 Western purses at the expense of Eastern pockets, and you 
 have a fair picture of Korea as she stood after ten years 
 
 165 
 
166 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 of emergence from her long seclusion and enjoyment of the 
 intercourse of the nations. She was going to purchase her 
 own experience, and to learn that, while civilisation is a 
 mistress of rare and irresistible attractions, she requires to 
 he paid for in coin of no small denomination. 
 
 Nominally, every Government post in Korea was given 
 by competitive examination. In reality, the examinations 
 
 — which were conducted in the open air in the 
 
 Korean '■ 
 
 adminis- Palace-grounds in the presence of the King, and 
 consisted of little more than the composition of 
 an essay (probably prepared in advance) upon some well- 
 known sentence from the Chinese classics — were a farce ; 
 and the posts were given to those who paid for them, the 
 successful candidate and the price paid by him being, as 
 a general rule, matters of common knowledge beforehand.^ 
 This being so, it might be thought surprising that so many 
 candidates should enter. The examination, however, was 
 always an excuse for a visit to the capital and a pleasant 
 holiday ; and, a few posts being occasionally assigned, for 
 form's sake, to merit, each competitor was firmly convinced 
 that he would be the lucky man. The successful candidate 
 has to undergo a sort of schoolboy ' bullyragging ' at the 
 hands of his comrades, which reminds one of the peculiar 
 ceremonies formerly enacted on British ships when ' crossing 
 the Line.' His face and clothes were smeared all over with 
 ink, and were then bespattered by one of the examiners with 
 white soap. Frequently, too, his hat was smashed in, and 
 his clothes were torn of his back. Finally, after this oi'deal 
 was over, he was washed and dressed up and was taken round 
 in state to receive the congratulations of his friends. All 
 the higher posts were filled by the yanghans, or gentry, and 
 
 1 The examination system, perhaps the most picturesque and fascinating of 
 Korean abuses, has since been abolished by the Japanese. 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA l67 
 
 the highest of all by the relatives of those in great positions 
 at Court. The eight provinces and 332 prefectures of the 
 kingdom absorbed an immense army of office-holders,^ only 
 the superior ranks among whom received any salary, and 
 this usually in arrears, while the rest had to butter their own 
 bread as best they could. All office was held for a period of 
 three years, dm-ing which time the incumbent extracted from 
 it whatever he could, the normal level of extortion being so 
 mathematically ascertained by long practice, that while any 
 excess was voted tyrannical, adherence to the average 
 standard was regarded as a proof both of integrity and 
 moderation. Under a form of government so organised it 
 became easy enough to understand why the coiuitry lan- 
 guished and stagnation reigned supreme. 
 
 The Government itself — or, in other words, the King, who 
 was the Government — was always in debt ; and the financial 
 assistance which in moments of embarrassment he 
 was never loth to accept from interested parties, j^jj^^j'^'^'^t 
 whilst it did not enable his exchequer to recover 
 financial equilibrium, still further mortgaged the fast dwin- 
 dling resources of national wealth and independence. The 
 amount of the YOj^[_j'£y^n.ne could not be ascertained; but 
 it was derived from the following sources : — (1) a Land-tax, 
 principally paid in grain, and fluctuating according to the 
 nature of the harvest; (2) a House-tax, very capriciously 
 assessed and levied ; (3) the Customs Revenue, which is 
 levied upon imports and exports at the three Treaty Ports, 
 and which in 1891, the high-water mark yet reached, 
 amounted to over £90,000, but which, with a new tariff 
 
 1 This organisation was rei^laced, under Japanese auspices, in June 1895 by 
 a redistribution into 23 counties {fu), with 337 prefectures (chun), the ad- 
 ministration of each county being placed under a governor, deputy -governor, 
 and a staff of secretaries or clerks, of whom there are not to be more than 
 330 for the whole kingdom. 
 
 I6'J 
 
168 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 classification^ tlie opening of more Treaty Ports^^ and a pre- 
 ventive service to stop the enormous amount of smuggling 
 that prevails^ might be very greatly increased; (4) the 
 proceeds of the ghiseng monopoly ; ^ (5) the proceeds of 
 other monopolies or Government licenses, such as gold- 
 minings and the various Trade guilds ; (6) irregular taxation. 
 It is now nineteen years since the first Foreign Treaty 
 was signed with Japan in 1876. Later conventions opened 
 Foreiffn Gensan in 187.9, and Chemulpo in 1880; and 
 Treaties. further Trade and Fishery Regulations were 
 concluded between the two Governments in 1883 and 
 
 1 The British and subsequent Foreign Treaties with Korea stipulated for 
 the opening of a further Treaty Port, Yang-hwa-chin on the river Han, as a 
 river-port for the capital. If the steam-traffic on the Han is developed, 
 Yong-san or Ryong-san, which is only three miles from Soul, might be 
 selected. Since the war two new Treaty Ports have been opened by the 
 Japanese, viz. Chinnampo on the Ping-yang inlet or estuary of the Taidong 
 River, and Mokpo, in the south-west, at the southern extremity of ChuUa 
 Provincg.^.,- 
 
 ^{p-inseng iPanax qvAnquefoliiwi) is the plant, of the Araliacece or Ivywort 
 tribe7"wEo«e root is so immensely valued for medicinal and recviperative 
 purposes in China. One of its principal areas of production is Korea, where 
 it both grows wild in the forests of the north (fabulous sums being sometimes 
 paid for a single root), and is artificially cultivated under screens. A less 
 valuable variety of the same plant is also produced in Aijierica, principally 
 ilt, Virginia. Red or clarified ginseng, which is jjrei^ared by steaming the 
 root over boiling water, is a monopoly of the King in Korea. Its ^port,,^ 
 except by a single guild, is jarohibited by Treaty, and is punishable by death. 
 For years it has been farmed oiirioTEe CfPWng In, a body who used to ac- 
 company the Tribute Mission to Peking as interjjreters, in which capacity 
 they did a little trade on their own account. They are now a close 
 corporation, and are said to pay the King from £80,000 to £100,000 a year. 
 A tax is also levied upon the growth and export of ordinary ginseng, which 
 is prepared by drying the root over a charcoal fire. As much again, however, 
 is said to be smuggled out of the country as passes through the hands of the 
 guild. Ginseng is consumed in China by catting uj) the root into minute 
 fragments and steeping them in wine. But it is usually mixed with other 
 drvigs. As long ago as 1617, Richard Cocks, Factor of the East India 
 Company at Firando in Japan, sent home a piece of the root, of which he 
 said that it was ' worth its weight in silver ; all that can be got is taken 
 by the Emperor ; it is held in Japan the most precious thing in physic 
 in the world, and suflficient to put life into any man if can but .draw breath. ' 
 State Pcqxrs, East Indies Series, 1617-1G21. 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 169 
 
 1889. The Chinese Trade Regulations and the American 
 Treaty were signed in 1882. Great Britain and Germany 
 followed in 1883, Russia and Italy in 1884, France in 
 1886. An Overland Trade Convention was also concluded 
 with Russia in 1888; and finally Austria entered the list 
 of Treaty Powers in 1893. For a full decade, therefore, 
 excluding the special priority of Japan, Korea has had the 
 experience of commerce and contact with the outer world. 
 How had she benefited by it ? 
 
 The sudden leavening of so archaic and stubborn a lump 
 by the strenuous agency of civilisation had not been pursued 
 without the familiar symptoms. Each foreign 
 country had thought itself or its citizens the /^I^^^s 
 best qualified to act as guides to the trembling 
 footsteps of the bewildered ingenu. Of these external aids 
 to local embarrassment perhaps the most remarkable was 
 the continuous maintenance of one or more so-called 
 Foreign Advisers by the King. There were successively 
 four of these gentlemen. The first was a German, who was 
 appointed to the double post of Director of Korean Customs 
 and Foreign Adviser by the Viceroy Li Hung Chang. He 
 disappeared abruptly, in consequence, it is said, of having 
 drawn up a secret treaty with Russia. The second was an 
 American, who created quite a stir by issuing a pam phlet 
 in defeiice of Korean independence, and in repudiation of 
 the_ Chinese claims of suzerainty, and who spent his whole 
 time in combating the Chinese Resident. There were 
 two occupants of the post in 1892, both of whom 
 were Americans. The function of these individuals was 
 apparently to advise the Korean Government on any 
 negotiation or complication that might arise with foreign 
 Powers, and to assist them in the making of purchases from, 
 or sale of concessions to, outside parties. With the policy 
 
170 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 of the Governinent they had nothing to do ; and the greater 
 part of its administrative and executive action was performed 
 behind their backs and without their cognisance. It was 
 not surprising that a position so ambiguous should operate 
 against any very lengthy tenure of the office in question. 
 The historical sequence was^ as a rule, the same in each 
 case ; great ambitions on the part of the newly appointed 
 official ; gradual disenchantment ; salary in arrears ; final 
 fracas and departure, leaving behind unsatisfied claims, with 
 futile threats of legal enforcement. 
 
 In other departments less official but equally officious 
 auxiliaries proffered a not more disinterested assistance. A 
 . few years ago a German undertook to regenerate 
 
 and specu- the country by introducing the silk industry ; and 
 , TT^ ' the grounds of a deserted palace were handed 
 
 over to the spade and the mulberry-tree. There were the 
 trees; but the German and the silk-worms had disappeared. 
 Somebody else was desirous of making matches and glass ; 
 others were unselfishly interested in the creation of an 
 arsenal and the manufacture of gunpowder. A Post-office 
 was started and stamps were printed, but the Postmaster- 
 General lost his life in a political revolution, and the stamps 
 are now only a joy to the philatelist. In 1893 a Govern- 
 ment Postal and Telegraphic Service was announced in the 
 Official Gazette ; but up to the war very little had come of 
 it. The Germans were willing to sell some steamers to the 
 Korean Government in order to encourage the coasting 
 trade. The Americans, as already observed, had taken in 
 hand the Army. Nor was agriculture left out in the cold, 
 for the King was persuaded to start a Model Farm for the 
 growth of foreign cereals and the breeding of foreign stock. 
 Almost all these ventures had failed ; though a Foreign 
 School, which was started in Soul to impart the elements 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 
 
 171 
 
 The cur- 
 rency. 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
 ■J 
 
 of a modem education to young Koreans of good position, 
 and in which the King takes or took such an interest that 
 on one occasion he personally examined the pupils, and 
 awarded rank or office to such as distinguished themselves, 
 still continued, in spite of inadequate support, to exist. 
 The average attendance of students was stated to be 
 twenty-five. _^ 
 
 The most interesting illustration, however, of the 
 capacities of native ignorance in alliance with foreign 
 speculation was supplied by the history of the 
 Korean currency, to which the Japanese had 
 turned an unremitting attention. Among the 
 devices for replenishing its exchequer that was suggested 
 to the Korean Government by one of its Foreign Advisers 
 a few years ago was the issue of /a^ new cash piece (the 
 pierced coin of brass or copper and lead, which is the 
 popular medium of exchange here as in China) that should 
 be declared equal to five of the old cash then in circulation. ^A-^^ -c'l'i — / 
 The iiew_^ cash being of very inferior quality (it was com- ?c^.y^f 
 posed of copper and lead in the proportions of three to two, 
 and its intrinsic value was less than two of the old cash), 
 the Government looked to gain a tidy sum upon the 
 transaction — a profit which they subsequently endeavoured 
 to enhance by farming out the right to coin, or rather to 
 cast (for the coins are moulded, not struck) this debased 
 amalgam to native speculators. The results were threefold. 
 The quality of the coin became steadily worse, brass being 
 substituted for copper, and ^and for lead ; outside the 
 capital and neighbourhood, where it was forced upon the 
 people, traders absolutely declined to Jtake it; and the 
 depreciation advanced so rapidly that prices rose, trade was 
 seriously jiffected, and the mwiey market was paralysed. 
 In 189^ the Japanese yen, or silver dollar (then equal to 
 
 ^Ic^, 
 
z /f^- 
 
 172 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 about 2s. lOd.), which, at the first institution of the tangos, 
 
 or 5 cash pieces, represented 70 of the latter, or 350 old 
 
 cash, was equivalent to as many as 650 new cash, or 3250 
 
 of the cash in common circulation. The drawbacks as well 
 
 as the cumbersomeness of a currency so prostituted might 
 
 easily be conceived. 
 
 In this emergency the Japanese saw their opportunity. 
 
 In 188 8 a Government Mint had been erected at Soul for 
 
 the issue of a new silver currency on the Euro- 
 New Mint - ■" ■ 
 
 and silver pean model, and a few specimen dollars had 
 ' been coined but never circulated. An ex- 
 ' ^ pensive annexe was now, in J. 891,- added to the disused 
 mint, and heavy machi nery was imported by .a Japanese 
 syndicate, who, in return for a loan to the King, c^tained 
 the concession to manufacture and issue a new_silyer and 
 nickel currency of kindred denomination to the Japanese. 
 No sooner, however, had the machinery arrived than it was 
 found that the cost of putting it up in Soul and of importing 
 the metal would render the speculation an unprofitable one. 
 Accordingly it had to be carted back to Chemulpo, on the 
 coast, where another raint, costing $20,000, was erected for 
 its reception. Here a number of new coins^ were at last 
 struck off, consisting of a silver 5 ri/o piece or i/en, equivalent^, 
 to 500 cash, a silver n/o or 100 cash piece, a nickel 25 cash 
 piece, a copper 5 cash piece, and a brass 1 cash piece, which, 
 -^ however, were found to be so unsatisfactory that it was 
 
 rumoured they were all going to be melted down and ' /' 
 mmted again. They were finally issued, after the war, in 
 1894. Simultaneously it had been arranged so start a 
 system of bank-notes, a few of which were printed in^Tokio, 
 but never issued. At this stage it seems to have struck all 
 parties that the experiment of keeping open a State Mint in 
 Korea, to which all the metal required must be impoi'ted at 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 173 
 
 ruinous cost, and where the machinery was not of first-rate 
 quality, was absurd ; having indeed nothing but the gratifica- 
 tion of national vanity to recommend it. Accordingly the 
 only possible refuge was at last adopted ; and negotiations 
 were entered into and a contract signed with the Japanese 
 Government in 1893 to midertake the entire Korean currency 
 in the excellent Imperial Mint at Osaka. Even so, the 
 experiment was really superfluous and has since been 
 abandoned; for since the Japanese yen and the Mexican 
 dollar are made by treaty legal tender for customs dues, and 
 are everywhere freely accepted (except perhaps in the 
 remote interior) in Korea, all that is really wanted is the 
 issue of a stable cash coinage, the old debased currency 
 being called in and melted down or destroyed. This tale 
 of currency woe fills, however, a most characteristic page of 
 Korean history. 
 
 Among other commercial ventures in Korea, the Japanese 
 had also started branches of Japanese banks at Chemulpo 
 
 and Soul, into one of which inter alia the Customs 
 
 - Banks. 
 
 revenue was paid, and whereat the Government 
 
 account was permanently overdrawn ; and were said 
 
 also to have contemplated, in connection with their new 
 
 currency, the institution of exchange offices, or banks in 
 
 disguise, where the new coinage should be procurable in 
 
 exchange for the old copper cash, which it was fondly but 
 
 foolishly expected would thereby disappear from popular 
 
 use. In the meantime, with the view of placing Korean 
 
 finance in more experienced hands, it was suggested that a 
 
 branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation 
 
 should be opened in Korea — a venture by which, if carried 
 
 out, no one would have profited more than the Korean 
 
 Government. 
 
 By an admistration so sorely embarrassed and in such 
 
174 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 habitual financial straits as the Korean, one might expect 
 
 that, instead of embarking upon risky if not unsound 
 
 „. . financial transactions with adventurous outsiders, 
 
 to com- a resolute attempt would have been made to 
 
 velopment develop the internal resources of the country. 
 
 Means of which a consensus of opinion admits to be con- 
 communi- 
 cation, siderable. My journeys in the interior, restricted 
 
 "^^^ ^' as they were, convinced me that there might be 
 
 a great future for Korean agriculture ; and this view was 
 borne out by those who had travelled over a wider range. 
 
 Indeed, in the possession of an excellent climate, a soil of 
 more than ordinary fertility, vast tracts of still virgin country, 
 and a robust rural population, Korea possesses the four 
 conditions of agricultural prosperity. Already as a rice and 
 bean-producing country she was rising before the war into 
 commercial importance, and provided a valuable feeder for 
 the neighbouring islands of Japan. Among the self-created 
 obstacles that intervene between her and a full enjoyment 
 of these advantages one has long stood out in discreditable 
 prominence — viz. the scandalous poverty of means of com- 
 munication between the producing and the consuming areas, 
 and between the interior and the coast. There are no roads 
 in the country in any sense in which the word would be 
 understood in Europe. The pack-roads are mere bridle- 
 tracks, which frequently degenerate into rocky torrent-beds, 
 or precarious footpaths across inundated swamps. No one 
 looks after them ; they are never repaired. Transport upon 
 them is very costly, and on some occasions absolutely pro- 
 hibitive. No means for conveying the surplus produce of 
 any area to an available market in time of dearth are forth- 
 coming ; and one district may be smitten with sore famine, 
 while its neighbour, at no great distance, cannot get rid of 
 its superfluous grain. Better roads would be followed at 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 175 
 
 once by a better organised system of transport and by a 
 
 rapid increase in the volume of exports. 
 
 The same remarks apply to river and coast communications. 
 
 On two only of the five great navigable rivers of Korea ^ do 
 
 steamboats attempt to ply. Small native steamers 
 
 run between Fusan and the mouth of the Nak- ^^.^^ "^^'" 
 
 gation. 
 
 tong River, seven miles distant, and even ascend 
 the stream for fifty miles as far as Miriang. On the Han 
 River, which, if properly navigated, would almost convert 
 the capital into a seaport, two small steamers started 
 running from Chemulpo in 1880; one was wrecked, the 
 other was usually aground. Vessels of lighter draught and 
 special build were required for the shifting and shallow 
 channel. By the energy of the Chinese Resident a Chinese 
 company was at length organised in 1892 to undertake this 
 venture. Two new steamers were placed upon the river, 
 running the fifty-four miles from Chemulpo to Ryong-san, 
 three miles from Soul (which it was proposed to connect by 
 tramway with the landing-place) ; and by one of these 
 Sir N. O'Conor, the British Minister to Korea, ascended to 
 the capital, to present his letters of credence in 1893. 
 
 Similarly upon the coasts the supersession of the Korean 
 junk, which is one of the least seaworthy of crafts, by a line 
 of small schooners running from port to port, would 
 develop the provincial trade to an enormous extent, _°^-^~ *•„_ 
 and would cheapen the cost of the necessaries of 
 life. A Korean steamship company which charters foreign 
 vessels has for some little time been in existence, and has 
 lately extended its voyages to Chefoo on the one side and 
 Vladivostok on the other. Enjoying the monopoly of the 
 transport of tribute rice from the non-treaty ports to 
 
 1 The Yalu in the north, the Taidong or Ping-yang River, the Han, and 
 its tributary the Im-jin-gang, and the Naktong. 
 
176 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 Chemulpo, it might easily become a most lucrative concern ; 
 though in competition with the two keenest mercantile 
 nationalities of the East, it can hardly be expected that 
 either monopolies or bounties will ever galvanise an under- 
 taking owned and worked by such a people as the Koreans 
 into permanent vitality. 
 
 A concession was at one time applied for by some American 
 financiers for a short railway between Chemulpo and Soul; 
 
 and it is believed that the contract was about to 
 Railways. n i . i i i r-n 
 
 be signed when it was vetoed by the Chinese 
 
 Resident. This railway is one of the first of the boons with 
 
 which Japan has undertaken since the war to endow her 
 
 pivtege ; and there can be little doubt that it will be carried 
 
 into execution before long. Wild schemes for a network of 
 
 railways throughout Korea are said to have been formulated 
 
 in the brains of those who anticipate an early Russian seizure 
 
 of the entire peninsula^ or who believe that Japan will speedily 
 
 convert control into possession. But it will be worth while 
 
 to wait till the Russians or the Japanese are finally installed 
 
 before discussing what they will do. 
 
 The drawbacks which I have enumerated — viz. a debased 
 
 currency ; dearth of communications by land and water ; the 
 
 consequent cost of transport; the incubus of native 
 row o monopolists who control the prices and evade the 
 
 Treaties by fresh local liki7i or octi-oi-dues in the 
 interior ; the apathy of the Korean producer, the poverty of 
 the Korean consumer, and the lack of enterprise of the 
 Korean merchant; above all, the inexperience and mis- 
 judgment of the Korean Government — are obstacles to any 
 such heroic expansion of trade as was once predicted by the 
 optimists. Nevertheless, both in volume and value, Korean 
 trade has pursued, with occasional relapses, an upward 
 career. In 1891, which was the best year yet realised^ the 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 177 
 
 net value of the forei gn t rade was nearly <£lj400,000, and 
 the tot al trad e during the ten_yjears smce the opening of the 
 Treaty ports is stated to have been |50^00,000, a figure ^ ^•^■ 
 which, if the enormous almount of smuggling that goes on be 
 taken into account, does not probably represent more than 
 /fwo-thirds of the real value. The trade before the war was 
 practically shared by the Chinese and Japanese, between 
 whom the most acute competition prevailed. The former 
 had almost entirely monopolised the retail business, both in 
 native produce and foreign imports. They penetrated every- 
 where, and everywhere their stores and shops were to be 
 found. The Japanese, on the other hand, had acquired the 
 virtual command of the export trade, over ninety per cent, 
 of which was to Japan. The two great staples of Korean 
 produce are rice and beans, which are increasingly demanded 
 by her southern neighbour, as the population of Japan 
 increases and more soil is surrendered to the cultivation of 
 silk. Hence the intense Japanese irritation when, for 
 reasons of internal policy, the Korean Government saw fit 
 to place even a temporary embargo upon the export of 
 native grain. As regards imports, though there were no 
 Bi-itish, but only Gerixian and American merchants in the 
 country — the system of CJiinese or Japanese brokers operat- 
 ing with sufficient success — oyer (Sixty per cent, of the sum ■ 
 total, and practically the whole of her trade in piece goods, 
 hailed from Great Britain, who might claim, even in remote 
 Korea, to have discovered one more^market for Manchester.^ 
 
 1 It is nearly 300 years since, in 1604, the first Royal Licence ' to discover 
 the conntries of Cathaia, China, Japan, Corea, and Cambaia, and to_ trade 
 with the peoj)le there,' was issued by_ James i. to Sir Edward Michelborne, 
 for the East India Company. In 1614 E. Saj-er was sent to Tushma {i.e. 
 Tsushima), but reported tliat ' there was no hope of any good to be done 
 there or in Corea.' In 1618 Richard Cocks, the head of the Factory at 
 Firando in Japan, on the occasion of one of the Tribute Missions from 
 Korea, ' endeavoured to gain speech with the Amljassador, but was un- 
 
 M 
 
178 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 Evidence of commercial expansion is also provided by the 
 increasing number of steamships that have found it profitable 
 to include the Korean ports in their published sailing lists. 
 The well-known Japanese steamship company known as the 
 Nippon Yusen Kaisha keeps up a service of three^ mail 
 steamers. fortnightly between Kobe and the Korean ports^ 
 besides sending outside steamers for the carrying trade direct 
 from Osaka. Another Japanese company^ the Qsaka Shosen 
 Kaisha, has lately appeared upon the scene, and runs boats 
 at unstated intervals from the former port.^ The year 1891 
 also witnessed the introduction of a liberally subsidised 
 fortnightly Russian packet service between Shanghai and 
 Vladivostok, touching at the harbours of Fusan and Gensan 
 on the way. Though this venture cannot as yet conceivably 
 be attended with profit, it is characteristic of the energy with 
 which the Russians advance their flag in Eastern watexis, and 
 make an experimental and even expensive commerce sub- 
 serve larger^goliticaljeiids. It is not for mercantile gain that 
 the Russian subsidies are given, but for the avowed object 
 of providing a useful auxiliary marine, with well- organised 
 complement, in time of war. 
 
 In the nurture of Korean commerce too much credit 
 cannot be given to members of the Chinese Imperial Customs 
 Service, into whose hands the predominant influence of 
 the suzerain power insured that the collection of Korean 
 
 successful, the King of Tushma being the cause, he fearing that the English 
 might procure trade if Cocks got acquainted with the ambassadors. The 
 Japan Lords asked why he sought acquaintance with such barbarovis people.' 
 —State Papers, East Indies Series, yoI. i. (1513-1616),. No_s. ,336, 699; vol. ii. 
 (1617-1621), No. 273. From that day till the British Treaty in 1883 there 
 was no direct Anglo-Korean trade, although in 1702 the idea of a Korean 
 Factory was reconsidered by the Directors of the East India Company 
 J^&ruc&^^jLmudSjjvoX. iii. p. 483J. 
 
 1 The Japanese have acquired such a command of the shipping that out of 
 a total tonnage of 391,000 in the Treaty Ports in 1892, 328,000 wereJajJMiese, 
 as against 25,000 Russian, 15,000 Chinese, and 8000 Korean. 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 179 
 
 Customs should be committed when the Treaty Ports were 
 first opened in 1883. A number of European officials were 
 subsequently lent for the purpose from the ad- 
 mirably orsranised Chinese service under Sir Robert ^"s'^?'"^ 
 •' ° berv-ice. 
 
 Har t. Their salaries in Korea were only in part 
 
 paid by the Korean Government, for they continued to 
 
 remain o n the Chinese list and to receive Chinese pay. It 
 
 was rumoured that the Viceroy Li Hung Chang would have 
 
 liked to supersede Sir Robert Plart's service, which he was 
 
 said to regard with a jealous eye, by a privately organised 
 
 Chinese service of his own. In the interests of Korea this 
 
 would have been a most unfortunate step, since it would have 
 
 meant the substitution of universal jobbery and smuggling 
 
 for a pure and efficient administration. Since the war the 
 
 Japanese have done their best to oust the former employees 
 
 of China. But the Korean Government has managed so far 
 
 to retain them in its own service — almost the sole case in 
 
 respect of which it has successfully vindicated its so-called 
 
 independence. 
 
 Were steps taken by the Korean Government to check 
 
 the systematic smuggling that even now prevails all along 
 
 the coast between the Treaty Ports (to which the 
 
 . - „ Smuggling, 
 
 jurisdiction or the European Customs officers is 
 
 confined), much more business would pass through their 
 
 hands. Opium, which is prohibited in the Foreign Treaties, 
 
 is smuggled into the country, and giiiseug out of it in great 
 
 quantities. Of the enormous surreptitious traffic in gold-dust 
 
 I shall speak presently. Under the terms of the Fishery 
 
 Convention between Japan and Korea, the fishermen of the 
 
 former country have hitherto been permitted to land and 
 
 sell their fish wherever they please on the Southern Korean 
 
 coast. Each man does a little c ontra band business as well. 
 
 It is the same with the Ch inese ju nkm<;n on the west coast. 
 
180 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 In I894 the King was persuaded to organise a small cruiser 
 service, which should deal with this abuse, and might further 
 in time develop into the nucleus of a small but effective 
 Korean navy. For this purpose he applied for the loan of 
 two English officers, to give the requisite start to the under 
 taking. The war, however, put a stop to all further pro- 
 ceedings. 
 
 Though the symptoms of commercial development in 
 Korea are thus encouraging, it is not believed that the trade 
 
 ^ . has hitherto been profitable to those engaged in 
 
 stand- it, mainly owing to the difficulties arising from a 
 ' debased and fluctuating medium of exchange ; 
 whilst the natural apathy of the Koreans, which renders 
 them irresponsive to any appeal that places an unaccustomed 
 strain upon their energies or prepossessions, has so far found 
 an undeniable stimulus in the fact that the advent of the 
 foreigner cannot be said as yet to have brought much profit 
 to them. The 2>rices of everything in Korea have, since the 
 opening of the country, shown a tendency to assimilate 
 themselves to those of surrounding markets, with the result 
 that the necessaries of life have become dearer, and the cost 
 qf food-stuffs in particular has been greatly augmented. 
 None of the Customs revenue derived from increased trad^ 
 goes into the pocket of the Korean peasant, and he probably 
 has moments of acute though stolid disgust at the boasted 
 regeneration of his country. 
 
 Among the resources to which the attention of foreigners 
 
 has long been drawn, either as unrealised assets of national 
 
 wealth or as a source of possible lucre to them- 
 
 Mines and ggjygg ^re the minerals of Korea. It is known 
 
 minerals. ' 
 
 that gold, lead, and silver (galena), copp er, and iron 
 ores are found in some abundance, although hitherto worked 
 in the most spasmodic and clumsy of fashions. Some years 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 181 
 
 ago the most roseate anticipations were indulged in of impend- 
 ing mineral production; and a financial authority was even 
 found to assert that the currency problem of the world would 
 be solved by the phenomenal output of the precious metals 
 from Korea. Latterly there has been a corresponding recoil 
 of opinion, which has led people to declare that the Korean 
 mines are a fraud, and that the wealth-producing capacity of 
 the peninsula will never be demonstrated in this direction. 
 Those, however, who have the most intimate knowledge of 
 the interior agree in thinking that the minerals are there 
 and are capable of being worked by European hands at an 
 assured profit. Should the Government consent to a con- 
 cession on at all a liberal scale, and personally assist instead 
 of obstructing its operations, the money would be forthcom- 
 ing to-morrow from more than one quarter, and it is incon- 
 ceivable, vain though the Koreans are about treasures of 
 which they know nothing, but which, because a few foreigners 
 are running -after them, they conceive must be unique in the 
 world, that many more years can elapse before a serious 
 attempt is made to open them up. Excellent coal, a soft 
 anthracite, burning brightly and leaving little ash, is already 
 procured by the most primitive methods from a mine near 
 Pyong-yang, which is said to contain unlimited quantities. 
 Nearly all the iron that is used in the country for agricultural 
 and domestic purposes is also of native production, the ore 
 being scratched out of shallow holes in the ground and 
 smelted in charcoal furnaces. The Koreans have no con- 
 conception either of ventilation, drainage, blasting, or 
 lighting. There is or was a Mining Board among the 
 Government Departments at Soul ; but of its activity no 
 evidence has ever been forthcoming. 
 
 The mineral, howevei*, that has excited most interest 
 abroad is gold, which, in the form of dust from river 
 
182 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 washings, has formed a notable item in the exports of Korea 
 for many years. During the last decade £8,000^000 of gold 
 
 and gold-dust have passed through the hands of 
 
 the Customs in export. But this does not in all 
 probability represent more than twenty per cent, of the real 
 export^ few Japanese or Chinese leaving the country without 
 smuggling out a little of the precious dust upon their 
 persons ; while the fluctuations in the annual returns may be 
 explained by the higher rate of wages procurable from 
 agriculture during years of good harvests, whereby labour is 
 diverted from the more precarious essay of the goldfields. 
 Placer mining is probably best suited to Korean conditions ; 
 but the introduction of quartz crushing and of scientific ap- 
 pliances might be expected to add largely to the annual 
 production. Five years ago the Government did purchase 
 foreign machinery, and engaged foreign miners to work the 
 gold-mines in the Pyong-yang district, but the enterprise 
 was abandoned before it had had a fair trial. 
 
 Anyhow, with mineral resources of undoubted value, even 
 if of uncertain quantity, with grain-producing capacities that 
 
 are susceptible of indefinite multiplication, with 
 , ready markets and willing customers close at hand, 
 
 Korea will only have to thank herself if she pre- 
 fers to remain plunged in poverty and squalor. The initia- 
 tive must, of course, come from the Government. Hitherto 
 in Korea, unhappily, as in Persia, quicquid delirant reges 
 plechmtur Achivi. Perhaps the Japanese I'eghne may bring 
 about an improvement. The first thing that the Govern- 
 ment has to do is to abandon the idea that Korea is an 
 Amalthea's horn, into which foreigners will pay enormous 
 prices (in the shape of royalties or commission) for the privi- 
 lege of dipping their fingers. The next step is to realise 
 that without foreign capital little can be done, and under 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 183 
 
 native management nothing. At the same time a wary 
 eye must be directed upon the not too dispassionate offers 
 of financial assistance which are pressed upon the inter- 
 esting debutante with sucli suspicious emulation by her astute 
 neighbours. 
 
 Owing to the so recent opening of the country and to the 
 savage persecution by which Christianity had been practically 
 exterminated a short time before, the missionary 
 question in Korea is in a far less advanced state of ork'in^'^^ 
 
 development than it is in either of the neighbour- Korea. 
 
 I. Perse- 
 ing countries of Japan and China. Not that the cution. 
 
 record of Christian missionary effort in the penin- 
 sula has been either slender or abortive. It is now a little 
 more than a hundred years since the intercourse with Peking 
 (where there was a flourishing Roman Catholic Church), 
 originating from the journeys to and fro of the annual Tribute 
 Missions, was responsible for the first Korean convert to the 
 faith of Christ. Since that date the infant Korean Church 
 has shown a heroism, has endured sufferings, and has pro- 
 duced a martyr-roll that will compare favourably with the 
 missionary annals of less obscure countries and more forward 
 peoples. From the start it was proscribed, hunted down, 
 and delivered over to occasional spasms of fierce persecution. 
 It was not till after half-a- century of disturbed and precai-i- 
 ous existence, in which the flame was only kept alive by the 
 devotion of native or of Chinese converts, that in 1836 
 M. Maubant, the second Papal nominee to the post of Vicar 
 Apostolic of Korea, succeeded in getting across the frontier, 
 the first European priest who had set foot in Korea since 
 1594. In 1837 the first Catholic bishop of Korea, Msgr. 
 Imbert, followed, only to lose his life in a violent persecution 
 that immediately ensued. In spite of continued and telent- 
 less hostility on the part of the Government, the native 
 
184, POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 Christians are said in 1859 to have numbered 17,000. After 
 the usurpation, however, of the Tai Wen Kun in 1804, the 
 man with ' the bowels of iron and the heart of stone ' was 
 content with no half-measures. A merciless war of extirpa- 
 tion was waffed against the heretical sect; the French 
 expedition of 1866 that was sent to avenge these murders 
 beat an inglorious retreat; and by 1870, 8000 native Chris- 
 tians were said to have paid the penalty with their lives. 
 
 The end, however, was near at hand. The reign of the 
 bloodthirsty Regent was now over; more liberal ideas ani- 
 mated the young Sovereign ; and the warning 
 2. olera- clamour of the nations was heard sounding at the 
 gates. The earlier Treaties, it is true, demanded 
 nothing more than the free exercise of their religion in the 
 Treaty Ports for the subjects of the signatory Powers; nor 
 to this day does any article, expressly sanctioning missionary 
 enterprise, appear in any of the Treaties. The French are 
 said to have held out long for such a concession ; but the 
 only substitute for it which their Treaty, concluded in 1886, 
 contains, is a clause permitting of the employment of natives 
 as literati, interpreters, or servants, or in any other lawful 
 capacity, by the French, and promising the latter every 
 assistance in their study of the native language and institu- 
 tions.^ Whatever may have been the ulterior meaning of 
 these words, the Korean Government, with representatives 
 of all the great Powers of Europe stationed in its capital, and 
 with the gunboats of their squadrons floating upon the neigh- 
 bouring seas, is no longer in a position, even if it had the 
 
 1 Article ix. runs as follows : — 'Les autorites Frangaises et les Frangais en 
 Coree pourront engager cles sujets Coreens k titre de lettre, d'interj)rete, de 
 serviteur, ou h, tout autre titre licite, sans que les autorites Coreennes puis- 
 sent y mettre obstacle. . . . Les Frangais qui se rendraient en Coree pour y 
 etudier ou y professer la langue ecrite ou i^arlee, les sciences, les lois et les 
 arts, devront, en temoignage de sentiments de bonne araitie dont sont ani- 
 mees les Hautes Parties Contractantes, recevoir toujours aide et assistance.' 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 185 
 
 desire^ to assume a hostile attitude ; and missionaries are at 
 liberty to come and go as they please, and to make converts 
 where they can. There are said to be many thousand native 
 Christians^ Roman Catholics^ in the country. In a letter 
 dated May 1894, Monsignor Mutel, Vicar Apostolic of the 
 Roman Catholic Church in Korea, stated that whereas the 
 number of Korean Christians in 1886 was 14,000, in 1894 it 
 was 208,423. Their priests, many of whom are Koreans, live 
 in their midst; and every member of the flock, however 
 remote his residence, is visited once in each year by his 
 spiritual father. The French Catholic Church and Establish- 
 ment, occupying a natural elevation, are one of the most 
 prominent objects in Soul, and their earlier start has given 
 them an advantage which the Protestants will not easily 
 retrieve. 
 
 In 1890 an English Protestant Bishop (whose diocese is 
 Korea and Shing-king, i.e. Manchuria) first appeared upon 
 
 the scene, and when I was in Soul, the Mission ^ ... 
 
 English 
 
 establishment consisted, in addition, of several Protestant 
 clergy, some lay-helpers, a doctor, and some sisters 
 of St. Paul's, Kilburn. Churches had been built in Soul and 
 Chemulpo, hospitals had been opened in both places, a 
 printing-press had been established at Soul, and the mission- 
 aries were still engaged in acquiring the language before 
 turning their energies either to evangelisation or to the 
 translation of the Prayer-book into Korean.^ There was as 
 yet neither Korean congregation nor Korean convert. Sim- 
 ultaneously, and even earlier, American, Canadian, and 
 Australian Societies or Churches had deputed bands of 
 ardent workers to enter the field ; and, all told, there were 
 
 1 The New Testament was translated into Korean over twelve years ago 
 by Rev. J. Ross of Newcliwang ; and in 1882 the Religious Tract Society 
 published an introduction to it, and a catechism of the chief Biblical doctrines, 
 in Korean. 
 
186 POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 between thirty and forty Protestant ministers at work in 
 
 Korea. 
 
 What may be the future that lies before them it would be 
 
 hazardous at this stage to predict. The Korean wolf has 
 
 not been converted straight away^ by the exigen- 
 
 ^^^^^ ^ cies of national weakness or outside pressure, into 
 sentiment. ^ 
 
 a lamb ; and a people at once so incurious, and so 
 firmly wedded to Chinese ethics and ancestor-worship, may 
 be expected in some places to oppose a stubborn front of re- 
 sistance, in others to indulge in occasional outbursts of frantic 
 antagonism. A few such cases have occurred even since the 
 Treaties. In 1888 an outbreak took place in the streets of 
 Soul, the ridiculous rumour (not unlike that which preceded 
 the famous Tientsin massacres in 1870, as well as later out- 
 rages in China) having been spread that the American 
 missionaries had been stealing and boiling Korean babies in 
 order to manufacture chemicals for use in photography. 
 Nine native officials who were alleged to have been concerned 
 in the transaction were seized and decapitated by the mob ; 
 and the crews of the foreign gunboats at Chemulpo were 
 marched up to the capital to protect the subjects of their 
 several nationalities. More recently there has been a re- 
 crudescence of the same feeling. In 1892 a Catholic mission- 
 ary was attacked and beaten at a town in the interior, and a 
 threatening proclamation was posted on the missionary doors 
 in Soul. Early, in 1893 a politico-religious party, calling it- 
 self the Tokaguto or Tonghak, i.e. the Party of Oriental 
 Learning, and appealing to the Conservative instinct of the 
 people, started into being and attained menacing proportions, 
 both in the capital and in the provinces. Its leaders pre- 
 sented a petition to the Throne demanding the prohibition 
 of all foreign religions and the expulsion of the merchants — 
 in other words, the abi'ogation of the Treaties. Nor was it 
 
SYMPTOMS IN KOREA 187 
 
 till after the ringleaders had been arrested, and foreign men- 
 of-war had hurried from all quarters of the China Seas to 
 Chemulpo — while the Japanese community in Soul, who 
 are always the first victims of attack, had organised a militia 
 in their own defence — ^that the peril subsided. 
 
 In the following year, in the disturbances again organised 
 by the Tonghaks, which preceded and furnished the main 
 Japanese plea for the declaration of war, the native Christians 
 suffered severely. A French missionary, Pere Jozeau, was 
 brutally murdered in July. Christian villages were pillaged 
 and burned, many native Christians were killed, and, before 
 the war had half run its course, there were less than half a 
 dozen Catholic missionaries left in Korea, and those at or 
 near to the Treaty Ports. The Tonghaks have now been 
 suppressed, and almost all spirit has been crushed out of 
 the Koreans. Nevertheless the outlook is not reassuring. 
 Because the Korean is ordinarily friendly to foreigners, it 
 does not follow that he has any genuine fondness for us, still 
 less for our creed. Instinctive in him is the Conservatism of 
 a hide-bound stolidity ; and to suppose that the walls of the 
 Korean Jericho are going to fall flat down at the first blast 
 of the missionary trumpet is to cherish a belief from which 
 the future will in all likelihood provide some more sharp 
 awakenings. On the other hand, since, in the dramatic 
 history of Korean Christianity, there is much cause for 
 admiration, there is consequently good ground for hope. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE POLITICAL FUTUllE OF KOREA 
 
 Behold, a peojile shall come from the north, and a great nation, and many 
 kings shall be raised np from the coasts of the earth. They shall hold the 
 bow and the lance : they are cruel, and will not show mercy : their voice 
 shall roar like the sea, and they shall ride u]3on horses, every one put in 
 array, like a man to the battle, against thee. Jeremiah 1. 41-42. 
 
 Before leaving Korea I must devote a final chapter to a 
 
 discussion of the subject to which all other Korean questions 
 
 are subsidiary, and to find a clue to which I was 
 
 l3oiiHc^l~ attracted thither from afar — viz. the political 
 
 status of future that awaits this shuttlecock among the 
 Korea. . t i i i i . 
 
 nations. 1 use the phrase as accurately descrip- 
 tive of the relation in which ^Korea stood in j.892 :to the 
 various Powers who were represented at her capital, who 
 treated her from entirely different and wholly irreconcilable 
 standpoints, according to their own interests or prejudices, 
 and at whose hands she was alternately — nay, even simul- 
 taneously — patronised, cajoled, bullied, and caressed. A 
 more a noma lous political condition certainly did not exist 
 in_±he world than that of a country which itself claimed to 
 be both independent and dependent, and could produce 
 powerful evidence in support of either hypothesis ; and as 
 to which oiitside Powers advanced pretensions of suzerainty, 
 control, protectorate, alliance, mo§t-favoured-nation treat- 
 ment, or technical equality, for all of which there was 
 considerable show of justification. This curious state of 
 affairs had arisen, in the first place, out of the peculiar 
 
 188 — 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 189 
 
 geogi'apliical situation of Korea as a sort of political Tom 
 Tiddler's ground between China, Russia, and Japan ; and, 
 secondly, out of the contradictory policy pursued by the 
 first-named of these Powers in moments of calculation or of 
 alarm at the attitude or encroachments of the others. By 
 a survey of the respective positions occupied or claimed 
 by this trio, who were the protagonists in the international 
 play for which Korea provided an involuntary stage, while 
 the remaining nations were either cast for minor parts in 
 the same piece, or sat as interested spectators in the 
 auditorium, we may succeed in elucidating the earlier 
 history of the drama that assumed such sanguinary develop- 
 ments in 1894. 
 
 Though Korea has been ruled by successive dynasties of 
 monarchs for centuries, there has scarcely been a time since 
 
 the commencement of the Christian era when it ^ 
 
 Connec- 
 
 has not acknowledged a greater or less depend- tion with 
 ence upon either China or Japan. The claims of "^ 
 the latter Power, which in the declining years of the 
 Shogunate were allowed to shrink into the background — 
 to the great regret of Japanese patriots — were both the 
 earlier in origii^and have been exercised over the longer 
 space of time. It was as early as the third century a.d. 
 that a masculine Empress^Tlegent of Japan, bearing the 
 appropriate name of Jingo or Zingu, herself led an expedi- 
 tion against Korea and received th©s^ubmission of that 
 State. From that time down to the end of4he fourteenth 
 century the relations between the two countries, though 
 frequently disturbed, were, as a rule, those of Japanese 
 ascendency and Korean allegiance. Tribute Missions 
 constantly sailed froin Fusan to the Court of Mikado or 
 Shogun; and there grew up in Japanese minds the con- 
 viction, which has never been extirpated, that to surrender 
 
190 KOREA 
 
 Korea would be as indelible a stain upon the national 
 honour as Mary of England felt it to lose Calais. After 
 1392, however, when the Mings assisted the Ni dynasty to 
 establish itself on the Korean throne, the influence of China 
 became paraiTiount, and the marks of deference to Japan 
 dwindled, until in 1460 the last Korean Embassy started 
 for the Shogun's Court at Kamakura. It was accordingly 
 as much to punish a refractory vassal as it was to prosecute 
 loftier schemes of conquest against China herself that 
 Hideyoshi designed his famous Korean expeditions. This 
 invasion, by which the peninsula was desolated from end to 
 end for six years (1592-98), had, even before the recent war 
 broke out, permanently affected the relations between the 
 two countries. It had left a heritage of wounded pride and 
 national antipathy in the breast of the Koreans which three 
 centuries had not availed to erase ; while it heightened the 
 exasperation felt by Japan that the vassal whom she crushed 
 so utterly should for so long have managed to elude her 
 clutch. 
 
 The retreat of the Japanese for a time suspended com- 
 munications between the two States; but in I6I8 occurred 
 the Korean Mission, to which I have already 
 Iribute alluded in a footnote; and in l623 lyemitsu 
 demanded the revival of the tribute ; and from 
 that date, in spite of the absolute submission of the Korean 
 Throne to the Manchus from l637 onwards. Missions 
 continued to make their annual excursion to Tokio, entirely 
 at the expense of the Japanese, and with no advantage to 
 the latter beyond the barren compliment to their pride. 
 Owing to the exorbitant cost of entertainment a change 
 was effected in 1790, when the envoys, instead of crossing 
 to the Japanese mainland, were invited to proceed as far as 
 Tsushima only ; with which change the so-called tribute 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 191 
 
 shrank still more into an annual exchange of presents with 
 little or no admission of political subordination. This 
 incongruous condition of affairs lasted till 1832^ when the 
 last complimentary mission upon a Shogun's accession was 
 despatched from Korea to the Japanese Court. 
 
 A new era now opened, in ^v^iiclwFapan, by dint of her 
 own political resuscitation, Was to re-establish a powerful 
 
 influence in Korea, although at the\Cost of the „ . . 
 
 ''^ ^ r notion 
 
 feudatory relationship which for so many centuries and rup- 
 it had been her boastful pretension to maintain. 
 When the Korean Government was threatened by the 
 French invasion in 1866, it is said to have remembered its 
 old connection, and to have solicited the advice and aid of 
 Japan. No reply being returned to this request it was not 
 surprising that when in 1868 a Japanese embassy arrived in 
 Soul to convey the formal announcement of the political 
 revolution in Japan, and the resumption by the Mikado of 
 full sovereignty, and to invite from the Koreans a renewal 
 of ancient friendship and vassalage, an insolent refusal was 
 returned by the Tai Wen Kun. In Japan the Samurai 
 party were furious ; but the country was too poor and too 
 much hampered by other complications to go to war ; 
 although the Chauvinist spirit found angry vent in rebellion 
 in Saga, and in an attempt upon the life of the Japanese 
 statesman Iwakui'a, who, on his return from Europe with 
 Okubo in 1873, stoutly resisted a policy of stronger 
 measures. To satisfy these ardent spirits, two successive 
 but bootless Japanese missions, conducted by Hanabusa and 
 Moriyama, were sent to Korea in 1873 and 1874, to re- 
 establish Japanese authority by peaceful means, while the 
 filibustering Formosan expedition was undertaken to keep 
 the war-party employed in 1874. Nevertheless, when in 
 1875 a Japanese man-of-war, the Umjolcan, had been fired 
 
192 KOREA 
 
 upon by the Koreans from the island of Kanghwa on the 
 Han^ and after an appeal to Peking and the receipt of an 
 assurance from the Chinese Government that all responsi- 
 bility was disowned by them, the first Japanese Treaty of 
 1876 was presented as an ultimatum and signed^ the 
 military party again broke forth into stormy discontent, 
 and the great Saigo of Satsuma, splitting irrevocably with 
 the Government, retired to his patrimony to plot the 
 terrible civil war that commenced in the following year. 
 
 The self-restraint and caution of the then race of Japanese 
 statesmen were, however, amply rewarded. They wisely 
 T, recognised that the time for an aggressive policy 
 
 ofinflu- was not then, and that Japanese influence in 
 
 ence. 
 
 Treaty of Korea could best be recovered, not by sustained 
 
 1876. invasion or conquest, biit by the subtler move- 
 
 ments of diplomatic finesse and commercial control. In 
 this sagacious policy they were assisted by the weakness 
 and indecision of China. When the above-mentioned Treaty 
 was concluded, in 1876", with Korea, the opening words in 
 Article 1 contained the remarkable statement that ' Chosen, 
 being an independent State, enjoys the same sovereign rights 
 as does Japan ' — an admission which was foolishly winked at 
 by China from the mistaken notion that, by disavowing her 
 connection with Korea, she could escape the unpleasantness 
 of being called to account for the delinquencies of her vassal. 
 This preliminary advantage was more than doubled in 
 value to Japan when, after the revolution in Soul in 1882, 
 
 by which her diplomatic representative was com- 
 tion of pelled to flee from the Korean capital, she con- 
 
 Tientsin eluded a Convention with Korea, containing a 
 in 1885. '^ 
 
 stipulation that she should have the right to 
 
 station troops for the protection of her own nationals in 
 that country. It was quadrupled when, after the second 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 198 
 
 revolution in 1884, and the second Hegira to Chemulpo, 
 Japan at once sent troops to avenge the insult and declined 
 to remove them until China had made a similar concession 
 with regard to the Chinese garrison, which had been main- 
 tained since the previous outbreak in 1882 in that city. By 
 the Convention of Tientsin, which was negotiated in April 
 1885 by Count Ito with the Viceroy Li Hung Chang, both 
 parties agreed to withdraw their troops and not to send an 
 armed force to Korea at any future date to suppress rebellion 
 or disturbance without giving previous intimation to the 
 other. 1 This document was a second diplomatic triumph 
 for Japan ; for, whilst it was safe to aver that neither Power 
 would ever be seriously deterred thereby from hostile action, 
 it yet involved the very admission of substantial equality of 
 rights as regards Korea which Japan had all along been 
 labouring to reassert, and which China, except in the 
 moments when she had been caught napping, had as con- 
 sistently repudiated. Japan, therefore, if she had not re- 
 covered her former position, had at least re-established her 
 credit. It was, in my judgment, greatly to be regretted 
 that in the summer of 1894 her Government, anxious to 
 escape from domestic tangles by a spirited foreign policy, 
 abandoned this statesmanlike attitude, and embarked upon 
 a course of aggression in Korea, for which there appeared to 
 be no sufficient provocation, and the ulterior consequences 
 of which, even after the brilliant issue of the campaign, it is 
 still too early to forecast. 
 
 So much for the political revindication of Japan prior to 
 
 1 This stipulation was contained iu the conchiding article of the Convention, 
 which ran as follows: — 'In case of any disturbance of a serious character 
 occurring in Korea rendering it necessary for the resjjective countries (.Japan 
 and China) or either of them to send troops to Korea, it is hereby luiderstood 
 that they shall give, each to the other, previous notice in writing of their in- 
 tention so to do, and after the matter is settled, they shall withdraw their 
 troops immediately and not further station them there.' 
 
 N 
 
194 KOREA 
 
 the war. Simultaneously she pursued with unflagging energy 
 the policy of commercial and fiscal ascendency in Korea. 
 
 „ Active and business-like as compared with the 
 
 Commer- '■ 
 
 cial ascen- indolent Koreans, possessed of capital, and under- 
 standing how to make others pay through the nose 
 for the loan of it, her colonists and merchants had gradually 
 fastened a grip on the weaker country which it would in 
 any case have been exceedingly difficult to shake off. The 
 Japanese had got the mint and banks already. The Govern- 
 ment was largely in their debt. They were daily pressing 
 for concessions of every description. Their eye had long 
 been fixed upon the Customs, then in the hands of their 
 rivals, the Chinese, and in a few years' time they hoped to 
 have obtained so commanding a hold upon the national 
 resoui'ces of Korea as to render her political dependence 
 upon China a constitutional fiction which the wisdom born ot 
 accomplished facts might ultimately allow to expire. This 
 policy was, of course, one of selfishness. But its success was 
 not thereby so much imperilled as it was by the national 
 race-hatre^ between Koreans and Japanese, that was and is 
 one of the most striking phenomena in contemporary Chosen. 
 Civil and obliging in their own country, the Japanese even 
 before the war had developed in Korea a faculty for bullying 
 and bluster that was the result partly of national vanity, 
 partly of the memories of the past. The lower orders ill- 
 treated the Koreans on every possible opportunity, and were 
 cordially detested by them in return. Indeed, it was very 
 amusing to contrast the extreme sensitiveness of Japan 
 towards the Treaty Powers in her own territories and her 
 indignant protest against the severity of the Treaties, with 
 the domineering callousness with which she, the first of the 
 Treaty Powers in Korea, treated the latter unfortunate 
 country because of its weakness, and exacted every ounce 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 195 
 
 of flesh permitted by the Treaties between them.^ Such a 
 relationship, which was in marked contrast with the amicable 
 terms on which the Koreans and Chinese subsisted side by 
 side, did not assist Japan in the war, during which the 
 Koreans lent every possible aid to China, and, aggravated as 
 it has been by the issue of the conflict, will not facilitate 
 the issue which Japanese ambition has in view. 
 
 A striking instance of this attitude was afforded just before 
 the outbi'eak of hostilities. In the course of 1889 the 
 Korean Government, finding that the native- 
 grown beans, were being bought up in_ great , ? ^^'^^ 
 quantity by Japanese merchants for exportation 
 t o Japan , issued a temporary prohibition of export in two 
 provi nces. By this decree the purchasers, who had already 
 made advances to the cultivators, alleged that they were the 
 losers by nearly $220,000, owing to their inability to recover 
 their loans and to the non-delivery of the grain. Now by the 
 Trade Regulations agreed upon between Korea and Japan in 
 1883, the former country had the right to prohibit the export 
 of^cereals in time of scarcity or emergency.- The Japanese, 
 however, alleged that the emergency had not arisen in this 
 case, and also that the stipulated month's notice had not 
 been given in advance. The claim was pressed with greater 
 or less insistence for four years, the Korean Government 
 admitting a certain liability, but expressing its incapacity, 
 owing to continued impoverishment, to pay more than 
 $60,000 in compensation. At length the Radical and Jingo 
 party in Japan became very much excited at this insulting 
 
 1 When Japan dictated the first Kiitfiaii-JCr£aty_iii_LSZ6, she Qopied. the 
 extra-Jerxitorial clauses almost verbatim fi-om Articles iv. and v. of the Anglo- 
 Jimauese . Treaty of 1858 ; and lias never shown any reluctance to set in 
 operation against Korea the provisions of which sfhe complains so bitterly 
 when applied to herself. 
 
 - Regulation xxxvu. 
 
196 KOREA 
 
 procrastination. As a sop to them the Japanese Minister to 
 Soul was recalled, and a young Radical firebrand, who had 
 recently published a book on Korea on the strength of a 
 short visit there, was sent out to pursue a policy of brag. 
 This individual, by presenting an ultimatum at the throat of 
 the Korean Court, eventually compounded the dispute for 
 $110,000; but, being totally destitute either of manners or 
 of official training, he affronted the King and his Ministers to 
 such an extent by his unseemly violation of all diplomatic 
 etiquette in his interviews with them, that he was summarily 
 recalled by the Japanese Government, returning to Tokip to 
 be made the recipient of a popular ovation. 
 
 At that time Count Ito and his colleagues were not 
 believed to have any sympathy with this intemperate and 
 swaggering attitude towards the weaker State, 
 rue po icy ^^^^y appeared to recognise that Japanese policy 
 in Korea could only attain its ends by a friendly 
 understanding with China; that the effort to recover purely 
 political ascendency in Soul was incompatible with such an 
 understanding ; and that every attempt to humiliate or 
 terrorise over Korea was to pl^jChiiiaj game, and to 
 tighten the bonds that united the vassal with the suzerain. 
 At the same time no Japanese minister could afford al- 
 together to abandon the immemorial claims of his country 
 over the petty adjacent kingdom ; while every Japanese 
 minister has now to deal with a people — namely, his own 
 countrymen — who, when their so-called patriotic instincts 
 are appealed to, are apt to respond by going stark mad. 
 
 It is the latter phenomenon, and the skilful but not too 
 scrupulous use that was made of it, coupled with a justifiable 
 confidence on the part of the Japanese in the superiority 
 of their naval and military armaments, that prompted the 
 rupture with China and the sustained invasion of Korea in 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 197 
 
 the summer of 18.94. Taking advantage of disturbances in 
 the peninsula, which demonstrated with renewed clearness 
 the impotence of the native Government to pro- 
 vide either a decent administration for its own ^^'^break 
 
 of war. 
 subjects, or adequate protection to the interests of 
 
 foreigners, and ingeniously profiting by the loophole left for 
 
 future interference in the Tientsin Agreement of 1885, 
 
 Japan in July 1894 responded to the despatch by China of a 
 
 body of 2000 men, at the request of the Korean King, to 
 
 assist him in putting down the Tonghak rebellion, by herself 
 
 landing a inuch larger military force, estimated at 10,000 
 
 men, in Korea, and by seizing the capital. Li Hung Chang 
 
 retaliated by the despatch of the Chinese fleet and of an 
 
 expeditionary force, marching overland into the northern 
 
 provinces. Both parties declined to retire : China relying 
 
 upon her genuine authority and influence, but feeling that 
 
 she had been somewhat outwitted ; Japan being resolved to 
 
 atone for previous blunders, and to reap a full advantage 
 
 from her crafty but scarcely defensible diplomacy. After 
 
 preliminary engagements, the result of which was entirely in 
 
 favour of Japan, war was declared by the latter; and its 
 
 subsequent progress, Avhich on her side almost amounted to a 
 
 procession, and on that of China to a stampede, is sufficiently 
 
 recalled by the names of Ping-yang, Yalu River, Port 
 
 Arthur, and Wei Hai Wei. With its consequences I shall 
 
 deal in a later chapter. 
 
 I turn next to the position of China. Her ascendency in 
 
 Korea, which had far more natural conditions in the shape of 
 
 common language, customs, religion, and philosophy, 
 
 Connec- 
 as well as territorial connection, to recommend it tion with 
 
 than could be advanced by Japan, practically dated ^^^' 
 
 from the foundation of the present reigning dynasty of Korea 
 
 500 years ago. It was under the patronage of the Ming 
 
198 \^ KOREA 
 
 Emperors that^'^xTaijo, a soldier of fortune, raised himself 
 to the Korean throne/ and established a Com-t and capital at 
 Soulj which till 1894 faithfully reproduced the Chinese 
 (pharacteristics of that epoch. When the Japanese invaded 
 the peninsula from 1592 to 1598, the Chinese defended it 
 with as much energy as though it were part of their own 
 territories, and ultimately expelled the intruders. Subse- 
 quently, on their way to China, the Manchu conquerors 
 devastated and exacted an even more humiliating sub- 
 mission from Korea, which till recent events was never 
 surrendered, and was punctiliously enforced by the suzerain 
 Power, While Hamel was in Korea, 1653-1 666, he testifies 
 to the constant visits of the representative of the ' Great 
 Cham,' and to the complete humility of the Korean 
 Government. Annually a Tribute Mission wended its 
 way by land from Soul to Peking, conveying the specified 
 tribute,^ and receiving in return the Calendar, which it 
 was the imperial prerogative to prepare, and the mark of 
 vassalage to receive. In the succeeding century the tribute 
 was gradually reduced, and the embassy appeared at times 
 to dwindle into a ceremonial function, carrying presents in 
 return for the permission to trade at the frontier, rather 
 than tokens of political submission. Nevertheless, during 
 this epoch a violent disturbance took place if there was the 
 slightest omission of prescribed deference ; and one Korean 
 monarch was smartly fined for his omission of some punctilio. 
 From the time of the Manchu invasion to the present day 
 every King and Queen of Korea have received their patent 
 of royalty from the Court at Peking ; ^ and the historical 
 
 1 Its ingredients are stated by Dallet (vol. i. p. 15) ; but it is long since 
 tliey were scrupulously exacted. 
 
 - M. Scherzer has translated into French and published in Recucil 
 W Itiniraires et cle Voyages clans I'Asie Ccntrale et Vextreme Orient (1878) 
 the diary of the principal Chinese Envoy who was sent from Peking to ' 
 invest the present Queen of Korea in 186G. 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 199 
 
 tutelary position of China continued up till the war to be 
 vindicated in the following manner. 
 
 In addition to the Imperial investitui*e, and to the annual 
 despatch of the Tribute Mission from Soul, which was still 
 maintained — although a practical and mercantile 
 aspect was lent to the proceeding by its being gyj^ences 
 utilised for the export to China by the Chung In of Korean 
 ^ 1 T^ . 1 • /> 1 • vassalage. 
 
 oi the Kmg s red ginseng — the name or the reign- 
 ing monarch of Korea was also given to him by China, and 
 the era specified in Korean Treaties was that of the accession, 
 not of the King, but of his Suzerain the Emperor. The King 
 of Korea was not allowed to wear the Imperial yellow. When 
 the Imperial Commissioners arrived from Peking, he was re- 
 quired to proceed outside of his capital in order to receive 
 them, the chief Commissioner being of higher rank in the 
 Chinese official hierarchy than himself; and I have previously 
 spoken of the now destroyed ornamental archway outside the 
 west gate of Soul, at which the vassal prince received the 
 envoys of his Suzerain. When any notable events occurred 
 in the Court at Peking they were communicated to the 
 vassal Court, and were the cause of a respectful message 
 either of condolence or of congratulation from the latter. 
 Similarly, if any death occurred among the leading members 
 of the Royal Family at Soul, an official intimation of the fact 
 was sent to Peking. 
 
 When the late Queen Dowager of Korea died in 1890, the 
 King deputed a mission at once to report the fact to the 
 Emperor ; and, in petitioning the latter to dis- 
 pense with the ordinary ceremonial of a return ^^^q ° „ 
 mission to convey the condolences of the Suzerain, Dowager 
 because of the difficulty that would be experi- 
 enced by Korea in consequence of her financial embarrass- 
 ment in carrying out all the prescribed ceremonies — he 
 
200 KOREA 
 
 made the following statement of his position vis-a-vlf with 
 China : — 
 
 ' Our counti-y is a small kingdom and a vassal State of China^ to 
 which the Emperor has shown his graciousness from time im- 
 memorial. Our Government was enabled to survive tlie political 
 troubles of 1882 and 1884 through the assistance received from the 
 Throne, which secured for our country peace and tranquillity. 
 Since His Majesty has been good enough to confer these favours 
 upon us^ we should make known to him whatever M'e desire ; and 
 whatever we wisli we trust that he may allow, as to an infant con- 
 fiding in the tender mercies of its parents.' 
 
 These compliments, however, did not induce the Suzerain 
 to forgo one tittle of his traditional rights ; although he so 
 far yielded to the Korean plea of poverty as to permit his 
 Commissioners to travel by sea to Chemulpo, instead of over- 
 land, thereby greatly reducing the cost of their entertain- 
 ment. An account of the minute and elaborate ceremonies 
 observed on both sides was afterwards published with evident 
 design by the Secretary to the Imperial Commissioners.^ 
 The latter, it appears, among other marks of condescension, 
 suggested the omission from the programme of the state 
 banquets, music, and jugglery, with which it was usual to 
 entertain them. "^ Their motive for this suggestion was to 
 show their consideration fc^r Korean impecuniosity.' They 
 also declined to receive parting presents from the King, at 
 which the latter 'felt very grateful, and at the same time 
 regretted the fact.' When all was over the King sent a 
 memorial to the Emperor, thanking him for his graciousness. 
 'The sentiments of this memorial — in their sincerity and 
 importance — are beyond expression in words, demonstrating 
 that China's manifold graciousness towards her dependencies 
 is increasing with the times. The Emperor's consideration 
 
 1 JVotes on the Imperial Chinese Mission to Corea in 1890. Shanghai, 
 1892. 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 201 
 
 for his vassal State, as evinced by his thoughtfuhiess in 
 matters pertaining to the Mission, is fathomless. How 
 admirable and satisfactory ! And how glorious ! ' 
 
 Such is the technical and official expression of the suze- 
 rainty of China that was observed until July 1894, and such 
 were the evidences of the indisputable reality of that re- 
 lationship. Of even greater importance is it to trace the 
 extent to which in recent years it had been accompanied by 
 practical domination of Korean statecraft — a subject which 
 brings us into immediate acquaintance with the diplo- 
 matic indecision of China, as well as with her great latent 
 strength. 
 
 Up to the time of the massacre of the French missionaries ^ 
 in Korea in 1866 the claim of Korean independence had 
 never seriously been made. At that date it was 
 advanced, of all people in the world, by the ^||f^^" °' 
 Chinese themselves. Anxious to escape re- policy. 
 sponsibility for the act, as well as the irksome (ji^tion" 
 duty of either paying an indemnity themselves or 
 extorting it from their vassal, when M. de Bellonet, the 
 French Charge d' Affaires, inquired of the Tsungli Yamen 
 what he was to do, the latter disowned Korea altogether, 
 aii'1 left the Frenchman to publish a ridiculous manifesto to 
 Prince Kung, in which he took upon himself to announce in 
 advance the deposition of the Korean Sovereign. Similarly 
 when, in J^7l, the American Expedition, under Admiral 
 Rodgers, proposed to sail against Korea to demand repara- 
 tion 4"or the loss of the General Sherman and the murder 
 of its crew on Korean shores in 1 866, and to force a treaty 
 upon the Korean Court, it was again wdth the connivance of 
 the Chinese Government that the project was undertaken. 
 Finally, when in 1876 the Japanese, before sending an ex- 
 pedition to Korea with a similar object, applied for in- 
 
 ZH 
 
202 * KOREA 
 
 formation to Peking in advance, a third time came the 
 disclaimer of China, which is said on this occasion to have 
 even been committed to paper. This was a policy of 
 Repudiation, and was China's first inconsistency. 
 
 Discovering her mistake, and realising that the foreigner, 
 
 having once been allowed to meddle with Korea propria 
 
 motu, could not be permanently excluded from 
 
 2. Ne\\- closer relations, she then tried to repair her 
 
 tralisation. ' ^ 
 
 error by encouraging the various Powers to enter 
 into Treaty relations with Korea on an independent basis, 
 hoping, apparently, that the mutual jealousies of all would 
 preclude the ascendency of any one. Commodore Sliufeldt,. 
 an American naval officer, who in _L8jS7 had been sent upon 
 a futile mission to Korea after the loss of the General 
 Shemnan, being in Tientsin in 1881, was utilised by Li 
 Hung Chang as the first instrument of this nevv policy. The 
 American Treaty, intended to serve as a pattern for its 
 successors, is said to have been drafted by the Viceroy him- 
 self; and it was with the escort of a Chinese squadron that 
 the Commodore presented himself at the mouth of the_ Han. 
 Simultaneously the Viceroy wrote a letter to the Tai Wen 
 Kun, strongly urging upon the Korean Government the 
 signature of treaties with the foreign Powers as the sole 
 means of continued security and independence for the 
 threatened kingdom. Under these conditions the American 
 Treaty was signed in 1882, and the Treaties with Great 
 Britain and Germany in 1883; the first Bntish. draft Treaty^ 
 which was framed by Admiral Willes in 1882 qii_the model 
 of the American, being superseded by the more liberal 
 instrument negotiated with great ability and concluded 
 by Sir Harry Parkes in the following year. 
 
 Now the first article of the Japanese Treaty of 1876 had 
 opened with these words : — ' Chosen, being an independent 
 State, enjoys the same sovereign rights as does Japan.' Con- 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 203 
 
 scions of the serious significance of this admission, China, in 
 
 recomniending the additional foreign Treaties, now sought to 
 
 ffuard herself by a statement of her own position. ^ 
 
 * -^ ^ Terms 
 
 The American Treaty, when first drafted, contained of the 
 
 a clause which ran as follows : — ' Korea has always 
 been tributaiy toXhina, and this is admitted by the President 
 of the United States ' ; but ' The Treaty shall be permanently 
 regarded as having nothing to do therewith/ This absurd 
 contrad iction was of course expunged by the Washington 
 Government, who, being invited to conclude a treaty with 
 Korea, naturally insisted upon treating Korea as an indepen- 
 dent State. Accordingly in the American, as in the British 
 and subsequent foreign Treaties, the King of Korea is 
 throughout regarded (though not actually described) as an 
 independent Sovereign ; and provisions are made for the 
 customary diplomatic representation, familiar in the case of 
 Powers negotiating upon an equal basis, of each of the High 
 Contracting Parties at the Court of the other. Not to be 
 circumvented, however, China insisted upon the King of 
 Korea sending the following despatch to the President of 
 the United States, prior to the actual conclusion of the 
 treaty; and facsimiles of the same have since been trans- 
 mitted to the Sovereigns of each of the remaining Treaty 
 Powers at the corresponding juncture : — 
 
 ' The' King of Korea acknowledg-es that Korea is a tributary of 
 China ; but iu regard to both iiiternal administration and foreign 
 intercourse it enjoys complete independence. Now, being about 
 to establish Treaty relations between Korea and the United States 
 of America on terms of equality, the King of Korea, as an 
 independent monarch, distinctly undertakes to carry out the 
 '^.articles contained in the Treaty, irrespective of any matters 
 affecting the tributary relations subsisting between Korea and 
 China, with which the United States of America liave no concern. 
 Having appointed officials to deliberate upon and settle tlie Treaty, 
 the King of Korea considers it his duty to address this despatch to 
 the President of tlie United States. ' 
 
204. KOREA 
 
 It will, I think, be conceded that a more strictly illogical 
 State-paper than the above was never penned, and that a 
 more incongruous or cont radictory position was never taken 
 
 , up. The King of Korea acknowledges his vassalage to 
 
 I Chiiia; but in the same breath pronounces his complete 
 independence both in the administration of his own country 
 and in foreigrL relations. In what, then, we may ask, does 
 his vassalage consist ? He describes himself simultaneously 
 as a tributary and as an independent monarch. So double- 
 faced a portent, so complex a phenomenon, has neither 
 parallel nor precedent in international law. If he is a 
 vass al, he has no business to be making treaties, or to be 
 sending and receiving envoys on a footing of equality. If 
 he is iijdependent, why does he declare himself a feudatory? 
 
 Such was the irrational position in which China, by her 
 
 policy of an attempted neutralisation of Korea, landed both 
 
 herself and the vassal State. The full consequences 
 
 t^ues ion ^^ YiQY attitude were clearly manifested when, a 
 
 or envoys. -^ ' 
 
 few years later, Korea proposed to carry out her 
 initial prerogative of sending duly accredited envoys to the 
 foreign Courts who were already represented at Soul. The 
 Viceroy Li, who had in the meantime sensibly tightened the 
 reins, was consulted ; and once more seeking to recover the 
 ground which had been technically abandoned, he attached 
 conditions to the proposed appointments which, strictly 
 regarded, were, if possible, even more anomalous than the 
 original paradox. The Korean Envoy, on arrival at his 
 destination, was to report himself to the Chinese Representa- 
 tive there, and to be introduced by him to the Foreign 
 Minister of the State. On all public occasions he was to 
 yield precedence to the Chinese Minister, and he was 
 invariably to consult and take the advice of the latter. 
 Here was the same contradiction in terms in a more pro- 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 205 
 
 nounced shape. If the King of Korea was a vassal, he had 
 no business to be sending representatives at all ; if he was 
 an independent monarch, China had no business to interfere 
 with hiiTi. Either his envoys were private individuals or 
 they were diplomatic representatives. If they were the 
 former, no question of precedence could arise ; if they were 
 the latter, they were subject to the normal regulations of 
 diplomatic etiquette. For some weeks the President of the 
 United States, naturally somewhat bewildered, kept the 
 Korean Envoy at Washington waiting for his audience ; but 
 when the common-sense view of the question prevailed 
 against the quibbles concocted in self-defence by the 
 Chinese Government, and the Envoy was received, without 
 any reference to the Chinese Minister, as the representative 
 of an independent Sovereign, Li Hung Chang was very 
 wroth with His Majesty of Korea, who for his part returned 
 the stereotyped reply that the offending envoy had exceeded 
 his instructions. However this might be, his brother-minister, 
 who had been accredited to the Courts of Petersburg, Berlin, 
 Paris, and London, never got beyond Hongkong ; so that 
 the European Foreign Offices were saved from a repetition 
 of the same inconvenient wrangle. 
 
 Before the dispute about the envoys arose, China, not yet 
 alive to the initial error that had led her to authorise the 
 
 Treaties, had been tempted into a repetition of ^ 
 
 ^ Question 
 
 the same weakness, on an even larger scale, by of troops 
 the Convention, already referred to as concluded 
 at Tientsin in 1885 between herself and Japan. If China 
 was the suzerain Power, she had the same right to march 
 troops into Soul, in the event of disturbance, as the Indian 
 Government has, for instance, to order British regiments in a 
 similar emergency to Hyderabad — whilst Japan had no 
 corresponding right whatsoever ; and any agreement by 
 
206 KOREA 
 
 China with a second Power involving a surrender of that 
 right was to derogate from her own pretensions. If China 
 was not the suzerain Power, how could she claim any right, 
 but that which war confers upon any belligerent strong 
 enough to exercise it, to send troops to Korea at all ? 
 
 If, however, on the field of diplomacy, where she is ordin- 
 arily supposed to be so clever, but where I think I have 
 shown that in the case of Korea she has always 
 
 3. lac ica i^ggjj tackinff to and fro between opposite extremes, 
 sovereignty. ° J^^ ' 
 
 China had been more timid or less far-sighted 
 than Japan, she had to a great extent atoned for her dis- 
 cordant policy by a very practical assertion of sovereignty in 
 Soul itself. When the rebellion broke out there in 1882 
 and the King appealed to Li Hung Chang for help, the latter 
 responded by at once sending a number of ironclads, and 4000 
 troops, the bulk of whom remained in a permanent camp 
 outside the city for neai-ly three years. He compelled the 
 Korean Government to accept the Japanese demands with 
 a quite unusual alacrity ; and effectively nipped all antago- 
 nism in the bud by instructing the Chinese commander. Ma 
 Kien Chung, to invite the Tai Wen Kun to dinner, to pop 
 him into a sedan-chair, and carry him down to the coast, 
 whence he was deported straight to China and intei'ned for 
 three years. Again it was Li Hung Chang whom the dis- 
 consolate King was obliged to petition for the restoration of 
 his troublesome parent, and who allowed the old intriguer to 
 go back. When the Treaty Ports were opened, the same 
 statesman took good care to reserve the Customs service for 
 Chinese hands; and in the summer of 1892 the Bean 
 question with Japan was only settled by his intervention and 
 by a Chinese loan to Korea, the security for which was to be 
 the Customs Revenue — an ingenious frustration of one of 
 the pet projects of Japan. When in 1885 negotiations were 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 207 
 
 opened with Great Britain about the evacuation of Port 
 Hamilton, it was Chin a^ and not Korea, who took up the 
 pen. Until 1893 the only overland telegraphic connection 
 which the Viceroy allowed to Korea outside of her own 
 dominions was a junction with the Chinese wire to Peking, 
 and when the Russian demand for a connection with Vladi- 
 vostok could no longer be refused, he wisely backed it up 
 by offering to construct and to officer the line with Chinese 
 material and men. 
 
 Finally, in Sou l itself eveiy one of the Fore ign Diplomatic-^ 
 Corps, though he gaily proclaimed himself the representa- 
 tive of his sovereign at an allied and equal Court, 
 knew_j2grfectly well who was the real master. Chinese 
 The Cliinese Resident, who was a man of great ^^^^ ^" ' 
 energy and ability, named lQian_„Sllili^ Kai, \ £as in the 
 position of a JVIayor of the Palace, without whose knowledge 
 nothing, and without whose consent little was done. Alone 
 among the foreign representatives, he was entitled to sit_ 
 w hen r eceived in audience by the King. His establishment 
 and guard and display in the streets were among the sights 
 of Soul. The various champions of the academic theory of 
 Korean independence have one by one disappeared from 
 the stage, but the Chinese Resident remained. Time after 
 time he had been reappointed, as was the Marquis Tseng 
 in Europe ; and even after his promotion to the Taotaiship 
 of Wenchow in China had been formally gazetted in 1893, 
 it was still felt that he could not be spared from Soul, and 
 he stayed on, until the war had irretrievably shattered the 
 structure to the building of which he had devoted such 
 pains. He is one of the few Chinese I have met who 
 impressed me with frankness as well as with power. 
 
 Judged, therefore, by its results prior to the war, it might 
 be said that the policy of Li Hung Chang, however little 
 
208 KOREA* 
 
 shaped by the canons either of logic or of international 
 custom, was not unsuccessful. Each logical faux pas was in 
 
 , .^ ,. the end retrieved by some practical advantage. 
 
 Justification j i o 
 
 of Li Hung If he declined to punish Korea in the first place 
 for her attacks uponmissionaries and foreigners, 
 he thereby escaped responsibility for her cruelties. If he 
 allowed Korea, a vassal State of China, to make Treaties 
 with foreign Powers, he at the same time vindicated his 
 right to appear as go-between — a capacity in which Japan 
 was most anxious to figure. By these means he might claim 
 to have enlisted the interest of foreign Powers as a set-off 
 to the only two rivals whom China seriously fears in Korea, 
 viz. Japan and Russia. Finally, having surrendered some 
 of the technical symbols of suzerainty, he offered a very 
 practical demonstration of the remainder at all moments of 
 crisis ; and by judicious advances of money obtained a firm 
 hold upon Korean administration. How futile, however, 
 such a policy was destined to be, when, in the face of a 
 serious emergency, it had nothing to lean upon save the 
 incredible rottenness of Chinese administration, the events 
 of the past year were required to expose. 
 
 Upon this scene Jlussia^ having been brought by the 
 Chinese concessions of 1858-1860 ^ down to the River 
 
 „ . Tiumen, and having thereby become coterminous 
 
 Connection o ^ 
 
 with with Korean territory on the north, appeared for 
 
 the first time as an_ actor about thirty years ago. 
 
 At her maritime harbour and base of Vladivostok she is but 
 
 1 Mouravieff, the Russian Governor-General of Siberia, taking advantage 
 of the absorjition of China in her impending war with Great Britain, and of 
 the gross ignorance of the Manchu frontier officials, persuaded the latter to 
 sign the Treaty of Aigun in 1858, ceding to Russia the Amur province. In 
 1860, before the war was concluded and while the Emperor was still a 
 fugitive, Ignatieff went to Peking, and by a further Treaty from tlie 
 terrified Government got the Primoi'sk jlrovince [i.e. all the territory lying 
 to the east of the Ussuri, and 600 miles of sea-coast) as well. Never was a 
 fine dominion so cheaply or more cleverly won. 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 209 
 
 little removed from the Korean frontier, across which her 
 officers and agents have pursued their surveys far and wide 
 (the only decent map of Korea, before the war, being one 
 that emanated from Russian sources), while the Koreans 
 have been encouraged to develop a corresponding familiarity 
 by invitations to come and settle in Russian villages across 
 the border. Here they were utilised at first as squatters 
 and colonists in the practically uninhabited country, later 
 on as farmers and graziers and woodcutters. In the towns 
 labour was found for them and schools were opened for their 
 children, in which the latter were brought up in the Russian 
 faith, supplying, as they grew to manhood, a native pasto- 
 rate to evangelise their fellow-countrymen. In 1885 there 
 were said to be 20,000 Koreans in Russian territory, and ' 
 the figures are probably now much higher, there having 
 been a steady exodus across the frontier ever since the war. 
 It was through the agency of these volunteer emigrants and 
 naturalised citizens that Russia first opened her campaign of 
 political intrigue in the peninsula. 
 
 The general territorial acquisitiveness of Russia at the 
 expense of weaker neighbours, her admitted desire for a 
 naval marine in the Pacific, and the superior ad- 
 vantages possessed by Korean harbours over the -, S?''^^^*^^ 
 of J designs. 
 
 more northerly port of Vladivostok, which is ice- 
 bound for four months in the year, as well as the diplomatic 
 tactics adopted by her representatives, have given universal 
 credence in the East to the belief that Korea is regarded by 
 Russia with a more than covetous eye. There is consider- 
 able evidence in support of this hypothesis. It was during 
 the Kulja dispute with China in 1880 that her unconcealed 
 affection for the sheltered recesses of Port Lazareff^ (the 
 
 1 At the outbreak of the recent war a Russian engineer who had been sent 
 in 1886 to survej' and report upon Port Lazareff, wrote to the Novoe Vremya 
 
 o 
 
210 KOREA 
 
 plans for the seizure and fortification of which are said to 
 have been long prepared) was first made use of as a diplo- 
 matic menace, and is believed in consequence to have still 
 further inclined the mind of Li Hung Chang towards the 
 policy of the Korean Treaties. In 1884, while France was at 
 war with China and was anxious to enlist the sympathy and 
 alliance of Japan, the question of the price to be paid to the 
 latter soon brought matters to a deadlock, when it was dis- 
 covered that Russia would not let the opportunity slip of 
 also doing a stroke of business in Korean waters. In 1884 
 the Russians were said by many to have been at the bottom 
 of the conspiracy and outbreak in Soul ; but I am not aware 
 of the evidence upon which this is based. About the same 
 time rumours, not without solid foundation, were circulated 
 of a secret agreement between Russia and Korea, negotiated 
 -by the German Adviser of the King, by which Russia was to 
 reorganise the Korean army and to suppoi't the Korean 
 claims to Tsushima,^ while Korea in return was to cede Port 
 Hamilton ; and it was something more than rumour of the 
 latter intention that induced the British Government to 
 anticipate an impending Muscovite seizure by hoisting the 
 
 that Port Lazareff itself was unsuited either for a commercial harbour or for 
 a naval base ; but that sixty miles further north was a harbour named Port 
 Shestakoff, formed by the island of Gontcharoff and the mainland, which 
 could easily be defended and was admirably adapted to either purpose. The 
 Russian Minister of Marine, who had himself visited the sjjot, reported in 
 the same sense to his Government. 
 
 1 Others said that Russia was to occupj' Tsushima herself — a course which 
 the Novoe Vremiia urged upon the Government in a most unblushing article, 
 and which possessed the charm of an historical jjrecedent. For in 1861 the 
 main island was actually occupied for six months by the crew of the Russian 
 frigate Possadnik, who hoisted the Russian flag, formed a small settlement 
 ashore, and cultivated the soil. Sir R. Alcock, who was British Minister in 
 Japan, sent Mr. Laurence Oliphant, then a member of the Legation, to find 
 out what was going on. The latter reported to Admiral Sir J. Hope, who 
 was in command of the neighbouring sqixadron, and who rej^resented to the 
 Russian Admiral that he should he compelled to go to Tsushima himself and 
 to stay there as long as did the Russians. The result was immediate evacua- 
 tion. (Vide an article by Laurence Olijjhant in Bkickwood's Magazine^ 
 Dec. 1885, and also Rolling Stone. ) 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 211 
 
 British flag upon those islands. In 1886 a further plot for 
 placing Korea under Russian protection was detected by the 
 Chinese Resident. Four leading Korean officials were 
 arrested and imprisoned, and subsequently admitted their 
 complicity by flight. In 1886, however, China, furnished 
 with a golden opportunity by the willingness of Great 
 Britain to evacuate Port Hamilton, provided she could obtain 
 guarantees that no other foreign Power would occupy it, 
 scored her first genuine diplomatic triumph as regards Korea 
 by extorting a distinct and official pledge from the Russian 
 Government that under no circumstances would Russia 
 occupy Korean territory. This pledge was alluded to with 
 
 some pride in the conversation which/ 1 ^fenjoyed at Tientsin 
 with th e ViceroyJL<i.Hung Chang. ButTan Englishman who re- 
 members the official pledges as to Samarkand, and Khiva, and 
 Merv, might be pardoned for preferring an attitude of more 
 scepti cal reserve. This, however, was, for the time being, 
 the cue to Russian official argument touching Korea, and has 
 been followed more recently by the Novoe Vremyci, which 
 acts as a sort of ballon d'essai for the schemes of the Russian 
 General Staff, and which has gone so far as to reason against 
 Russian annexation of Korea on the ground that the country 
 is too thickly populated to admit of easy conquest, too 
 different from Russia to render assimilation possible, and too 
 poor to make the experiment remunerative. There is much 
 to be said for this view ; and undoubtedly it cannot for some 
 time be to the interest of Russia, with her Siberian Railway 
 still unfinished, and with her military resources on the 
 Manchurian border in no very forward condition, either of 
 numbers or equipment, to involve herself in a warlike ad- 
 venture at so great a distance from her base. On the other 
 hand, she can hardly desire to have as her permanent neigh- 
 bour, within a few hours' sail of Vladivostok, so pugnacious 
 and aspiring a Power as Young Japan. 
 
212 KOREA 
 
 The Russian appetite, if it be inflamed either by Korean 
 
 attractions or by Korean weakness, or if it be piqued at 
 
 having been temporarily anticipated by Japan, 
 
 Ad interim ^^ therefore require to mortify itself for some 
 plans. J ~\ J 
 
 little time to come. In the meantime the tradi- 
 tional methods of amicable influence can successfully be 
 pursued. By a Commercial Convention concluded with 
 Korea in 1888, the Korean land-frontier was opened to 
 Russian traders ; a Korean market at the mouth of the 
 Tiumen River was opened to Russian trade ; a lower rate of 
 Customs dues was fixed for Russian land imports than for 
 other foreign imports by sea ; and Russia secured the right 
 to have agents, whatever that may mean, in the northern 
 parts of Korea. She also made her contiguous frontier an 
 excuse for communicating with her representative at 
 Soul overland. In 1894, with a charming naivete, she in- 
 vited permission of the Korean Government to found a 
 Russian agricultural colony, for seven years only, within the 
 Korean border. Russian^drill-instructors were more than 
 once offered to the Korean army — a step with which the 
 histories of Bokhara, Khiva, and Persia have rendered us 
 familiar. An overland telegraphic connection between 
 Korea and Russia was secured in 1893. A steam service 
 between Korean ports and Vladivostok is being maintained 
 by an ample subsidy from the Imperial Government. A 
 Russian Consul has been appointed at Fusan, where there 
 are no Russian subjects, and as yet next to no Russian 
 trade. These are the recognised and more or less legitimate 
 symptoms of Muscovite concern. In Korea itself, and I 
 think also in Japan, an impression has long prevailed that 
 they are only the forerunners of a movement which will 
 not slacken till a Russian fleet is moored in Port Lazareff, 
 and the Russian flag waves over Fusan ; and it must be 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 213 
 
 admitted that the lessons of history are not unfavourable 
 to such an hypothesis. Were an excuse at any time 
 required, it would promptly be forthcoming in the military 
 occupation of Korea by Japan, which, if long continued, 
 would constitute'a violation both of Japanese pledges and 
 of the alleged independence of Korea ; but the premature 
 withdrawal of which would, on the other hand, be followed 
 by complete social and political disoi'ganisation in the penin- 
 sula. It is also to be remembered that the domination of 
 Korea and the acquisition of an open port are capable of 
 attainment by other methods than those of aggression upon 
 the peninsula itself. There is a neighbouring Power possess- 
 ing even more valuable territory and even more useful ports, 
 whom recent experience has shown to be amenable to 
 almost any degree of squeezing, if judiciously and firmly 
 applied. 
 
 The position of the remaining Powers may be briefly 
 summarised. The pi'imary interest of Great Britain in 
 
 Korea is as a market for an already considerable , . , 
 
 •^ Attitude 
 
 trade. Of far gi'eater moment, however, is the of Great 
 secondary and contingent interest arising out of 
 the political future. A country so welLprovided with 
 h arbo urs which could both supply and shelter great flotillas, 
 and so richly endowed with many potential sources of wealth, 
 might involve a serious menace to British commerce and 
 i ntere sts throughout the China seas, and even in the Pacific 
 Ocean, if held by a hostile State. A Russian port and fleet, 
 for instance, in the Gulf of Pechili would, in time of war, 
 constitute as formidable a danger to British shipping in the 
 YeJlow_Sea as they would to the metropolitan province and 
 the capital of China. Permanent Russian squadrons at Port 
 Lazareff and Fusan would convert her into the greatest naval 
 Power in the Pacific. The balance of power in the Far East 
 
214 KOREA 
 
 would be seriously jeopardised, if not absolutely overturned, 
 
 by such a development ; and England is prohibited alike by 
 
 her imperial objects and her commercial needs from lending 
 
 her sanction to any such issue. 
 
 The temporary occupation of Port Hamilton, an almost 
 
 uninhabited group of islets forty miles from the southern 
 
 coast of Korea, by the British fleet in 1885, was 
 
 of Port dictated by the political necessities of that time, 
 
 Hamilton bginff undertaken in order to anticipate a Russian 
 m 1885. *= ^ 
 
 seizure, and as an answer to the Russian aggression 
 
 at Penjdeh, but was not subsequently persisted in — a retire- 
 ment which, less for its own sake than for the possible use 
 of continued occupation as a plea by others, was gladly 
 welcomed both by China and Korea, and cemented the 
 friendly relations between Great Britain and those States.^ 
 
 1 Port Hamilton is formed by two large and one small island, called re- 
 spectively Sodo, Sunodo, and Chuwen, or Observatory Island, belonging to 
 the Nanhow groui^, thirty-eigbt miles from the north-east end of Quelpart. 
 When occupied by the British they were found to contain a few villages and 
 Korean officials. Lord Granville, in announcing the temporary occupation 
 to China, expressed his readiness to come to an agreement with her on the 
 matter, and to pay yearly to Korea any revenues derived from the islands. 
 The Tsimgli Yamen, who in the meantime had been threatened with 
 corresponding movements both by Russia and Japan, declined, and in- 
 structed the Korean Government to protest — an action which Lord Granville 
 endeavoured to meet by offering a yearly rent of £5000. In the meantime 
 three British admirals successively reported that the jjort could not be safely 
 held unless great exj^euse were incurred in fortification, and that in war a 
 protecting squadron would be required to prevent its being shelled from 
 without. After much correspondence. Lord Rosebery, in April 1886, offered 
 to icetixe vrpon a guarantee being given by China against the occupation of 
 Port Hamilton by any other Power, or upon the conclusion of an international 
 agreement guarantying the integrity of Korea. A combination of these 
 suggestions was ultimately adoj)ted ; and the Russian representative at 
 Peking having given ' a most explicit guarantee ' that if the British evacuated 
 Port Hamilton ' Rirssia would not occujjy Korean territory under any circum- 
 stances whatsoever,' the British flag was hauled down in February 1887. 
 (Vide China, No. 1, 1887.) This engagement has not been affected by the 
 recent war, and was j)ronounced in the House of Commons in June 1894 to be 
 in the opinion of the British Government still valid. The Korean Government 
 in 1894 reasserted its authority over the islands by sending there as Governor 
 an official of some distinction. 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 215 
 
 In the negotiations that passed between the respective 
 Governments it was obvious, indeed, that what China shrank 
 from, and what Korea dreaded, was not the estabhshment 
 of a British naval or coahng station, or even of a British 
 maritime fortress in the mouth of the Sea of Japan, but 
 the chance of a corresponding Russian movement in some 
 neighbom-ing^ quarter ; and both Powers were grateful for 
 a step which forced the hand of Russia, and compelled her 
 to ffive a guarantee, which lent a renewed lease of life to 
 the phantom of Korean ^integrity, and has so far saved the 
 little kingdom from sudden or surreptitious deglutition at 
 the hands of her formidable neighbour. The evacuation 
 of Port Hamilton also showed that, while Great Britain is 
 in terested in keeping out others from this Naboth^s vine- 
 yard of the Far East, she has no reversionary desire for 
 its possession herself, and is about as likely to seize or to 
 annex Korea as she is to invade Belgium — a demonstration 
 which was not merely grateful to China, but was also useful 
 in allaying the phenomenal sensitiveness of Japan. 
 
 The remaining Powers in Korea before the war, according 
 to their political predilections or objects, were disposed 
 to range themselves partly on the side of those 
 who proclaimed, partly with those who dis- p^^gj-g 
 couraged, the pretensions of Korean autonomy ; 
 their attitude being generally ascertainable from the 
 character and title of the diplomatic representation which 
 they maintain at the Korean Court. France, of course, 
 adopted the former line and deputed a Consul and 
 Commissaire, claiming precedence of the British and 
 German Consuls. Russia, her ally, was represented by 
 a Charge d' A^aires. America appointed a Minister and 
 vigorously encouraged the dream of Korean independence, 
 as best qualified to provide employment for American 
 
216 KOREA 
 
 dollars and brains. Germany sent a Consul and Com- 
 missioner. Great Britain was and is technically repre- 
 sented by a Minister Plenipotentiary, the Minister at 
 Peking being simultaneously accredited, in virtue of the 
 Treaty of 1883, to the King of Korea. Till 1893, how- 
 ever, when Sir N, O^Conor went up to Soul and presented 
 his letters of credence to the King, no visit of a British 
 Minister had taken place since that date; and the Queen 
 is ordinarily represented in Soul by a Consul-General, 
 whose relatively subordinate position is the source of not 
 unnatural vexation on the part of the Korean Govern- 
 ment, as well as of misunderstanding among the Diplomatic 
 Body. These absurd anomalies and disputes were a further 
 but inevitable consequence of the illogical policy of the 
 Treaties. 
 
 Such was the position occupied by Korea in the summer 
 of 1894 vis-d-vis with the more powerful nations with whom 
 
 _,, the march of events had brought her into direct 
 
 The carcase ° 
 
 and the contact. She was confronted with the ill-sup- 
 
 S3.P'1gS 
 
 pressed cupidity of Russia, the mysterious latent 
 force of China, the jealous and vainglorious interest of 
 Japan. By herself she was quite incapable of successful 
 resistance to any one of these three, though her statesmen 
 were not deficient in the skill required to play off each 
 against the other. Her intrinsic weakness was in reality 
 her sole strength ; for had she been powerful enough to 
 render her own alliance an appreciable weight in the scale, 
 she might have been tempted to adopt a course of action 
 thatj would have precipitated final absorption. Unfor- 
 tunately for her, the conflict for which she supplied a 
 convenient battle-ground, rather than a legitimate provoca- 
 tion, was forced upon her by the tempers of her Asiatic 
 neighbours, too highly charged to postpone any longer the 
 
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 T.Tiglish Statute i&les 
 
THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF KOREA 217 
 
 inevitable explosion. My awiL.conyiction, expressed in my 
 first edition, that the only hope of continued -jiational 
 existence for Korea lay in the maintenance of her con- 
 nection with China has not, in my opinion, been falsified 
 by the issue of fhe campaign, since the independence, 
 which was the nominal pretext of the latter, and is now 
 claimed as its result, is a phantom which not even the 
 interested auspices of Japan have so far persuaded to 
 materialise, and which will assuredly be the source of 
 further trouble in the future. 
 
CHINA 
 
 'And so he passed with his folk, and wan the Lend of 
 Cathay, that is the Grettest Kyngdom of the World ' 
 
 Sir John Maundeville : Travels 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 thp: country and (.^apital of china 
 
 Minseque 
 Murorum ingeutes, sequataque machina ccelo. 
 
 Virgil : ^neid iv. 88, 89. 
 
 A MORE singular contrast can scarcely be found than is 
 
 presented by the transition from Korea to China. From 
 
 romantic mountain-scenery the traveller passes, 
 
 at least on his way up to Peking, to flat and . '^^u-' '°" 
 •' ^ <^' to China. 
 
 featureless plains. He exchanges the miniature 
 Korean stallion, which rarely advances beyond a walk, for 
 the sturdy China pony, upon which he will with ease cover 
 seven miles an hour, or a day's march of forty miles. In 
 place of the confined and filthy Korean hostelry, he will 
 sleep with comparative comfort in the ample surroundings 
 of a Chinese inn. He has left behind the most supine and 
 spiritless of the peoples of the Far East, and sees about 
 him the frugal, hard-limbed, indomitable, ungracious race, 
 who oppose to all overtures from the outside the sullen 
 resistance of a national character self-confident and stolid, 
 a religious and moral code of incredible and all-absorbing 
 rigour, and a governing system that has not varied for 
 ages, and is still wrapped in the mantle of a superb and 
 paralysing conceit. Most travellers deplore the transition 
 from Japan to China as one from sweetness to squalor, from 
 beauty to ugliness, froin civilisation to barbarism, from 
 warmth of welcome to cheerless repulsion. And yet I am 
 
222 CHINA 
 
 not sure that a truer estimate is not formed of the pro- 
 digious strength of Chinese character and custom by the 
 ability to contrast them with the captivating external 
 attributes of Japan ; whilst a check is placed upon the too 
 indiscriminate laudation of the latest recruit to civilisation 
 by the spectacle of a people who have lived and would be 
 content^ if we permitted them^ to go on living without any 
 contact with the West at all, and who think what we call 
 truth error^ our progress weakness^ and our fondest ideals 
 an abomination. Perhaps as a stepping-stone between the 
 two, akin to yet also profoundly dissimilar from either, 
 Korea supplies a link that may at once break and lend 
 point to the abruptness of the contrast. 
 
 The journey from the coast of the Gulf of Pechili up to 
 the capital seems to have won an undeserved reputation 
 
 for painfulness in travellers' writings. It is true 
 Tientsin. , , . . i. . . ^ 
 
 that the visitor may lie tossing tor one, two, or 
 
 more days on the mud-bar outside the Taku forts at the 
 
 mouth of the Peiho — in which position he may picture the 
 
 plight of the British gunboats, which, on that fatal day in 
 
 1859, rolled helplessly in precisely the same plight under 
 
 the pitiless pounding of the enemy's guns. But, once 
 
 landed, he may now avoid the further delays of the 
 
 serpentine river-course to Tientsin by taking the railway 
 
 train that runs thrice daily to that city ; while the sights 
 
 of Tientsin itself are, to any but those who have never 
 
 before seen a great Chinese centre of population, very 
 
 rapidly exhausted. To the ordinary European traveller 
 
 almost its sole interest lies in the fact that it was the 
 
 scene of the famous massacre of 1870, an eloquent testimony 
 
 to which still survives in the ruined towers and facade of 
 
 the French Catholic Cathedral on the right bank of the 
 
 Peiho. 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 223 
 
 To all who have followed the course of Chinese history 
 during the last quarter of a century, Tientsin will present 
 the additional interest of being the residence of 
 the foremost living Chinese statesman, the Vice- j.ov\i^^^' 
 roy Li Hung Chang. First made famous by his Hung 
 conduct and generalship during the Taiping 
 Rebellion, his connection in which with the late General 
 Goi'don is w^ell known, he succeeded Tseng Kwo Fan (the 
 elder of the two Tsengs, and father of the ambassador) as 
 Governor-General of Kiangsu in 1862, and became Viceroy of 
 Kukuang in 1867. In 1870 he settled at Tientsin, where 
 he succeeded the same eminent statesman as Viceroy of 
 the metropolitan province of Chihli, and was entrusted with 
 the delicate negotiations with England, arising out of the 
 Margary murder, that resulted in the Chefoo Convention of 
 1876. Now for nearly twenty years the Senior Grand 
 Secretary of State, the first Chinese subject who has ever 
 been promoted to that dignity,^ he also combines in his 
 
 1 The Grand Secretariat, or Nei Ko, which was the Supreme Council, or 
 Cabinet, of the Chinese Empire under the Ming dynasty, is tlie senior of the 
 two bodies which intervene between the Sovereign and the Administrative 
 Departments in the Chinese reyime, and consists theoretically of two Manchu 
 and two Chinese Grand Secretaries, with their assistants and staffs. It now 
 forms the Imperial Chancerv, or Court of Archives, and admission to one 
 of its superior posts confers the highest distinction attainable by a Chinese 
 official, although entailing little more than nominal duties. For purposes 
 of actual administration it has been superseded by the second body, viz. the 
 Chun Chi Chu, or Grand Coiuicil, which is the acting Privy Council of the 
 Sovereign, in whose presence its members dailj- transact the business of 
 State, in a hall of the Imperial Palace at Peking, at the inconceivable hour 
 of four o'clock in the morning. It is a Cabinet composed of Ministers in the 
 capital holding other substantive offices. Their number is undetermined, 
 but for many years past did not exceed five. During the war with Japan 
 it was raised to seven. Its Presidential chair, which was successively 
 occupied by Prince Kung and Prince Chun, and is now again filled by the 
 former, is practically equivalent to the post of Prime Minister. Two or three 
 members of the Tsungli Yamen, or Foreign Board, generally hold seats in 
 this Council, and all its members enjoy the technical right of audience with 
 the Emperor. For a more minute account of the theoretical organisation 
 and functions of the two Councils, vide Professor R. K. Douglas's excellent 
 recentlj' publislied work, Societji in China. 
 
224 
 
 CHINA 
 
 person the viceregal functions above mentioned, as well as 
 those of Senior Tutor to the Heir Apparent (who is not yet 
 
 LI HUNG CHANG 
 
 in existence). Earl of the First Rank, Superintendent of 
 the Northern Ports, and Imperial Commissioner for Foreign 
 Trade. \s such he not merely divides with the late 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 225 
 
 Marquis Tseng the distinction of being the most remarkable 
 figure whom his country has produced during the last thirty 
 years, but he has for long filled the part of a sort of unofficial 
 Foreign Minister and confidential adviser to his Sovereign, 
 without whose knawledge nothing, however unimportant, 
 takes place, and without whose advice nothing important 
 is done. His Chinese extraction and his commanding 
 position have sometimes suggested to others the hypothesis 
 of a rising against the Manchu occupants of the throne, and 
 of a new Chinese dynasty, founded by Li Hung Chang 
 himself; and it is even said that he has at different times, in 
 troublesome crises, been sounded upon the matter both by 
 England and by France. There has never, however, been 
 any reason to suspect his loyalty, which, if tempted, has 
 not been seriously impugned ; and he has long remained 
 the strongest pillar of the Imperial throne. Many times 
 has the Viceroy, who is now seventy-two years of age, 
 petitioned to be relieved from the responsibilities, official 
 and supernumerary, of his great position, but on each 
 occasion has appeared an Imperial Rescript, commanding 
 him in complimentary terms to continue the discharge of 
 duties from which he could not be spared. During the 
 recent war, after the shameful collapse of the Chinese naval 
 and land forces, for which he was held to be largely re- 
 sponsible, he was temporarily disgraced ; and the various 
 phases of his official degradation and reinstatement followed 
 each other with a kaleidoscopic rapidity that must, except 
 to any one versed in the ways of Chinese officialdom, have 
 been sufficiently bewildering. As soon, however, as it 
 became necessary to send an Imperial Plenipotentiary to 
 Japan to negotiate the terms of peace, it was once more 
 found that the veteran was the only man ; and, though 
 he emerges from the terrible ordeal of the war, to use a 
 
 P 
 
226 CHINA 
 
 colloquial phrase, as only 'the best of a bad lot/ he has^ 
 ostensibly at any rate, recovered his former position, and con- 
 tinues to offer to the foreigner the interesting spectacle of the 
 one Chinaman who with the ingrained characteristics of his 
 countrymen combines a diplomatic astuteness, and a respect 
 for the externals of reform that are variously described as 
 admirable and deceiving. According to the latest news, 
 he has been relieved of his Viceroyalty of Chihli and his 
 Imperial Commissionership, and has been ordered to Peking 
 to take up the functions of Head of the Imperial Chancery. 
 Whether this is intended as a compliment or the reverse, no 
 one outside the Palace at Peking can as yet say. 
 
 At Tientsin I was honoured by the Viceroy with an inter- 
 view, to which I look back with the greatest pleasure. The 
 
 Viceroyal Yamen is a building in the official 
 Interview. n i ■ i 
 
 quarters oi which, at any rate, there is neither 
 
 distinction nor beauty. Carried in green palanquins to the 
 gate, we there descended and passed through one or more 
 dingy anterior courts, small, squalid, and coarsely painted, 
 to an inner room, where seats had been placed round a long 
 table. The Viceroy entered, a tall and commanding figure, 
 considerably over six feet in height, dressed in a long grey 
 silk robe, with a black silk cape over his shoulders. Taking 
 his seat at the head of the table, the Viceroy, with the aid 
 of a competent interpreter, commenced a discussion, mainly 
 upon contemporary politics, which lasted for over an hour. 
 He continually put the most searching and ingenious 
 questions ; being renowned, indeed, for his faculty of 
 ' pumping ' others about what he desires to ascertain, with- 
 out emitting the least corresponding drop of moisture 
 himself. While speaking or listening his small, black, 
 restless eyes follow keenly every movement of the features, 
 A big moustache overhangs and partially conceals his mouth, 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 227 
 
 and a sparse Chinese beard adorns his chin. His hair is 
 quite grey and is turning white. Speaking of England, he 
 wished particularly to know whether the recent change of 
 Government involved a change in foreign policy^ or whether 
 Mr. Gladstone might be expected to pursue the same line 
 as Lord Salisbury. Upon this point the nomination of Lord 
 Rosebery as Foreign Secretaiy enabled me to give the 
 Viceroy consolatory assurances. Discussing the tortuous 
 policy which had been followed in relation to the Chinese 
 vassal State which I had just left, he admitted that Korea 
 had been ill-advised, and even allowed that ' there had been 
 ill-advisers in China also.' The Pamirs and Lhasa were 
 the remaining subjects of our conversation, and the Viceroy 
 produced one of the Royal Geographical Society's small 
 maps of the former region. He has subsequently sent to 
 me the photograph with an autograph inscription that 
 accompanies the text. 
 
 From Tientsin the traveller has the choice of covering 
 the distance that separates him from Peking either by an 
 agreeable two days' ride of eighty miles,^ or by a 
 house-boat on the river, which, by alternate sail- ^"p"^^ 
 ing, poling, rowing, and tracking, should convey 
 him to his destination in something between two and three 
 days. 2 
 
 The scenery, consisting as it does of a vast expanse of 
 alluvial mud, not uncommonly under water, and relieved 
 only by mud villages of greater or less size, may strike the 
 new-comer as repulsive. But a little deeper insight will 
 
 ^ First day — three hours' ride to Yangtsim (inn) 20 miles ; ditto to Hoh- 
 Hsi-wu (inn), 20 miles. Second day — three hours' ride to half-waj^ village, 
 Hsiu-ho (inn), 20 miles ; ditto to Peking, 20 miles. Total, 80 miles. 
 
 2 It is best, of course, to ride up and sail down ; since the upward joiirney 
 by river sometimes, with an unfavourable wind, occupies from four to five 
 days. The return journey can be shortened by riding from Peking as far as 
 Matou, 28 miles, and picking up the house-boat there. 
 
228 CHINA 
 
 show him in these self-same villages, and in the wide-tilled 
 plains about them — countless replicas of which I have seen 
 
 during both my visits to China — the evidences of 
 Chinese ^^ agricultural contentment and prosperity that 
 
 contrast favourably with the more picturesque 
 surroundings of village life in neighbouring countries. The 
 main street of each village is frequently sunk considerably 
 below the level of the houses, and is apt to be filled with 
 the ebb of an unexhausted inundation. The houses are 
 humble, but neither small nor poverty-stricken. Artificial 
 privies, made of reeds, are frequently erected outside, with 
 a view to economise all available manure. The village 
 threshing-floor, rolled to a compact and level hardness, lies 
 near by. The shops exhibit at least as many commodities 
 as in an English village of corresponding size. Women and 
 children abound, the former neatly dressed and coiffured, 
 the latter dirty but cheerful. Upon a wage of less than five 
 shillings a month the men can find adequate subsistence. A 
 great variety of animals in good condition— mules, donkeys, 
 ponies, and oxen — are employed either for tillage or burden. 
 The eating-houses and tea-shops are filled with noisy crowds, 
 and the inns are frequent and commodious. The people in- 
 habiting such a locality are liable to occasional and appalling 
 visitations of flood, pestilence, or famine. But, these risks 
 excepted, their lives are probably as happy, their condition 
 as prosperous, and their contentment as well assured as 
 those of the rural population in any European country. The 
 taxation imposed upon them is only nominal. The obliga- 
 tions which they stupidly incur to pawnshops or usurers, in 
 pursuit either of the national vice of gambling or of other 
 forms of extravagance, are a greater burden upon them than 
 is the hand of the State. So little fear is there of disturb- 
 ance that the force behind the provincial government is in 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 229 
 
 most cases ridiculously small. In China there are no police ex- 
 cept the unpaid hangers-on of the i/ame7is, assisted, in the event 
 of a riot, by any soldiery in the neighbourhood. Life may be 
 uneventful; but so it is to the peasant in every land. He 
 usually demands little beyond the means of livelihood, freedom 
 from exaction, and the peaceful enjoyment of his modest wage. 
 From such surroundings, which, however respectable, are 
 too unlovely to be idyllic, the stranger rides into the din 
 and dust, the filth and foulness, the venerable and 
 measureless bewilderment of Peking.^ Unique, to"p^]^^^p. 
 and of its kind unequalled, is the impression 
 produced by this great city of over three-quarters of a 
 million souls ^ upon even the seasoned traveller. He may 
 have seen the drab squalor of Bokhara and Damascus, have 
 tasted the odours of Canton and Soul, and heard the babel 
 uproar of Baghdad and Isfahan ; but he has never seen dirt, 
 piled in mountains of dust in the summer, spread in oozing 
 quagmires of mud after the rains, like that of Peking ; his 
 nostrils have never been assailed by such myriad and assorted 
 effluvia ; and the drums of his ears have never cracked be- 
 neath such a remorseless and dissonant concussion of sound. 
 These are the first impressions of the stranger ; they appear, 
 in a great many cases, to be the abiding association of the 
 resident. If, however, a man can succeed in detaching 
 himself from the sensuous medium upon which such constant 
 and violent attacks are made from without, he will find in 
 Peking much both to excite his astonishment and to arrest 
 his concern. In the mighty walls, in some parts fifty feet 
 
 ^ Peking is written and pronounced by the Chinese Pei-chang, and signifies 
 Northern Capital, just as Nan-king signifies Southern Capital. 
 
 2 This seems to be the most reasonable estimate, the pojDulation having 
 greatly dwindled in modern times. In the seventeenth century the Jesuit 
 Grimaldi estimated the total at 16,000,000 ! Du Halde reckoned 3,000,000, 
 which numbers were also given to Lord Macartney in 1793. Klaproth named 
 1,300,000. 
 
230 CHINA 
 
 high and well-nigh as broad, covering a rectangular circum- 
 ference of twenty-one miles/ and rising skywards with 
 colossal symmetry of outline, save where their vertical profile 
 is broken by huge projecting bastions_, or their horizontal 
 edge is interrupted by enormous castellated keeps or gate- 
 towers, he observes a sight without parallel in the modern 
 world — one which, more than any relic of the past that I 
 have ever seen, recalls that Babylon whose stupendous 
 battlements were the wonder of antiquity, the mystery of 
 our childhood, and the battleground of our academic days. 
 Shrouded behind these monumental defences, the gates of 
 which are still opened and closed with the sun, just as they 
 were in the Cambaluc of Marco Polo, of which this modei-n 
 Peking is both the lineal heir and the faithful reproduction,^ 
 
 1 The walls of the Manchu or Tartar city (called by the Chinese Nei-cheng, 
 i.e. Inner City) in their present condition date from the time of the Ming 
 Emjaerors, i.e. from the beginning of the fifteenth century onwards. They 
 are from forty to fifty feet in height, and sixty feet wide at the base, con- 
 sisting of a stone foundation and two walls of immense bricks, the space 
 between which is filled in with mud and paved with bricks at the top. The 
 Tartar city is over fourteen miles in circumference and is entered by nine 
 gates, six in the outer wall and three in the inner or south wall, which is also 
 the north wall of the Chinese city. The latter, or Outer City, AV"ai-cheng, is 
 nine miles in circumference, excluding the northern or common wall, and its 
 walls are from twenty-five to thirty feet high, and twenty-five feet wide at 
 the base. They are entered by seven outer and three inner gates (the latter 
 being identical with those already named). The grand total of gates is 
 therefore sixteen, of which thirteen are in the outer wall. In the embrasures 
 of the gate-towers are fixed boards upon which are painted the nozzles of 
 imaginary cannon — an innocent device which is supposed both to terrify the 
 advancing enemy and to deceive the war god Kuan-ti, who, as he looks down 
 from heaven, is overjoyed to see the city in a state of such splendid defence. 
 In deference to the misogynist prejudices of the same deity, women are not 
 allowed upon the walls. 
 
 2 Yen-king, the capital of the Kin Tartars, which was situated a little to 
 the south of the present Peking, was captured by Jinghiz Khan in 1215. His 
 grandson Kublai Khan (the patron of Marco Polo) rebuilt the capital on a 
 rather more northerly site in 1264-67, and called it in Chinese Tatu or Taidu, 
 i.e. Great Court. It was also called Khan-baligh, i.e. City of the Khan, the 
 Cambaluc of Marco Polo, and covered ap^jroximately the same site as the 
 modern Tartar city, beyond which, however, its wall, which still exists, 
 extended aboiit two miles on the north. 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 231 
 
 the fourtold city — Chinese, Tartar^ Imperial, and Forbidden 
 — is at once an historical monument, carrying us back to 
 the age of Kublai Khan ; a vast stationary camp of nomads, 
 pouring down from Mongolian deserts and Tartar steppes ; 
 the capital of an empire that is to Eastern Asia what Byzan- 
 tium was to Eastern Europe ; the sanctuary of a religion 
 that is more manifold than that of Athens and more ob- 
 
 WALLS AND GATES OF PEKING 
 
 stinate than that of Rome ; and the residence of a monarch 
 who is still the Son of Heaven to 350,000,000 of human 
 beings, whom a bare score of living foreigners have ever 
 seen, and who at the end of the nineteenth century con- 
 tinues to lead an existence that might better befit either 
 the Veiled Prophet of Khorasan or the Dalai Lama of Tibet. 
 The ground-plan of Peking, which dates directly from the 
 time of the Mongol Kublai Khan, and was practically a 
 
232 CHINA 
 
 reproduction in brick and mortar of a military camp, is 
 exceedingly simple ; and its principal landmarks are so 
 
 prominently placed, that in spite of its vast size and 
 roun - ^YiQ sameness of its disgusting streets, a stranger 
 
 very soon learns his way about. The walls of the 
 Tartar city frame an immense quadrangle, almost a square, 
 facing the points of the compass, and on the southei'n side 
 subtended and slightly overlapped by the more elongated 
 parallelogram of the Chinese city. It should be added that 
 this ethnographical distinction of inhabitants, which was 
 enforced for expediency's sake at the time of the Manchu 
 conquest in 1644^ has since been almost entirely effaced, the 
 Tartar element having been in the main absorbed, and the 
 Chinese having overflowed into the quarters that were at 
 first reserved for the conquering race. Within the walls of 
 the Tartar city is a second walled quadrangle, constituting 
 the Huang- cheng, or Imperial city, about seven miles in 
 circuit, containing the public offices, barracks, and many 
 temples and residences of princes, nobles, and officials ; and 
 in the centre of the Imperial city is the final and innermost 
 walled enclosure of the Tzu-chin-cheng, or Pink Forbidden 
 city, a succession of magnificent yellow-tiled halls, of palaces, 
 kiosques, lakes, and gardens, whei-e, behind the protection of 
 pale pink rampart and wide moat, the Lord of this great 
 domain, the master of 350,000,000 human beings, and the 
 Vicegerent of Heaven, himself all but a god, lives a 
 prisoner's life. On the northern side of the Palace rises 
 the Ching-shan, or Prospect Hill, whose wooded sides and 
 five summits, crowned with kiosques or temples, are the 
 most conspicuous object in the city as seen from the Tartar 
 wall. Tradition relates that this elevation is made of coal, 
 and was artificially raised by the Ming Emperors as a 
 provision against the hardships of a prolonged siege ; it is 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 233 
 
 therefore also called Mei-shan, or Coal Hill. But I am not 
 aware that this hypothesis has ever been tested by driving a 
 shaft into the interior; and the hill, which seems to be 
 absolutely identical with the one described by Marco Polo 
 as having been thrown up by the Mongols, is more likely to 
 have been raised as a screen to the Imperial dwelling on its 
 northern side, in deference to the popular superstition of the 
 fengshid. There is something imposing and hieratic in the 
 mysterious symbolism of the ground-plan of Peking, in the 
 conception of these concentric defences successively pro- 
 tecting and shielding from mundane contact the central 
 sanctuary, the o/x^aAos yv^s, where the representative of 
 Heaven, as it were in a Holy of Holies, resides. 
 
 From another point of view there may be said to be three 
 Pekings — the exterior Peking as seen from the city walls, 
 which is a delicious wilderness of green trees, in 
 
 the depths of which the dust and nastiness are -r, ^- "^^^ 
 ^ rekings. 
 
 submerged, and from whose leafy surface rise 
 only the curled roofs of yellow-tiled palaces and temples, 
 an occasional pagoda, a distant tower ; the interior Peking, or 
 the Peking of the streets, tumultuous, kaleidoscopic, pesti- 
 lential, shrill ; and the innermost Peking, or the mysteries 
 hidden behind the pink and yellow walls that conceal so 
 hermetically from the alien eye the ijenetralia both of secular 
 and spiritual adoration. The first of these is the only aspect 
 in which the charm is unshattered by jarring associations ; 
 although, when we descend into it we wonder where the 
 shade and the verdure have gone to, so completely do they 
 seem to have disappeared. To the second, however, a few 
 more words may be devoted, inasmuch as it is the Peking of 
 every-day life. 
 
 As we go forth into it for every excursion, either of duty 
 or pleasure, we have to settle our means of locomotion. 
 
234 
 
 CHINA 
 
 Shall they be ponies^ whose least movement will envelop us 
 in an acrid whirlwind of dust, or the Peking cart, that 
 p strange and springless wooden vehicle of which it 
 
 of the is doubtful whether it was first invented to resist the 
 
 chasms and crevasses and moraines of the streets 
 of Peking, or whether they were devised to harmonise with 
 its primitive and barbaric structure ? Or, rejecting the two 
 
 STKEET IN PEKING 
 
 sole means of assisted locomotion— for no other animal and 
 no other vehicle are available, chairs being reserved for very 
 high officials in the capital, and Europeans preferring for 
 etiquette's sake not to use them — shall we proceed on foot, 
 and pick our way cautiously from peak to peak amid the 
 archipelago of universal ordure ? Presently we emerge on 
 to a main street. Its great breadth is successfullv concealed 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 235 
 
 by the two lines of booths that have sprung up in the kind 
 of ditch that extends on either side of the elevated central 
 roadway ; but through the dust we may discern a long 
 vista, the parallel walls of which present a line of fantastic 
 poles, gilded signboards, carved woodwork, and waving 
 streamers and lanterns — the insignia and advertisement of 
 the shops that open below. Down this avenue streams 
 and jostles a perpetual crowd of blue-clad, long-queued, 
 close-shaven, brazen-lunged men ; Chinese women hobbling 
 feebly on their mutilated stumps ; thickly-rouged Tartar 
 wives, blushing (artificially) beneath a headdress of smooth 
 black hair, parted in several places on the crown, and 
 plastered tightly over a projecting comb that stands out 
 like a long paper-cutter at right angles to the head; a 
 sparsely-bearded mandarin seen nodding behind his saucer- 
 like spectacles in a screened sedan ; long strings of splendid 
 two-humped camels, parading a magnificent winter coat, 
 and blinking a supercilious eye as they stalk along to the 
 heavy cadence of the leader's bell, laden with sacks of 
 lime or coal from the hills ; Mongolians in shaggy caps 
 bestriding shaggier ponies ; half-naked coolies wheeling 
 casks of oil or buckets of manure on creaking barrows ; 
 boys perched on the tails of minute donkeys ; ramshackle 
 wagons drawn by mixed teams of mules, asses, ponies, and 
 oxen yoked together by a complicated entanglement of 
 rope traces passing through an iron ring; abominable and 
 hairy black pigs running in and out of the animals' legs ; 
 good-looking but cowardly dogs that bark and skedaddle ; 
 and above all the crush and roar of the ubiquitous Peking 
 cart, thundering with its studded wheels over the stone 
 bridges and crashing into the deep ruts, drawn by the 
 most majestic mules in Asia, cruelly bitted with a wire 
 across the upper gum. 
 
236 CHINA 
 
 This is the panorama of the central aisle. In the side 
 
 aisles or alleys all the more stationary purveyors of the 
 
 ,, ,. amusements or necessities of life are iammed up 
 
 Native •' ^ 
 
 practi- together ; barbers shaving without soap the 
 foreheads of stolid customers seated upon stools, 
 dentists and chiropodists proclaiming their extraordinary 
 skill, auctioneers screaming the glories of second-hand 
 blouses and pantaloons, cobblers puncturing the thick sole 
 of the native shoe, gamblers shaking spills or playing 
 dominoes, or backing against all comers a well-nurtured 
 fighting cricket, pedlars and hucksters with their wares 
 extended on improvised stalls or outspread upon the 
 ground, curio-dealers offering carved jade snuff-bottles or 
 porcelain bowls, vendors of the opium-pipe and the water- 
 pipe, charm-sellers and quacks with trays of strange 
 powders and nauseating drugs, acrobats performing feats 
 of agility, sword-players slashing the air with huge naked 
 blades, story-tellers enchaining an open-mouthed crowd, 
 itinerant musicians tweaking a single-stringed guitar, 
 country folk vending immense white cabbages or ruddy 
 red persimmons, soldiers with bows and arrows behind 
 their backs going out to practise, coolies drawing water 
 from the deeply-grooved marble coping of immemorial 
 wells, and men and boys of every age carrying birds in 
 cages or a singing chaffinch attached by a string to a 
 stick. A more than ordinary shouting will herald the 
 approach, though it will hardly clear a way, for a bridal 
 procession, in which the bride, tightly locked in an 
 embroidered red palanquin,^ follows after a train of boys 
 
 1 Red is the festive colour in China. The bridal chair is first carried to 
 the bride's home, accomj)anied by music, lanterns, and trays of sweatmeats. 
 There she enters, and, preceded by her lady's maids and followed by one of 
 her brothers, is conveyed to the bridegroom's house, being so hermetically 
 shut up in the sedan that sometimes in the hot summer v^eather she is taken 
 out fainting, and occasionally even dead. 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 237 
 
 bearing lanterns and men blowing portentous trumpets or 
 tapping Gargantuan drums ; or of a funeral cortege, in 
 which the corpse^ preceded by umbrellas and tablets, rests 
 upon a gigantic red catafalque or bier, with difficulty 
 borne upon the shoulders of several score of men.^ In 
 curious contrast with the cacophonous roar of this many- 
 tongued crowd a melodious whirring sings in the air, and 
 is produced by whistles attached to the tails of domestic 
 pigeons. 
 
 Such is the street life of Peking, a phantasmagoria of 
 excruciating incident, too bewildering to grasp, too aggres- 
 sive to acquiesce in, too absorbing to escape. If _, 
 we turn from it to the Peking of sanctuaries. Imperial 
 palaces, and shrines, we are in a very different 
 atmosphere at once. For just as everything in the other 
 Peking is public and indecent, so here everything is 
 clandestine, veiled, and sealed. The keynote to the 
 remainder is struck by the enclosure within enclosure, 
 the Forbidden city inside the Imperial city, where the 
 Lord of countless millions, so well described as the ' solitary 
 man,' resides. In former days, indeed as late as 1887, 
 parts of the Palace-grounds, the lakes and gardens and 
 marble bridges, were accessible to foreigners ; photographs 
 can be purchased that reveal their features, and the 
 majority of resident Europeans can speak from recollection 
 of the site. Now all is closed ; and from the exterior 
 nothing can be seen but the yellow roofs of the great 
 halls and the elegant pavilions that crown the higher 
 elevations. To the innermost enceinte or Palace no man 
 is admitted. There the Impei*ial person and harem are 
 surrounded by a vast body of eunuchs, estimated at from 
 
 ^ The number of bearers ranges from 16 to 128 according to the rank of 
 the deceased, 64 being a not uncommon and resi^ectable number. 
 
^8 CHINA 
 
 8000 to lOjOOO. When the Emperor goes out to worship 
 at any of the temples, or to visit his palaces in the vicinity, 
 no one is allowed in the streets, which are swept clear of 
 all stalls and booths, and are very likely paved for the 
 occasion, while the houses are barricaded or closed with 
 mats. Only in the country, where such precautions are 
 impossible, can the Imperial person be seen, borne swiftly 
 by uniformed retainers in a magnificent sedan. ^ 
 
 Of the disposition and tastes of a monarch thus shrouded 
 from human gaze but little can be known. His imperial 
 Majesty, whose ruling title is Kuang Hsu, is now 
 Emperor twenty-four years of age, and succeeded his 
 ""^ ^ ■ cousin, the Emperor Tung Chih, twenty years 
 ago, under circumstances that throw an interesting light 
 upon the inner mysteries of Court existence in Peking. 
 Tung Chih also was a child when he succeeded his father, 
 Hsien Feng, the fugitive of the Anglo-French campaign, 
 in August I86I. During his minority the Government was 
 virtually in the hands of two ladies, one of whom, the 
 Empress of the Eastern Palace, named Tsi An, had been 
 the principal wife and Empress of Hsien Feng, while the 
 other, who, though the mother of Tung Chih, had not been 
 Empress, was in consideration of the accession of her son 
 named Empress-Mother and Empress of the Western Palace. 
 She was only twenty-seven years of age at the time. Seizing 
 the reigns of government by a bold coup d'etat,^ in which 
 they were assisted by one of Hsien Feng's brothers, well- 
 known to Europeans as Prince Kung, these ladies ad- 
 
 J The Imperial palanquin is usually carried iipon the shoulders of eight 
 bearers, clad in green coats spotted with red and white, and ruiming in the 
 midst of several hundred horsemen. 
 
 2 They arrested the entire Council of Regency, as they were returning to 
 Peking with the body of the deceased Emperor, and sentenced them, one 
 to public execution, two to compulsory suicide, and the remainder to 
 deprivation of all office and rank. 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 239 
 
 ministered the State as Regents, with Prince Kung as 
 Chief Minister, until in 1873 Tung Chih attained his 
 majority and shortly afterwards married. The young 
 wife then became Empress, and the two elder ladies 
 retired nominally into the background. 
 
 Tung Chihj however, was addicted to dissipation, and veiy 
 soon gave signs of a failing constitution. During his illness 
 
 a decree was issued, no doubt at their initiative, ^, 
 
 The two 
 
 in which the Emperor, passing over his own wife, Empresses 
 invited them to resume their former functions ^^ " ' 
 until his restoration to health. By this clever step the two 
 ladies, who foresaw a second and not less agreeable lease of 
 power during the minority of a second infant, found them- 
 selves in the highest place, when^, in January 1875, the 
 Emperor Tung Chih died childless, but leaving a widow who 
 expected before long to become a mother. They were now 
 in a position to manipulate the succession according to their 
 own desires. The natural course, following the ordinary 
 practice of Imperial succession, would have been to wait for 
 the birth of the deceased Emperor's posthumous child, and 
 in the event of its being stillborn, or a girl, to select from 
 among the members of the Imperial family a child who 
 should be adopted as his son, and during whose minority the 
 widowed Empress should rule as Regent. This, however, 
 was not at all to the taste of the two ex-Empresses Regent. 
 Of these the one who was mother to the late Emperor had a 
 sister married to Prince Chun, the younger brother of Prince 
 Kung, the child of which union was therefore twice over a 
 nephew of the Emperor Hsien Feng and cousin of Tung 
 Chih. Ignoring the pregnancy of the Empress Ah-lu-ta, and 
 passing over the sons of Prince Chun's elder brothers,^ they 
 
 1 Prince Kung was willing to submit to this, because it assured him a 
 renewed lease of power as First Minister, which, according to Chinese 
 
240 CHINA 
 
 selected this infant, whose name was Tsaitien, and who, 
 having only been born in August 1871, would ensure them 
 a second long spell of Regency^ The Empress-Mother went 
 in person to the house of her brother-in-law, and brought out 
 the intended claimant. He was adopted as a son to Hsien 
 Feng, thus ensuring to the two ladies a continuation of their 
 functions as dowagers, and was elevated with the ruling title 
 of Kuang Hsu (Glorious Continuity) to the Dragon Throne ; 
 the Regents further producing what purported to be a nomi- 
 nation of the child by the late Tung Chih as his heir. The 
 only step that remained to complete the success of the 
 arrangement was the disappearance of the young widowed 
 Empress of Tung Chih before the birth of her child could 
 upset the plot ; and Chinese opinion can have been little 
 surprised when the early announcement of her death was 
 made, the catastrophe being generally explained by the 
 popular Chinese practice of suicide, though whispers 
 were not lacking of a more sinister doom. It will 
 be seen from the above account that there was quite 
 a cluster of irregularities, to use no stronger term, in 
 the nomination of the reigning Sovereign. But, ac- 
 cording to Chinese ideas, the main flaw in his title 
 consists in his belonging to the same generation as 
 the Emperor Tung Chih, and in his consequent dis- 
 qualification from performing the sacrifices that are due 
 from a descendant to his Imperial predecessor, whose 
 legal successor therefore he cannot be. It was this 
 injury done to the memory of Tung Chih that formed 
 the protest of the censor Wu-ko-tu, who committed 
 
 views of parental dignitj^ would not have been possible had his own son 
 become Emj)eror. The latter, moreover, had already passed by adoption into 
 the family of a younger brother of the Emperor Hsien Feng. Prince Chun, 
 however, violated all precedent later on by serving his own son, the 
 reigning Emperor, in the same capacity until his death in 1891, 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 241 
 
 suicide during one of the Imperial visits to the ancestral 
 tombs, in order to attract public attention to the scandal. 
 
 The second Regency lasted for fourteen years, until in 
 1889 the young Emperor assumed the reins of power and 
 
 married his cousin Yeh-ho-na-la. Providence _ 
 
 The 
 
 has not yet favoured him with an heir, although. Empress 
 according to the Chinese practice, several ap- 
 pointments have already been made to the titular office 
 of Guardian to the Heii'- Apparent. The senior of the 
 two Regents, the Empress Dowager of Hsien Teng, had 
 died in 1881, but the second, or mother of Tung Chih, 
 the Empress Tzu Hsi, continued and continues to survive, 
 and, in spite of her nominal withdrawal from public life, 
 still wields a predominant influence in the government of 
 the Empire. In the opinion of every European who has 
 lived long in Peking, and of all the Chinese statesmen 
 with whom they have conversed, the Empress is a woman 
 of remarkable abilities. In November 1894 she attained 
 her sixtieth year (the ' cycle of Cathay '), and the 
 celebrations and rejoicings in honour of this auspicious 
 event, for which a compulsory subscription had been 
 imposed upon the various provinces, and which were to 
 have assumed unequalled dimensions, involving an ex- 
 penditure of £5,000,000, were interrupted only by the 
 calamitous sequence of the war. The Emperor paid her 
 the supreme compliment of adding two more ideographs 
 to her already elongated title, which now runs as follows : 
 'Tzu-hsi-tuan-yu-kang-i-chao-yu-chuang-cheng-shou-kung- 
 chin-hsien-chung-hsi.' An issue of the Peking Gazette 
 also contained the following eminently filial announce- 
 ment : — 
 
 ' The superlative goodness of the most August Empress Dowager 
 is brightly manifest, and Her comprehensive foresight benefits the 
 
 Q 
 
242 CHINA 
 
 whole race. By ceaseless diligence within Her palace she secures 
 the peace of the entire realm. Since Our accession to the Throne 
 We have in respectful attendance constantly received Her admirable 
 instructions. With great gladness We perceive Her Gracious 
 Majesty in robust health and cheerful spirits. In the year 1894 
 Her Majesty will happily attaiii the illustrious age of sixty years^ 
 and it will be Our duty at the head of the officials and people of 
 the whole Empire to testify our delight and to pray for blessings.' 
 
 It is a curious coincidence — in contradiction of the popular 
 theories concerning the Eastern subjection of women— that 
 both in China and Korea I should have found the de facto 
 sovereign belonging to the female sex. 
 
 Upon no bed of roses, how^ever, can the Emperor of China 
 lie. The ceremonial functions of his life, whether as 
 „, „ Supreme Ruler or as Pontifex Maximus of his 
 
 peror Ku- people, are manifold and engrossing. His educa- 
 tion, both in the native classics and in such de- 
 partments of foreign learning as may be thought desirable, 
 is not neglected ; and the present Emperor, who is known 
 to take a deep interest in everything English, receives daily 
 English lessons, at a very early hour in the morning, before 
 giving audience to his ministers, from two Chinese students 
 of the Tung Wen Kuan, or Foreign College at Peking; who, 
 unlike the Ministers, are allowed to sit in the Imperial 
 presence. As an instance of the young ruler's keen concern 
 in his English studies, I may mention that when he received 
 a copy of the Life of the Prince Consort as a present from 
 Her Majesty the Queen, he sent it down at once to the 
 Tung Wen Kuan to be ti'anslated, and was impatient until 
 he had received it back.^ In the still hours of the night, 
 
 ^ The following description of his personal ai^pearauce was given by an 
 eye-witness of the Audience of 1891: — 'His air is one of exceeding intelli- 
 gence and gentleness, somewhat frightened, and melancholy looking. His 
 face is pale, and though it is distinguished by refinement and quiet dignity, 
 it has none of the force of his martial ancestors, nothing commanding or 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 243 
 
 when no sound but the watchman's rhythmical tap intrudes 
 upon the silence, palanquins may be seen wending theii' 
 way to the Palace-gates ; and there, at 3 and 4 a.m., long 
 before suni'ise, custom prescribes that the young monarch 
 shall give audience to such of his Ministers as have access 
 to his person, and shall give or refuse to the documents 
 which they present the crowning sanction of the vermilion 
 seal. 
 
 What with the necessary but dolorous routine of his 
 official existence on the one hand, rigidly prescribed by an 
 adamantine and punctilious etiquette, and with 
 the temptations of the harem on the other, it is ^ ^^^ 
 rarely that an Emperor of China — usually an 
 infant, and selected because of his infancy in the first place, 
 and exposed through the tender years of his youth to these 
 twofold preoccupations — can develop any force of character, 
 or learn the rudimentary lessons of statecraft. The safety 
 of the dynasty and the sanctity of the Imperial title are 
 supposed to be summed up in the unswerving maintenance 
 of this colossal Imperial nightmare at Peking. Were it to 
 be dissipated or shattered by the appearance of a strong 
 Sovereign, who to the ascendency of personal authority 
 added an emancipation from the petrified traditions of the 
 Palace, the phantom of Imperial power would, it is com- 
 monly said, suffer irretrievable collapse. But at least the 
 spectacle, or the experiment, would be one of surpassing 
 interest ; nor do I see any very clear reason why a present 
 or a future Emperor should not take that more public part 
 
 imperious, but is altogether mild, delicate, sad, and kind. He is essentially 
 ]Mancliu in features ; his skin is strangely i^allid in hue ; his face is oval- 
 shaped with a very long narrow chin, and a sensitive mouth with thin 
 nervous lips ; his nose is well-shaped and straight, his eyebrows regular and 
 very arched, while the eyes are unusually large and sorrowful in expression. 
 The forehead is well-shaped and road, and the head is large beyond the 
 average.' 
 
244 CHINA 
 
 which was filled only a century ago by the Emperor Kieng 
 Lung, and a century earlier by the Emperor Kang Hsi. 
 
 Profound^ however, as is the obscurity attaching to the 
 Palace life, a scarcely less, and a far more exasperating, 
 ^, mystery has in the last few years been allowed 
 
 Temple of to gather about the various sacred enclosures 
 within the city^ which are the goal to which the 
 traveller's gaze has been turned from afar. Till within the 
 last fifteen years most of these were easily accessible, and 
 old residents record how they have played at cricket in the 
 park of the Temple of Heaven, and explored the Temples 
 of Agriculture, the Sun, and Moon. In proportion, however^ 
 as the memory of the war of I860 has receded, and the 
 power for menace of the foreigner been diminished, so has 
 the arrogance of the Chinese grown ; and nothing now gives 
 them greater pleasure than the sullen and sometimes in- 
 solent rejection of the ^foreign devil' from the doors to 
 which he once gained undisturbed entry. In the case of 
 the Imperial temples or enclosures there is the further excuse, 
 that whereas during the long minorities of the present and 
 the preceding Emperor, they were not used for worship, and 
 were consequently neglected, their sanctity has now been 
 vindicated and revived. I know of no foreigner, accordingly, 
 who has been admitted to the Temple of Heaven for ten 
 years ; although, having climbed, not without judicious 
 bribery, the southern wall of the Chinese city, which im- 
 mediately overlooks the sacred enclosure, I could with ease 
 observe from thence the vast roofless altar, three stages high, 
 of glittering white marble, whereupon, at the summer and 
 winter solstice, at two hours before sunrise, the Emperor 
 makes burnt-offerings and sacrifice on behalf of his people 
 to the Supreme Lord of Heaven ; could recognise the Hall 
 of Fasting, where he remains in solitary meditation during 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 245 
 
 the night ; the southei'ii cii-cular Temple of the Tablets ; 
 the three great red poles, from which are hung lanterns 
 to illumine the ceremony ; and the scaffolding surrounding 
 the site of the renowned triple-roofed, blue-tiled temple 
 above the northern altar, the chief glory of the entire en- 
 closure, which was burned to the ground a few years ago, 
 and is now in course of a snail's-pace reconstruction. ^ 
 
 It is still quite possible to pass the outer wall of the 
 entire enclosure, which is a pai*allelogram about three miles 
 in circumference, for the dust has blown up against „.^ . 
 it in a manner which renders it easy to clamber of admis- 
 on to the coping and then to drop down the 
 other side. Here, however, the visitor merely finds himself 
 in the wooded park where the sacrificial animals are kept ; 
 and though he may succeed in taking the guards by surprise 
 and in rushing one of the doorways that lead into the inner 
 enclosures, he is hardly likely to repeat the success suffi- 
 ciently often to conduct him to the innermost enceinte where 
 are the altars. In former days nothing but a little dash to 
 start with, and a subsequent douceur, were required to over- 
 come the scruples of the custodians ; but such a venture, 
 it is generally thought, might in the present state of native 
 feeling be provocative of violence. 
 
 Fascinating, indeed, would be the experience of the man 
 who, by whatever device, succeeded in witnessing the great 
 
 annual observance of December 21 : when, in the „, 
 
 ' The 
 
 glimmer of the breaking dawn, the Emperor, who Annual 
 
 has passed the night in solitary prayer in the Hall 
 
 of Fasting, comes forth and dons the sacrificial robe of blue ; 
 
 ^ It was struck by lightning in 1890. The contract for its reconstruction 
 was 1,000,000 taels (about £210,000), and the new building is to be complete 
 in 1898. At the time that I was in Peking (November 1892) the workmen 
 had struck for higher pay, although receiving 2s. a day, an enormous wage 
 in China. One half of the time-limit for reconstruction expired in 1895. 
 
246 
 
 CHINA 
 
 when he leaves on his left hand the northern altar and the 
 circular temple upon it, with its curving azure roof, like unto 
 a threefold outspread parasol ; when he moves along the 
 marble causeway between the cypress groves, and beneath 
 the pailows or arches of sculptured marble ; when he passes 
 the single-peaked Circular Hall of the Tablets, whence the 
 tablets of Shang-ti, the Supreme Lord, and of the eight 
 deified Manchu Emperors have already been transferred to 
 
 SOUTHERN ALTAR OF HEAVEN 
 
 their temporary resting-places on the roofless southern altar ; 
 when to the music of over 200 musicians, and to the mystic 
 movements of a company of dancers, he approaches the 
 marble mount, and ascends the triple flight of nine steps 
 each, from the ground to the lower, and from the lower to 
 the central tier, whereon are disposed the tablets of the Sun, 
 Moon, and Stars, and of the Spirits of the Air and Water ; 
 when, finally, from the central he mounts to the uppermost 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 247 
 
 terrace, wherej under the open vault, a pavilion of yellow 
 
 silk overshadows the tablets of the deified Emperors and 
 
 of Shang-ti, the Supreme Lord. There arrived, he kneels ; 
 
 there he burns incense and offers libations on behalf of his 
 
 people before the sacred tablets ; there, nine times, he bows 
 
 and strikes the marble platform with his Imperial forehead, 
 
 in obeisance to the God of Heaven. 
 
 While in Peking I saw the sights or buildings which 
 
 are still accessible to the foreigner, though in some cases 
 
 not without difficulty, and in few without long 
 
 parleying at the wicket, and the ffift of an ex- ^^"syb- 
 r J o ' o servatory. 
 
 orbitant bribe. Of these, perhaps, the best known 
 is the Kuan-Hsiang-tai, or Observatory, originally founded 
 in 1279 by Kublai Khan, to contain the instruments of his 
 famous Astronomer- Royal, Ko-chow-tsing. Four hundred 
 years later the Mongol instruments were pronounced out of 
 date by Ferdinando Verbiest, the Jesuit father, who was 
 President of the Board of Works at the Court of the Manchu 
 Emperor Kang Hsi, and were superseded, by a new set of 
 instruments, manufactured under Verbiest's directions at 
 Peking, or (as in the case of the azimuth dial, presented by 
 Louis XIV. to the Chinese sovereign) imported from Europe. 
 The Ming instruments, all of bronze, and polished to a 
 glassy smoothness by long exposure to the dust-charged air 
 of Peking, are placed under the open sky, on an elevated 
 bastion rising above the summit of the east Tartar wall, 
 which, however, is only accessible thi'ough a wicket and 
 courtyard at the base. Of far greater interest, to my mind, 
 than these objects, w'hich consist of a sextant, a quadrant, an 
 armillary sphere, a great celestial globe adorned with gilt 
 constellations, and other instruments, are the older and dis- 
 carded fabrications of the Mongols, which repose under the 
 shadow of trees in the grassy courtyard below. Here are 
 
248 CHINA 
 
 two armillaiy spheres, great intertwined circles or hoops of 
 bronze, on stands supported by chiselled dragons i-ampant. 
 Here also, shut up in two dusty compartments of an adjoin- 
 ing building, are two objects which no modern traveller, 
 whose writings I have seen, appears to have noticed, although 
 one of them is mentioned by Sir H. Yule in his edition of 
 Marco Polo.^ One is a clepsydra, or water-clock, probably 
 dating from the Mongol era, and composed of three great 
 bronze jars, placed in tiers one above the other, so that 
 a measured quantity of the water overflowed within a given 
 space of time. Attached to them in former times was a 
 figure holding an arrow, on which the hours were marked, 
 and which rested on a vessel floating in one of the cisterns, 
 and changing its elevation as the water rose or fell. This 
 I think, must be the disused water-clock, which the early 
 Jesuit missionaries describe as having formerly been placed 
 in the Ku-lou, or Drum Tower. The remaining instrument 
 is a gnomon, or long table of bronze, along which, down the 
 middle, is marked a meridian of fifteen feet, divided by 
 transverse lines. Upon this the sun's rays struck, passing 
 by an aperture in the wall, the horizon being formed of two 
 pieces of copper suspended in the air. The instrument has 
 now fallen to pieces, and no one seems ever to notice it. 
 
 Among other places which are usually visited within the 
 Tartar city is the Kao Chang, or Examination Building, 
 
 „ . which lies below and is easily visible from the Ob- 
 
 isxamina- •' 
 
 tion Build- servatory Platform. It consists, like the corre- 
 sponding structures in the provincial capitals of 
 China, of long parallel rows of many thousand cells or pens, 
 in which, once every three years, the candidates for the 
 second and third degrees of literary promotion are immured 
 for several days and nights, while they are composing the 
 Vol. i. p. 366. 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 249 
 
 jejune though flowery disquisitions that are to turn the 
 successful competitors into the higher class of mandarins. 
 It is the apotheosis — or shall I not rather say the reductio ad 
 absurdum ? — of the system, from whose premonitory symptoms 
 our own country^ a tardy convert to Celestial ideas, is 
 already beginning to suffer. 
 
 In the northern part of the city beyond Prospect Hill are 
 the Ku-lou, or Drum Tower, containing an immense drum, 
 
 which is beaten to announce the watches of the ^^ , 
 
 Drum and 
 
 night, and the Chung-lou, or Bell Tower, erected Bell 
 by the Emperor Kien Lung in 1740 to shelter one 
 of the five great bells that were cast by the Emperor Yung Lo 
 at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Both these towers 
 are immensely lofty structures, quite 100 feet high, pierced 
 below by a wide arch. 
 
 Every one also goes to see the Temple of Confucius, a vast 
 and dusty hall, of the familiar Chinese pattern, raised upon 
 a stone terrace, and containing nothing inside 
 but the dull red pillars that support the lofty rQ^fu^fju" 
 timbered roof, the tablet of the sage standing in 
 the centre in a wooden shrine, with the tablets of the four 
 next most eminent sages, two on either side, and those of 
 another dozen a little lower down. The Emperor is sup- 
 posed to visit and worship at this temple twice in every 
 year ; but at the time of my visit the reigning monarch was 
 reported not yet to have been at all. In an adjoining court 
 are the so-called stone drums, black cheese-shaped blocks of 
 granite inscribed with stanzas in an ancient character, that 
 are supposed to refer to a hunting expedition of the 
 Emperor Siuen in the eighth century b.c. On the opposite 
 side of the same gateway are the replicas that were made of 
 them by the Emperor Kien Lung. A neighbouring en- 
 closure contains the commemorative tablets, like the carved 
 
250 CHINA 
 
 letters in the Upper School at Eton, that display the names 
 of all the learned doctors who have taken the highest 
 literary degree, or Chin-shih, since the days of the 
 Mongol. 
 
 Adjoining again is the Kuo-tzu-chien, or Imperial Academy 
 of Learning, an educational establishment which exists only 
 
 in respect of habitation and of name ; and in the 
 Hall o the (.gj^|-j.g ^f |-]^jg enclosure stands the Pi-yung-kung, 
 
 or Hall of the Classics, where, upon a raised 
 throne, the Emperor is supposed to, but, I believe, does not 
 read an address to the literati. On the sides of a court in the 
 Kuo-tzu-chien are also placed under cover the 200 tablets 
 containing the graven text of the Confucian classics. 
 About all these fabrics, and their silent and deserted courts, 
 there is an air of academic and supreme repose. 
 
 No such impression is derived from a visit to the Yung-ho- 
 kung, or great Lama temple, which stands close to the last- 
 
 „ mentioned enclosure in the north-east corner of 
 
 Great 
 
 Lama the city. Its 1200 Mongolian inmates, presided 
 
 over by a Gegen, or Living Buddha, are celebrated 
 for their vicious habits and offensive manners. It was con- 
 sidered a stroke of rare good fortune that, with the aid of 
 an experienced Chinese scholar, I obtained entrance to the 
 monastery ; although our small party did not escape from 
 the clutch of its filthy and insolent inhabitants without 
 being heavily mulcted at the gate of each court and 
 sanctuary, which were barred against us one after the other, 
 and being subjected at intervals to rough usage as well. 
 Subsequent visitors to Peking have been unable to gain 
 admittance at all. I retain a vivid recollection of the main 
 temple, with its three seated Buddhas and two standing 
 figures, one on either side of the central image ; with the 
 eighteen Lohans, or disciples, along the sides ; and with a 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 251 
 
 unique collection of old cloisonne and gilt bronze vessels, 
 censers, and utensils, the gifts of emperors, on the various 
 altars. The furniture of this temple is the finest that I have 
 seen in China, and reflects a sumptuous antiquity befitting 
 a sanctuary of such high repute. Behind the main temple 
 is the Prayer Hall, filled with rows of low forms or stools, 
 facing east and west and divided by mats. As the hour for 
 evensong was approaching we were unceremoniously hustled 
 out of this building by the assembling monks. Beyond 
 again is a temple containing a huge gilt wooden image of 
 Maitreya, the Buddha To Come, not seated but standing, 
 and with his head touching the roof seventy feet above. It 
 is possible to climb up to the top by wooden stairs leading 
 to two upper stories, where are innumerable small brass 
 Buddhas disposed in shrines and niches. The Lamas de- 
 clined to part with any of these except at an exorbitant 
 price; but I have one in my possession which was sub- 
 sequently brought to the Embassy by a monk, less pious or 
 more pliable than his fellows. At the back is another altar 
 with a number of porcelain Buddhas, resembling Luca della 
 Robbia ware. We next saw a dilapidated building con- 
 taining the terraced structure or throne, on the top of which 
 the Emperor Kien Lung is said to have fasted for a night 
 prior to his initiation into the Church, In another part is 
 the temple of Kuan-ti, the God of War, crowded with 
 hideous painted and grinning images, and with figures of 
 warriors in helmets and armour. Here also are the wooden 
 models of two hippopotami with their young, which are said 
 to have been killed by Kien Lung while hunting at Kirin in 
 Manchui'ia. On our way out we saw the monks and their 
 pupils, many hundreds in number, engaged at evensong in 
 the various chapels. Loud rang the deep, base monotone of 
 their voices, shouting with irreverent iteration the responses 
 
252 CHINA 
 
 of the Tibetan liturgy. All wore yellow mantles, and in 
 front of each upon the bench was his yellow tufted felt 
 helmet, exactly like the headpiece of a Hellenic or Roman 
 warrior. The Lamas of higher grade, in purple and crimson 
 mantles, wore these upon their heads as they walked to and 
 fro between the benches, conducting the service. The 
 appearance of a group of Europeans excited indignant pro- 
 tests from these individuals ; and we had a long wait, in 
 hope of a crowning bribe, before we were permitted to leave 
 the final gate and quit this nest of profligate scoundrels. 
 However, the experience was well worthy of the time and 
 trial to temper involved, and is thought by the best resident 
 authorities to be the most singular of the now available 
 sights of Peking. 
 
 Very gratifying is it to turn one's back upon this city, 
 where all that is worth seeing is so difficult, and where such 
 
 savage inroads are made upon equanimity, patience, 
 Uutside g^^j every human sense, and to make a trip to 
 
 some of the well-known sites that lie within a 
 range of from forty to sixty miles of the northern gates. 
 Here, outside the Tartar wall, but within the mud rampart 
 of the Mongolian Kambalu, is the Huang-ssu, another Lama 
 monastery, commonly called the Yellow Temple. It consists 
 of a series of great enclosures with tranquil courts, old trees, 
 shrines covering memorial tablets, and vast temple-halls. 
 The largest of these possesses one of the most impressive 
 interiors that I have ever seen. Three great solemn seated 
 Buddhas are raised aloft, and peer down with the inscrutable 
 serenity of the familiar features and the ruddy glimmer of 
 burnished gold. The adjacent figures of Lohans, the 
 coloured fresco of Buddhistic scenes, the lofty timbered 
 roof, the splendid altars and censers, are all features seen 
 elsewhere ; but the majestic stature of the images, the 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 253 
 
 sumptuous though faded colouring of the pillars and walls, 
 and the deep gloom in which the hall is plunged, compel 
 a reverence which is almost without alloy. In a neighbour- 
 ing court is the dagoba, or white marble tomb, erected by the 
 Emperor Kien Lung to the Teshu Lama of Tibet,^ who, 
 while on a visit to Peking, died there of smallpox in 1780. 
 The shape of the monument is ugly, but the sculptures 
 on its eight sides, which represent scenes in the history 
 of the deceased Lama, are fine and humorous in their fidelity 
 to life. 
 
 At a short distance to the north-west, the largest of the 
 five bells of Yung-Lo, which was cast about the year 1406^ is 
 suspended in a temple that was erected 170 years 
 later. The dimensions oi'dinarily given are 14 feet j, ?. 
 in height, 34 feet in circumference at the brim, 
 9 inches in thickness, 120,000 lbs. in weight. More remark- 
 able is the fact that the surface of the monster, both inside 
 and outside, is covered with thousands of Chinese characters, 
 representing extracts from two of the Buddhist classics. 
 
 One of the bitterest of the many disappointments of 
 modern Peking is the inability, also of recent origin, to 
 see the grounds or ruins of the celebrated Summer 
 Palace that was demolished by the Allies in I860. Summer 
 Of this act I observe that it has become in recent ^ ^'^^' 
 years the fashion among travellers, who have probably never 
 read a line of the history of the war itself, to say that it was 
 a thoughtless or intemperate act of vandalism appropriately 
 committed by the son of that Lord Elgin who had per- 
 petrated a corresponding deed of violence by wresting from 
 the rock of the Acropolis the marble treasures of Athens. 
 Both criticisms are equally ignorant and empty. For though 
 
 1 The Teshu Lama, or Banjin Prembutcha, is the second dignitary in the 
 Buddhist hierarchy of Tibet, and resides at Shigatze. 
 
254 CHINA 
 
 we may regret that the modern Acropolis, now for the first 
 time tended and cared for, does not contain the sculptures 
 that once formed its chief glory, and though we may deplore 
 the loss to the world of architecture and art of the splendid 
 fabrics and the priceless treasures of the Chinese Versailles ; 
 yet in the one case it must be remembered that, but for the 
 first Lord Elgin's intervention, the marbles which bear his 
 name would probably not now be existing at all ; and in the 
 other, that the second Lord Elgin's act was a deliberate and 
 righteous measure of retribution for the barbarous cruelties 
 and torture that had been practised for days and nights 
 in the courts of that very Palace upon British prisoners of 
 war; that more than any other possible step, short of the 
 sack of the Imperial Palace at Peking, it signified the 
 humiliation and discomfiture of a throne claiming a 
 prerogative almost divine ; and that the reason for which 
 the suburban instead of the urban residence of the Emperor 
 was selected for destruction was the merciful desire to 
 save the inhabitants of the capital from a retribution 
 which was felt to have been specially, if not solely, 
 provoked by the insolency and treachery of the Court. 
 Twenty-seven years later the Marquis Tseng, writing in 
 the pages of an English magazine,^ admitted that it was 
 this step, or 'singeing of the eyebrows of China,' as he 
 called it, that first caused her to awake from her long 
 sleep, and to realise that she was not invulnerable. So 
 far from cherishing an undying grudge against the French 
 or English for the act, as is also commonly represented 
 by travellers, the Chinese themselves, who have a wonderful 
 faculty for oblivion, have invented the fiction that the 
 Summer Palace was looted by robbers ; and this is now 
 the popular belief. 
 
 1 Asiatic Quarterly Bevieiv, January 1887. 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 255 
 
 The term Summer Palace is strictly applied to the Yuan- 
 ming-yuan, i.e. Garden of Perfect Clearness, a large enclosure 
 surrounded by a high wall four and a half miles in 
 
 circuit, about seven miles to the north-west of V^"" 
 
 ' ming-yuan. 
 
 Peking. Here the Emperor Yung Ching in the 
 first half of the eighteenth century first built a palace and 
 laid out the grounds — a work of twenty years ; and here 
 it was that a series of magnificent buildings, designed upon 
 the model of Versailles, and framed in a landscape garden- 
 ing that was a similar reminiscence of France, were raised 
 for the Emperor Kien Lung by the Jesuit missionaries in his 
 service. Of these, Pere Benoist undertook the hydraulics in 
 1747-50; and the descriptions by Pere Attiret, who was the 
 Emperor's Court Painter, and by Pere Bourgeois, which are 
 to be found in the Letires J^difiantes, give a most interest- 
 ing account of the manner and success of their undertaking. 
 To the average European sitting at home it is probably news 
 to learn that the Summer Palace, of which he has heard so 
 much, was a series not of fantastic porcelain pagodas or 
 Chinese pavilions, but of semi-European halls and palaces 
 adorned with the florid splendour of the Court of the Grand 
 Monarque. The greater part of these were wrecked in I860, 
 but for the last twenty years the work of restoration has 
 been slowly proceeded with, and no foreigner can now gain 
 access to the interior. 
 
 Till lately this prohibition did not apply to the Wan-shou- 
 shan, i.e. Hill of Ten Thousand Ages, a similar Imperial 
 Pleasaunce about three-quarters of a mile to the 
 south-east; and many are the Europeans who Wan-shou- 
 have visited and described its beautiful lake and 
 island connected with the shore by a white marble balus- 
 traded bridge with sixty marble lions on the parapet ; the 
 marble boat that lies in the water; the bronze cow reposing 
 
256 CHINA 
 
 on a stone pedestal ; and the great hill rising from the lake's 
 edge, ascended by a lofty staircase upon both sides of a 
 colossal terrace of stone, and crowned by elegant temples 
 and pavilions. The bulk of these too succumbed to the 
 bayonet and the torch ; but on attempting to enter the 
 great gates^ where are the bronze lions, I found the whole 
 place alive with movement. Thousands of masons and 
 coolies were at work, rebuilding the ruins as a palace for the 
 Empress Dowager. Entrance was strictly prohibited, and 
 only from one of the neighbouring mounds was it possible 
 to obtain a view of the interior. The work of reparation 
 has been suspended since the war. 
 
 No visit to Peking is accounted complete without an ex- 
 pedition to the Great Wall and the Tombs of the Ming 
 Emperors ; and though I shall refrain from de- 
 W U '^^ scribing an excursion that is so well known, I may 
 remark that neither section of it should be omitted 
 by the traveller. The Wall is most easily and commonly 
 visited at one of two places, either at Pataling, the far exit 
 of the Nankow Pass, forty miles from Peking, or at Ku-pei- 
 kow, nearly double that distance on the road to the Em- 
 peror's Mongolian hunting-lodge at Jehol. The first- 
 named point is in the Inner Wall, the second in the Outer.^ 
 
 ^ As most persons know, there are two Great "Walls of China, the main 
 or Outer Wall, called Wan-li-chang-cheng, i.e. the Ten Thousand Li Wall, 
 which runs from Shan-hai-kuan on the Gulf of Pechili, in a westerly direc- 
 tion along the northern frontier of China Proper for 1500 miles ; and the 
 Inner Wall, which branches off from the first, to the west of Ku-pei-kow, 
 and describes the arc of a circle round the north-west extremity of the 
 province of Chihli, dividing it from Shansi, for a total distance of 500 miles. 
 The Outer Wall is attributed to the Emperor Tsin-shi-huang-ti in 214-204 
 B.C. ; but of the original structure it is supposed that very little now remains. 
 Near the sea it is made of unhewn stones ; in the greater part of its course 
 it is faced with large bricks resting upon a stone foundation, and is from 15 
 to 30 feet in height and 15 to 25 feet in thickness ; in its western part it is 
 commonly only a nuid or gravel mound, over which horsemen can ride with- 
 out dismounting. In parts it has entirely disappeared. The Inner Wall is 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 257 
 
 This great monument of hmnan labour, that still, with some 
 interruptions, pursues its aerial climb over 2000 miles of peak 
 and ravine, almost invariably excites the enlightened abuse 
 of the foreigner, who can see in it nothing but a blindfold 
 conception and misdirected human power.^ To me, I con- 
 fess, it appears as a work not merely amazing in plan, but 
 of greftt practical wisdom (in its day) in execution. To this 
 date the Mongol tribes regard the Great Wall as the natural 
 limit of their pastures ; and though it could not have been 
 expected at any time to render the Empire or the capital 
 absolutely secure from invasion, yet in days when men 
 fought only with bows and arrows, and indulged in guerilla 
 raids of irregular horse, times without number its sullen 
 barrier arrested the passage of predatory bands, caused the 
 examination of passports, and prevented the illicit entry of 
 goods. Because we do not now, in days of artillery, encircle 
 an empire any more than a city with a wall, it by no means 
 follows that such a defence may not once have been as 
 useful to a kingdom as it was to a town. 
 
 Of the Shih-san-ling, or Thirteen Tombs of the Ming 
 Emperors, which at unequal distances, each in its own 
 wooded enclosure, surround a wide bay or amphi- 
 theatre in the hills, thirty miles nearly due north r^^^ Ming 
 of Peking, I will merely observe that the famous 
 avenue of stone animals through which one enters the 
 valley from the south is to my mind grotesque without 
 
 attributed to the Wei dynasty in a.d. 542; but in its present state it is 
 almost entirely the work of the Ming Emperors. Their part of the wall is 
 built of stone, and is from 25 to 50 feet in height, including the outer 
 parapet, and has a paved walk along the summit 14 feet in width, i^assing 
 through frequent and more elevated towers with embrasured stone walls 
 9 feet in thickness. At the Pataling Gate it is a very imposing structure. 
 
 1 Dr. Williams, for instance, in his Middle Kingdom, speaks of it as an 
 ' evidence of the energy, industry, and iDerseverance of its builders, as well 
 as of their umvisdom and icaste.' 
 
258 CHINA 
 
 being impressive, the images being low, stmited, and with- 
 out pedestals ; that the Great Hall of Yung Lo, which 
 contains his tablet, is in design, dimensions, and extreme 
 simplicity, one of the most imposing of Chinese sacred 
 structures ; that, like the Egyptian kings in the Pyramids 
 of Ghizeh and in the subterranean galleries of Thebes, and 
 the Persian kings in the rock-sepulchves of Persepolis, the 
 object of the Chinese Sovereigns appears to have been 
 either to conceal the exact spot in which the royal corpse 
 was deposited, or at least to render it impossible of access ; 
 and that a visitor should be recommended to compare the 
 Ming Tombs with the Mausolea of the reigning dynasty, 
 which are situated in two localities known as the Tung-ling 
 and Hsi-ling, to the east and west of Peking (while the 
 ancestors of the Imperial family were interred in Southern 
 Manchuria), and are reported to be of great beauty and 
 splendour ; though no European would stand a chance of 
 being admitted to their inner temples or halls. 
 
 These and similar excursions to the delightful monastic 
 retreats in the western hills, or rides in the Nan-hai-tzu,^ 
 
 a great Imperial park three miles to the south 
 Le 'Von ^^ ^^^ Chinese city, surrounded by a wall and 
 
 containing some very peculiar deer,^ are an agree- 
 able relief to the visitor, who soon tires of the dirt and 
 confusion of Peking. Even such relaxations, however, are 
 found to pall upon the resident ; and he is apt to turn from 
 the surfeit of desagrements in the streets to the repose of the 
 
 1 In a fit of belated economy, the Emf)ress Dowager, since the war, is 
 said to have closed her palace in the Nan-hai-tzu. 
 
 2 This is the Ssu-pu-hsiang {lit. Four-Parts-Unlike, because the various 
 parts of the body resemble those of different animals), or Tail-deer, called 
 after its first discoverer Cervus Davidianus. It has an immense tail, over 
 a foot in length, and gigantic antlers, somewhat resembling those of a rein- 
 deer. The species has never been found wild, and is not known to exist 
 anywhere in the world excejjt in this park. 
 
THE COUNTRY AND CAPITAL OF CHINA 259 
 
 walled compounds within which the various Foreign Lega- 
 tions reside, and where life, though confined, is at least 
 cleanly and free. Of these by far the most imposing is 
 the British Legation, an enclosure of three acres inside the 
 Tartar city, once the palace of an Imperial prince, whose 
 entrance-archways and halls have been skilfully adapted 
 to the needs of European life, where the members of the 
 staff are accommodated in separate bungalows, where the 
 means of study and recreation alike exist,^ and where a 
 generous and uniform hospitality prevails. 
 
 1 The premises of the British Legation include the Minister's reception- 
 rooms and residence in the quondam palace, separate houses for the First 
 and Second Secretaries, houses of Chinese Secretaries, Physician, and 
 Accountant, the Chancellery, Library, Student Interpreter's quarters and 
 mess. Dispensary, Fire Engine, Armoury, Lawn Tennis and Fives Courts, 
 and Bowling Alley, with a body-guard of two constables. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CHDSTA AND THE POWEJIS 
 
 Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate. 
 
 Dante : Inferno, Canto ii. 
 
 At no capital in the world are relations between the 
 
 Government of the country and the representatives of 
 
 Foreign Powers conducted under circumstances 
 
 Relations g^ profoundly dissatisfactory as at Peking. There 
 
 between c j j o 
 
 Chinese is absolutely no intercourse between the native 
 peans officials and foreigners. Few of the latter have 
 
 ever been, except for a purely cei'emonious visit, 
 inside a Chinese Minister's house. No official of any 
 standing would spontaneously associate with a European. 
 Even the Chinese employes of the various Legations would 
 lose "^face' if observed speaking with their masters in the 
 streets. Superior force has installed the alien in the 
 Celestial capital ; but he is made to feel very clearly that 
 he is a stranger and a sojourner in the land ; that admission 
 does not signify intercourse ; and that no approaches, 
 however friendly, will ever be rewarded with intimacy. 
 This attitude is more particularly reflected in the official 
 relations that subsist between the Diplomatic Corps and 
 the Foreign Office at Peking. 
 
 That office, if it can be said so much as to exist, is an 
 office without either recognised chief or departmental 
 organisation. After the war of I860, a board named the 
 Tsungli Yamen was invented in 1861 by Prince Kung, who 
 
 260 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 26l 
 
 became its first President — a titular post which he held till 
 his fall in 1884 — in order to take the place of a Foreign 
 Office, and to conduct dealings with the Minis- „, 
 ters of the Powers who insisted on forcing their Tsungli 
 unwelcome presence upon Peking. Up till 
 that time all foreign affairs had been conducted by 
 the Li Yan Yuen, or Colonial Office, a department of the 
 Ministry of Rites, which dealt with the dependent and 
 tributary nations, and therefore — since, according to the 
 Chinese theory, the whole exterior universe fell into that 
 category — with all foreign peoples. The war, however, 
 showed conclusively that Europe did not appreciate this 
 sort of logic ; and some deference required to be paid to 
 scruples that had just been so inconveniently enforced. 
 The new Board consisted at the start of three members 
 only : Prince Kung ; Kuei Liang, senior Grand Secretary ; 
 and Wen Hsiang, Vice-President of the Board of W^ar. In 
 the following year, 1862, four additional members were 
 appointed, and by 1869 successive additions had brought 
 the number up to ten. In recent years the total has 
 ranged from eight to twelve, with a preponderance, as a 
 rule, of Chinese. But it possessed, from the start, this 
 remarkable idiosyncrasy, that its members did not con- 
 stitute a separate department in any legitimate sense of 
 the term, being mainly selected from the other Ministries,^ 
 \vithout any special aptitudes for or knowledge of foreign 
 affiiirs. For many years past it has been closely identified 
 with the Grand Coinicil, a majority of the members of the 
 latter Board being also members of the Yamen. It is 
 much as though the Board of Admiralty at Whitehall were 
 
 1 These are the Ministries of (1) Civil Affairs and Apijoiiitments, or 
 Treasiuy ; (2) Revenue and Finance, or Exchequer ; (3) Rites and Ceremonies ; 
 (4) War ; (5) Public Works ; (6) Criminal Jurisdiction or Punishments.— Fi(ie 
 Professor R. K. Douglas's Society in China, pp. 44-57. 
 
262 CHINA 
 
 composed of the Home, Indian, and Colonial Secretaries, 
 with perhaps the President of the Boax-d of Trade and the 
 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster thrown in. This is 
 the scratch body that takes the place of a Foreign Minister, 
 and acts as an intermediary between the foreign repre- 
 sentatives and the Imperial Government in Peking. A 
 number of its members, ranging, maybe, from three to a 
 dozen, sit round a table covered with sweetmeats to receive 
 the diplomat and listen to his representations. No privacy 
 is possible, since the conversation must in any case be 
 conducted through interpreters, and there are plenty of 
 hangers-on standing about as well.^ While Prince Kung 
 was President, all correspondence was carried on in his 
 own name. But during the regime of Prince Ching from 
 1884 to 1894 official communications were drawn up in 
 the names of himself and his colleagues conjointly. The 
 Prince, though unknown in Europe, is a typical specimen 
 of the Manchu gentleman, and a statesman of great ability, 
 with a wide grasp of foreign questions. At the end of 
 September 1894, after the double defeat of China by 
 Japan in the naval battle of the Yalu, and in the land 
 fight at Ping-yang, he was dismissed by the Emperor, and 
 Prince Kung, then sixty-two years of age, was recalled 
 from his long exile (dating from the Franco-Chinese war 
 of 1884) and was reappointed President both of the Tsungli 
 Yamen and of the Chun Chi Chu or Grand Council, with 
 powers almost amounting to a Dictatorship. Prince Ching 
 
 1 In the excellent recently -published Lije of Sir Harry Parkes, by Mr. 
 S. Lane-Poole, there are several extracts from his correspondence, describing 
 with characteristic candour his impressions of the Tsungli Yamen. He 
 speaks of 'going to the Yamen and having a discussion with eight or ten 
 men, who all like to speak at once, and who, when refuted, just repeat all 
 they have said before. In some resj)ects it is a question of physical endur- 
 ance ; and, if you are not in good condition, the struggle is trying.' — Vol. ii. 
 p. 389 ; compare pp. 386, 394. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 26S 
 
 has since been readmitted to favour and now acts as junior 
 colleague to Prince Kung. 
 
 It may be imagined that^ whatever the knowledge or 
 the ability of the President^ business can with difficulty 
 be conducted with a body so constituted. Their 
 lack of individual experience ensures irresolution ; . j?Y 
 their freedom from all responsibility, ineptitude ; 
 and their excessive numbers, paralysis. With whom the 
 decision ultimately rests no one appears to know. The 
 Board is in reality a Board of Delay. Its object is to 
 palaver, and gloze, and promise, and do nothing — an 
 attitude which has been in great favour ever since its 
 notable success after the Tientsin massacres of 1870, when 
 the Chinese, by dint of shilly-shallying for several months, 
 till the French were hard pressed in the Franco-German 
 war, escaped very much more lightly than they would 
 otherwise have done. Sir Harry Parkes said that to get 
 a decision from the Tsungli Yamen was like trying to 
 draw water from a well with a bottomless bucket. So 
 long as the result is procrastination, and China is not 
 compelled to act, except as she herself may desire, the 
 Tsungli Yamen has served its purpose. As a matter of 
 fact, any important business between the British Minister 
 and the Chinese Government is far more likely to be 
 successfully concluded in London, where, although no 
 Chinese representative, with the exception of the Marquis 
 Tseng, has so far had any knowledge of English, the 
 assistance of Sir Halliday Macartney, the accomplished 
 Councillor and English Secretary of the Chinese Legation, 
 gives to his chief an advantage which is not enjoyed by 
 the official superiors of the latter in Peking. 
 
 This dilatory attitude on the part of the Tsungli Yamen 
 is encouraged by the discovery, which the Chinese have 
 
264 CHINA 
 
 made long since, that the Powers, whose joint action 
 would still be almost irresistible, are sundered by irre- 
 mediable differences, and can be played off one 
 
 J. 1"^^^ aeainst the other. They know that an allied 
 
 diplomacy. ° •' 
 
 French and British army is in the last degree un- 
 likely ever again to march up to Peking and sack another 
 Summer Palace. Other hostile combinations are almost 
 equally improbable. When, as in the recent co-operation 
 of France and Russia, any two of the Powers do combine, 
 they carry all before them. In this conflict of interests 
 lies the opportunity of the Chinese. Past masters in every 
 trick of diplomacy, they picture it in the light of a balance- 
 sheet, with credit and debit account, in which no ex- 
 penditure must be entered without a more than compensat- 
 ing receipt. China never voluntarily makes a concession 
 without securing a substantial quid pro quo ; and the tactics 
 that recovered Kulja would have done credit to Cavour. 
 With equal ability have they recently pressed upon the 
 British Government their somewhat shadowy pretensions 
 on the confines of Kashmir, Burma, and Siam. The 
 Tibetan negotiations, that, after going on for years, 
 reached an apparent conclusion in 1894, were conducted 
 in precisely the same spirit. With such a people the only 
 system to adopt is to borrow a leaf from their own book, 
 to act remorselessly upon the Do ut des principle, to pursue 
 a waiting game, and to demand a concession, not solely 
 when it is wanted, but rather when they want something 
 else. In this way will the transaction present the aspect 
 of a mercantile bargain so dear to the Oriental mind. 
 
 The one question of foreign politics at Peking which 
 equally affects the representatives of . every foreign Power, 
 is the Right of Audience ; of which, as it fills a most 
 important and a thoroughly characteristic page of Sino- 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 265 
 
 European history, I will give some account. The Emperors 
 of China do not appear at any time to have taken up the 
 position that their own person was so supremely „, 
 sacred as to render audience with a foreigner Right of 
 an indignity. On the contrary, in olden days, 
 when the Imperial state and prestige were immeasurably 
 greater than they now are, audience was freely granted, and 
 the person of the Sovereign was less hermetically concealed 
 than is now the fashion. Two questions, however, have 
 successively been made uppermost in the settlement of the 
 matter, viz. the character of obeisance made by the foreigner 
 admitted to the interview, and the nature and locality of the 
 building in which it took place. As regards the former, the 
 favoured individual was expected to comply with the Chinese 
 usage by perforxning the kowtow, i.e. kneeling thrice and 
 knocking his forehead nine times upon the ground. The 
 theory of Chinese sovereignty being that the Emperor is the 
 de jure monarch of the whole earth, of which China is the 
 ' Middle Kingdom,' all other nations, therefore, must be 
 either his tributaries or his subjects ; whence the exaction 
 of this mark of deference from their envoys. As regards 
 the site of audience, the practice of emphasising the lowli- 
 ness of the stranger in presence of the Son of Heaven by 
 fixing the audience in a building that carries with it some 
 implication of inferiority, appears to have been the growth 
 only of the last fifty years, if not more recently. 
 
 As early as 713 a.d. an Arab Embassy fi-om Kutaiba, 
 arriving at the Court of the Chinese Emperor, Hwen Thsang, 
 
 found themselves called upon to perform the 
 
 ^ History. 
 
 kowtow. This they declined to do, and were 
 
 accordingly tried and sentenced to death by the Chinese, 
 
 but were graciously pardoned by the Emperor.^ Conversely, 
 
 1 Nouvecmx 3Ielanges Asiatiques, by .J. V. Remusat, vol. i. p. 441, 442. 
 
266 CHINA 
 
 ten Chinese envoys were themselves put to death by the 
 Burmese in 1286 a.d., because they insisted on appearing 
 before the king of that country with their boots on — the 
 Burmese equivalent in insult to the refusal of the kotvtotv in 
 China.i In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries both 
 the Jesuit Fathers who were in the service of the Emperor 
 and the envoys of European Courts or companies, who came 
 to Peking for complimentary purposes or to secure facilities 
 for trade, performed the kowtow without apparent com- 
 punction. One Russian official, however, who arrived at 
 Peking in the reign of the first Manchu Emperor Shun 
 Chill (I644-I66I) was refused an audience because he de- 
 clined to kowtow. In those days the audience commonly 
 took place in one or other of the great Ceremonial Halls of 
 the Imperial Palace in the heart of the Forbidden City, where 
 no European is now permitted to enter. Hei"e stands the 
 Tai Ho Tien, or Hall of Supreme Harmony, a magnificent 
 structure, 110 feet in height, erected upon a terrace of 
 marble 20 feet high, with projecting wings, ascended from 
 the outer court by flights of steps. The Great Audience 
 Hall on the summit of the platform is a vast pavilion, in 
 design not unlike the Memorial Temple of Yung Lo at 
 the Ming Tombs, 200 feet in length by 90 feet in depth, 
 sustained by 72 immense columns of painted teak. In this 
 Hall the Emperor held and still holds the splendid annual 
 Levees at the Winter Solstice, at the New Year, and on his 
 own birthday. As in the Audience Hall, which I have 
 previously described at Soul, and as in that which I shall 
 afterwards describe at Hue — both of which, being erected 
 for the Levees of tributary sovereigns, were exactly modelled 
 upon the Chinese pattern — so here in the Tai Ho Tien the 
 Emperor takes his seat upon a raised throne in the centre. 
 1 Narrative of Mission to the Court of Ava, by Sir H. Yule, p. 79. 
 
CHINA AND THE t'OWERS 26? 
 
 A few Manchus of exalted rank alone are admitted to the 
 building. Outside and below the marble balustrades are 
 ranged the nobility and officials in eighteen double rows, 
 the civil officers on the east side, and the military officers 
 on the west, their respective ranks and positions being 
 marked by low columns. Here at the given signal they 
 kneel, and nine times strike their foreheads upon the 
 gromid in homage to the Son of Heaven, dimly seen, if at 
 all, through clouds of incense, in the solemn gloom of the 
 pillared hall. The earliest picture published in Europe of 
 an Imperial Audience, which was granted to a Dutch Em- 
 bassy in 1656, represents it as having taken place in the 
 Tai Ho Tien.i The second Hall beyond this in the series 
 of successive pavilions, of which the ceremonial portion of the 
 Palace consists, is the Pao Ho Tien, or Hall of Precious Har- 
 mony, also raised upon a marble terrace, wherein the Emperor 
 confers the highest triennial degrees, and in former days gave 
 official banquets to foreign guests (notably to the Mongol 
 princes and to the Korean and Liuchiu envoys if in Peking) 
 on the day preceding the New Year. Here also we read of a 
 Dutch ambassador, one Van Braam, as having been received 
 by the Emperor Kien Lung in 1795." Both these ambassadors 
 kowtowed. So also had done a Russian envoy in 1719^ hi whose 
 company travelled John Bell of Antermony, a Scotch doctor ; '^ 
 and a Portuguese Envoy, Metello de Sousa Menezes, in 1727. 
 
 1 Relation de VAmhassade de la Compagnie HoUandaise vers VEnipereur de 
 la Chine. Paris, 1663. 
 
 2 Voyage de I'Ambassade de la Compagnie des Itules Orientales HoUandaise 
 vers VEnipereur de la Chine. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1797. 
 
 2 Journey from St. Petersburg to Divers Parts of Asia, luith an Embassy 
 from H.I.M. Peter J., by John Bell. 2 vols. Glasgow, 1763. The ex- 
 cellent Scotchman did not at all like having to go through this servile 
 operation. But at the audience he says : ' The masters of the ceremonies 
 then ordered all the company to kneel and make obeisance nine times to the 
 Emperor. At every third time we stood up and kneeled again. Great 
 pains were taken to avoid this jDiece of homage, liut without success.' 
 
268 CHINA 
 
 The first English Plenipotentiary admitted to an audience 
 
 with a Chinese Emperor was Lord Macartney in 1793. He 
 
 was twice received by the aged Kien Lung ; first 
 
 English jj-j ^ pavilion in the grounds of the Emperor's 
 
 embassies. '■ ^ '■ 
 
 Lord hunting-retreat at Jehol, in Mongolia^ and after- 
 
 in 170^ wards at the great Birthday Levee in Peking. 
 
 There were long disputes beforehand as to the 
 exact nature of the obeisance which the Plenipotentiary 
 should perform ; and in his desire to be agreeable^ the 
 latter carried complacency so far as to offer to kowtow on 
 condition that a Chinese official of corresponding rank did 
 the same before a picture of George iii., which he had 
 brought with him. This offer was refused^ and Lord Macart- 
 ney is said to have only knelt upon one knee on the steps 
 of the Imperial throne as he presented his credentials.^ 
 Whatever he actually did, the Chinese ever aftewards in- 
 sisted that he had kowtowed ; and furthermore took ad- 
 vantage of the British nobleman's ignorance of the Chinese 
 language to fix above the boat that brought him up the 
 Peiho River, and on the vehicle that took him to Jehol, a 
 flag bearing the inscription, ' Ambassador bearing tribute 
 from the Country of England ' — an incident which is in 
 itself a highly condensed epitome of the national character. 
 
 The next British Envoy, Lord Amherst, in 18 16 escaped, 
 it is true, the kowtow, but he never saw the Sovereign at all. 
 J , While at Tientsin and during his journey up the 
 
 Amherst river, prolonged daily conferences took place 
 between himself and the Chinese officials, who 
 insisted that Lord Macartney had kowto7vecl, and demanded 
 
 1 Authentic Account of the Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the 
 Emperor of China. Taken from the papers of the Earl of Macartney by Sir G. 
 Staunton. 2 vols. London, 1798. Among the presents taken by Lord Macart- 
 ney to the Emperor of China from the British Government was a watch that 
 cost £500. During the sack of the Summer Palace by the allied armies in 18C0, 
 it was found by a French soldier, who sold it to an Englishman for $20. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 269 
 
 the same deference from him. Lord Amherst not merely 
 repeated his predecessor's first offer, with equal lack of 
 success, but he even consented to kowtow, if the next 
 Chinese Ambassador to England would do the same to the 
 Prince Regent. This proposal also was scouted ; and Lord 
 Amherst finally proceeded upon the understanding that 
 instead of kowtowing, i.e. kneeling on both knees three times, 
 and knocking the ground nine times, he should kneel on 
 one knee three times, and make a low bow nine times. 
 Upon his arrival, however, at the Summer Palace, where the 
 Emperor Chia Ching was then staying, he was bidden by 
 the latter, who was either devoured with curiosity or was 
 bent upon a rupture, to an immediate audience, before his 
 baggage had arrived, and consequently before he could 
 either cleanse himself after the journey, or don his uniform, 
 or prepare his presents. Lord Amherst, suspecting in this 
 inordinate haste some intentional slur upon the Sovereign 
 whom he represented, begged to be excused the honour of 
 the interview, and was bundled unceremoniously out of the 
 Palace the same evening. Thus abruptly ended his mission.^ 
 No other British representative was admitted to the 
 Imperial presence up till the war in I860; and the right of 
 audience vipon the terms that prevail in every 
 other foreign Court was one of the first ad- 
 vantages exacted by the conquerors. Article iii. of the 
 English Treaty of 1860, without actually claiming the right, 
 inferred it by stipulating that the British representative 
 ' shall not be called upon to perform any ceremony de- 
 rogatory to him as representing the Sovereign of an in- 
 dependent nation on a footing of equality with that of 
 China.' After the conclusion of the war no audience was 
 
 1 Journal of Proceedings of the late Emhassi/ to China, by Henry Ellis, 
 Third Commissioner. London, 1817. 
 
270 CHINA 
 
 possible in the reign of Hsien Feng, because he was a 
 fugitive and an exile from his capital till his death in I86I ; 
 nor, .during the minority of Tung Chih, in which interval the 
 Duke of Edinburgh visited Peking in 18 69 without the 
 question being raised, could the demand be put forward. 
 As soon, however, as Tung Chih assumed the reins of 
 government in 1873, the foreign Ministers in Peking 
 addressed to him a collective note, in which they asked to 
 be permitted to present their congratulations in person. 
 The days had long passed when the Chinese authorities 
 
 could insist upon the kowtow. June 29, 1873, at 
 Audiences ^ very early hour of the morning (Lord Macartney 
 Chih in had been received at daybreak) was fixed for the 
 1874. collective audience. Compelled to evacuate their 
 
 original redoubt, however, the Chinese, with 
 characteristic strategy, fell back upon an inner and un- 
 suspected line of defence, endeavouring to safeguard the 
 dignity of their own Sovereign and to humiliate the foreigner 
 by selecting for the site of audience a building in the out- 
 skirts of the Palace enclosure known as the Tzu Kuang Ko, 
 which stands on the western shore of the big lake. In 
 this Hall, which is hung with pictures of combats and of 
 eminent Chinese generals, many of them painted by the 
 Jesuits, it is the habit to entertain the envoys from tributary 
 or dependent States, such as Mongolia and Korea — and in 
 former days also the Liuchiu Islands, Nepal, and Annam — 
 at the festival of the New Year; and the object which was 
 directly served by the flag upon Lord Macartney's boat in 
 1793 could, it struck the crafty Chinaman, be now indirectly 
 secured by admitting the foreigners to audience in a 
 building that possessed to Chinese minds a tributary signifi- 
 cance. The audience, at which Great Britain was repre- 
 sented by Sir Thomas Wade, took place; but considerable 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 271 
 
 irritation was caused by the official announcement of the 
 event in the Peking Gazette, which described the foreign 
 Ministers by an incorrect and inferior title^ and represented 
 them as having ' supplicated ' for an interview. The ob- 
 jections, however, to the building were, it is said, not shared 
 in their entirety by some eminent authorities, including Dr. 
 Williams, who was present at the audience, and Sir Thomas 
 Wade himself 
 
 In the succeeding year, the precedent of 1873 was so far 
 improved upon that audience was given to several newly 
 arrived Ministers separately in the same hall as on the 
 previous occasion. 
 
 In 1875 the Emperor Tung Chih died, and was succeeded 
 by a minor. It was not, therefore, till after the assumption 
 of government by the Emperor Kuang Hsu, in 
 1889, that the question again rose. This time, ^-^^j^ 
 however, the Emperor (or rather the Empress Kuang Hsu 
 Dowager, inspiring him) himself took the initia- 
 tive by issuing on December 12, 1890, the following Pro- 
 clamation, which testified to a common-sense or a conversion 
 on the part of the Government, which was in either case 
 remarkable : — 
 
 ' I have now been in charge of the Government for two years. 
 The Ministers of Foreign Powers ought to be received by me at 
 an audience ; and I hereby decree that the audience to be held be 
 in accordance with that of the twelfth year of Tung Chih (1878). 
 It is also hereby decreed that a day be fixed every year for an 
 audience, in order to show my desire to treat with honour all the 
 Ministers of the Foreign Powers resident in Peking.' 
 
 These sentiments were eminently laudable, but by reviving 
 the precedent of Tung Chih, they offered no solace to the 
 spirits that had been outraged by the reception in the 
 Tzu Kuang Ko. Here finally, in spite of a good deal 
 of preliminary grumbling, the audience again took place 
 
272 CHINA 
 
 on March 5, ISQl.^ Six Ministers and their staffs were 
 received by the Emperor, who sat cross-legged upon a 
 dais with a table draped in yellow silk in front of him ; 
 the Ministers being first received separately, in the order 
 of their length of residence in Peking ; and the united 
 staffs being subsequently introduced en masse. The 
 Emperor and his suite wore long blue silk coats lined 
 with white fur, and embroidered on the back and front 
 with the insignia of their different ranks. On their 
 heads were winter hats of black felt with red silk 
 tassels and coloured buttons on the crown. Each 
 Minister, upon entering, marched up the hall, bowing 
 at stated intervals, and paused at the Dragon Pillar, 
 where, after reading his letter of credence, and hear- 
 ing it translated by the interpreter, he handed the 
 document to the President of the Tsungli Yamen. The 
 latter placed it on the yellow table in front of the 
 Emperor, and subsequently knelt to receive the Imperial 
 reply, written in Manchu, which, after descending the 
 dais, he repeated in Chinese to the Minister through 
 his interpreter. Some of the representatives are said 
 to have been dissatisfied with the arrangements, and the 
 foreign press re-echoed and magnified the cry. It was 
 perhaps not surprising after this that the Cesarevitch, in 
 his tour round the world in the same year, should have been 
 successfully kept away from Peking, both by the Chinese, 
 who dreaded a compulsory surrender, and by the Tsar, 
 who could hardly have brooked anything approximating 
 to an indignity. 
 
 1 Herr von Brandt, the German Representative on this occasion, mentions 
 in his book, A^is dem Lanclc des Zoirfcs, that beside the road which the 
 diplomats had to follow in order to reach the Audience Hall, runs the 
 track of a small Decauville Railway, uf)on which the Emperor is pushed 
 along in a light car by the Palace eunuchs. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 273 
 
 After the audience of 1891 j the Doyen of the Diplomatic 
 Corps gave becoming expression to the dissatisfaction of his 
 colleagues, among whom the French and Russians 
 have always taken the lead, by applying to the fuJ^g^j^^eT^ 
 Tsungli Yamen for reception on a future occasion, 
 not outside the Palace, and in a tributary building, but, as in 
 old days, inside the actual precincts of the Imperial residence. 
 A sort of half compliance with this request was made, first by 
 the promise to erect a new building for the ceremony, and 
 afterwards by the offer of another hall. This is the Chang 
 Kuang Tien, a building dating from Mongol times, which 
 appears to have no peculiar significance or application, and 
 stands on the eastern side of the marble bridge across the 
 ornamental lake. It is not one of the ceremonial halls of 
 the Palace proper, but, on the other hand, its use conveys 
 no slur. Acting upon this opinion, the Austro-Hungarian 
 Minister was the first of the Foreign Diplomatic Corps to 
 be received here in 1891 ; and here also Sir N. O'Conor, 
 Her Majesty's recent representative in Peking, was granted 
 an audience upon his arrival in December 1892, and Herr 
 von Brandt, the retiring German Minister, upon his 
 departure in 1893; a more honorific character having in 
 these latter cases been lent to the reception of the 
 envoy by his introduction through the main or Porcelain 
 Gate, instead of a side gate of the Palace. 
 
 A still further advantage was gained, under the stress 
 of the war then proceeding with Japan, in November 1894. 
 The Chang Kuang Tien was exchanged for the Wen Hua 
 Tien, a hall adjoining the Palace (though not, it appears, 
 actually inside it), where the Emperor sits to hear the 
 Confucian classics expounded. There, on November 12, 
 the Foreign Representatives, who had been admitted by 
 the Central Gate, were received by the Emperor Kuang 
 
 s 
 
274 CHINA 
 
 Hsu to present their congratulations on the sixtieth 
 anniversary of the Empress Dowager. The latter was 
 present, though concealed from view by a silk curtain 
 adorned with peacocks' feathers, that was hung behind 
 the throne. Upon leaving, the Ministers were conducted 
 out of the grounds through the Eastern Gate. In the 
 present year (on June 7, 1895) the Ministers of France 
 and Russia, who have always adopted a more uncom- 
 promising attitude than the remainder of their colleagues, 
 were granted a special audience, arranged somewhat 
 theatrically on their behalf, in order to present new letters 
 of credence from the heads of their respective States. 
 They are reported to have secured the privilege of having 
 the missives carried up the central flight of steps to the 
 Imperial throne — a technical admission of the titular 
 equality of their rulers with the Son of Heaven. 
 
 It will be observed from this historical summary that, 
 since Lord Macartney's audience at Jehol just one hundred 
 years ago, the following points have been gained, 
 ummary ^^^ merely does a Special Plenipotentiary enjoy 
 achieve- the right to an audience with the Sovereign, 
 but to every foreign Minister accredited to the 
 Chinese Court is this prerogative now conceded, both 
 upon his arrival and departure, or when presenting any 
 communication from his Sovereign ; and, if the terms of 
 the Imperial Proclamation of 1890 be carried out, once 
 every year in addition. The kowtow has disappeared, not 
 merely fi-om foreign practice, but even from discussion. 
 Its place has been taken by a ceremonial not essentially 
 different from that with which a new Member of Parliament 
 is introduced to the British House of Commons. These 
 are considerable forward moves. On the other hand, the 
 diplomats, though advancing by steady degrees, have not 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 275 
 
 yet quite won their way back to one of the great 
 Audience Halls in the main body of the Palace, to 
 which it appears to me that precedent and equity alike 
 entitle them to advance a claim. Perhaps the recovery 
 of the Tai Ho Tien is one of the triumphs that is re- 
 served for the diplomacy of the ensuing century. 
 
 Englishmen, living freely in a democratic country, where 
 the Fountain of Honour is inaccessible to few, and where 
 humility has never been confounded with humilia- 
 tion, may not be able to comprehend all this .^^^ ^^^' 
 'J r nincance 
 
 pother about the nature of a bow and the of the 
 significance of a building. To the Chinese they 
 are all-important; and just as the Greek Timagoras was 
 condemned to death by the liberty-loving Athenians 2260 
 years ago^ becavise he had kowtowed at Susa to Artaxerxes 
 Mnemon, the Great King, so have British representatives 
 — instructed to maintain the equal prerogative of then- 
 Sovereign, in face of the inadmissible pretensions of a 
 majesty that was supremely ignorant of its own limita- 
 tions — been justified in fighting strenuously for what to 
 Europe may seem a shadow, but in Asia is the substance. 
 When Lord Macartney took out a beautiful coach with glass 
 panels as a present from George in. to the Emperor Kien 
 Lung, the Chinese officials were horrified at a structure 
 which would place the coachman on a higher level than 
 the monarch, and promptly cut away the box-seat. 
 
 Such and so imperfect being the status of foreign 
 diplomats, and the methods of diplomatic intercourse at 
 Peking, we may next inquire what are the „ 
 main objects for which their intervention is policy of 
 required .^ In other words, what is the foreign 
 policy of China, in so far at least as concerns our own 
 country ? We have not here, at any rate for the present. 
 
276 CHINA 
 
 any demand similar to that which we have noticed in 
 Japan, for the revision or abrogation of the Treaties under 
 which Europeans are admitted to trade or residence in 
 certain ports on the sea-coast, and in cities in the 
 interior.! China has not, Hke her neighbours, any judicial 
 system, nominally based upon a European model, to offer 
 in substitution for the consular courts of the foreigner. 
 She is far more dependent upon the latter for her wealth, 
 particularly as derived from the Imperial Customs, which, 
 under the extremely capable management of an English- 
 man, Sir Robert Hart — who enjoys the unique distinction 
 of having resigned the appointment of British Minister in 
 order to remain Inspector-General, a post which he has now 
 held for thirty years — have poured a large and annually 
 increasing revenue into her exchequer.- The foreign 
 element itself is both much more numerous and more 
 powerful than it is in Japan. '^ Moreover, the Chinese 
 temperament is naturally disposed to acquiesce in established 
 facts, and is wrapped in a complacency too absorbing to 
 feel the perpetual smart of foreign intrusion. Such a 
 movement may rise into view later on ; but at present it 
 is below the horizon. 
 
 The foreign policy of China chiefly concerns Englishmen 
 in its relation to St. Petersburg and to Downing Street. 
 The successive advances made by Russia, largely at China's 
 own expense, have taught her to regard that Power as 
 
 1 A single exception must be noted in the person of the present Chinese 
 Minister in England, who, when Taotai at Ning-i:)0, some years ago, wrote a 
 series of essays on this and kindred subjects, which have appeared in book 
 form. 
 
 2 The Customs' Revenue derived from the Foreign Trade of China in 1892 
 was £4,500,000. 
 
 ^ In 1892 the number of foreigners residing in the twenty-four Treatj' 
 Ports, including Jajjanese, was close upon 10,000. Of these nearly 4000 
 were British ; America came next with 1300 ; then France with less than 900 
 and Germany with 750. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 277 
 
 her real enemy, whom, however, she fears far more than 
 she abhors. It is Russia who threatens her frontiers in 
 
 Chinese Tm'kestan and on the Pamirs : Russia who . ^ .^ , 
 
 ' Attitude 
 
 is always nibbling, in scientific disguise, at Tibet ; towards 
 Russia who has designs on Manchuria ; Russia 
 whose shadow overhangs Korea ; Russia who is building a 
 great Trans-continental railway that will enable her to pour 
 troops into China at any point along 3500 miles of contigu- 
 ous border. All this she knows well enough, and when 
 the Cesarevitch passed through Asia he was, as I have 
 pointed out, neither invited to nor himself proposed to visit 
 Peking ; but the knowledge, so far from instigating China 
 to any definite policy of self-defence, except in the isolated 
 case of the proposed Manchurian Railway, fills her with an 
 alarm that is only equalled by her suspicion of the counsels 
 of any other Power. 
 
 China pretends, for instance, to be interested in the 
 Pamirs, but she cannot be reckoned upon to move a single 
 battalion in their defence, particularly if it is p, . 
 whispered in her ear that she is thereby helping and the 
 to pull somebody else's chestnuts out of the 
 fire. We read in the newspapers mysterious paragraphs 
 about the activity of Chinese diplomats at St. Petersburg, 
 and of Russian diplomats at Peking ; and the world is 
 invited to believe that China is as solicitous of her Turkestan 
 frontier as Great Britain is, for instance, about the Hindu 
 Kush. We hear of garrisons being reinforced in Kashgaria, 
 and of the telegraph wires being pushed westwards over the 
 Mongolian desert. All this is intended to give, and perhaps 
 succeeds in giving, a general impression of abounding 
 activity ; and so far as mere diplomacy is concerned, China 
 will no doubt fight as stubbornly to retain her precarious 
 foothold on the Roof of the World as she did to recover 
 
278 CHINA 
 
 Kulja. But no greater mistakej in my judgment^ can be 
 committed than to suppose that this mixture of diplomatic 
 finesse and bravado masks either any intention to fight 
 seriously for the territories in question or the possession of 
 any materials to fight with. During the fracas on the 
 Pamirs in 1892, when small detachments of Russians 
 marched about filibustering and annexing whatever they 
 could, the Chinese outposts at Soma Tash and Ak Tash 
 skedaddled with headlong rapidity at the first glimpse of a 
 Cossack ; and an English traveller found the Chinese 
 authority, which claims to be paramount over the entire 
 eastern half of the Pamirs^ represented by less than a dozen 
 soldiers. And yet there exists a large corps of writers who 
 never cease to press upon the public acceptance an implicit 
 belief in the strength and resolution of China in Central 
 Asia. I prefer to accept the opinion of General Prjevalski, 
 Colonel Bell, Captain Younghusband, Mr. Carey, and every 
 authority (so far as I know) who has visited the Chinese 
 frontier dominions, that, however long Russia may find it 
 politic to postpone a forward move, her advance, when 
 finally made across the outlying western portions of the 
 Chinese Empire, inhabited as they are by a Mussulman 
 population who have no loyalty towards their present 
 masters, will be a military promenade, attended by little 
 fighting and by no risk. Meanwhile, the golden hour in 
 which China might make herself strong if she either had 
 the will or could resolve upon the way, is allowed to slip by ; 
 and a frontier which might, with certain modifications, be 
 rendered almost invulnerable, continues by its ostentatious 
 helplessness to invite the enemy's assault. 
 
 The experiences of the present year (1895), which might 
 by some be thought to testify to the friendly feeling of 
 Russia, since it is the latter Power that has stepped in 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 279 
 
 to check the impetuous advance of Japan^ to recover for 
 China the Liao-tung Peninsula^ and to supply her with the 
 cash wherewith to discharge her indemnity obhga- 
 tions, are in reality only a further illustration ■ ^gQ- 
 of my proposition. Russia does not render this 
 assistance from a superfluity of unselfishness, or for no end. 
 She has her price, and she will receive her reward. That 
 reward will involve the still further enfeeblement of the 
 victim for whose inheritance she is waiting, and to whose 
 invalid gasps she prescribes with tender hand the dose that 
 imparts a transient spasm of vitality, to be followed pre- 
 sently by an even xnore profound collapse. 
 
 The very conditions that render Russia the natural enemy 
 of China would appear to constitute Great Britain her 
 
 natural friend. China desires, or should desire, 
 
 Attitude 
 to keep the Russian army out of Korea and the towards j^ 
 
 Russian navy away from the Yellow Sea. We y^^^^- 
 
 are similarly interested in both objects. China 
 
 wants, or should want, to retain Yarkund and Kashgar, and 
 
 therefore requires a defensible and defended frontier on the 
 
 Pamirs. We also are anxious to avoid Russian contiguity 
 
 with ourselves at the Hindu Kush or the Karakoram. China 
 
 attaches or should attach a high value to her suzerainty over 
 
 Tibet, which Russia notoriously covets. England does not 
 
 quarrel with the former, but could hardly welcome the 
 
 latter status. If the Trans-Siberian railway will be a 
 
 menace to Chinese territorial integrity, it will also generate 
 
 a sharp competition with British Asiatic trade. Farther to 
 
 the south the recent apparition of France as an aggressive 
 
 factor upon the confines of Siam and Burma has been a 
 
 source of no slight annoyance to China, already exasperated 
 
 by the theft of Tongking. It is not more acceptable to 
 
 ourselves, who have no desire for France as a next-door 
 
278 CHINA 
 
 Kulja. But no greater mistake^ in my judgment^ can be 
 committed than to suppose that this mixture of diplomatic 
 finesse and bravado masks either any intention to fight 
 seriously for the territories in question or the possession of 
 any materials to fight with. During the fracas on the 
 Pamirs in 1892, when small detachments of Russians 
 marched about filibustering and annexing whatever they 
 could, the Chinese outposts at Soma Tash and Ak Tash 
 skedaddled with headlong rapidity at the first glimpse of a 
 Cossack ; and an English traveller found the Chinese 
 authority, which claims to be paramount over the entire 
 eastern half of the Pamirs, represented by less than a dozen 
 soldiers. And yet there exists a large corps of writers who 
 never cease to press upon the public acceptance an implicit 
 belief in the strength and resolution of China in Central 
 Asia. I prefer to accept the opinion of General Prjevalski, 
 Colonel Bell, Captain Younghusband, Mr. Carey, and every 
 authority (so far as I know) who has visited the Chinese 
 frontier dominions, that, however long Russia may find it 
 politic to postpone a forward move, her advance, when 
 finally made across the outlying western portions of the 
 Chinese Empire, inhabited as they are by a Mussulman 
 population who have no loyalty towards their pi'esent 
 masters, will be a military promenade, attended by little 
 fighting and by no risk. Meanwhile, the golden hour in 
 which China might make herself strong if she either had 
 the will or could resolve upon the way, is allowed to slip by ; 
 and a frontier which might, with certain modifications, be 
 rendered almost invulnerable, continues by its ostentatious 
 helplessness to invite the enemy's assault. 
 
 The experiences of the present year (1895), which might 
 by some be thought to testify to the friendly feeling of 
 Russia, since it is the latter Power that has stepped in 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 279 
 
 to check the impetuous advance of Japan, to recover for 
 
 China the Liao-tung Peninsula, and to supjily her with the 
 
 cash wherewith to discharge her indemnity obhga- 
 
 tions, are in reality only a further illustration ?^"^f^ 
 •' •' in I095. 
 
 of my proposition. Russia does not render this 
 assistance from a superfluity of unselfishness, or for no end. 
 She has her price, and she will receive her reward. That 
 reward will involve the still further enfeeblement of the 
 victim for whose inheritance she is waiting, and to whose 
 invalid gasps she prescribes with tender hand the dose that 
 imparts a transient spasm of vitality, to be followed pre- 
 sently by an even more profound collapse. 
 
 The very conditions that render Russia the natural enemy 
 of China would appear to constitute Great Britain her 
 
 natural friend. China desires, or should desire, 
 
 Attitude 
 to keep the Russian army out of Korea and the towards 
 
 Russian navy away from the Yellow Sea. We S'^v^^ 
 
 are similarly interested in both objects. China 
 
 Avants, or should want, to retain Yarkund and Kashgar, and 
 
 therefore requires a defensible and defended frontier on the 
 
 Pamirs. We also are anxious to avoid Russian contiguity 
 
 with ourselves at the Hindu Kush or the Karakoram. China 
 
 attaches or should attach a high value to her suzerainty over 
 
 Tibet, which Russia notoriously covets. England does not 
 
 quarrel with the former, but could hardly welcome the 
 
 latter status. If the Trans-Siberian railway will be a 
 
 menace to Chinese territorial integrity, it will also generate 
 
 a sharp competition with British Asiatic trade. Farther to 
 
 the south the recent apparition of France as an aggressive 
 
 factor upon the confines of Siam and Burma has been a 
 
 source of no slight annoyance to China, already exasperated 
 
 by the theft of Tongking. It is not more acceptable to 
 
 ourselves, who have no desire for France as a next-door 
 
280 CHINA 
 
 neighbour on the borders of our Indian Empire. There are 
 therefore the strongest a priori reasons in favour of a close 
 and sympathetic understanding between China and Great 
 Britain in the Far East. Nor, though Chinese armaments are, 
 in the present state, a delusion and China's military strength 
 a farce, and though the full extent of the imposture has 
 been relentlessly exposed during the recent war, can any one 
 deny that the prodigious numbers of China, her vast extent, 
 her obstinate and tenacious character, and her calculating 
 diplomacy, render her a coadjutor in Central and Eastern 
 Asia of no mean value ; just as it would appear that the 
 prestige and power of Great Britain in the same regions 
 might be of corresponding and even greater service to her. 
 A fuller confidence in the honesty of Great Britain than in 
 that of her rivals has for long existed in the breast of Chinese 
 statesmen, and has been largely due to the integrity of our 
 commercial relations, and to belief in the straightness of 
 British character ; whilst no efforts have been spared to 
 conciliate Chinese scruples in every point where the con- 
 cession could be made without sacrifice of principle. The 
 ascendency of British influence thus acquired at Peking 
 appears to have been temporarily shaken by the negative and 
 cautious attitude assumed by the British Government during 
 and after the war with Japan, and by the skilful though 
 interested interference of Russia and France. But the 
 passage of time may be trusted to reveal to China the 
 more than Platonic limitations of the affections of her new 
 friends, and to remind her of the less suspicious amenities 
 of older allies. 
 
 Unfortunately the relations of Great Britain and China 
 are liable from time to time to be imperilled by outside 
 circumstances, which play a large part in determining the 
 character of their official intercourse. I do not allude 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 281 
 
 to the question of Trade, which is the principal ground 
 
 of meeting between the two countries, because a commerce 
 
 which enriches both is unlikely to be seriously . . 
 
 risked by either, and because the wider the Chinese 
 
 sphere of mercantile relations between them (and 
 
 it must expand instead of shrinking) the less rather than 
 
 the greater are the som'ces of friction likely to become. 
 
 Already Anglo-Chinese Trade has attained dimensions that, 
 
 at the time of the fii'st war, fifty years ago, would have been 
 
 laughed at as an idle dream. At that time China sent to 
 
 England less than half a million sterling of goods in the 
 
 year. In 1892 the total foreign trade of the Empire amounted 
 
 to £47,550,000, of which £27,050,000 were imports and 
 
 £20,500,000 exports ; and of this enormous total Great 
 
 Britain and her Colonies (including Hongkong) claimed 
 
 60 per cent., or £28,500,000; and Great Britain alone 
 
 £8,000,000, over three-fourths of which were expended by 
 
 China in imports from this country. If we take the returns 
 
 of shipping, the British preponderance was even more clearly 
 
 marked ; for out of a total of 29,500,000 tons that entered 
 
 and cleared from the Treaty Ports in 1892, 65 per cent., or 
 
 nearly 19,500,000 tons, were British vessels; Germany, the 
 
 next European competitor, having only 1,500,000.^ Taught 
 
 by us, the Chinese themselves now absorb no inconsiderable 
 
 part of the Treaty Port trade ; but the vessels which Chinese 
 
 merchants own and run are commanded by British officers, 
 
 and are guided into the rivers and harbours by British pilots. 
 
 Nor is this trade, immense though it seems to be in 
 
 relation to the time within which it has been developed, 
 
 1 The Returns for 1893 showed that the total value of Chiuese Foreign 
 Trade had increased by £6,000,000. The British share of the total was 
 5(3 per cent., and of the shipping 65 per cent. In 1894, in spite of the war, 
 there was a continued rise, and the British share, both in trade and in 
 shipi^ing, amounted to 69 per cent., and in tlie carrying trade to 61 per cent., 
 or out of the carrying trade under a foreign tiag, to 83 per cent. 
 
282 CHINA 
 
 more thaii a fraction of what, under more favourable con- 
 ditions, may be expected in the future. When we reflect 
 that to supply the needs of a population of 350,000,000 
 there are only twenty-four ports at which foreign commerce 
 is allowed in the first place to enter ;i that river navigation 
 by steam, except upon the Yangtse, can scarcely be said to 
 exist ; that vast markets are hidden away in the far interior 
 which are practically under prevailing conditions inaccessible ; 
 that the paucity and misery of communications are a by-word ; 
 that every form of native entei'prise is strangled unless power- 
 ful officials have a personal interest at stake ; that officialism 
 operates everywhere by a mathematical progression of 
 squeezes ; that the multiplication of inland likin or octroi 
 stations swells the cost of foreign commodities to famine 
 prices before they are offered for sale in the inland markets ; 
 that China is deliberately throwing away her staple source 
 of wealth, the tea-trade, by failure to adapt it to the altered 
 requirements of consumers ; that in the same period in 
 which she has doubled her trade Japan has trebled hers ; 
 and that with 60,000,000 more mouths to feed and bodies 
 to clothe, her total commerce is yet £80,000,000 less per 
 annum than that of India : when all these facts are re- 
 membered, it cannot be doubted that, compared with what 
 might be, and some day will be done, we are only standing 
 on the threshold of Chinese commercial expansion. 
 
 ^ The Treaty Ports, opened by various Treaties or Conventious with Great 
 Britain, France, and Germany, since the Nanking Treaty in 1842, are as 
 follows : Canton (with Customs stations at Kowloon and Lappa), Amoy, 
 Foochow, Ningpo, Shanghai, Nanking, Tientsin, Newchwang, Chef oo, Swatow, 
 Kiungchow (in Hainan), Tamsui and Tainan, with their dependencies Kelung, 
 Takow, and Anping in Formosa, Chinkiang, Kiukiang, Hankow, Ichang, 
 Wuhu, Wenchow, Pakhoi, Chungking. The French, by a Trade Convention 
 in 1887, also trade overland with Lungchow, Mengtse, and Manghao. By 
 the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan (April 1895) the following additional 
 ports have been opened : Shashih, Suchow, and Hangchow. By the Franco- 
 Chinese Treaty of J\ine 1895 Hokeow has been substituted for Manghao, 
 and Ssumao has become a Treaty Port, with rights of residence for a French 
 Consul and French subjects. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 283 
 
 Neither, in speaking of the occasional sources of friction 
 between China and ourselves, do I allude to the Opium 
 Question, which in the hands of enthusiastic or 
 prejudiced ignorance in London has been pre- Qygg^ojj^ 
 sented to English audiences in a guise that 
 excites a smile in every Treaty Port in China. There, at 
 least, everybody knows that the helpless Celestial is neither 
 being forced nor befooled by an insidious and immoral 
 Government at Calcutta; that if not an ounce of Indian 
 opium ever again passed through a Chinese custona-house, 
 Chinamen would go on smoking their own inferior drug as 
 keenly as ever ; ^ and that the pretence that China is hostile 
 to the British people or to Christian missions because we 
 introduced to her the opium habit (which she had already 
 practised for centuries), is about as rational as to say that the 
 national soreness that sometimes arises between England and 
 France is due to our resentment at having to cross the 
 Channel for our best brandy. In any case, long before our 
 domestic Puritans have purged the national conscience of 
 what they style this great sin, the Opium Question will have 
 settled itself by the rapid decline of the Indian import and 
 the acceptance by China herself of the undivided responsi- 
 bility for her own moral welfare. 
 
 There remains the Missionary movement in China, which, 
 next to, perhaps even more than, the merchants, compels 
 the attention of the British Foreign Office, and 
 will here be .treated only in so far as it affects the Questions 
 international relations between the two countries. 
 The missionary himself resolutely declines to regard it from 
 this standpoint. He conceives himself to be there in obedi- 
 ence to a divine summons, and to be pursuing the noblest 
 
 1 As it is, Indian opium is only smoked by about 2 in every 1000 of the 
 population. 
 
284 CHINA 
 
 of human callings. A friend of my own, an eminent divine 
 in the English Church, speaking at Exeter Hall in answer to 
 some observations which I had made in the columns of the 
 Times upon Christian Missions in China, thus stated the case 
 from the Church's point of view: — 
 
 ' The gain or loss to civilisation from Christian missions is not 
 the question for the missionary. He is subject to a Master higher 
 than any statesman or diplomatist of this world. It is not the 
 missionary who has to reckon with the diplomatist^ but the diplo- 
 matist with the missionary.' 
 
 A variation of the same reply is that which I have in 
 many lands received from the lips of missionaries, and which 
 in their judgment appears to cut the ground away from all 
 criticism, and to render argument superfluous. This is a 
 repetition of the divine injunction which closes the Gospel 
 of St. Matthew : ' Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, 
 baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Ghost.' ^ Obedience to this supreme com- 
 mand is the sole final test to which the missionary is willing 
 to submit his action. He is the unworthy but chosen 
 instrument of God himself. It is useless, as I have ex- 
 perienced, to point out to him that the selection of a single 
 passage from the preaching of the founder of one faith, as 
 the sanction of a movement against all other faiths, is a 
 dangerous experiment. If, for instance, the disciple of 
 Confucius wei'e to quote an aphorism of that philosopher that 
 justified the persecution of Christian missionaries as the 
 sponsors of a mischievous innovation, what value would the 
 Christian missionary attach to such a form of Chinese excul- 
 pation } Equally useless is it to remind him that Christ 
 Himself seems to have contemplated the likelihood of an 
 unsuccessful or inopportune propaganda when He said : 
 J Matt, xxviii. 19. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 285 
 
 ' When they persecute you in this city^ flee ye into another' ;i 
 and again : ' Whosoever shall not receive you nor hear you, 
 when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet 
 for a testimony against them.' ^ The authority which the 
 missionary enthusiast is willing to attach to the ukase that 
 accredits his enthusiasm, he ignores or deprecates when it 
 appears to quaUfy its sanction. To him the course is clear, 
 and has been mapped out in advance by a higher hand. 
 That governments should fight, or that international relations 
 should be imperilled over his , wrecked house or insulted 
 person, would strike him as but a feather's weight in the 
 scale compared with the great final issue at stake — viz. the 
 spiritual regeneration of a vast country and a mighty popu- 
 lation plunged in heathenism and sin. Just, however, as the 
 statesman is frequently called upon to correct the fighting 
 general's plan of campaign in the light of diplomatic possi- 
 bilities, so the impartial observer must submit even the 
 impassioned apologia of the Christian evangelist to the cold 
 test of political and practical analysis. 
 
 In endeavouring to arrive at an opinion upon so vexed a 
 question, the risks, even after a careful study upon two 
 separate occasions on the spot, of involuntary 
 ignorance or unconscious bias, are so great that it j^jjggjQjjg 
 will perhaps be wisest to state the case pro and 
 con with as much fulness as space will pei'mit, leaving the 
 reader to form his own conclusion. The facts are these. 
 Whilst the Jesuit missionaries have been in China for cen- 
 turies, and in many cases have done splendid work, the 
 Protestant missions (of whom, principally, I desire to speak) 
 in the main date their institution from the Treaties that 
 closed the first China war fifty years ago,^ and the second in 
 
 1 Matt. X. 23. " Mark vi. 11. 
 
 3 The first Protestant missionary in China was the Rev. R. Morrison, who 
 
286 CHINA 
 
 1858-60, Whereas in 1844 there were but thirty Protestant 
 missionaries in China, their numerical strength in 1890 was 
 1300 (including women), and in 1894 was said to be 1511. 
 The total strength of all Christian missionaries in China is 
 said to be 2000. Every year America, Canada, Australia, 
 Sweden, and in a not inferior degree England, pour fresh 
 recruits into the field, and the money that is subscribed for 
 their support and that of their propaganda excels the 
 revenue of many States. The question is. How do the 
 soldiers of this costly crusade acquit themselves .'' 
 
 The points that will universally be conceded in their 
 
 favour are as follows : The devotion and self-sacrifice of 
 
 many of their lives (particularly of those who in 
 
 1 heir good jj^tive dress visit or inhabit the far interior), and 
 
 service. ^' 
 
 the example of pious fortitude set to those among 
 whom they labour; the influence of the education and 
 culture thus diffused in kindling the softer virtues and in 
 ameliorating the conditions of life ; the slow but certain 
 spread of Western knowledge ; the visible products of 
 organised philanthropy in the shape of hospitals, medical 
 dispensaries, orphanages, relief distribution, and schools ; 
 the occasional winning of genuine and noble-hearted con- 
 verts from the enemy's fold ; ^ the exalted character of the 
 spiritual sanction claimed by the missionaries ; the plausi- 
 bility of the analogy drawn by them from the tardy incep- 
 tion of Christian labour in other countries and earlier times ; 
 the excellent work done by missionaries in writing learned, 
 
 came to Canton in 1807, and published his famous dictionary and translation 
 of the Bible in 1823. But this was all the more remarkable for being an 
 isolated effort. 
 
 1 A hostile critic might retort that the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, 
 who was a Christian convert, and as such was hailed bj^ many of the mission- 
 aries as the herald of a new dispensation, succeeded in nothing better than 
 in devastating thirteen out of the eighteen provinces of China, and in sacri- 
 ficing the lives (at the lowest computation) of 20,000,000 men. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 287 
 
 though often unreadable, essays about the country and 
 people. 
 
 I should be the last person to claim that even this tabu- 
 lated statement contained a complete record of the good work 
 done by the missionaries. Much of their labour is 
 
 necessai'ilv devoid of immediate result, and is in- !i°^^"^j 
 •' ' the seed. 
 
 capable of being scientifically registered in a me- 
 morandum. They sow the seed ; and if it does not fructify in 
 their day or before our eyes, it may well be germinating for a 
 future eartirae. No fair critic would withhold fi-om the Chris- 
 tian missions in China the credit of any prospective harvest 
 that may be reaped by their successors when they have gone. 
 On the other hand, it would be foolish to deny that in 
 China their operations evoke a criticism, even at the hands 
 
 of their own countrymen, of which Exeter Hall „, . ^. 
 
 •' ' Objections 
 
 very likely has no inkling, but which in China and draw- 
 
 itself, where Exeter Hall has never been heard 
 
 of, is not to be despised ; and that there are features in 
 
 their condvict of the campaign which may be said, not 
 
 altogether unwarrantably, to furnish the enemy with cause 
 
 to blaspheme. The alleged drawbacks to the work, or at 
 
 least to the modus operandi of the missionaries, fall under 
 
 three heads: (1) religious and doctrinal; (2) political; and 
 
 (3) practical ; with each of which I will deal in turn. 
 
 With rare exceptions, more liberal-minded than their 
 
 fellows, the missionaries adopt an attitude of implacable 
 
 hostility to all native religions and ethics, isnor- 
 
 ^ * *= I. Rail- 
 
 ing alike their virtuous aspects and influence, the gious and 
 
 all-powerful hold which they have acquired upon t^^ 5\"f ' 
 
 Chinese character, and the sanction lent to them to Chinese 
 
 ethics. 
 by a venerable antiquity. Particularly is this 
 
 the case with regard to ancestor-worship, with which they 
 
 decline all parley ; although a rare retort would appear to 
 
288 CHINA 
 
 be open to a Chinaman in England who accidentally found 
 his way into Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's. In 1790 
 the young Christian Church in Korea, very much exei-cised 
 about this question, sent to the Roman Catholic bishop at 
 Peking to inquire what its members ought to do. The 
 response came that ancestor-worship of any kind or in any 
 degree was incompatible with Christianity, and that no 
 Koi-ean could be a Christian who worshipped or burned 
 incense before the family tablets. What the French bishop 
 then answered, his coreligionists have always answered ; 
 and the same reply was from the earliest period returned 
 by the Protestant missions also. I am not here concerned 
 with the doctrinal justice of this decision, which is a matter 
 for theologians rather than for the lay mind. I am 
 interested only in pointing out the inevitable consequences 
 of such an attitude. The Chinaman, who is entirely 
 content with his own religion, and only asks to be left 
 alone, is assailed by a propaganda that commences with an 
 attack upon all that he holds most dear. To him the 
 ethics of Confucius sum up the whole duty of man to the 
 family and the State ; while the payment of homage to 
 the higher powers is provided for by the polytheistic 
 conceptions of the Buddhist cult. He hears the former 
 disparaged, the latter derided. He is invited to become 
 a convert at the cost of ceasing to be a citizen ; to tear 
 up the sheet-anchor of all morality as the first condition 
 of moral regeneration. Sntiall wonder that a propaganda, 
 which thus lays the axe to the very root of the tree, 
 should encounter the stubborn resistance of all those who 
 have been accustomed to seek shelter under its branches.^ 
 
 1 It is equally beginning at the wrong end to adopt the needless subser- 
 vience to native superstitions that is in vogue at some of the Catholic 
 establishments ; e.g. in the Lazarist Orplianage at Kiukiang, where the feet 
 of girls are deformed in order to conciliate native opinion. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 289 
 
 If the evangelists of some new faith were to appear in 
 England, drawn from a race whom we hated and despised, 
 and were to commence their preaching by denouncing the 
 Bible, and crying Anathema upon the Apostles' Creed, 
 what sort of reception would they meet with ? Moreover, 
 this attitude on the part of the missionaries incurs the 
 risk of defeating its own object; for such iconoclasm, in 
 the eyes of many critics, could only, even if successful, 
 lead to two results, both equally to be deplored — the 
 complete disintegration of the Chinese social fabric, and 
 the collapse of Chinese morality. 
 
 While thus warring with the most cherished beliefs of 
 their hoped-for converts, the missionaries have not agreed 
 
 among themselves as to the Chinese word to „. 
 
 ^ Disputes as 
 
 express the single Deity whom they preach, to name of 
 and for whom the Jesuits, the Americans, and 
 the English have at different times employed different 
 titles, with the result of complete bewilderment to the 
 native understanding, ill able to cope with the subtleties 
 of theological logomachy. The first-named adopt the 
 title Tien Chu, i.e. Lord of Heaven. The Americans and 
 some English prefer the more impalpable Chen Shen, i.e. 
 True Spirit. The English Protestants and American 
 Methodists adopt the Chinese Shang-ti, or Supreme Lord, 
 the Deity whose worship (a survival of the primitive nature 
 worship) I have described upon the Altar of Heaven at 
 Peking. Indeed, I have heard of an English missionary 
 who, in the old days when the latter enclosure was 
 accessible to foreigners, is said to have conducted a service 
 of the Church of England on the summit of the marble 
 altar. 
 
 Still less do the foreign teachers coincide upon the form 
 of religion itself, which is promulgated by the divines of 
 
 T 
 
290 CHINA 
 
 a score of different schools, each claiming the accredited 
 custody of the oracles of God. To Chinamen a separate 
 . , sect is not always distinguishable from a separate 
 form of creed ; and between Jesuits, Lazarists, Trap- 
 
 pists, Russian Greeks, Protestants, Churches 
 of England, Scotland, Canada, and America, Baptists, 
 Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, 
 Free Christians, and all the self-accredited polyonymous 
 missionary societies, he finds it hard to determine who are 
 the true and who the false prophets, or whether any are 
 true at all. Again, conceive the parallel case in our own 
 country. Suppose the apostles of some new manifestation 
 to reach our shores with a creed in their pockets that 
 claimed a supernatural origin and a divine authority ; and 
 suppose these pioneers to be presently succeeded by others, 
 not in one batch only, or in half a dozen, or in a dozen, 
 but in a score of detachments, each proclaiming the 
 fallibility or spuriousness of the others, and its own superior 
 authentication — what should we say to these bearers of the 
 heavenly message, who could not even agree together upon 
 its terms } 
 
 Another cause for stumbling has been supplied by the 
 circulation of imperfectly revised translations of the Bible 
 
 through the country. The missionary societies do 
 
 Unrevised j^^^. gggj^^ j-q have sufficiently realised that the 
 
 transla- ■ •' 
 
 tions of Holy Scriptures, which require in places some 
 
 tures. explanation, if not some expurgation, for ourselves, 
 
 may stand in still greater need of editing for a 
 community who care nothing about the customs or pre- 
 possessions of the ancient Jews, but who are invited to 
 accept the entire volume as a revelation from on high. I 
 am aware of a so-called English missionary who rampages 
 about Central Asia with the funds supplied by societies at 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 29 1 
 
 home, and who, taking with him a portmanteau full of 
 
 Bibles, thinks that by dropping its contents here and there, 
 
 he is winning recruits to the fold of Christ. What is the 
 
 educated Chinaman likely to think, for instance, of Samuel 
 
 hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord, or of David setting 
 
 Uriah in the forefront of the battle, and commissioning 
 
 Solomon to slay Shimei, whose life he had himself sworn 
 
 to spare, or of Solomon exchanging love-lyrics with the 
 
 Shulamite woman ? Even in the New Testament the 
 
 bidding to forsake father and mother for the sake of Christ 
 
 must to the Chinaman's eyes be the height of profanity, 
 
 whilst if he can follow the logic of St. Paul, he accomplishes 
 
 that which is beyond the power of many educated Christians. 
 
 To the Chinese people, who have great faith but little hope 
 
 in their own creeds, a simple statement of the teaching of 
 
 Christ might be a glorious and welcome revelation. But 
 
 the text of the Scriptures, unsoftened and unexplained, has 
 
 no such necessary effect, and is capable, in ingenious hands 
 
 (as the Hunan publications sufficiently showed), of being 
 
 converted into an argument against that which it is intended 
 
 to support. 
 
 If the text of the Bible is thus wrested into a cause of 
 
 offence, neither is the intrinsic abstruseness of the dogma 
 
 which it inculcates easy of interpretation in a 
 
 manner that conveys enlightenment to the Chinese •■ '^'^ ^^^ 
 •> o dogma. 
 
 intellect. The mysteries, for instance, attaching 
 
 to the Christian theogony, and to the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 
 whilst to the believer they only supply welcome material 
 
 for faith, are to the unbeliever excellent ground for 
 
 suspicion. 
 
 Finally, the religion whose vehicles of diffusion I have 
 discussed is disseminated in many cases by a number of 
 irresponsible itinerants, each of whom is a law unto himself, 
 
292 CHINA 
 
 many of whom disown communion with any Church, and 
 
 whose single-minded fervour is dearly purchased at the cost 
 
 of the doctrinal confusion entailed. Some of my 
 Irresponsi- 
 ble itine- own schoolfellows had felt the call, and had 
 
 rancy. spontaneously given to China what was meant for 
 
 mankind. Upon inquiry as to their whereabouts and doings, 
 
 I learned that more than one had severed his connection 
 
 with any denomination, and was proceeding against the 
 
 infidel upon his own plan of campaign. This may be 
 
 magnificent, but it is not scientific warfare. 
 
 The political drawbacks to the missionaries' work are less 
 
 exclusively matters of their own creation. China can never 
 
 forget that, unlike the Christians in early Rome, 
 2. Political. 1 ^ , , „ , 1 
 
 in early Gaul, or in early JBi-itain, they owe their 
 
 admission here to no tacit acquiescence on her own part, 
 
 much less to any expressed desire ; but solely to the coercion 
 
 of a superior and victorious strength. Each station is a 
 
 sardonic reminder to them that they have been made to pass 
 
 under the Caudine Forks. Nay, it is more ; for it is a 
 
 reminder of the duplicity as well as of the power of the 
 
 conqueror ; seeing that the right of residence in the interior 
 
 of China is only enjoyed by the British and other missionaries 
 
 in virtue of the most favoured nation clause in our own 
 
 Treaty, taking advantage of a spurious paragraph introduced 
 
 by a French missionary into the Chinese text of the French 
 
 Treaty of I860, and either not discovered by the Chinese, 
 
 or not repudiated by them until it was too late. Let me 
 
 briefly recapitulate the history of this curious and not 
 
 altogether creditable page of history. 
 
 The only passage in Lord Elgin's Treaty of 
 
 of the Tientsin in 1858, relating directly to the mission- 
 
 rea les. aries, is that commonly known as the Toleration 
 
 Clause, which was copied without substantial alteration from 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 293 
 
 the treaties already concluded by China with Russia and the 
 United States. Article viii. of the English Treaty runs as 
 follows : — 
 
 '^The Christian religion, as professed by Protestants and Roman 
 Catholics^ inculcates the practice of virtue^ and teaches man to 
 do as he would be done by. Persons teaching or professing it, 
 therefore, shall alike be entitled to the protection of the Chinese 
 authorities ; nor shall any such, peaceably pursuing their calling, 
 and not offending against the law, be persecuted or interfered 
 with. ' 
 
 A later clause in the same treaty (Article xii.) was sub- 
 sequently appealed to as giving English missionaries the 
 right to rent or own land and buildings in the interior : — 
 
 •^ British subjects, whether at the ports or at other places, desiring 
 to build or open houses, warehouses, churches, hospitals, or burial- 
 grounds, shall make their agreement for the land or buildings they 
 require at the rates prevailing among the people, equitably and 
 without exactions on either side. ' 
 
 But it was then explained, and has always been held by 
 the British Government, that the words, ' at other places^ 
 upon which alone the pretension rested, had never been 
 intended to confer, and could not be construed as conferring, 
 such a right, Lord Elgin having only introduced them in 
 order to cover the case of places such as Whampoa, Woosung, 
 and Taku, which are situated respectively at the distance of 
 a few miles below Canton, Shanghai, and Tientsin, and where 
 it might be found desirable, instead of or in addition to the 
 Treaty Ports, to establish foreign settlements. Indeed, if 
 the words had meant places in the interior promiscuously, 
 there would obviously have been no necessity for subsequent 
 treaties opening fresh Treaty Ports, which concessions have 
 only been procured as a compensation for outrage, or with 
 immense difficulty. 
 
 The British Treaties, accordingly, while they secure to 
 
294 CHINA 
 
 the missionary full protection everywhere in the pursuit of 
 his calling, and in the possession of house and church 
 property in the Treaty Ports, do not give him the right 
 either of residence or of ownership in the interior. It was 
 reserved for the French to supply the deficiency. 
 
 Already, in the French Treaty of 1858, the privileges 
 above mentioned had been definitely guaranteed. Article 
 xni. says, in terms not unlike those of the English 
 Treaty : — 
 
 "^The Christian religion having for its essential object the leading 
 of men to virtue, the members of all Christian communities shall 
 enjoy entire security for their persons and property, and the free 
 exercise of their religion ; and efficient protection shall be given 
 to missionaries who travel peaceably in the interior, furnished with 
 passports as provided for in Article viii. No hindrance shall be 
 offered by the authorities of the Chinese Empire to the recognised 
 right of every individual in China to embrace, if he so please, 
 Christianity, and to follow its practices without being liable to any 
 punishment therefor. ' 
 
 Two years later, after the capture of Peking and the 
 sacking of the Summer Palace by the allied forces, both 
 England and France exacted supplementary Conventions, 
 which were signed at Peking in I860. Article vi. of the 
 French Convention stipulated for the restoration to them 
 of the religious and philanthropic establishments, the ceme- 
 teries, and other dependencies which had been confiscated 
 during the persecutions. At this juncture and in this 
 section of the treaty it was, that a French missionary, 
 acting as interpreter for the French mission, introduced the 
 following clause into the Chinese text, while the document 
 was being transcribed : — 
 
 ' It is, in addition, permitted to French missionaries to rent and 
 purchase land in all the provinces and to erect buildings thereon 
 at pleasure.' 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 295 
 
 Now by Article iii. of the previous Treaty of Tienstin 
 (1858) it had abeady been agreed that the French text 
 should be considered the authoritative version ; and there- 
 fore this clause, thus surreptitiously interpolated into the 
 Chinese text only, and not to be found in the French text, 
 was invalid ab initio. The Chinese, howevei", did not at 
 once detect the fraud; and when they did, were either too 
 proud or too fearful of the consequences to contest the point. 
 The British Government professed its readiness to retire 
 fi'om a position which had no solid or legitimate foundation. 
 But as the claim was consistently vindicated by the French, 
 without serious protest from the Chinese, so the British 
 tacitly acquired the right also ; and to it is owing the 
 privileged status which the missionaries now enjoy, and 
 which is not shared by a single other class of their country- 
 men. 
 
 Though the Chinese did not repudiate the interpolated 
 clause, there was nevertheless some dispute and correspond- 
 ence thereupon; which culminated, in 1865, in an under- 
 standing between the Tsungli Yamen and the then French 
 Minister as to the exact interpretation that was to be placed 
 upon it. Among other things, it was agreed that property 
 acquired by French missionaries in the interior should be 
 registered in the name, not of individual mission- 
 
 ai'ies or converts, but of the parent society. " ^f' 
 
 ' i •' quent 
 
 Other stipulations pi-ovided for due notice to under- 
 
 1 1 1 1 • • c 1 . • . standing, 
 
 the local authorities or the intention to acquire 
 
 property, etc., in the interior.^ As a matter of fact, these 
 
 conditions are not always observed by the Protestant 
 
 missionaries, much of the property acquired by them being 
 
 1 In December 1894, M. Gerard, the French Minister at Peking, taking 
 advantage of the recovered influence of France, hunted up the Berthemy 
 Convention of 1865, and procured its formal ratification by the Tsungli 
 Yamen, and its official circulation to the Provincial Governors. 
 
296 CHINA 
 
 registered and held in the name of converts, and made 
 over by private agreement to the foreign missionary. 
 
 In the diplomatic complications arising out of the mission- 
 ary massacres at Wuhu and Wuhsueh in 1891, the combined 
 , . , pressure of the foreign representatives, reinforced 
 Edict of by gunboats, availed to extract from the Chinese 
 Government an Imperial Edict, which was pub- 
 lished in the Peldng Gazette of June 13, 1891, and was 
 ordered to be posted in the principal cities of the Empire — 
 an order which, it is needless to add, the Provincial 
 Governors, wherever they conveniently could, disobeyed. 
 To this decree the Christian missionaries are now disposed 
 to look as the charter of their liberties, confirming and to 
 some extent superseding the text of the Treaties. After 
 directing the civil and military authorities in the disturbed 
 provinces to arrest and try the principal criminals, and to 
 condemn the guilty to death, the Emperor proceeded with 
 this general statement of the missionaries' rights : — 
 
 ' The right of foreign missionaries to promulgate their religions 
 in China is provided for by Treaty and by Edicts which were pre- 
 viously issued ; the authorities of all the provinces were com- 
 manded to aiford them protection as circumstances required. . . . 
 The religions of the West have for their object the inculcation of 
 virtue, and though people become con^'erts they still remain 
 Chinese subjects, and continue to be amenable to the jurisdiction 
 of the local authorities. There is no reason why there should not 
 be harmony between the ordinary people and the adherents of 
 foreign religions ; and the whole trouble arises from lawless 
 ruffians fabricating baseless stories and making an opportunity for 
 creating disturbance. These bad characters exist everywhere. 
 We command the Manchu Generals-in-Chief, the Viceroys and 
 Governors in all the provinces, to issue proclamations clearly ex- 
 plaining to the people that they must on no account give a ready 
 ear to such idle tales and wantonly cause trouble. Let all who 
 post anonymous placards and spread false rumours, inflaming the 
 minds of the people, be at once arrested and severely punished. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 297 
 
 The local authorities are bound to aiFord due protection at all 
 times to the persons and property of foreign merchants and foreign 
 missionaries^ and must not allow them to be injured or molested 
 by evil cliaracters. Should the precautionary measures be lacking 
 in stringency, and trouble be the result, we command that the 
 local authorities be severely denounced.' ^ 
 
 This decree may perhaps be said to cover and condone 
 any previously existing flaw in the missionaries' position, and 
 to lend a direct Imperial sanction to their presence and pro- 
 paganda in the interior. Extracted as it was, however, by 
 sheer compulsion from the Chinese Government, and in the 
 main dictated by the foreign Ministers, it represents no 
 spontaneous change of attitude on the part of the former ; 
 whilst it is to be feared that its practical influence will be 
 very small. 
 
 Such is the history of the circumstances under which 
 the Christian missionaries have gained a foothold in the 
 interior of the Chinese Empire. If the Chinese, 
 with their ingrained disposition to accept facts, g^f^^^ts 
 have forgotten alike the duplicity of the foreigner 
 and their own humiliation, nevertheless the presence of 
 the missionaries is a testimony to the continued ascendency 
 of an alien Power, still maintained, as it was originally 
 introduced, by force. As such the Chinese, who dislike 
 all foreigners, regard the missionaries in particular with an 
 intense aversion, considering them the agents of a policy 
 which has been and is forced upon them in opposition both 
 to the interests of the Government, the sentiments of the 
 literati, and the convictions of the people. A converse illustra- 
 tion, minus the stimulus of the odium theologicum, is supplied 
 by the detestation with which the Chinese immigrant is 
 himself elsewhere regarded by the white man, by the 
 Australian in Sydney, or the American in San Francisco. 
 1 Parliamentary Blue Book, China, No. 1, 1892. 
 
298 CHINA 
 
 Nor is this impression diminished by the attitude of the 
 
 missionaries themselves, many of whom, though they 
 
 „, , buckle on their armour as the soldiers of Christ, 
 
 The appeal 
 
 for gun- remember only in times of peril that they are 
 
 citizens of this or that empire or republic, and 
 
 clamour for a gunboat with which to insure respect for 
 
 the Gospel. To this too ready appeal to the physical 
 
 sanction of a national flag there are many honourable 
 
 exceptions — men who carry their lives in their hands, and 
 
 uncomplainingly submit to indignities which they have 
 
 undertaken to endure in a higher cause than that of their 
 
 nationality. Nevertheless the presence of the missionary 
 
 bodies as a whole in the country is a constant anxiety to 
 
 the Legations, by whom in the last resort their interests, 
 
 resting as they do upon treaties, must be defended ; and 
 
 is equally distasteful to the Chinese Government, which 
 
 frequently finds itself called upon to reprimand a native 
 
 official or to punish a local community at the cost of great 
 
 odium to itself. This is the explanation of the extreme 
 
 reluctance exhibited, as a rule, by the central authority 
 
 in bringing to justice the notorious authors of calumny or 
 
 outrage. The secret sympathies of the people are behind 
 
 the malefactor; and the Government feels that it may be 
 
 straining a bond of allegiance, which already, in the case 
 
 of many of the outlying provinces, is stretched almost to 
 
 the point of rupture. 
 
 In some districts the unpopularity of the missionaries 
 
 has been increased by the special privileges which they 
 
 T, . ., are disposed to claim on behalf of native converts 
 
 rnvileges ^ 
 
 claimed for engaged in litigation or other disputes ; and by 
 
 their interference in the civil affairs of the 
 
 neighbourhood in which they reside. Just as in Southern 
 
 India many a iiative becomes a Christian in order to get 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 299 
 
 a situation as a servant or a clerk, so in China it not 
 
 infrequently happens that a shady character will suddenly 
 
 find salvation for the sake of the material advantages or 
 
 protection which it may be expected to confer upon him. 
 
 But to the thoughtful Chinaman's eye, penetrating a 
 
 little below the surface, the real political danger is more 
 
 deeply rooted than any such superficial symptoms . . 
 
 might appear to suggest. He sees in missionary rium hi 
 , . , /. . . T • • imperio. 
 
 enterprise the existence oi an insidious impermvi 
 
 in imj:)erio, of a secret society hostile to the commonwealth, 
 of damage and detriment to the State. He remembers 
 that the most frightful visitation which China has suffered 
 in modern times, the Taiping rebellion, by which over 
 20,000,000 of her people perished, was in its inception a 
 Christian movement, led by an alleged Christian convert, 
 and projected to Christianise his countrymen ; and with 
 these experiences before him he may well feel qualms at 
 any signs of increasing missionary influence. In the case 
 of the French missions, with whom as Roman Catholics I 
 have not here been dealing, there is an additional ground 
 for mistrust; for the Chinese see that the French Govern- 
 ment is here engaged in forcing upon them the very men 
 and the selfsame religion whom it has sought to expel from 
 its own land — an act of duplicity which in their minds can 
 only mask some dark political cabal. 
 
 It is sometimes said by missionary champions, that of 
 the recurring outbreaks against them, the missionaries, 
 though the victims, are commonly not the cause; p. , 
 the movement being in reality a deep-seated plot political 
 concocted by political malcontents to embroil 
 either the provincial with the Imperial Government, or the 
 latter with foreign Powers. How far this is the case there 
 exist few means of accurately determining. But the plea 
 
300 CHINA 
 
 is believed, by those who know best, to be destitute of 
 validity ; though there are obvious reasons for its en- 
 couragement by the Tsungli Yamen^ who can thereby 
 plead internal disorder as an excuse for their own responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 Finally^ there are the practical charges brought against 
 the v/ork, arising partly from the missionaries' own conduct, 
 
 p . . partly from the gross superstitions of the people. 
 
 Mission Of the former character are the allegations that 
 
 life 
 
 are so frequently made, not without apparent 
 
 justification, about the personnel and surroundings of the 
 missions, particularly in the Treaty Ports ; about the lack 
 of personal aptitudes, inseparable from a career that has 
 already in some cases, especially in that of the American 
 missionaries, come to be regarded as a profession ; and 
 about the well-appointed houses, the comfortable manner 
 of living, the summer exodus to the hills, the domestic 
 engrossments and large families, which, strange to say, are 
 encouraged by a liberal subsidy from the parent society 
 for each new arrival in the missionary nursery. 
 
 Another source of misunderstanding is the constantly 
 increasing employment of women, and particularly of 
 p , unmarried women, by the missionary bodies. A 
 
 ment of steamer rarely sails from the American shores 
 for Yokohama without carrying a bevy of young 
 girls, fresh from the schoolroom or the seminary, who, 
 with the impulsive innocence of youth, are about to devote 
 their young lives and energies to what they conceive to be 
 the noblest of purposes in Japan or China. A scarcely in- 
 ferior stream of female recruitment flows in from the United 
 Kingdom and the Colonies.^ Now I do not say that the 
 
 1 Of the 1300 Protestant missionaries in China in 1890, as many as 700, or 
 more than half, were women ; and of these 316 were unmarried women. 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 301 
 
 work of the female missionary is thrown away, or that there 
 may not be cases in which her devotion reaps an ample 
 harvest. Neither do I presume for one moment to qviestion 
 the honestv self-sacrifice of the act ; but I do say that in a 
 country like China — where, on the one hand, very different 
 notions of the emancipation of women prevail from those to 
 which we are accustomed, and on the other hand an element 
 of almost brutal coarseness enters largely into the composi- 
 tion of the native character — the institution of sisterhoods, 
 planted alongside of male establishments, the spectacle of 
 unmarried persons of both sexes residing and working to- 
 gether, both in public and in private, and of girls making 
 long journeys into the interior without responsible escort, 
 are sources of a misunderstanding at which the pure-minded 
 may aiford to scoff, but which in many cases has more to do 
 with anti-missionary feeling in China than any amount of 
 national hostility or doctrinal antagonism. In 1893, at the 
 remote inland town of Kiiei-hwa-cheng, a friend of mine 
 encountered a missionary community consisting of one male 
 and of twenty Swedish girls. The propaganda of the latter 
 consisted in parading the streets and singing hymns to the 
 strumming of tambourines and guitars. The society that 
 that had committed the outrage of sending out these inno- 
 cent girls only allowed them $200, or £27, 10s. a year 
 apiece, for board, lodging, and clothing. As a consequence 
 they were destitute of the smallest comforts of life, and 
 could not even perform their toilette without the imperti- 
 nent eyes of Chinamen being directed upon them through 
 the paper screens. Can anything more futile than such an 
 enterprise be conceived, or more culpable ? The popular 
 feeling against female missionaries was illustrated in the 
 recent massacres at Kutien (August 1895), where out of ten 
 persons that perished, eight were women. 
 
304 CHINA 
 
 ages of the Christian societies have sometimes been recruited 
 for with a not too judicious avidity by their philanthropic 
 patrons ; while they receive many miserable inmates whom 
 an early death overtakes in the natural course of things. It 
 is firmly believed by the masses in China that foundlings are 
 taken in^ and that sick women and children are enticed to 
 these institutions to be murdered by the missionaries for the 
 sake of the therapeutic or chemical properties attaching to 
 their viscera, or eyes, or brains. 
 
 It must be remembered that in the Chinese pharma- 
 copoeia anthropophagous remedies are held in the highest 
 esteem ; and that particular parts of the human body, 
 administered in powders or decoctions, are recommended 
 as a sovereign remedy. A son who thus sacrifices some 
 portion of his flesh for a sick parent, or a wife for an invalid 
 husband, is regarded as having performed the most meritorious 
 of acts, and is sometimes rewarded by the provincial Govern- 
 ment with a. imilow, or commemorative arch. The xnedicines 
 distributed in the mission dispensaiy, the chemicals employed 
 in the scientific processes, such as photography, to which the 
 foreign magician is prone, have undoubtedly, in the eyes of 
 the ignorant masses, been obtained by these methods. It 
 Avas to such a belief that the famous Tientsin massacres in 
 1870, the Wuhsueh murders in 1891, and the Cheng-tu 
 outrages in 1895, were mainly due; and when these horrible 
 charges are reinforced by every variety of pamphlet and 
 leaflet and filthy caricature and obscene lampoon, issued 
 with the secret connivance of the local authority, as in the 
 publications of the notorious Chow Han in 1891, in the 
 province of Hunan, it may readily be conceived what a 
 terrible and almost insurmountable weight of prejudice is 
 excited. To intelligent pei'sons all this may sound senseless 
 and irl'ational enough ; but again I am compelled to remind 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 305 
 
 my readers that to this day there are many parts of Europe 
 where precisely analogous superstitions prevail among the 
 ignorant peasantry, against the Jews in particular ; and that 
 the last decade alone has witnessed a longer list of murders 
 and outrages in Christian Europe, due to an almost identical 
 cause, than has been contributed in the same period by the 
 whole of pagan China. 
 
 Such, briefly summarised, is a list of the main drawbacks, 
 or in some cases failings, by which the Protestant missionary 
 movement in China is retarded. I refrain from 
 indicating any personal acceptance of their truth, ^"^"^'"S 
 since it ixiay be said that my opportunities for 
 forming a trustworthy judgment have not, in spite of two 
 visits to the country, been sufficient; but I state them as 
 I have derived them orally from numerous resident authori- 
 ties, as well as from the study of newspapers published in 
 China, of official reports, and of the writings and speeches of 
 the missionaries themselves. ^ I have no other desire than to 
 enable my readers, firstly, to see that there are two sides to 
 the missionary question, and secondly, before making up 
 their own minds upon it, to form some idea of what those 
 sides are. 
 
 Whatever the proportion of truth or falsehood in this pre- 
 sentment of the case, there seems, at least to my mind, to be 
 
 small doubt that the cause of Christianity is not 
 
 •^ Results. 
 
 advancing in China with a rapidity in the least 
 
 commensurate to the prodigious outlay of money, self- 
 
 ^ For the study of the question may be recommended, The Anti- Foreign 
 Riots in Cliina in 1891, republished from the Worth China Herald at 
 Shanghai ; The Parliamentarij Blue Books, China No. 1, 1891 ; No. 2, 1892 ; 
 a recent pamphlet by INIr. C. T. Gardner, of the British Consular Service in 
 China ; and above all, two excellent brochures entitled Missionaries in 
 Cliina, and Cliina and Christianity, by Mr. A. Michie of Tientsin, an 
 authority whose writings on all subjects connected with China are dis- 
 tinguished both by remarkable insight and great literary ability. 
 
306 CHINA 
 
 sacrifice, and human power. To many it appears to be 
 receding. Such, of course^ is not the impression that will 
 be derived from missionary publications. But, if we accept 
 their own figures, which in the year 1 890 showed a total of 
 1300 Protestant missionaries (women included) and only 
 37,300 native converts,^ or a fold of less than SO to each 
 shepherd, and a proportion of only one in every 10,000 of 
 the Chinese population, it must be admitted that the 
 surviving harvest after half a century's labour is not 
 large. ^ Meanwhile the temper of the native peoples may 
 be gathered from the incidents of contemporary history. 
 During the short time that I was in the China Seas in 
 1892, three fresh cases were recorded of aggravated assault 
 upon missionaries and their wives. Since then two un- 
 offending Swedish missionaries have been brutally murdered 
 at Sungpu. In the spring of 1895 occured the Szechuan 
 riots at Cheng-tu and other places ; and then in August 
 ensued the ghastly atrocities, involving the murder of ten 
 persons, at Kutien. This does not look as though the reign 
 of peace had yet dawned. 
 
 Here, however, I am only concerned with the danger that 
 a movement exposed, whether justly or unjustly, to these 
 attacks must entail upon the general interests of foreign 
 Powers in China. Those interests are not solely co-extensive 
 
 1 The missionaries have exi^lained that these are 'the inner circle of 
 communicants' only. They claim that if 'the whole number of adherents 
 be reckoned, including baptized persons who are not communicants, and hmut, 
 fide candidates for baptism,' the total must be multiplied by at least three, 
 perhaps by four. To a layman, however, these grades of jjroselytism are a 
 little puzzling. 
 
 " A few years ago the Roman Catholics jiublished the figures of their 
 missions in China, which were as follows : Bishops 41, European priests 664, 
 Native priests 559, 'Colleges [34, Convents ^34, [Native converts 1,092,818. 
 Thus, for one-half the number of European missionaries, they have thirty 
 times the number of disciples. On the other hand, they have the advantage 
 of a much older establishment, 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 307 
 
 with the work of evangelisation. They embrace the entire 
 
 field of international relationship upon which peoples meet 
 
 and hold intercourse; and it should be the first 
 
 object of diplomacy to remove from this arena, or ^^^ "S^^ 
 
 policy. 
 at least to minimise upon its surface, all possible Respect 
 
 sources of complication. The Christian missions l^^ ^^? 
 are in China ; they were introduced there by our- 
 selves; they were accepted or at least submitted to by the 
 Chinese Government; there we have hitherto maintained 
 them ; there undoubtedly they will remain. However much 
 the unfriendly critic might welcome their wholesale de- 
 portation, no such solution is practicable. So long as the 
 Treaties are not rescinded, their obligation can neither be 
 evaded by foreign Governments nor trampled on with 
 impunity by the Chinese. Whether it was wise or not 
 to introduce missionaries in the first place, China, having 
 undertaken to protect their persons and to tolerate their 
 faith, must fulfil her pledge, and cannot be permitted to 
 combine a mere lip respect for the engagement with secret 
 connivance at its violation. Still less must the idea be 
 allowed to prevail that a mere money compensation will 
 suffice to expiate any or every outrage. The exaction of 
 blood-money is at the best but a poor form of diplomatic 
 amends ; but blood-money in return for the lives of innocent 
 men, whose protection has been guaranteed by treaty, and 
 who have been brutally done to death, is almost an aggrava- 
 tion of the offence. The Chinese themselves will be the 
 last to feel surprise at an attitude of resolution on the part 
 of the foreigner. Firmness is the only policy for which 
 they entertain any respect. It would of course be best if, 
 in all cases of outrage or crime, whether happening to an 
 Englishman, a Frenchman, or an American, joint action 
 were taken by all the Powers. Such united pressure it 
 
308 CHINA 
 
 would be almost impossible to resist. Unfortunately, inter- 
 national jealousies or differences render such a co-operation 
 difficult of attainment ; and the steps in that direction which 
 were taken, at Lord Salisbury's initiative, after the murders 
 of 1891 J, and which assumed the form of a collective note 
 addressed by the Powers to the Tsungli Yamen, failed in 
 their object, owing to the withdrawal of the United States 
 from the concert. That the action of a single Power, if 
 taken with sufficient evidence of earnestness, is capable of 
 bringing the Chinese Government to its knees, has been 
 shown by the rapidity with which, as these pages go to 
 print (October 18.95) Lord Salisbury's ultimatum in regard 
 to the degradation of the late Viceroy of Szechuan, the 
 proven author of the Cheng-tu riots, has been accepted, when 
 backed up by the appearance of a British squadron in the 
 Yangtse. 
 
 Nevertheless, while the primary canon of political action 
 should be the adequate fulfilment of admitted obligations, 
 
 statesmanship has other and supplementary duties 
 Stricter , , . . . , 
 
 precau- to perform. It should aim at a cautious tightening 
 
 tions. ^£ ^j^g reins, whereby the causes of offence may be 
 
 abridged, the vagai-ies of indiscreet enthusiasm kept in 
 
 check, and the political aspects of missionary enterprise 
 
 contracted within the smallest possible dimensions. There 
 
 are some who recommend that the missionaries should 
 
 dispense with foreign protection altogether, and, proceeding 
 
 without passports, should live as Chinese subjects under 
 
 Chinese laws. Such a solution is probably more Quixotic 
 
 than feasible, and might lead to worse disaster. A very 
 
 strict revision, however, of the conditions of travel and 
 
 residence in the interior is much to be desired. Some 
 
 limitation ought to be placed upon the irresponsible vagrancy 
 
 of European subjects over remote and fanatical parts of the 
 
CHINA AND THE POWERS 309 
 
 Chinese dominions. Passports should be absolutely refused 
 at the discretion of the Minister^ exercised with regard to 
 the character both of the locality and the applicant. When 
 granted, they might specify the name of the province, 
 district, or town to which, and to which only, the bearer is 
 accredited. Already they give a general sketch of the route 
 which he proposes to follow. Upon his arrival he might be 
 compelled to report himself to the local magistracy, and to 
 notify his future movements to the latter. Such a demand 
 has, I believe, more than once been made by the Chinese 
 Government, but has been steadily refused. The relations 
 between the civil authorities and the Christians in matters 
 pertaining to the acquisition and tenure of land should be 
 clearly defined and assimilated as far as possible to native 
 custom. The opening of all mission establishments to the 
 inspection of Government officials is recommended by some 
 as an antidote to the horrible prevalent superstitions. Of 
 more avail would it be to curtail within the narrowest limits 
 the institutions, such as orphanages and sisterhoods, that 
 give currency to these odious beliefs. The employment of 
 hundreds of young unmarried foreign girls in various branches 
 of missionary woi'k, though the most popular current phase 
 of the movement, is greatly to be deprecated, as giving rise 
 to the very pardonable misinterpretations of which I have 
 spoken ; and ought to be curtailed by educated opinion at 
 home. 
 
 In the last resort mox'e will depend upon the character 
 and conduct of the missionaries themselves than upon the 
 checks devised by even a friendly diplomacy. 
 Impulsive virtue and raw enthusiasm are not j^^^^gj.jj^j 
 necessarily the best credentials for a missionary 
 career. The sensational appeal from the platform of Exeter 
 Hall, and the despatch of the heterogeneous company that 
 
310 CHINA 
 
 respond to the summons, like a draft of young volunteer 
 recruits to the theatre of war, are fraught with infinite 
 danger. It behoves the parent societies, both in Great 
 Britain and America, by a more careful choice of the men 
 whom they send forth, and the emissaries themselves, by an 
 anxious regulation of their own conduct, to anticipate and, 
 if it may be, to avert the danger which, under existing 
 conditions, confronts alike the interests of the country under 
 whose flag they march, and the sublime cause to which they 
 have devoted their lives. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 
 
 Idem semper erit, quoniam semper fuit idem. 
 Non alium videre jiatres aliumve nepotes 
 Aspicient. Deus est qui non mutatur in sevo. 
 
 Mahilius : Astron. i. 528-530. 
 
 Seven years ago the Western, and I dare say the Eastern 
 world also, in so far as it was made aware of the fact, was 
 startled by the appearance in the pages of an 
 English magazine of an article purporting to have ^ , ^"^ 
 been written by the foremost Chinaman then 
 living, a tried statesman and a successful ambassador, in 
 which, with a skilfulness that was to be expected of his 
 abilities, and with an emancipation of sentiment that was 
 surprising in his nationality, he advanced the propositions that 
 China had at length been aroused from her age-long sleep, 
 and, with the same energy with which she had for so many 
 centuries pursued and idealised the immobile, was about to 
 enter into the turbulent competition of modern progress. ^ 
 Possibly the Max'quis Tseng, assuming that he wrote the article 
 — which I believe that there is good reason for doubting — may 
 have believed in his own assurances ; unquestionably they 
 proved palatable to the large class of European readers who 
 cannot conceive of any standard of life, either for an individual 
 or a nation, except that which prevails in the country of which 
 they themselves are citizens, who bisect mankind into two 
 
 1 'China, the Sleep and the Awakening,' by the Marquis Tseng. Asiatic 
 Q^Mrtcrly Review, January 1887. 
 
 311 
 
312 CHINA 
 
 camps, the civilised and the barbarian, and hold it to be both 
 the destiny and the duty of the latter to wear the former s 
 gyves. Had China at last, the most arrogant of the rebels, 
 the most formidable of the barbarians, been driven to capitu- 
 late ? Was the Celestial about to sit, a chastened convert, at 
 the feet of Western doctors ? So blessed a proclamation had 
 not for long been spread abroad upon the earth ; and loud 
 were the Hosannas that went up from chapel and con- 
 venticle, from platform and pulpit and press, at these glad 
 tidings of great joy. It may be worth our while, who are 
 neither, like the Marquis Tseng, diplomats whose interest 
 it is to conciliate, nor prophets who are ahead of our times, 
 to examine how far it is true that China has really awakened 
 from her ancestral sleep, or whether she may not merely have 
 risen to stop the rattling of a window-sash, or the creaking 
 of a shutter, that interferes with her quietude, with the fixed 
 intention of settling down once more to the enjoyment of an 
 unabashed repose. 
 
 For now more than fifty years has the combined force of 
 
 the Western nations, exercised commonly by diplomacy, 
 
 frequently by threats, and sometimes by open 
 
 A ac ica ^^ been directed against that immense and 
 
 surrender. ' ° 
 
 solid wall of conservative resistance, like the 
 city walls of their own capital, which the Chinese oppose 
 to any pressure from the outside. In parts an opening has 
 been effected by the superior strength of the foreigner, 
 backed up by gunboats or cannon. Of such a character are 
 the concessions as regards missionaries and trade, which fall 
 more properly under the heading of China's external than 
 of her internal relations, and, as such, have been dealt with 
 in the previous chapter. In what respects, however, may 
 she be said to have yielded, or to be even now abatmg her 
 stubborn opposition, in deference to no exterior compulsion. 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 313 
 
 but of her own free will ? The answer^ whether we look at 
 the introduction of the electric telegraph and railways, at 
 the adoption of foreign mechanical appliances in arsenals, 
 dockyards, and workshops, at the institution of a native 
 press, at the development of internal resources, or at the 
 encouragement of domestic enterprise — the familiar first 
 lessons of the West to the East — will teach us that it is 
 with no lighthearted or spontaneous step, but from the 
 keenest instincts of self-preservation alone, that China has 
 descended from her pinnacle of supercilious self-sufficiency, 
 and has consented to graduate in Western academies. One 
 might think that in the contemplation of the magnificent 
 wharves and streets and buildings of Shanghai, which 
 worthily claims to be the Calcutta of the Far East ; of the 
 spacious and orderly foreign settlement of Tientsin, con- 
 trasted with the filth of the native city adjoining ; or of 
 the crowded dockyards and shipping of Hongkong — the 
 Chinese would have found at once a reproach to their own 
 backwardness and a stimulus to competition. It is doubtful 
 whether any such impression has ever been produced upon 
 the Celestial mind. What suits the foreigner's taste is not 
 necessarily required by his. If the foreigner prefers to be 
 comfortable, he is content to be squalid. If space and 
 grandeur are essential to the one, they have for centuries 
 been dispensed with, and are, therefore, not necessary to 
 the other. Were it not that experience has shown beyond 
 possibility of cavil that, in the struggle with the foreigner 
 to which the march of events has committed her, China is 
 herself handicapped by the absence of those appliances 
 which have rendered her antagonists so formidable, she 
 would not have made the smallest concession to a pressure 
 which she still despises, even while yielding to it. In a 
 word, her surrender is the offspring, not of admiration, 
 
314 CHINA 
 
 but of fear. It is based upon expediency^ not upon con- 
 viction. 
 
 No more striking illustration of this thesis can be furnished 
 than the enterprise which Avill seem to the superficial ob- 
 server the evidence of its very opposite^ viz. the 
 
 .^^' ^^'^y^ introduction of railways into China. When I first 
 in China. •' 
 
 visited the Chinese Empire in 1887, there was not 
 a mile of railroad in the country. The little abortive railway 
 from Woosung to Shanghai, which had been constructed in 
 ] 876 by English merchants, and had been compulsorily 
 acquired and torn up by the provincial authorities in 1877, 
 was only a memory and a warning. Now, however, the 
 stranger can travel in an English-built carriage upon English 
 steel rails from the station of Tongku, near the Taku forts 
 at the mouth of the Peiho River, over the 27 miles that 
 separate him from Tientsin ; while from Tongku the main 
 line is already prolonged for 67 miles to the Tungshan and 
 Kaiping coalfields, and thence as far as Shan-hai-kuan, at 
 the seaward terminus of the Great Wall, in the direction of 
 Manchuria beyond. 
 
 The reason of these several extensions has been as follows : 
 Of the first (which was begun in 1887), the alarm produced 
 ^ , by the French war in 1884; of the second, the 
 
 rian necessity, in the event of a future campaign, of 
 
 possessing native coalfields, instead of being de- 
 pendent upon foreign supply — as well as the interests of 
 a speculation in which the Viceroy Li Hung Chang is per- 
 sonally concerned ; of the third, the fear of Russian aggression 
 on the north; — self-interest or apprehension having been, 
 therefore, in each case the motive power. In other words, 
 the introduction of these railways has been a compulsory 
 operation, not undertaken of free will or inclination, but forced 
 from the outside. At one period the works were stopped by 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 315 
 
 the resurgence of old-fashioned and superstitious ideas,^ and 
 by the weight of Palace intrigue. But the influence of Li 
 Hung Chang has triumphed; and the line, though nominally 
 mercantile in its inception, has now become in reality a 
 strategical railway, which before the war was being steadily 
 pushed forward in the direction of Kirin. Its total length 
 will then be just short of 650 miles. The first Q4< miles 
 were constructed by a company, the China Railway Company ; 
 the remainder is a State i-ailway. But inasmuch as both 
 undertakings are controlled by the Viceroy, and as the 
 former is in no sense a commercial speculation, the share- 
 holders being all officials, and no accounts being published, 
 the entire project may be considered as one scheme. At 
 the rate of advance before the war, 40 or 50 miles were being 
 laid yearly, a sum of £400,000 being allocated for the purpose. 
 This left a gap of several years before Kirin was expected 
 to be reached ; but it was calculated that, owing to the 
 paucity of physical obstacles, and the ability of the Chinese 
 navvies in throwing up earthworks, the whole line could, at 
 a pinch, be completed in two years. In 1894, however, 
 progress was for a while suspended, in order that the funds 
 so released might be devoted to the celebrations of the 
 sixtieth birthday of the Empress-Dowager — a proceeding 
 profoundly Chinese. Before these could take place the war- 
 cloud burst upon China ; and railroad-construction went the 
 way of every other Chinese undertaking. Had the line 
 been pushed forward without interruption before the out- 
 break of hostilities, it is conceivable that Port Arthur might 
 
 1 "When it was announced that a branch line was to be constructed from 
 Moukden to Newchwang, the Tartar General of the former place, who did 
 not want it at all, consulted the geomancers, who reported that the vertebrre of 
 the dragon encircling the holy city of Moukden would infallibly be sundered 
 by driving the long nails of the railway sleepers into them. Accordingly, he 
 advocated the removal of the line from Moukden. The sj^inal cord of the 
 dragon was ultimately secured by shifting the rails a few hundred yards. 
 
316 CHINA 
 
 have been saved. Branch lines were contemplated in the 
 original scheme from Moukden to the Treaty Port of New- 
 chwangj a distance of 110 miles; and from Newchwang to 
 the naval dockyard of Port Arthur, both strategical in design. 
 The entire scheme, in fact, was China's reply to the Trans- 
 Siberian Railway of Russia to Vladivostok — the prodigious 
 effect of which upon the future of Asia, at present but 
 scantily realised in this country, was clearly appreciated by 
 a few Chinese statesmen — and was a warning to the Tsar 
 that China does not mean to let Manchuria and the Sungari 
 River slijp from her grasp quite as easily as she did the Amur 
 and Ussuri channels, and the provinces upon their northern 
 and eastern banks. The circumstances have been changed 
 by the clever and resolute diplomacy of Russia since the 
 war ; and few persons would be surprised if the price that 
 China is now called upon to pay included some concession 
 affecting the alignment or completion of that very Siberian 
 railway, which will ultimately seal her doom. 
 
 It was originally contemplated to run a line from Tientsin 
 to Tungchow, the river port thirteen miles distant from 
 
 Peking — a project which would have been of 
 Peki ° gi'eat service both to the Chinese inhabitants of 
 
 the capital, who find the prices of the necessaries 
 of life swollen to exorbitant figures by the difficulty of com- 
 munications in winter, and to the Europeans who, by the 
 same conditions, are cut off for months every year from the 
 outer world. But Chinese conservatism could not stomach 
 any such affront to the footstool of Royalty, while the argu- 
 ment that a railroad to the capital would only avail to 
 transport an invader all the more quickly is one that pos- 
 sessed peculiar fascination for Celestial ears. Accordingly, 
 the direct connection of Peking with the coast will probably 
 be postponed for some time longer, although I entertain no 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 317 
 
 doubt that it will ultimately be accomplished. Many more 
 foreigners will then visit the Chinese capital, hotels will 
 spring up, and the curio-dealers will rejoice. In practice 
 the familiar objection to railways in China that they will 
 offend the fe7!gshui, or Spirit Powers, and disturb the repose 
 of the dead, is found to be less serious than the contention, 
 which there is no school of political economy in China to 
 controvert, that the displacement of labour caused thereby 
 will throw so many hundreds or thousands of coolies or 
 junkmen or cartmen out of employment. This is a line of 
 reasoning that has already been successfully employed for 
 years to resist the opening of the Upper Yangtse to steam 
 navigation, and that will be repeated ad nauseam against 
 every proposal for railway extension for many yeai's to 
 come. 
 
 There are of course statesmen in China who, like Li 
 Hung Chang, are superior to the fallacies or the supersti- 
 tions of their countrymen. It will be remem- 
 bered that a few years ago the Emperor, or Trunk 
 rather the Empress - Dowager, who was still 
 Regent, issued an interrogation to the principal provincial 
 Governors and Governors-General, inviting their counsel 
 upon the subject of railway extension in the Empire. Their 
 replies, which were published, contained several expressions 
 of very sensible opinion. One Governor recommended not 
 merely the Manchurian Railway, but a second line in a 
 north-westerly direction through Shansi and Kansu to Hi, 
 and a third as far as remote Kashgar, assigning these 
 reasons : — 
 
 'We shall thereby be able to send troops, money, etc., anywhei'e 
 in our Empire within ten days : and morover, we shall be able to 
 found prosperous colonies in those outlying regions of people who 
 in China proper are only a starving jjroletariat, and a source ot 
 
318 CHINA 
 
 trouble to the Government, but who, once transplanted thither, 
 will be able to find a fruitful field for their now unemployed labour, 
 and will turn the desert into a garden.' 
 
 But the most stalwart of these advocates was the celebrated 
 Chang Chih Tung, Viceroy of the Two Kuangs,^ who pressed 
 for the construction of a great Trunk Railway connecting 
 Pekmg with Hankow, to be commenced simultaneously 
 at both ends. Not the most conservative of Chinamen 
 could deny that such a line at least was sufficiently removed 
 from the coast to be of little assistance to an invader. In 
 1889 appeared an Imperial Proclamation authorising the 
 execution of this only half-considered scheme, and Chang 
 Chih Tung was sent as Viceroy to Hankow to carry it out. 
 Subsequent reflection appears to have convinced him that 
 it must not be undertaken except with Chinese capital, and 
 with steel rails manufactured in Chinese furnaces from 
 Chinese metal — a decision which looks very much like a 
 postponement to the Greek Kalends. Until the Chinese 
 have realised that they are incapable of constructing a great 
 line except by foreign assistance, and (unless they are pre- 
 pared to pledge the Imperial Exchequer to the undertaking) 
 to some extent by foreign capital, it is safe to predict that 
 the great Hankow-Peking egg will never be hatched at all. 
 
 In the meantime the Viceroy, until his recent promotion 
 to Nanking, continued energetically to pursue the first part 
 
 ^^ , of his curtailed scheme by erecting iron and steel 
 
 Hankow •' ° 
 
 Line and works and a great rolling-mill (in addition to 
 already existing cotton, brick, and tile factories 
 in the neighbourhood) at Hanyang, near Hankow, while 
 he could flatter himself that he had a railway all his own in 
 the shape of a short line of the standard gauge, seventeen 
 
 1 In the course of the war with Japan, Chang Chih Tung was made Vice- 
 roy of the Hu Provinces, and afterwards of Nanking. 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 319 
 
 miles long, which he had constructed from Shih-hin-yao on the 
 banks of the Yangtse, seventy miles below Hankow, to the 
 iron mines of Tienshan-pu, whence the ore was to be derived. 
 Branch lines were also contemplated to the neighbouring 
 collieries of Wang-san-shih and Ma-an-shan. In Wuchang 
 a laboratory was established in 1891 for the analysis of the 
 various local minerals. Additional ironworks are now being 
 constructed by the indefatigable Viceroy at his new seat of 
 Government, to assist those of Hanyang in carrying out his 
 pet scheme and supplying material for the Great Trunk 
 Railway of the future. Simultaneously, but even more 
 leisurely, the second part of the scheme is being advanced 
 by the despatch of a number of Chinese to Europe, to 
 acquire the necessary mechanical and engineering experi- 
 ence. These are the resorts, cumbersome, dilatory, and 
 infinitely costly, to which China is impelled by an imperish- 
 able confidence in herself and a corresponding dislike of 
 external assistance. 
 
 The only other railway in the Chinese dominions in 1892 
 was a line in the north of the island of Formosa, originally 
 commenced with the torn-up Woosung rails, by 
 one of the most enterpi-ising of Chinese states- °™°s^ 
 men, Liu Ming Chuan, who, having gained great 
 credit for his skilful defence of Kelung against the French 
 fleet, under Admiral Courbet, in 1884, was reported in 1894, 
 in consequence of scares upon the Pamirs, to be about to 
 proceed as military commander to Chinese Turkestan. The 
 idea of the Formosa Railway was to connect the port of 
 Kelung, on the north-east coast of the island, with that of 
 Tainan on the west. About fifty miles of this railroad have 
 been laid by the Chinese ; and it now remains for the 
 victors in the recent war to enter into the fruition of their 
 predecessors' labours. 
 
320 CHINA 
 
 Since the conclusion of peace, railways have been, so to 
 
 speak, ' in the air ' ; and all manner of schemes have been 
 
 reported as having been sanctioned by the Em- 
 
 f ^ peror and as being on the brink of execution. Of 
 
 schemes. ^ ° 
 
 these the line from Tientsin to Peking is said to 
 
 be the first that will be undertaken. Railroad extension is 
 
 indeed the single respect in which China seems at all likely to 
 
 show that the rhinoceros-hide of her complacency has been 
 
 so much as pricked by the goad of recent calamity. 
 
 This short sketch of the inception of railroad enterprise 
 
 in China will, however, have proved that whilst the advice of 
 
 ^ , a prominent statesman here, or the influence of 
 
 Other ^ 
 
 communi- an energetic governor there, or the momentary 
 warning of military disaster, may result in the 
 commencement of isolated undertakings, which are recom- 
 mended by particular exigencies of policy or speculation, 
 the Chinese Government is far from having realised the 
 overwhelming importance, not merely to the economic and 
 industrial development, but to the continued national 
 existence of the Empire, of a wide-reaching and promptly 
 executed system of i-ailways. The prediction may safely 
 be hazarded that, without railroads, Manchuria, Chinese 
 Turkestan, and Western Mongolia, as well as other out- 
 lying parts of the Empire, cannot be permanently held. 
 There is not the slightest good in manufacturing Krupp, 
 and Hotchkiss, and (jatling, and Winchester, and Martini- 
 Henry implements of war by the thousand, if there exist 
 no means of conveying the troops who are to use them to 
 the scene of action. In railroads and telegraphs (the latter 
 were stoutly resisted at the start by the provincial governors 
 because of the restraints which would thereby be placed 
 upon their independence) lies the sole hope that China still 
 possesses of retaining her territorial integrity. And yet, so 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 321 
 
 perversely ignorant has the Government always been of this 
 elementary axiom, that communications of any kind have 
 been treated by it with undeviating neglect. The military 
 reliefs have been compelled to trudge to their stations over 
 thousands of miles of execrable track. Even the few military 
 roads that have been constructed near the coast have been 
 allowed to fall out of repair. Simultaneously, with the 
 most magnificent rivers in Asia running through her terri- 
 tories, and inviting cheap and rapid communication with the 
 populous cities of the interior, it is only, so to speak, at the 
 bayonet's point that assent can be gained to the extension 
 of river navigation by steam ; and whole populations must 
 be starved in order that small commimities of boatmen or 
 raftmen may live. 
 
 Similar reflections are suggested by an examination of the 
 military equipment and resources of China, which, until the 
 pitiless exposure of the war, formed the subject of 
 
 much premature congratulation. It is true that, I ' ^^^ 
 
 r is ' reiorm. 
 
 particularly since the French war in 1884-85, 
 which, in spite of the comparative failure of the French, 
 and the pretensions to victory that have since been ad- 
 vanced by the Chinese, yet taught the latter a great 
 many well-needed lessons, millions have been spent in 
 providing the Empire with the inechanical appliances that 
 shall enable it successfully to resist the foreigner. At 
 Kirin, Tientsin, Shanghai, Nanking, Foochow, and Canton, 
 are factories or arsenals, capable of turning out gunpowder, 
 cartridges, repeating rifles, field and mountain artillery, 
 projectiles, and machine guns of the most approved and 
 recent pattern. The majority, if not all of these, were 
 established in the first place, and for a long time supervised, 
 by foreigners. It is true also that a military school for 
 oflicers has been founded at Peking, and schools of gunnery, 
 
 X 
 
322 CHINA 
 
 musketry, and engineering, under the patronage of Li Hung 
 Chang, at Tientsin, Simultaneously, a large number of 
 foreign officers or instructors, principally Germans, have been 
 engaged to instruct the Chinese in the manufacture or use 
 of these scientific appliances. Thus equipped, the Chinese 
 Army is on paper a force not merely numerically strong, but 
 mechanically powerful. A more minute and searching 
 scrutiny, however, is needed before we can accept these 
 exterior symptoms as irrefutable evidence of a reformed 
 military system. Let me briefly examine both the con- 
 stitution of the Army as a whole, and the opinions that 
 have been entertained of its efficiency by competent 
 observers.^ 
 
 The military organisation of China is little less antique 
 and no less rigid than its civil counterpart. It has not 
 
 varied since the Manchu invasion 250 years ago. 
 The Man- in. , 
 
 chu and The descendants of the conquerors, with a certain 
 
 a lona admixture of Mongolians and Chinese, still form 
 Armies. ® ' 
 
 the Array of the Eight Banners,^ from which the 
 garrisons of Peking and other great provincial capitals are 
 drawn ; constituting a sort of hereditary profession or caste 
 maintained at the expense of the Crown, and, like the 
 Roman legionaries in the outlying provinces of the Empire, 
 owning military lands. The nominal strength of the Eight 
 Banners is variously returned as from 230,000 to 330,000 
 men; but of these considerably less than 100,000, perhaps 
 not 80,000, are in any sense of the term upon a war footing. 
 
 1 I am indebted for some portions of the following information to the 
 courtesy of Baron Speck von Sternburg, Secretary to the German Legation 
 at Peking, who has made a close personal study of the military resources of 
 China. 
 
 2 Strictly speaking, the Eight Banners are subdivided, ethnologically, into 
 three groups of eight corps each — Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese, the two 
 latter being descendants of the troops which took part in or assisted the 
 Manchu invasion. Intermarriage is compulsory among the twenty-four 
 Banner Corps, 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 323 
 
 The best of them, amounting to an avmy corps 37,000 
 strong, are stationed in Manchuria itself, where, face to face 
 with the dreaded enemy, Russia, large garrisons are main- 
 tained at Moukden, Kirin, and along the Ussuri. The 
 Imperial Guard in Peking, which is drawn from the Banner 
 Army, consists of eight regiments, or 4000 to 6000 men. 
 Side by side with them is the Ying Ping, or national Army, 
 called in contradistinction the Green Flags, or Five Camps 
 (five being the unit of subdivision), and constituting a terri- 
 torial army, frequently designated as ' Braves.' Of this 
 army there are eighteen corps, one for each province of the 
 Empire, under the orders of the local Governor or Governor- 
 General. Their nominal strength is given by different 
 authorities as between 540,000 and 660,000 men/ of whom 
 from 170,000 to 250,000 are variously reported to be avail- 
 able for war. The National Army is in fact better described 
 as a militia, about one-third of whom are usually called out, 
 and the whole of whom are never organised, and are pro- 
 bably incapable of being organised, for war. To this force 
 must be added the mercenary troops, raised in emergencies, 
 and dating from the time of the Taiping Rebellion; and 
 some irregulars, consisting of Mongolian and other cavalry, 
 nominally 200,000 in number, in reality less than 20,000, 
 and of no military value. The only serious or formidable 
 contingent of the National Army is the Tientsin army corps, 
 called Lien Chun, or drilled troops, which was first started 
 with European officers after the war of I860, and acquired 
 its cohesion in the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion, 
 since which it has been maintained in a state of comparative 
 efficiency by the Viceroy Li Hung Chang, its organisation 
 and instruction being based on the Prussian model. Nomi- 
 nally this division is 100,000 strong, but its mobilised 
 1 The Chinese Army List gives 651,667 men and 7157 officers. 
 
324 CHINA 
 
 strength is not more than 35,000^ or a full army corps, which 
 is employed to garrison the Taku and Peitang Forts, the 
 city of Tientsin, and Port Arthur. It is sometimes called 
 the Black Flag Army, and is equipped with modern fire- 
 arms, breech-loading Krupp guns, and Snider, Hotchkiss, 
 Remington, and Mauser rifles. The pay is also superior to 
 that of the Banner Army ; for whereas in the latter a 
 cavalry soldier receives only 10s. a month and forage allow- 
 ance, and the foot soldier 7s. a month and rations, the 
 Tientsin private receives 15s. a month. If any real business 
 requires to be done in the metropolitan province or neigh- 
 bourhood, it is to the Tientsin contingent that recourse is 
 made. This is the total land army of China — on a peace 
 footing not more than 300,000, on a war footing about 
 1,000,000 men — that is called upon to garrison and defend 
 an Empire whose area is one-third o'f the whole of Asia and 
 half as large again as Europe, and whose population is half 
 of the total of Asia and equivalent to the whole of Europe. 
 
 So much for the men, numerically considered. It is 
 when we approach the question of their discipline, training, 
 and personnel, still more when we examine their 
 officers and leading, that the true value of 
 the Chinese army emerges. The Chinaman has many 
 excellent qualities as a soldier, viz. a splendid physique, 
 natural docility and sobriety, considerable intelligence, and 
 great powers of endurance. The sum total of these acquire- 
 ments does not, however, necessarily make a first-rate 
 fighting-machine. Indiiference to death is by no means 
 identical with real bravery ; animal ferocity is a very diffe- 
 rent thing from moral courage. Of discipline in the highest 
 sense the Chinese have none ; and no arms in the world, 
 shuffled out from the arsenal upon the declaration of war, 
 like cards from a pack, and placed in untrained hands, can 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 325 
 
 make them follow leaders who are nincompoops, or resist an 
 enemy whose tactics, except when it comes to getting 
 behind a mud rampart themselves (and not always then, as 
 was shown by the experience of Asan [or Yashan] and Ping- 
 yang in Septenaber 1894), they do not understand. They 
 have no idea of marching or skirmishing, or of bayonet or 
 musketry practice. The only recruiting test is the lifting to 
 the full stretch of the arms above the head of an iron bar, 
 from the ends of which are hung two stones, weighing 9^ 
 stone the pair. Their drill is a sort of gymnastic perform- 
 ance, and their ordinary weapons are tufted lances, spears, 
 battle-axes, tridents, and bows and arrows, with an ample 
 accompaniment of banners and gongs. Rifles of obsolete 
 pattern, bought second-hand or third-hand in Europe, are 
 dealt out to those who are on active service. These and 
 their ammunition are mostly worthless from age. The 
 weapon of the majority is, however, an ancient matchlock, 
 of which the most familiar pattern is the Jingal, which re- 
 quires two men to fire it. On almost any day in Peking the 
 Manchu gai-rison may be seen engaged in archery practice 
 under the walls, or shooting with the same weapon, while at 
 full gallop, at a straw doll stuck up in a ditch. In war there 
 is no unity, either of administration or armament. There is 
 no organised transport service or commissariat column. A 
 medical or ambulance service is also unknown. In the fight- 
 ing against the French in Tongking the men of the same 
 regiment had different rifles, and an even larger confusion of 
 cartridges. To a Chinaman all cartridges are alike; and 
 what with those that were too large and those that were too 
 small, and those that jammed and could not be extracted, it 
 may be judged what amount of success attended the firing. 
 In the recent war with Japan it was the provision of faulty, " 
 or obsolete, or worthless ammvmition, and in some cases the 
 
326 CHINA 
 
 total lack of it altogether, that decided the fate of the 
 majority of the combats, almost before they had begun. 
 
 All these drawbacks or delinquencies, however, shrink 
 into nothingness when compared with the crowning handi- 
 cap of the native officer. In many parts of Asia 
 
 ^ ^^^ I have had occasion to observe and to comment 
 
 orhcers. 
 
 upon the strange theory of the science of war 
 (confined apparently to the East), which regard the personnel 
 of an army as wholly independent of its leading. In China 
 there is a special reason for this phenomenon. There, 
 where all distinction is identified with familiarity with the 
 classics, and depends upon success in a competitive exam- 
 ination, the military profession, which requires no such 
 training, is looked upon with contempt, and attracts only 
 inferior men. In the bulk of the army (I except the 
 Tientsin army corps) an officer still only requires to qualify 
 by passing a standard in archery, in fencing with swords, 
 and in certain gymnastic exercises. To the same deeply 
 embedded fallacy must be attributed the collateral opinion 
 that a civilian must be much better fitted to command a 
 battalion than a military man, because he is supposed in 
 the course of his studies to have read something of the art 
 of war. And when we examine what this art, in its literary 
 presentation, is, we find that the standard military works 
 in China are some 3000 years old ; and that the authority 
 in highest repute, Sun-tse by name, solemnly recommends 
 such manoeuvres as these : ' Spread in the camp of the 
 enemy voluptuous musical airs, so as to soften his heart' — 
 a dictum which might have commended itself to Plato, 
 but would hardly satisfy Von Moltke. The British army 
 could not be worse, nay, it would be far better led, were 
 the Commander-in-Chief compelled to be a Senior Wrangler, 
 and the Generals of division drawn from Senior Classics. 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 327 
 
 It cannot be considered surprising that the Chinese officers, 
 so recruited and thus taught, destitute of the slenderest 
 elements, either of military knowledge or scientific training, 
 should earn the contempt of their followers. Their posts 
 are usually acquired either by favouritism or purchase. 
 When it is added that they are also, as a rule, both corrupt 
 and cowardly ; that they stint the men's rations and pilfer 
 their pay ; and that when an engagement takes place they 
 commonly misdirect it from a sedan-chair in the rear, we 
 have the best of reasons for expecting uniform and 
 systematic disaster. The General officer is seldom (there 
 have, of course, been remarkable exceptions) any better 
 than his subordinate ; in warfare there is no single moving 
 spirit or plan of campaign ; and on the field of battle each 
 commander acts with irresponsible light-heartedness for 
 himself, and yearns for the inglorious security of the rear. 
 
 It may, however, be thought that in the occasional 
 employment of European officers some sort of guarantee 
 is provided against the universal prevalence of 
 this huge scandal. It is with no such intention Qj^^g^g^" 
 that China hires the brain or the experience of 
 the foreigner. She is ready enough to enlist and to pay 
 for them, perhaps at a high rate, in the initial stages of a 
 policy of military or naval reconstruction ; but she is too 
 jealous to give him the power or the chance to which he 
 is entitled ; and, like a sucked orange, she throws him 
 away as soon as she has drained him dry. In such a 
 manner has she treated both the English officer, Captain 
 Lang, who provided her with the nucleus of a powerful 
 reorganised fleet, and the German officer, Captain von 
 Hanneken, who has for years been engaged in fortifying 
 her coasts and reconstituting her arsenals. She kowtows to 
 the foreigner as long as she has something to gain from 
 
328 CHINA 
 
 him ; but her inordinate conceit presently reasserts itself, 
 
 and a Chinaman is appointed to continue, one might rather 
 
 say to take to pieces, the laborious efforts of his predecessor. 
 
 In the recent war, while the Chinese Government looked 
 
 askance upon any European assistance in the opening 
 
 stages, a point was soon reached at which they were 
 
 willing to pay exorbitant sums for any such aid, and to 
 
 appoint to important posts almost any foreigner who could 
 
 train a gun, or help to handle a ship. 
 
 To these details must be added the fact that the annual 
 
 military expenditure, or perhaps I should rather 
 Cost. 
 
 say waste, of China, is estimated at between 
 
 £15,000,000 and .£20,000,000. 
 
 But it may be said, is it not the case that on several 
 
 occasions during the last thirty years, e.g. in the suppression 
 
 of the Mohammedan revolt in Yunnan, in the 
 
 ^^^ recovery of Kashgar, and in the Franco-Chinese 
 
 successes. •> o ' 
 
 war, China showed a military capacity Avliich 
 would render her anywhere a formidable adversary.^ Such, 
 not unnaturally, is her own conclusion. But there are 
 qualifying considerations that must be borne in mind. The 
 Mussulman uprising, it is true, was quelled, but this was 
 mainly due to the deplorable tactics of the insurgents. 
 Eastern Turkestan was won back ; but only because, after 
 Yakub Beg had been got rid of by treachery and poison, 
 the life and soul of the rebellion were extinct. In the 
 French war, which is claimed as a victory by both parties, 
 the Chinese pride themselves greatly on having successfully 
 resisted the ridiculous French demands for an indemnity of 
 £10,000,000, on having repulsed the attack on Formosa, 
 and on having made peace after Langson, i.e. in the hour 
 of temporary triumph. Every one knows, however, that 
 had China been able to continue the struggle, she would 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 329 
 
 have done so ; and that she eagerly seized the opportunity 
 for coming to terms. The French committed every con- 
 ceivable blunder. Instead of striking at Peking, which is 
 the only way to bring the Chinese Government quickly to 
 its knees (a fact which was very early apprehended by 
 Japan), they conducted a foolish campaign in Tongking, 
 under a deadly climate, with a vastly inferior force, and in 
 a country utterly unsuited to European warfare, namely, 
 rice-fields intersected with canals, or hills covered with 
 dense covert. The campaign afforded little or no criterion 
 of the newly equipped and foreign-drilled armaments of 
 China ; for these can hardly be said to have been engaged. 
 Had the Chinese Army really been worth what is claimed 
 for it, the French would scarcely now be comfortably 
 installed in the Red River delta. 
 
 Let me fortify my opinion, however — which must in 
 itself be valueless — of the Chinese army, by citing the 
 verdict of three European officers, probably better r- _ ^ 1 
 qualified fi'om their peculiar experience to judge Gordon's 
 than any three other men during the last quarter 
 of a century. I do not know that even their opinion is 
 necessary at this date, ratified as it has been by the 
 overwheliTiing testimony of the war with Japan. But 
 inasmuch as these pages were originally written before 
 that war had broken out, it may not be inopportune to 
 reproduce the various grounds upon which I had been led 
 to the conclusion that in any conflict with a considerable 
 Power, China must inevitably suffer defeat. When war 
 was on the eve of breaking out between Russia and China 
 in 1880, over the affair of Kulja, the late General Gordon 
 was invited to Peking to give his advice to the Imperial 
 Government. In a characteristic and outspoken memo- 
 randum to his old fellow-officer, the Viceroy Li, he exposed 
 
330 CHINA 
 
 the utter rottenness of the Chinese military organisation, 
 and strongly advised them to give up playing the game of 
 scientific warfare with foreigners, in which they were sure 
 to be beaten, and to adhere to the traditional irregular 
 warfare for which their aptitudes especially fitted them. 
 Skirmishes as against battles, breech-loading rifles as against 
 big guns, this was his motto of advice.^ 
 
 The late General Prjevalski, the famous Russian explorer, 
 who spent many years of his life on the confines of the 
 
 Chinese Empire, and made a profound study of 
 enera ^^^ military resources, thus summed up, only six 
 
 years ago, a long and interesting essay upon the 
 Celestial Army : — 
 
 ' China, under its present conditions, and for many a long day, 
 cannot possibly hope to create an army at all similar to those of 
 European States. She lacks both the material and the spirit. Let 
 Europeans supply the Chinese with as many arms as they please, 
 let them strive to train the Chinese soldiers, let them even supply 
 leaders — and the Chinese army will nevertheless never be more 
 than an artificially created, mechanically united, unstable organism. 
 Subject it but once to the serious trial of war, and speedy dis- 
 solution will overtake it.' 
 
 Thirdly, I quote the opinion of Colonel Mark Bell, V.C, 
 one of the greatest, though the most modest, of living 
 
 English travellers, who, after covering the pro- 
 Bell digious journey, 3500 miles in length, from Peking 
 
 to Kashgar, thus summed up his impressions of 
 the Chinese army : — 
 
 ' A study of ("hina's interests, position, and material strength, 
 all along her Russian border, whether in Kashgaria, or Mongolia, 
 or Manchuria, has led me to conclude that she has no military 
 strength, and must be valueless to us as a military ally during the 
 next several decades.' 
 
 1 This Memorandum is reprodviced in A. G. Hake's Stori/ of Chinese 
 Gordon, p. 379. London, 1884. 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 331 
 
 Statistics differed as to the exact strength of the Chinese 
 Navy before the war^ and were hardly required afterwards in 
 consequence of its almost complete obliteration ; 
 but its history and equipment afford an almost Chinese 
 precise parallel to those of the Army, Just as the ^^^' 
 disasters of the war of I860 heralded the summons of 
 European officers to Peking, and a complete scheme of 
 military reorganisation, so does the modern Chinese Navy 
 date from the same epoch and events. In 1862, Mr. H. N. 
 Lay, who had been appointed Inspector of the Imperial 
 Customs at Shanghai before the war, was entrusted with the 
 commission to purchase a fleet of small gunboats in England. 
 Nominally these vessels were to be employed for the pro- 
 tection of the Treaty Ports and the suppression of piracy. 
 They were really intended for use against the rebels who 
 had not yet been subdued. Seven gunboats and one store- 
 ship were bought in England and taken out. But upon their 
 arrival a dispute arose between Mr. Lay and Captain Sherard 
 Osborn (who had been offered the command) on the one 
 hand, and the Chinese authorities on the other, as to the ap- 
 pointment of a Chinese colleague, and as to the source 
 whether provincial or Imperial, from which orders were to 
 be received. So long was the squabble protracted that the 
 ships were never used at all, and were finally sent back to 
 Bombay, where they were sold at a loss of half a million 
 sterling, Mr. Lay having in the meantime left the Chinese 
 service. This unfortunate misunderstanding greatly retarded 
 the naval advance of China, and was thus alluded to, twenty- 
 five years later, by the Marquis Tseng : — 
 
 ' Twice since 18C0 China has had to lament this as a national 
 misfortune, for twice since then she has had to submit to occupations 
 of her territory, which the development of that fleet would have 
 rendered difficult, if not impossible.' 
 
332 CHINA 
 
 Since those days, however, and more particularly since the 
 war with France, China has bestirred herself in the matter of 
 naval equipment. The first result of the French war was 
 the addition, in 1885, of a Ministry for the Navy, or Board 
 of Admiralty, to the seven existing administrative depart- 
 ments. At Foochow, Port Li, Tientsin, Wei Hai Wei, 
 Canton, Shanghai, and Port Arthur (Lu Shun Kou),^ have 
 been established powerful arsenals or dockyards, the last- 
 named place being the naval base of defence for Peking. 
 Four naval colleges for the education of cadets have been 
 started at Wei Hai Wei, Tientsin, Whampoa, and Nanking. 
 There is a torpedo-school under a German at Canton. Sir 
 W. Armstrong at Elswick has built for them fast cruisers ; 
 Herr Krupp at Essen has turned out the best ironclads. The 
 total Chinese fleet, divided into four squadrons, the Pei-yang, 
 or north coast squadron, and the fleets of Foochow, Shanghai 
 (called the Nanyang squadron), and Canton, comprised at the 
 outbreak of hostilities about 65 vessels of wai', mostly built 
 abroad^ and including 4 ironclads, l6 cruisers, and 17 gun- 
 boats, as well as over 30 torpedo-boats, and 6 floating 
 batteries. The tonnage of the combined fleets was about 
 65,000 tons, the armament 490 guns, and the complement 
 of men 7000. The usual experiment of a European com- 
 mander had been tried, with the usual result, expulsion. The 
 
 ^ The dockyard at Port Arthur, now the principal naval station of the 
 Empire, was only commenced in 1887, the French, in virtue of a clause in 
 their Treaty of 1885, having secured the contract. It was comi_)leted in 1890, 
 and defended by heavily armed forts, with a garrison of 7000 men and 1.3 
 torpedo boats. When the Japanese took it by storm in November 1894, the 
 Chinese seem to have practically ignored the land defences, which should 
 have been impregnable, and to have allowed themselves to be caught in a 
 trap. After the war Port Arthur remained in the occupation of the Japanese, 
 who proposed to retain it along with the Liao-tung Peninsula, on which it is 
 situated. It formed, however, that jDortion of the phmder which they were 
 compelled by the new Triple Alliance, France, Russia, and Gorm.anj', to 
 disgorge. 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 333 
 
 fleet was officered and manned by Chinese, foreigners being 
 retained only for instruction in gunnery, electricity, torpedo- 
 practice, etc. No doubt this fleet, like the army, was, on 
 paper, a fighting force of no mean capacity. But, as I wrote 
 in my first edition, with an anticipation that, substituting 
 only the word Japanese for European, was strictly prophetic, 
 the question was, whether under native commanders it was 
 not likely to prove a greater source of weakness than of 
 strength, and by falling a prey to the first European force 
 that seriously engaged it, to lend no inconsiderable increment 
 of strength to the latter. A further element of weakness in 
 the Chinese Navy is the total lack of administrative centrali- 
 sation. The Navy is jiot properly an Imperial or even a 
 National force. The four fleets are Provincial squadrons, 
 raised, equipped, and maintained by the viceroys or gover- 
 nors of the maritime provinces to which they are attached. 
 Each acts independently in its own area, though they are 
 mobilised for common evolutions every autumn. For 
 instance, when in 1885 the French blockaded Formosa, they 
 were not opposed by the combined Chinese fleet, but only 
 by the Foochow squadron ,• and when this had been anni- 
 hilated, by the Nanyang squadron, which took its place, no 
 idea of concerted action being entertained. The same thing 
 occurred in the recent war, where the Canton squadron 
 never left the Canton River. There is, finally, in the Navy, 
 as in the Army, a total want of a competent staff. 
 
 Two reflections are suggested by this review of the military 
 and naval reforms of modern China. The first is this. Un- 
 awai-e that her main danger continues to lie upon 
 her land frontiers, she thinks only of gunboats and and the real 
 maritime defences, and spends millions in forti- "^"S^'- 
 fying her coasts. Because England and France once landed 
 their troops at Canton and Tientsin, she appeal's to think 
 
334 CHINA 
 
 that no European enemy can ever attack her except in ships. 
 Because the great Powers of Europe are represented in the 
 Far East by naval flotillas, she must have an equivalent or 
 superior flotilla, in order to simulate the idea of being a great 
 maritime Power also. Meanwhile, on the one hand, no steps 
 are taken to combat or excise the canker of official corruption 
 that preys upon the vitals of both services. On the other 
 hand, in full view of the bewitched prey, the toils are being 
 spread, and from the Pamirs and Turkestan and the Trans- 
 Amur ^ will flow into Kashgaria, Mongolia, Sungaria, and 
 Manchuria the tide that will overwhelm her outlying pro- 
 vinces, and may possibly not be arrested till it has attained 
 the capital itself. Truly Quern Deus vult peirlere, prius 
 dementat. 
 
 Nevertheless, disrespectful to purely Chinese susceptibilities 
 as these remarks may appear to have been, it must not be 
 
 forgotten that in her vast empire China, however 
 Themer- * . l' > 
 
 cenaries of ill she may utilise it, possesses an inexhaustible 
 urope. supply of the very finest raw material, so far as 
 mere manhood is concerned, in the East ; and that what she 
 is too blind or too obstinate to do for herself, others, with a 
 superior foresight and strength, may insist upon doing for 
 themselves. In other words, the Chinaman, who now fights 
 for the Tartar just as he once fought for the Mongol, may 
 one day be persuaded to fight for the Russian also. If the 
 mandarin with spectacles on his nose and a cane in his hand 
 cannot make a soldier of him, perhaps the European drill- 
 sergeant will. Under good leadership he can fight suffi- 
 ciently well, as was shown by Gordon's men. Valueless, 
 therefore as, under existing conditions and management, we 
 
 1 China has by Treaty an equal right to navigate the Amur with the 
 Russians. But she has not placed a single gunboat on the river, though its 
 right bank is still mainly Chinese. 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 335 
 
 may believe Chinese armaments to be, their potential value 
 in the hands of another Power must not be lost sight of. It 
 is conceivable that, so organised and directed, the Chinese 
 Army and Navy may yet have a good deal to say in deter- 
 mining the destinies of the Far East. 
 
 Some writers have pointed to the tentative institution of 
 a native Press in China as evidence of an internal fermenta- 
 tion synonymous with reform. No such infer- 
 ence can with justice be drawn. Outside of . ^, -^^^^ 
 •> in China. 
 
 Peking, where the Peking Gazette is a strictly 
 edited Court journal and Government record and nothing 
 more,^ the native journals are only or mostly to be found in 
 the Treaty Ports. They are utterly unlike the native Press 
 as it is rapidly becoming developed in Japan^ as it has 
 already been developed in India. Free criticism, the 
 formation or reflection of public opinion, an independent 
 attitude — for these it is vain to search them, and hazai'dous 
 in China would be the experiment. Politically^ their editors 
 
 1 The Pelcing Gazette, which is the oldest newspaper in the world, its origin 
 being attributed to the Sung dynasty, which ended in 1366 a.d., is not actually 
 an official publication, like the London Gazette, but is a sort of ministerial or 
 Government organ, the issvie of which is authorised by the Government, who 
 also supply the greater part of the material. As such it is indirectly official 
 and is absolutely authentic. Therein are contained all the ImjDerial acts, 
 promotions, decrees and sentences, jietitions from provincial governors, pro- 
 clamations of the censors, etc., without any editorial comments or leading- 
 article. It is published daily in a manuscript and in a printed form, the 
 former containing more matter, and is read and discussed with avidity by 
 educated Chinese in every part of the Empire. In the provinces thousands 
 of persons are employed in copying and abridging its contents for those who 
 cannot afford to purchase the complete edition. It is printed by means of 
 wooden movable types of willow or pojjlar wood. An average Gazette con- 
 sists of ten to twelve leaves of thin brownish paper, measuring "2 by 3f 
 inches, and enclosed between leaves, front and back, of bright yellow paper, 
 to form a species of binding. The whole is roughly attached or stitched 
 together. The inside leaves, being folded double in the usual Chinese 
 fashion, give some twenty or more small pages of matter, each page being 
 divided by red lines into seven columns. Each column contains fourteen 
 charactei's from top to Ijottom, with a blank sjjace at the top. 
 
336 CHINA 
 
 are sufficiently wise to tender a general support to the 
 Government^ while the advantages of public encomium are 
 sufficiently recognised by the local officials to induce in some 
 cases a liberal payment for complimentary mention. Outside 
 of this harmless diversion, they serve a useful purpose in 
 acquiring telegraphic information, in circulating genei'al 
 news, and in calling attention to visitations such as floods, 
 etc., which might otherwise be ignored by the official eye.^ 
 The total absence of party politics in China is itself a dis- 
 couragement to the existence of an organised Press. On 
 the other hand, the absence of such a Press is a welcome 
 preventive to the dissemination of novel or revolutionary 
 ideas, or to the spread of any propaganda at which the 
 Government would look askance. 
 
 China is a country of immense, probably of unequalled, 
 
 natural resources. Her mineral wealth is believed to be 
 
 greater than that of any other country in Asia. 
 
 JNative Yler ports receive or diffuse a trade that employs 
 
 enterprise. ^ sr j 
 
 thousands of keels, and pours wealth into the 
 pockets of half the nations of Europe. Her people are 
 gifted with infinite perseverance, industry, and sobriety. 
 Under these circumstances, one might expect to find native 
 enterprise everywhere active and triumphant, and to see the 
 
 1 The first native newsjiaper ajjpeared at Shanghai a little over thirty years 
 ago, and was followed by two others at Tientsin and Canton, which were 
 nominally started by Europeans, in order to escape Government inquisition, 
 but were really owned and conducted by Chinese mandarins. There are now 
 several Chinese newspajjers at Hongkong ; three at Canton, with a daily 
 circulation of 5000 each ; and one has recently been started at Hankow. The 
 best native organ is the Shanghai News, a daily paper (with a weekly illus- 
 trated supplement), claiming a circulation of over 12,000. It usually contains 
 a leading article, one or two political and social reviews, copies of official 
 decrees and reports, police news, the telegrams of Eurofiean agencies, local 
 intelligence, and advertisements. On the other hand, the Tientsin paper has 
 proved a failure. The people like gossip and scandal, which are unsafe, and 
 their own classics, which are unsuited for publication ; but in general news 
 they take little interest. 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 337 
 
 resources of the country profitably exploited by her own 
 citizens. The very reverse is the spectacle before us. Of 
 the many well-stocked mines^ oiily the coal-mines near 
 Tientsin are successfully worked by a native company 
 (under foreign management). Among the hundreds of 
 merchant steamers cai*rying loaded bottoms from port to 
 port, only thirty (and those officered and engineered by 
 foreigners) fly the flag of a native company worth m.en- 
 tioning, that of the China Merchants. And in both these 
 cases the exception is merely due to the fact that official 
 patronage is concerned in promoting the venture, and that 
 the money of eminent mandarins is at stake. The Viceroy 
 Li Hung Chang is reported to be behind the Kaiping Coal 
 Mining Company. He it was who secured for the China 
 merchants an Imperial subsidy and an assured revenue in 
 the freight of the tribute rice. Quite lately a fresh bounty 
 was given to them in the shape of a remission of import 
 duties to native merchants shipping by their vessels, and 
 of customs examination to native officials travelling in them ; 
 but the discovery being made that these exemptions con- 
 stituted a breach of Article iii. of the Commercial Treaty 
 concluded between China and the United States in 1880, 
 they were rescinded as the result of a protest from the 
 British Minister. Yet in the cases of both these companies 
 I have heard that the profits are not what they might be, 
 and that shareholders complain of scant accounts and of 
 infrequent and arbitrary dividends. In fact, as a commercial 
 speculation, the China Merchants' Company is said to be a 
 failure.^ What, then, is the secret of this paralysis that 
 would seem to have ovei'come the energies of China just 
 
 ^ It ia very different with the China merchants of Hongkong, who, free to 
 invest and develop their cajiital without the peril of Government interference 
 or squeeze, run large ships to Manila and Batavia, to Saigon, Singa^jore, and 
 Bangkok. 
 
338 CHINA 
 
 at the very moment and in the very direction where they 
 
 might be employed to sueli obvious advantage ? 
 
 The answer Hes in tlie immemorial curse of Oriental 
 
 countries, the trail of the serpent that is found everywhere 
 
 ^, from Stamboul to Peking — the vicious incubus of 
 
 The curse ° 
 
 of official- officialism, paramount, selfish, domineering, and 
 corrupt. Distrust of private enterprise is rooted 
 in the mind trained up to believe that the Government is 
 eveiything and the individual nothing. The bough may 
 rot and its fruit may never be garnered sooner than that the 
 spoil should fall into any but official hands. So it has always 
 been, and so it must continue to be. Were all Viceroys far- 
 sighted and all mandarins liberal-minded, there would be 
 less cause for reproach. But a system that has prevailed 
 for twenty centuries does not easily relax the rigour of 
 its bonds or admit of converts from its own ranks ; and 
 those who have been bred and nurtured in a satisfied 
 twilight do not relish the sensation of a sudden intro- 
 duction to the noontide blaze. Let me give an illustration 
 of the manner in which this system affects the development 
 of the national resources. Near to Kelung in Formosa are 
 some coal-mines. They were opened in the first place 
 and worked by private individuals. Then the Provincial 
 Government marched in, shut up all the private mines, 
 and thus procured for itself a monopoly, which it pro- 
 ceeded to develop by sending for European plant and 
 European engineers. The next step was to appoint a 
 Chinese superintendent as colleague to the foreign en- 
 gineer; with the normal result of (1) friction, (2) dismissal 
 of the foreigner, (3) resumption of the mine by the natives, 
 (4) complete collapse and closure of the pits. Later on, 
 a foreign financial syndicate offered to take over the 
 mines on favourable terms. Taught by adversity, the 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 339 
 
 Provincial Government gladly accepted ; but this time 
 
 the Centi'al Government refused. So the mines lay idle 
 
 until the opportunity of ever developing them in Chinese 
 
 hands has now itself disappeared ; and this is the way in 
 
 which things are done in China. 
 
 In reality, therefore, the institution of which China is 
 
 most proud, viz. a lettered bureaucracy^ is the source of 
 
 her greatest weakness. Educated upon a system 
 
 which has not varied for ages, stuffed with sense- -. ^ f'^^' 
 
 ° ' dannate. 
 
 less and impracticable precepts, discharging the 
 ceremonial duties of his office with a mechanical and servile 
 accuracy, the victim of incredible superstitions and sorceries, 
 but arrogant with a pride beyond human conception, 
 furnished with an insufficient salary, and therefore com- 
 pelled to peculate and plunder, the Chinese mandarin is 
 China's worst enemy. All private enterprise is killed by 
 official strangulation, all public spirit is extinguished by 
 official greed. Nor, as it is the ambition and is within the 
 scope of everybody, whatever his class, to become an official 
 himself, is there any order to which we can look for success- 
 ful protest. The entire governing class, itself recruited from 
 the mass of the people, is interested in the preservation o£ 
 the status quo. The forces ordinarily enlisted on the side 
 of change, those of the literati or student class, are more 
 reactionary in China than any other, seeing that, unlike 
 Russia — where they are trampled upon and ignored — and 
 unlike India — where they complain of inadequate range for 
 their ambition — they already, by virtue of their degrees, 
 hold the keys of power. Neither can it be supposed that, 
 with a people so obstinate and so vain, there is the smallest 
 inclination among the lower strata of society to move where 
 their leaders decline to advance. Both find an equal charm 
 in stagnation. 
 
340 CHINA 
 
 What the foreigner realises only dimly and by slow 
 degrees is that the Chinaman has not the slightest desire 
 to be reformed by him ; that he disputes in toto 
 Chinese that reform is reform ; and that no deiTionstration 
 ' in the world will convince him of the existence of 
 a flaw in his own theory of national perfection. He points 
 to a Government infinitely more stable than that of any 
 Em-opean State, to order observed, and to justice effectively, 
 if roughly, administered (the fact that rebellion simmers in 
 some provinces, where official embezzlement in times of 
 hardship reduces the people to semi-starvation, not being of 
 sufficiently wide application to disturb the general pro- 
 position) ; he claims a civilisation that was already at a high 
 pitch when Britons were wandering painted in the woods ; 
 he boasts of a code of ethics equal in wisdom and amplitude 
 to our own ; he observes a religion which, while it touches 
 the extremes of purity in docti-ine and of degradation in 
 practice, is yet accommodated to every situation in life, and 
 enables him, subject only to the test of dutiful observance, 
 to pass with confidence into a future world. And he turns 
 round to us, and, with a pardonable self-confidence, asks 
 what we have to give him compared with these. 
 
 This is one aspect of the question — namely, the convinced 
 and embittered resistance of all classes to reform, and the 
 _,, fear that reform, if forced upon them, may dislodge 
 
 picture of some of the foundation-stones of that fabric of 
 
 "^ ■ which they are so exorbitantly proud. On the 
 other hand, must not some weight be attached to the con- 
 sideration — -which to the European mind appeal's so irre- 
 sistible — that the first tentative steps have been taken in 
 a forward direction, that the awakening trumpet has sounded 
 in China's ears, and that, once embarked on the path of pro- 
 gress she is already launched upon an inclined plane where 
 
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING OF CHINA 341 
 
 it will be impossible for her to stop ? This is a plausible and 
 a pretty picture, and even its approximate reaHsation might 
 enable the Chinese — a nation superbly gifted and possessing 
 unique advantages of character, country, and clime — once 
 again to repeat the history of the ages and to overrun the 
 world. Is this the future that awaits them ? Is this the 
 fate that threatens us ? 
 
 I must have argued feebly if I have not already shown 
 that in my judgment this consummation is not either to 
 
 be expected or to be feared. Reform, it is true, „, ,. 
 
 ^ ' ' The reality 
 
 cannot altogether be hustled out of the door, of stand- 
 Its force is like the wind, that bloweth where 
 it listeth, and can penetrate even through the chinks and 
 crannies. Doubtless in time, as from different quarters 
 foreign railways touch the confines of China, native railways 
 will be made to meet them. A day will come when mines 
 will be exploited^ a decent currency adopted, and rivers will be 
 navigated by steam. Neither, though China may be overrun, 
 and may even, as she has often done before, accept a change 
 of masters, is she likely to be submei'ged. She is for ever 
 proof against such a fate by reason of her moral character, 
 her swarming millions, and her territorial extent. The con- 
 tinued national existence of the Yellow Race may be regarded 
 as assured. But that the Empire which in the last fifty 
 yeai's has lost Siam, Burma, Annam, Tongking, part of 
 Manchuria, Formosa, and Korea, which has already seen a 
 foreign army in Peking, and the maritime approaches to 
 whose capital have been for a year in the armed occupation 
 of a victorious enemy ; whose standard of civil and political 
 perfection is summed up in the stationary idea; which, after 
 half a century of intercourse with ministers, missionaries, and 
 merchants, regards all these as intolerable nuisances, and one 
 of the number with peculiar avei'sion ; which only adopts 
 
342 CHINA 
 
 the lessons that they have taught her when the surrender 
 is dictated by her necessities or her fears ; and which^ after 
 a twenty years' observation of the neighbouring example of 
 Japan, looks with increasing contempt upon a frailty so 
 feeble and impetuous — that this Empire is likely to falsify 
 the whole course of its history and to wrench round the bent 
 of its own deep-seated inclinations, simj^ly because the 
 shriek of the steam-whistle or the roar of cannon is heard 
 at its gates — is a hypothesis that ignores the accumulated 
 lessons of political science and postulates a revival of the 
 age of miracles. I have narrated the stages of China's tai'dy 
 advance, and I have shown how far she has condescended to 
 reform. But it remains a mechanical and not a moral ad- 
 vance ; it is an artificial and not an oi'ganic reform. She may 
 still continue to play an important part in the development 
 of the Asiatic world. Her hardy colonists may sail to every 
 quarter of the Eastern hemisphere, and by their frugal toil 
 may enrich themselves, while they fail to aggrandise her. 
 But, politically speaking, her star is a waning and not a 
 rising orb. Sedet ceternumqiie sedebit is the limit of China's 
 own aspirations. It may even turn out to be beyond the 
 limit of her powers. ^ 
 
 1 This problem is further discussed in Chapter siii. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 MONASTICISM IN CHINA 
 
 Tantiini relligio potuit suadere malorum. 
 
 Lucretius : De Rerum Ifatura, Lib. i. 101. 
 
 In a previous chapter I have said something about Buddhism 
 in Korea^ where it is the discredited but not wholly dis- 
 avowed survival of a once dominant creed. I 
 propose in this chapter to deal with Buddhism ^ ^?f^f 
 in China^ where^ though decadent, it is still 
 dominant, and where the explanation of its influence pro- 
 vides a clue to many of the dark riddles of the national 
 character. Buddhism in China is indeed a curious mixture 
 of perishing rites and popular superstitions. There is pro- 
 bably no country where there are fewer evidences of faith 
 or devotion, or where, on the other hand, an apparently 
 doomed system dies so hard. From the squalid and 
 dilapidated condition of the temples, from the indifference 
 and iiTeverence with which the worshippers enact their 
 artificial parts, and from the miserable status of the priest- 
 hood, it might be inferred that the days of Buddhism were 
 numbered, and that a rival system was driving it from dis- 
 honoured shrines. Such, however, would be a most super- 
 ficial view of the case. This mysterious religion, which has 
 survived the varied competition of Rationalism, Confucianism, 
 and Ceremonialism, and which has an antiquity not far short 
 of two thousand years in China, is yet the favourite creed of 
 a community numbering 350,000,000 ; and despised and de- 
 
344 CHINA 
 
 generate though it be, it will still lift its head and smile its 
 serene Buddha-smile long after its purer and prouder and more 
 splendid counterpart in Japan has crumbled into the dust. 
 
 The explanation of this strange anomaly is that the 
 popular faith has with rare discretion intertwined itself with 
 the popular superstitions. Partly creating and 
 stitious partly accommodating itself to them, Buddhism, 
 
 sanction. involved in the sacred ties of Ancestor- Worship, 
 and claiming to dispense the portions of another life, has 
 wrapped itself in a covering of triple brass, and can afford 
 to laugh at its enemies. It has found the key to the inner 
 being of this inscrutable people, and, in secure command of 
 the lock, takes good care that none other shall tamper 
 with the wards. It may safely be contended that, were it 
 not for the uneasy anxieties of the Chinese about their 
 souls, and the universal and cherished cult of the Family 
 Tree, and for the part played in relation to both by the 
 Buddhist priesthood, Chinese Buddhism would long ere now 
 have languished and disappeared. ^ Dogmas, tenets, ritual, 
 and liturgy in themselves are of small import to the 
 Celestials. The stately ceremonial of the official creed, 
 the intellectual axioms of Confucius, the painted image- 
 worship of the Buddhist temple, the mysticism of the 
 Rationalists, or sect of Lao-tzu, produce little permanent 
 
 ^ In an interesting letter, the late Sir T. Wade, formerly British Minister 
 in Peking, wrote to me on this subject as follows : — 'The original capture of 
 the lettered classes of China by the apostles of Buddhism was largely due 
 to the fact that the period of their greatest activity as writers or trans- 
 lators (viz. the Tang Dynasty, a.d. GOO-900) was at the same time eminently 
 remarkable for the elegance of its prose and its j>oetry. It was, as we should 
 say, the Augustan age of Chinese composition. It has also been due to the 
 suj)j)ort which it received with tolerable steadiness from the Central Govern- 
 ment, notably under the two last dynasties. And yet, almost universal as 
 is the thraldom of its puerile superstitions, it has never supplanted Confuci- 
 anism as the national code of ethics, nor has its literature ever been able 
 to maintain a footing in the national education.' 
 
MONASTICISM IN CHINA 345 
 
 effect upon their stolid imaginations. The beautiful teach- 
 ing enshi'ined in the sacred writings as they came from 
 India, the precepts that made white lives and brought 
 tearless deaths^ that almost Christianised idolatry and 
 might have redeemed a world, have long ago died down into 
 frigid calculations, tabulating in opposite columns with 
 mathematical nicety the credit and debit accounts of the 
 orthodox disciple. Thus, on the one hand, the people are 
 plunged in gloomy dread of a hereafter, determined by the 
 exact laws of moral retribution ; on the other, deeply em- 
 bedded in the springs of their nature, is a fanatical attach- 
 ment to their Lares and Penates, and to the worship of the 
 dead ; and hence it comes about that the religion which, 
 whatever its shortcomings and disqualifications, ministers to 
 their requirements in both these respects, is simultaneously 
 derided and advocated, neglected and espoused. 
 
 No better illustration of this anomalous state of affairs 
 can be given than the condition and public estimation 
 of the Buddhist monks. A stranger will at first 
 be puzzled by the opposite verdicts which he ^jv^Qry" 
 hears jDassed upon this class of inen. He will opinion of 
 hear them denovmced as contemptible outcasts, 
 as pariahs from society, who have forfeited all the sympa- 
 thies of humanity by cutting themselves adrift from all 
 human ties. And this is a sentence which to some extent 
 finds its corroboration in their forlorn and decrepit appear- 
 ance, in their cheerless mode of life, and in their divorce 
 from the haunts and homes of men. On the other hand, he 
 will find these despised exiles supported by popular contri- 
 butions, recruited by voluntary adherents, and engaged in 
 the discharge of essential rites at the most solemn moments 
 of life and death, and in the service to the dead. A grosser 
 seeming contradiction can scarcely be imagined. 
 
346 CHINA 
 
 And yet it is an identical feeling which is partly respon- 
 sible for both attitudes, and which prepares for these 
 unhappy creatures this opposite mixture of tolera- 
 te ^^.". tion and contempt. The peculiar sanctity of the 
 
 planation. r r- j 
 
 family relations is one cause both of their ostra- 
 cism and of their employment. They ai*e needed to 
 discharge on behalf of others the very obligations which 
 they have renounced themselves. Expelled from the world 
 because they have ignored the family, they are brought back 
 into it to testify that the family is the first of all earthly 
 ties. Can anything more strange be conceived .'' It is a 
 creed whose apostates are enlisted as its prophets, and 
 whose perverts become its priests. 
 
 When Sakyamuni first instituted the monastic order, like 
 St. Anthony he did not contemplate the creation of a 
 
 priestly office, or the rise of a hierarchy. The 
 
 Ungina clerical profession had no special connection in 
 conception ^ ^ 
 
 of monas- his mind with monkish life. The first Buddhist 
 monks, like those of Egypt, were pious men who, 
 in pursuit of their master's teaching that worldly and carnal 
 ties were the source of all evil, and the main obstacle to that 
 serene altitude of contemplation by which absorption into 
 the higher life at length became possible, severed them- 
 selves from their fellow-creatures, and sought remote and 
 unfriended retreats for purposes of spiritual exercise and 
 self-mortification. They were primarily recluses and second- 
 arily preachers, but in no resort priests. It was only in 
 later times, as the first pattern was forgotten, and accretions 
 developed by other countries and circumstances grew up, 
 that the manifold accessories of sacerdotalism, particularly 
 among the peoples of the north, environed and obscured the 
 original ideal. 
 
 The logical carrying out of Buddha's precepts, however. 
 
MONASTICISM IN CHINA 347 
 
 brought the anchorite into early collision with the most 
 idolised beliefs of Chinese life. The essence of monasti- 
 cisnij viz. the repudiation of all earthly con- 
 nections, the lifelona; abandonment of father, . ^'^^^'^" 
 ' ° ' sion. 
 
 mother, brothers, and sisters, the surrender of the 
 covenant of wedlock and the hopes of paternity — above all, 
 the utter severance of the limb from the ancestral trunk, is 
 the very antipodes of the highest conception of duty that a 
 Chinese can entertain. Hence arose the dishonour in which 
 the monkish order has long been held, and from which it has 
 only rescued its existence by abandoning its traditions. The 
 monastery has, in fact, become the very converse of what 
 Buddha ever intended that it should be. The secular has 
 put on the religious, and the monk has saved himself by 
 turning priest. 
 
 We have seen how indispensable are his ministrations in 
 the worship of the dead, and in expediting the happy trans- 
 migration of the departed soul. There the mum- 
 meries of the temple are enlisted to fill up the • ^!^^" "^ 
 ^ ^ insurance. 
 
 incomplete credentials of the deceased, and to 
 vise his passport, so to speak, to another world. To the 
 more pious or superstitious (there is no distinction between 
 the two classes in China) they are not less obligatory as a 
 policy of spiritual insurance, to be taken out with pre- 
 cautionary object during lifetime. The Chinaman is a firm 
 believer in the doctrine of justification by works ; he expects 
 a return in the next life exactly proportionate to the labour 
 and money he has spent or caused to be spent in deserving 
 it in this. Every mumbled prayer, every tap of the drum 
 or clash of the cymbal by the paid hierophant whom he has 
 engaged, will be rewarded by so much tangible gain in the 
 next stage of existence. Metempsychosis may bring him a 
 worse or a better lot ; he may groan in poverty or loll in 
 
348 CHINA 
 
 wealth ; he may sink to hell or rise to the acme of paradisal 
 felicity in a future state. The Buddhist monks are the 
 established mediums through whom his merits may be 
 demonstrated and made known in heaven ; and from whose 
 hands he looks to receive his official diploma of celestial 
 promotion. 
 
 The isolation of the novice from all the ties and consola- 
 tions of life may well conflict with Chinese prejudices; for 
 . it is ghastly in its completeness. Not only, as 
 
 of the has been said, does he renounce all relationships 
 
 and take vows of celibacy, but he casts aside even 
 the ultimate symbol of identity, his own name. From the 
 hour that he passes the convent threshold, he is known only 
 by a religious appellation, in the very grandiloquence of which 
 there is something pitiful and absurd. Henceforward he 
 must shave his head, eat no animal food, drink no strong 
 drink, and wear no skin or woollen garment, but only the 
 prescribed vestments of his order. His life is mapped out 
 before him in a sterile and dolorous routine. And not only 
 has he ceased to be a member of domestic society, but as a 
 unit in the civil community he can scarcely be said to exist. 
 For he acknowledges no real allegiance to the Emperor, 
 albeit the latter is of the family of the gods ; yielding a 
 discretionary obedience to the civil authorities, with whom 
 he rarely comes in contact, but concentrating all capacity 
 for duty in a slavish obedience to the jurisdiction of his 
 abbot or religious superior. 
 
 The terrible exclusiveness of this discipline, repellent 
 though it is to Chinese ideas, would not be sufficient to 
 account for the odium in which the monastery is 
 odum^'^ held, were it not for the suspicion that its strin- 
 gency is a sham, and that the cowl is often either 
 assumed as an escape from justice or worn as a cloak of 
 
MONASTICISM IN CHINA 349 
 
 hypocdsy. It is difficulty for obvious reasons, to discover 
 how far the chai'ge that fugitives from the clutch of the law 
 shelter themselves within the monastery walls is a true one, 
 though it is certain that when once admitted the culprit is 
 safe from the bloodhounds of official retribution. I have 
 even heard it argued, by way of repudiation of this charge, 
 that it is only the most abandoned characters, fleeing from 
 the penalties of a capital offence, who will take advantage of 
 a refuge so discredited as the cloister ; though to contend 
 that a society is not criiTiinally recruited because only crimi- 
 nals of the deepest dye can be persuaded to attach them- 
 selves to it, does not seem to me a very happy method of 
 exculpation. I am reminded by it of an incident which I 
 came across while travelling in Greece some years ago. The 
 public executioner in that country was a character held in 
 such general detestation that he was forced to live apart, 
 strictly guarded, on a little island in the harbour of Nauplia. 
 And not only that ; but such difficulty was experienced in 
 filling the place, that the selected candidate was, as a rule, 
 taken from the criminal class itself — a bandit being pardoned 
 in order that he might be utilised to cut off the heads of 
 other bandits. At the time of my visit one of these worthies 
 had just completed the term of his office, but whether owing 
 to the unpopularity he had contracted by its discharge, or to 
 the distrust he had inspired by his previous habits of life, he 
 considered himself in so much danger that he solved the 
 problem of his future mode of existence by entering a 
 monastery and assuming the cowl. In China he would 
 presumably have taken this step at an earlier stage in his 
 career. 
 
 Whatever be the truth about the Buddhist monasteries in 
 China as Cities of Refuge, and whether the slur cast upon 
 them by that suspicion be just or not, there is less room for 
 
350 CHINA 
 
 doubt that the pattern of ascetic life to which the monk 
 
 is understood to aspire is one to which he most infrequently 
 
 conforms. His celibacy and his vegetarianism are 
 
 Common fj-eely impuffned. It is perhaps only natural that 
 imposture. ^ r o r r j 
 
 the theory that drinking-water and vegetables 
 are teeming with animalculse or with the germs of animal 
 life should be one which he indignantly rejects, seeing that 
 were he to accept it he would be hard put to subsist at all, 
 with any regard at least to the precepts of the Buddhistic 
 canon. But, alas ! he is the victiiTi of more substantial 
 charges. It is whispered that the odour of meat and fish, 
 and the tell-tale fragrance of the opium-pipe are no 
 strangers to the recluse's cell. With greater certainty he is 
 accused of being dirty, degraded^ and ignorant, subsisting on 
 alms which he does nothing to merit, and of prostituting his 
 worship into a mummery which he does not himself compre- 
 hend. If even a fraction of these charges be true, there can 
 be small surprise that the monastic profession is held in so 
 little repute among a people who are by no means deficient 
 in their standards of the sober moral virtues. 
 
 It may be wondered how a society held in such slight 
 esteem, and offering so few advantages, save to the stupid 
 ^.„ or indolent, can continually replenish its ranks. 
 
 classes of The means of doing so are, however, many and 
 varied, even if we reject the criminal hypothesis 
 to which I have alluded.^ In some cases the children are 
 bought at an early age from their parents ; though so strong 
 is the family feeling in China that it is only under pressure of 
 
 ^ It is scarcely possible to do so, in the face of the evideiice of such an 
 authority and eye-witness as the late Archdeacon Gray, who, in his work on 
 China, embodying the experience of a long life, said (vol. i. chajj. iv.) that he 
 himself saw at different times in Buddhist monasteries an escaped murderer, 
 a brothel-house keejjer, and a condemned rebel, who had been gratefully 
 admitted because he j)ossessed a little monej', which went to swell the cor- 
 porate funds. 
 
MONASTICISM IN CHINA 351 
 
 the direst necessity that the average jMleiifamilias will consent, 
 even for a price, to part with his offspring, particularly of the 
 male sex. Sometimes the young children are kidnapped 
 and sold to the priests ; this profession being, however, a 
 dangerous one, as, if detected, it is punishable by death. 
 More commonly young lads are voluntarily dedicated by 
 their parents in fulfilment of some vow, or for the sake of 
 spiritual gain, the transfer being effected with all the 
 formalities of a mercantile transaction. It is foi-bidden, 
 however^ by law to surrender the entire male stock of a 
 family to the cloister ; and in the event of there being two 
 sons, the younger only may be sacrificed. A second class of 
 adherents will be those who, from satiety of the world, or 
 pecuniary collapse, or official failure, or material disappoint- 
 ment in some form or other, have decided to abandon the 
 thorny paths of life, and to seek a safe retreat from its 
 multitudinous cares. Lastly, there will be some, even in 
 China and in the nineteenth century, to whom a life of 
 joyless penance and austerity will appeal with irresistible 
 force as an expiation for the sins of the flesh, and a plank 
 of passage into the world to come — sad, sorrowful wretches, 
 after the pattern of St. Simeon, who live apart in isolated 
 cells, performing acts of cruel self-torture, and mumbling in 
 solitude the accents of an unintelligible ritual. 
 
 Their means of subsistence are as varied as the ranks from 
 which their disciples are drawn. The large monasteries 
 possess endowments of property, principally in ^ 
 land, from -which they derive an income, either in subsist- 
 rent or in the profits of the cultivation of their ^^^^' 
 own hands. Voluntary donations are also made to their 
 funds by those who, while despising the monastery, cannot 
 dispense with the services of the monk. The sale of joss- 
 sticks and incense, of gilt paper and tapers, and the fees for 
 
352 CHINA 
 
 services, ceremonies, and prayers, are also a considerable 
 source of eniolument. And when all these fail, there is 
 always begging to fall back upon, the ultimate resort of all 
 creeds in all ages. The Buddhist priests are no amateurs in 
 the art of mendicancy. Sometimes large bands of them may 
 be seen patrolling the streets, and by the discordant clamour 
 of a gong calling attention to the unmistakable character 
 of the errand which has brought them down into the 
 thoroughfares of men. By these different methods they 
 manage to scrape along ; their buildings and temples just 
 saved from dilapidation; their persons and costumes in the 
 last stage of seediness and decay ; their piety an illusion, 
 their pretensions a fraud; themselves at once the saviours 
 and the outcasts of society, its courted and its despised. 
 
 I have visited many Buddhist monasteries and temples in 
 
 China ; and have usually found that they correspond to the 
 
 following description. Three buildings are ranged 
 
 onas ic ^^g behind the other on terraces, and approached 
 
 temples. ' ^^ 
 
 by a series of paved courts and rows of granite 
 steps. There is something solemn and imposing in this 
 succession of structures, each one properly exceeding its 
 predecessor in magnificence, and leading on the imagination 
 from what it has already seen to what is yet to come. It is 
 an architectural device that we know was familiar to the 
 Jews and Egyptians, and that appeal's to be common to all 
 Oriental religions. It is nowhere employed with greater 
 effect than in the splendid Buddhist sanctuaries and royal 
 mausoleums of Japan. 
 
 The entrance gateway, which is of the nature of an open 
 temple, sometimes contains a colossal gilt idol in the centre, 
 representing Maitreya Buddha (in Chinese Mili Fo), or 
 Buddha To Come ; and on either side are the four diabolical- 
 looking monstei-s, with painted faces and flaming eyeballs, 
 
MONASTICISM IN CHINA 353 
 
 who represent the deified warriors appointed to keep guard 
 over the shrines of Buddha, and who symbolise an absolute 
 command over all the forces of earth and heaven. 
 They are identical with the Maharajahs, or Great ^"/J^^'^^ 
 Kings, of Hindu mythology^ who, attended by a 
 host of spiritual beings, march hither and thither to the 
 pi'otection of devout disciples and the execution of Buddha's 
 will over the four quarters of the universe. In China they 
 are known as the Tien Wong. One of them, with a white 
 face, holds an umbrella, the circumference of which, when 
 opened, overshadows the whole earth, and is lord of the 
 forces of thunder and rain. Another, with a red face, 
 controls the elements of fire, water, and air, and plays a 
 species of stringed instrument, the vibrations of whose chords 
 shake the foundations of the world. The third, with a 
 green face, brandishing a sword, and the fourth with a blue 
 face, clasping a serpent, are typical of supreme dominion 
 over nature and man. In these figures, which are common 
 throughout China, and are uniform in design and monstrosity, 
 the artist has combined the hideous and the grotesque in 
 very equal proportions. But little skill seems ever to have 
 been expended upon their construction. 
 
 This gateway leads into a spacious paved court, at the 
 upper end of which, on a granite platform, rises the fabric of 
 the main temple. A huge high-pitched tile roof 
 almost eclipses the front and side walls, which temole 
 are commonly destitute of ornamentation. The 
 interior consists of a big parallelogram, divided by circular 
 painted columns into three main and two side aisles. Fronting 
 the principal avenues are the three familiar figures called 
 the Sang Po, or Precious Ones, which are always found in 
 the churches of Buddhist monasteries, and which are 
 incarnations respectively of the past, the present, and the 
 
 z 
 
354 CHINA 
 
 future Buddha ; or, to give them their correct titles, of 
 
 Sakyamuni, Kwanyin, and Maitreya.^ These idols are made 
 
 of clay, thickly gilt, and highly burnished. Their faces 
 
 wear that expression of ineffable self-complacency which is 
 
 common to the Buddha all over the East, but which, while 
 
 in Japan it is always sublime, in China is apt to overslip the 
 
 razor's edge into the ridiculous. The bodies are seated, and 
 
 rise from the calyx of a lotus-flower. Below the images are 
 
 altars laden with weighty bronzes, with big candelabra, and 
 
 with censers, a thin smoke curling upwards from the slow 
 
 combustion of blocks of sandalwood, or from sheaves of 
 
 smouldering joss-sticks standing in a vase. On either side 
 
 of the lateral aisles are ranged along a recess in the wall the 
 
 smaller gilt figures of the Eighteen Lohans or Disciples of 
 
 Buddha, whose features exaggerate the silliness, while they 
 
 altogether miss the serenity depicted in the countenance of 
 
 their illustrious master. The prevailing colours in the surface 
 
 decorations of the columns and rafters, which are rudely 
 
 painted, are everywhere red and green. 
 
 When service is going on, the aisles are laid out with 
 
 rows of long, low, sloping stools, upon which at intervals 
 
 rest circular straw hassocks. Behind these stand 
 Service. 
 
 the monks intoning the words of the prescribed 
 
 liturgy. The service is led by one of their number, who 
 
 officiates at an isolated mat before the great altar. Their 
 
 dresses are cut after one pattern, and are dingy in the 
 
 extreme, consisting of loose cotton robes of two colours — 
 
 yellow and an ashen-grey — with turn-down collars, and a 
 
 1 Sometimes in the main hall of Buddhist temples in China this trinity 
 represents Sakyamuni in the centre, with two of his most famous disciples, 
 Kashiapa, the first patriarch, represented as an old man, on one side, and 
 Ananda, the second patriarch, as a young man, on the other. Sometimes 
 the two supporters are Bodhisattwas, or prospective Buddhas, who, in the 
 evolution of their salvation, have reached the penultimate stage ; and of 
 whom the best known is the jovial image of Maitreya, the Buddlia To Come, 
 
MONASTICISM IN CHINA 355 
 
 clasp m front. No monk is allowed, according to the strict 
 regulation of the canon, to possess more than one set of 
 garments, and this he is compelled to wear both day and 
 night. Their heads are clean-shaven, a ceremonial which is 
 performed about twice a month. Here and there on the 
 bald craniums one may note small disc-like cicatrices, or scars, 
 burnt in by the hand of the abbot alone, as a badge of their 
 sacred calling, or in fulfilment of some particular vow. Their 
 hands are piously folded in front of them, and the nails have 
 been suffered to grow to inordinate dimensions. 
 
 The expression of their features is usually one of blank 
 and idiotic absorption ; which is, perhaps, not surprising, 
 considering that of the words which they intone „ 
 scarcely one syllable do they themselves under- praterea 
 stand. The mass-book is a dead letter to them, 
 for it is written in Sanskrit or Pali, which they can no more 
 decipher than fly. The words that they chant are merely 
 the equivalent in sound of the original sentences, rendered 
 into Chinese characters, and are therefore totally devoid of 
 sense. To this stale shibboleth, or ignorant repetition of 
 unmeaning sounds, they attribute a vital importance.^ It 
 is, they point out, the sacred language of Fan (the birth- 
 place of Buddha), and is therefore of divine origin and 
 efficacy. The 'blessed word Mesopotamia' was not more 
 fraught with consolation to the incurious Christian than 
 is this stupid jargon to the Chinese bonze. Or let me 
 give a more practical illustration. The case would be a 
 similar one if the responses in an English church were 
 to be uttered in the Greek tongue, transcribed into 
 English spelling and gabbled out by illiterate rustics — 
 an absurdity of which, as a matter of fact, our chant- 
 
 1 Compare Matthew vi. 7 : ' But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as 
 the heathen do ; for they think that they shall be heard for their much 
 
356 CHINA , 
 
 books are not altogether guiltless, seeing that the re- 
 sponses to the Commandments in the Communion Service 
 are always described in their pages as Kyrie Eleison, a 
 phrase which must be gibberish to nine out of every ten 
 choristers who read it. The effect upon a service so 
 conducted, and -still more upon the ministrants, is obvious. 
 No sincerity can be expected of a purely phonetic devotion. 
 It is vox et prceterea nihil. 
 
 And yet we must not be too severe upon these benighted 
 disciples of Buddha in the uplands of the Celestial Empire. 
 
 _. , Other churches and other creeds have been guilty 
 
 Tenants ° •' 
 
 of glass of the same pretence, and have found a saving 
 
 virtue in the use of an unknown tongue. Jew 
 
 and Gentile, Christian and heretic, Catholic and Moslem 
 
 have all acted upon the principle that the more restricted 
 
 the understanding the more implicit the acceptance, and 
 
 have imparted the secrets of salvation in accents that 
 
 kept them secrets still, to be interpreted not by the 
 
 ear of sense, but by that of faith. To this day how 
 
 many of the singers in the choir of a Catholic church 
 
 understand even a fraction of the Latin litany which they 
 
 intone .'' 
 
 The murmur of the chant is accompanied by intermittent 
 
 music from such instruments as the Oriental loves. An 
 
 acolyte from time to time strikes a drum, the 
 Procession. 
 
 framework of which is of wood, carved and 
 
 painted to represent a huge pot-bellied fish. Another 
 
 tinkles a bell in the background, and now and then 
 
 breaks in the dissonant clangour of a gong. After a 
 
 while a fresh note is struck ; and at the signal the 
 
 priests separate into two companies, and proceed for a 
 
 long time to wind in and out of the lines of stools in a 
 
 slow and solemn procession. Backwards and forwards, in 
 
MONASTICISM IN CHINA 357 
 
 and outj with measured tread and even steps they pace 
 along, their hands clasped, their heads bowed, their lips 
 still murmuring the same unintelligible refrain, in which 
 may be distinguished the sounds Omito Fo (Amitabha 
 Buddha), the repetition of which many thousands of times 
 is pregnant with salvation. 
 
 Behind and beyond the Main Temple extends a second 
 paved quadrangle, a further temple at the upper end of 
 which very frequently contains a marble dagoha, 
 or sculptured reliquary, with altars and shrines. 
 Here is concealed , some peculiarly sacred object, very 
 possibly a tooth of the great Buddha himself. Even 
 devotees have been somewhat staggered by the number 
 of these well-authenticated relics that are scattered through- 
 out the Eastern world; and an early Chinese geographer, 
 visiting Ceylon, and being everywhere shown tooth after 
 tooth, ended by solemnly remarking of his master, ' He was 
 born with an excessive number of teeth.' 
 
 At the rear and sides of the temples are the domestic 
 premises of the monks; the kitchen, where the daily rice 
 is boiled in a huge earthenware vat; the refectory, 
 where on hard tables and harder benches it is j.gj^jggs^ 
 consumed in silence under the supervision of 
 the abbot; the guest-chambers reserved for the not too 
 enervating entertainment of guests; and the sleeping 
 apartments beyond these, which can rarely, save by a 
 euphemism, be so leniently described. 
 
 The bodies of the monks themselves are in the greater 
 part of China burned and not buried after death ; although 
 in the north this is a privilege that is reserved 
 for the Fang-chang, or head-priests. Contrary 
 to the custom in Japan, where creiTiation is imiversal 
 among the common people, in China it is only the 
 
358 CHINA 
 
 prerogative or the peculiarity of the religious order. 
 Each monastery contains its crematorium, and its cmnpo 
 santo, where are deposited the ashes of the dead. The body 
 is placed in a sitting position in an open plank coffin, and is 
 carried out to the furnace, which is of the simplest descrip- 
 tion, consisting merely of a small brick chamber or tower, 
 standing by itself in a detached situation. There the corpse 
 is placed upon the ground, surrounded and supported by 
 faggots ; the attendant monks intone a chant ; and the mortal 
 remains of their departed brother are speedily reduced to 
 ashes, while the smoke from the pyre escapes through a 
 single orifice in the roof. Thus, unpretentiously and with 
 scant attempt at decorum, the mortal coil is shuffled off, 
 and its discharged inmate goes on his way to solve the 
 great mystery. 
 
THE PROSPECT 
 
 ■ Tu i-egere imijerio populos, Romane, memento ! 
 Use tibi erunt artes, i^acisque imponere morem, 
 Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos.' 
 
 Virgil : JSneicl, vi. 851-853. 
 
CHAPTER XII • 
 
 AFTER THE WAR 
 
 Parosmiographi Grceci : Macarius, v. 85. 
 
 In the earlier chapters of this book I have narrated the 
 sequence of events that preceded and culminated in the 
 
 outbreak of hostilities between Japan and China ^ 
 
 i Responsi- 
 
 in the summer of 1894. I have no desire here to bility for 
 
 1-1 -i-iii the War. 
 give a history 01 the war^ which might indeed be 
 
 recorded in a few sentences, but which, in the hands of one 
 who was not upon the spot, could only be a compilation. 
 The question, however, of the partition of responsibility be- 
 tween the two combatants is one that has naturally excited 
 much attention, and has elicited the most opposite verdicts. 
 On the one hand have been those, the majority in numbers, 
 who have attributed the entire provocation and initiative to 
 Japan. On the other hand a small but devoted band of 
 adherents has consistently represented the struggle as one 
 between Civilisation and Barbarism, to which the former 
 was impelled by a challenge which it could not honourably 
 resist. ^^ 
 
 In one sense it is true that the war was inevitable ./ It 
 was the historical coraUary_of__the_eYg .nts of 1 592-8. / Japan 
 had never forgiven the humiliation which she then 
 sustained at the hands of China, upon Korean soil, ^.g^detta 
 and for three centuries La Revanche had been as 
 fixed an idea in the bosom of Japanese patriots as it has been 
 
 361 
 
 ? ^B ij< 
 
362 THE PROSPECT 
 
 for the last quarter of a century in a not dissimilar case in 
 Europe. Sooner or later an appeal to arms was almost 
 certain for the settlement of this traditional feud ; and the 
 long and strenuous military and naval preparations of Japan 
 since her apparition on the international stage as an organised 
 modern Power were not obscurely directed to such an issue, 
 and might have been interpreted as a wai-ning by any nation 
 less arrogant and blind than China. For her part, the latter 
 did nothing whatever either to avoid or to postpone the 
 rupture ; and her policy of obstructive and dilatory con- 
 servatism in Korea, though based upon a suzerainty which 
 I hold to have been technically indisputable, must have been 
 intenseiyifiixasperating to the already wounded susceptibilities 
 of Japan. To this extent, therefore^ may it be said that 
 China, by her tactics and her temper, brought upon herself 
 the retribution that was to come. 
 
 Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that, in the chain of 
 events immediately preceding the war, Japan, having long 
 before made up her mind to fight at the first 
 econ ary convenient opportunity, 'forced the pace ' — if such 
 a metaphor may be permitted — in order to suit the 
 exigencies of the moment ; and that in the actual outbreak 
 of hostilities she was pointedly the aggressor,. A variety of 
 circumstances contributed to render the juncture favourable, 
 in her opinion, for an appeal to arms. After long preparation, 
 her armaments on land and sea had reached a pitch of 
 efficiency which her experts assured her could leave no doubt 
 of the issue of a conflict with China, but which it was at the 
 samie time desirable and convenient to test upon the corpus 
 vile of a second-rate Power. The Parliamentary situation 
 in Japan was fraught with so many difficulties, owing to the 
 undisciplined development of party feeling and to cabals 
 against the Government, that some appeal to a larger 
 
AFTER THE WAR 363 
 
 patriotism seemed essential in order to save the new Con- 
 stitution from premature shipwreck. A forward policy would 
 be acceptable to the Radical or Opposition party^ with whom 
 the recoveiy of Japanese influence in Korea had always been 
 a favourite cry. Simultaneously, there was among the leading 
 Japanese statesmen an anxious and far-sighted desire, im- 
 perfectly realised by European observers or critics, to an- 
 ticipate the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway by 
 Russia, and to vindicate, before it was too late, the pretensions 
 of Japan to a leading voice in the impending reconstruction 
 of the balance of power in the Far East. Among the 
 secondary motives here mentioned, I say nothing of the 
 unselfish desire to endow Korea with the beauties of civilisa- 
 tion ; since that plea, after figuring for a short time in the 
 magazine-apologies of enthusiasts, was less and less heard 
 of as the war proceeded, and it was found that Korea was 
 the principal sufferer by the venture, and has subsequently 
 disappeared altogether from view in the complete breakdown 
 of the attempt to force upon her the unwelcome luxury, 
 expressly imported for the purpose from Japan. 
 
 War having once been declared, it was evident that the 
 national spirit was intensely and unanimously enlisted in the 
 enterprise. It was felt that Japan was playing 
 for a high stake, and that there must be no patriotism 
 
 bickering or iealousv at the table. No country, ^^^ P^^' 
 
 ^ •> J •" parations. 
 
 in all probability, ever went to war, sustained by 
 
 a higher or more unfaltering fervour of patriotism than 
 did Japan. Then, too, it was discovered how ubiquitous and 
 exhaustive, and almost Machiavellian in their patient secrecy, 
 had been her preparations. Skilled topographers in disguise 
 had mapped the high-roads of China, and had plotted their 
 angles over the interior of Korea. Hydrographical surveys, un- 
 ostentatiously pursued for years, had acquainted the Japanese 
 
S64 THE PROSPECT 
 
 with every inlet in the Korean coast, and had furnished the 
 chart-room of every vessel in her Navy with hitherto un- 
 published maps. Her mobilisation proceeded with a smooth- 
 ness and rapidity that excited the admiration of the European 
 military attaches; her organisation and equipment were 
 wonderful in their completeness. The Japanese Intelligence 
 Department might have been engaged upon, just as it had 
 certainly been preparing for, a campaign for years. Its spies 
 were everywhere, in the offices and arsenals, in the comicil- 
 chambers and amid the ranks, of the enemy. The Press 
 was manipulated and controlled with a masterly despotism 
 that would have been impossible in Europe. Finally, the 
 ^trat^^y of the Japanese generals, if not brilliant, was de- 
 liberate, scientific, and successful. 
 
 If, however, we turn from the contemplation and admission 
 of these excellent merits to the actual fighting on the battle- 
 field, it by no means follows, as has been too 
 Japan on 
 the battle- generally supposed, that Japan either showed or 
 
 had the opportunity of showing, the capacities of 
 a first-rate military Power. During the seven months of 
 active operations, she never encountered an enemy, and 
 hardly fought a battle, worthy of the name. There con- 
 fronted her, in the majority of cases, not a disciplined army 
 but a rabble of tramps ; she was opposed, not by fire, but by 
 fireworks. The Chinese resistance was in nine instances out 
 of ten a farce that would have been laughable had it not 
 been piteous. It was generally known in advance when and 
 where the Japanese attack would be delivered; and after 
 a preliminary volley from the Celestial rank-and-file in order 
 to ' save their face,' a general stampede followed in order to 
 save their lives. It is even said that many of the Chinese 
 commanders wei*e in the pay of Japan. That this criticism, 
 which is based upon the observations of actual spectators of 
 
AFTER THE WATl 365 
 
 the war, is correct, might also be inferred from the figm'es of 
 the death-roll as officially published by the Japanese them- 
 selves. Though they lost 3284 men in the entire war, 
 2489 of these perished from cholera or other diseases, while 
 795 only were killed or died of their wounds, over half of 
 this total being claimed by the storming of Port Arthur. 
 Pe7^ contra, the Japanese claim to have killed 27,917 of the 
 enemy. So prodigious a disparity between the two death- 
 lists is quite irreconcilable with severe fighting. The 
 Japanese artillery is said to have been well served and to 
 have wrought great execution ; but the infantry fire is 
 reported to have been uniformly bad. The fact that Japan 
 was confronted by an enemy who had not the courage to 
 stand up to her, is of course no proof that she would not 
 have vanquished an enemy who had. Nor does it detract 
 from the valour and discipline which her troops seem, as a 
 rule, to have displayed. But it does fail to justify the con- 
 clusion, which has been very widely drawn from the issue of 
 the conflict, that the Japanese proved themselves thereby 
 to be a military Power of the first order, capable of being 
 arrayed against the best troops of European States. The 
 lessons of the naval battle of the Yalu, where the Japanese, 
 in spite of their victory, could not prevent the enemy's ships 
 from escaping, were not dissimilar from those of the more 
 numerous land fights. From the later incidents of the 
 struggle the truth became even more apparent. For it was 
 owing solely to the exhaustion entailed by what had been, 
 after all, but a brief campaign, that Japan was obliged to 
 abandon the__fondly-cherished idea of a march upon Peking,N 
 and, at a still more recent date, to give back, under European 
 pressure, Port^Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula. 
 
 No detraction however from the credit legitimately due to 
 Japan, which, in any case, stands sufficiently high to suffer 
 
366 THE PROSPECT 
 
 little from the loss^ will avail anything to redeem the 
 
 stupendous and unimaginable ineptitude of China. To those 
 
 ^ . who have read this book^ the reasons of that 
 
 Causes of , 
 
 Chinese collapse, which is without a parallel in history, will 
 
 isas er. have been manifest on almost every page ; and it 
 is surprising to me that they should have been so long and 
 obstinately ignored, not by Englishmen in China, to the 
 majority of whom they were well known, but by Englishmen 
 at home, for whom the Celestial imposture has always pos- 
 sessed irresistible attractions. Journalists and writers have 
 ever since been engaged upon the attempt to find out why 
 it was that China was so disastrously beaten. The reasons, 
 in their broader aspect, were twofold; although when we 
 come to sub-headings it is difficult to find a point at which 
 to stop. Most of the causes may, however, be classified 
 under the title either of civil corruption, permeating every 
 stratum of society, or of military imbecility, with a particular 
 asterisk to the names of those enjoying high commands. 
 
 From the Palace downwards there was no centralisation 
 of authority or responsibility, no unity of counsel, no agree- 
 ment as to action, no* plan of campaign. Stupefied 
 
 ivi cor- bewilderment, helpless inertia, or arrogant con- 
 
 ruption. ' f > ts 
 
 ^ tempt for the invader, prevailed alternately, some- 
 
 times simultaneously, in every t/amen. Each man was 
 absorbed in the effort to get the better of somebody 
 else, and to make something for his own pocket out of so 
 paying a concern as a campaign. Viceroys swindled 
 governors, governors swindled generals, and generals 
 swindled subalterns. There were infinite and delicately- 
 shaded grades of peculation. Of patriotism, or enthusiasm 
 for the war, or loyalty to the dynasty, or self-respect 
 for the race, there was not a sign. Chinese telegraph- 
 clerks sold important information to the Japanese ; Chinese 
 
AFTER THE WAR 367 
 
 officers accepted bribes to retreat or to surrender. Nobody 
 thought of China. In the fii'st resort a man cared only to 
 '_saye_lTiis own face'; in the last, as I have before said, to 
 sa^ his skin. For years had China succeeded in baffling 
 the distant European Powers by the poet's Riddling of 
 
 the Bards : 
 
 '^_Confusioii, and illusion, and relation, 
 Elusion, and occasion, and evasion ' ; 
 
 and the same policy she thought would equally suffice for 
 an exasperated and revengeful neighbour, with three army 
 corps landed upon her soil. One brave sailor, the Admiral 
 Ting, who committed suicide after the fall of Wei Hai Wei, 
 and a few of his officers stand out as having endeavoured with 
 single-hearted courage to do their duty. The remainder of 
 the civil and military hierarchy were like a frightened 
 herd of cattle cowering beneath a tree during a storm, and 
 each trying to squeeze itself furthest away from the lightning 
 and the rain. 
 
 Not less deplorable were the disorganisation and dis- 
 honesty that permeated every branch of the military and naval 
 services, and predestined the campaign to igno- 
 minious failure, even before it had begun. I have i^"'*^^^y 
 
 ^ incapacity. 
 
 already explained in this book that military 
 efficiency, in the modern acceptation of the term, is incom- 
 patible with the blind dominion of a systenti that regards war- 
 fare as a degradation of manhood, and inculcates the despica- 
 bility of military service. The best men in China will not 
 join the army; and the officers are of little superior origin 
 to the untutored coolies whom, from a safe distance, 
 they order to destruction. China was supposed for 
 years to have been preparing herself, after the European 
 example and with European mechanism, for, war Avith any 
 foreign Power sufficiently rash to attack her. But, as I 
 
368 THE PROSPECT 
 
 pointed out at an earlier date, these preparations had been 
 limited to the defence of such spots upon her coast-line as 
 an enemy depending upon sea power would be likely to 
 assault. No idea of an overland march by an invader 
 had entered her head ; whilst, though she has since been 
 accused of having herself contemplated an attack upon Japan, 
 not a thought had ever been turned to the requirements of a 
 foreign expedition. When the war broke out, neither War 
 Office, Horse Guards, nor General Staff existed to formulate or 
 to direct the campaign. There was no Chinese Commander- 
 in-Chief. Each commanding officer acted with the cheerful 
 irresponsibility of combined jealousy and ignorance. Com- 
 missariat, transport, and ambulance can scarcely be said to 
 have broken down, for they had never even been artificially 
 bolstered up. The army was an unwieldy and disjointed 
 mass, without unity, without cohesion, without a brain, 
 without strength, with no mark of an organism save a 
 ravenous stomach for the rations that were only procurable 
 by plunder, and for the retrograde movement that grew to 
 be so alluring. 
 
 Man for man, the Chinese rank-and-file were reported by 
 observers to be physically superior to the Japanese. In any 
 
 test, either of strength or endurance, thev ought, 
 
 The ' ^ > J b ' 
 
 Chinese apart from armament, to have swept their little 
 ^° ^^^' opponents off"the field. But under-fed, ill-equipped, 
 unpaid, and disgracefully led — driven, in fact, like sheep to 
 the shambles — who could expect them to fight for a cause in 
 which they took no interest, and against an enemy with 
 whom they had no passionate quarrel ? Spears, tridents, 
 cutlasses, gingals, pikes, old muzzle-loaders stuffed with 
 stones and nails, which were the common weapons of the 
 Chinese infantry, did not in themselves suggest at all an 
 equal combat against repeating rifles, however clumsily 
 
AFTER THE WAR 369 
 
 handled. But even so, the mere human instinct might some- 
 where have provoked a manly response, had it not been for 
 the paralysing incubus of the native officer. The latter 
 sustained a reputation already unique in the world. He 
 stole the men's pay; he sold their warm clothing; he 
 provided them with bad ammunition ; and he took to his 
 heels with a celerity that the most insubordinate of sub- 
 ordinates found irresistibly catching. Had the petty officers 
 only developed the additional aptitude for suicide, which 
 prescription dictated to the failures of a higher gi'ade in the 
 service, it might have fared better with the Chinese fortunes. 
 At Wei Hai Wei, where almost alone there was decent 
 leading, there was also, among the sailors, decent fighting. 
 
 Such were some at least of the main causes that were 
 accountable for the ignominious defeat of China, and for the 
 easy victory of Japan. I pass on to consider the 
 effect that has been produced by the issue of the ,, ^ 
 war upon the temper and policy of both nations, 
 as well as upon the position of the unhappy little country 
 whose misfortune it was to provoke the contest. 
 
 It might have been thought, after the appalling thorough- 
 ness of the Chinese exposure, that that Power, though she 
 could hardly feel grateful to Japan for the service 
 so remorselessly rendered, would at least have rjjjna^"^ 
 shown some inclination to profit by its lessons. 
 Some symptoms of recovered initiative in the Palace, of a 
 belated admission of convicted fiascoes on the part of the 
 ruling junta, or of reformatory zeal among the more in- 
 telligent mandarins, might have been looked for. China 
 having escaped, owing to the interested intervention of 
 foreign Powers, with no worse penalty than the surrender 
 of an island which she had never been able either to 
 conquer or to administer, and the payment of an indemnity, 
 
370 THE PROSPECT 
 
 for the loan of which she was willing to mortgage a security 
 whose value she owed to the foreigner^ not to herself — had 
 a rare opportunity, as soon as peace was concluded, and she 
 had satisfied the natural claims of her saviours, of putting 
 her own house in order and of fortifying her still prodigious 
 resources against another day. No such reflection, however, 
 seems to have presented itself to the Chinese mind. She 
 
 \ appears to have Jearned nothing, and, what is worse, to have 
 unlearned nothing, from the war. She is content to remain 
 the same old China, untaught and unteachable. Satisfied 
 at having emerged from the struggle with no very serious 
 interruption of internal order (the frail thread of connection 
 by which the inert and heterogeneous mass of the Empire 
 continues to be held together is one of the most remarkable 
 of Chinese phenomena), without detriment to the dynasty, 
 and without the dreaded profanation of Peking, she has 
 settled down once more into the enjoyment of her traditional 
 repose. Her complacency is stimulated by the consciousness 
 that rival jealousies may be counted upon to retard, if not to 
 prohibit, her disruption ; and is flattered by the international 
 competition for a share in her financial spoils. Some 
 tentative steps in the direction of so-called Reform she may 
 take, rather with the view of appeasing others than of 
 benefiting herself. A railroad here, an arsenal there, an 
 order in one country for ships, an appeal to another for 
 officers — these may be duly anticipated. But to the idea of 
 any radical change in the system, or of any voluntary effort 
 at national recuperation, the answer returned will prove to 
 
 , be the eternal and contemptuous ' No.' 
 
 To those who are interested in China for her sake rather 
 than for their own, and who are conscious of the wonderful 
 and admirable capacities of her people, this cannot fail to 
 be a most heartrending response. Whatevei' solution the 
 
AFTER THE WAR 371 
 
 jealousy of rival Powers may suggest to the prepossessions 
 
 of each, there are few dispassionate persons who would not 
 
 welcome the spectacle of a resuscitated China, 
 
 seriously grappling with the hard facts of her ., , 
 
 position, and addressing herself to the earnest 
 
 utilisation of her magnificent resources, and of the virtues of 
 
 a richly endowed race. She might undertake the reconstruc- J 
 
 tion of a National Army, in the true sense of the word, for r- 
 
 which the most splendid material is spoiling to be employed. \ ^ 
 
 A fresh Navy might be created, not by the mere order of 
 
 ironclads, but by engaging an entire foreign staff, and by the 
 
 institution of genuine scientific training in Government 
 
 Colleges. The construction and the custody of the national 
 
 defences should be taken out of the hands of pi'ovincial 
 
 governors and viceroys, and should be subordinated to a 
 
 single plan of Imperial defence. A genuine policy of 
 
 railroad construction, of the improvement of river navigation, 
 
 and of public works and communications generally, would 
 
 not merely add greatly to the wealth of the country, but 
 
 would strengthen the central authority and retard the 
 
 chances of rebellion. The success of the Imperial Customs, 
 
 under European management, furnishes a model which 
 
 might be applied to almost every branch of the public 
 
 service. Trained financiers could be hired to reorganise the 
 
 obsolete and cumbrous system of revenue and taxation. A 
 
 complete reorganisation of the Civil Service and of salaries 
 
 would in time ensue. Above all the Upas-tree of the 
 
 Mandarinate should be attacked and cut down. 
 
 If China were, even now, at the eleventh hour, to under- 
 take this task ; if, in fact, she were to borrow a 
 leaf from the school-book of her recent adversary ^^^^i^u 
 and conqueror, not merely would she extort 
 universal sympathy in place of contempt ; but in twenty 
 
372 THE PROSPECT 
 
 years' time she might place herself on the level of her 
 own lofty conceit, and might hold her own even against a 
 combination of those who are now individually too powerful 
 for her. If she deliberately refrains from doing so, the 
 tutelage which she will not voluntarily engage for herself 
 will some day be forcibly applied to her by others ; her 
 industrial exploitation, once taken seriously in hand, will pour 
 wealth into other coffers, not into her own : in her refusal 
 to employ foreign servants she will discover that she has 
 invited foreign masters ; and where procrastination has been 
 the sole policy, she may find, when it is too late, that partition 
 is the inevitable result. 
 
 From China I pass to her recent vassal and faithful 
 disciple, Korea, who has suffered even more than herself in 
 
 the overthrow of Chinese fortunes, and who now, 
 ?; po^ ii^ sackcloth and ashes, bewails the independence 
 
 of which she has been the forced recipient. In 
 my original edition I described Korea as she appeared on 
 the eve of the struggle. It was not a happy or a creditable 
 spectacle ; but such as it was, the Koreans, so far as they 
 took any part in the contest, fought for its maintenance 
 and not for its overthrow, and are now engaged in the 
 effort to set up again a duplicate of the system, to relieve 
 them from which the war was ostensibly undertaken. I 
 wrote in my first edition : ' A country that is too weak to 
 stand alone gains nothing by an affected indifference to 
 external support. If Korea is not to collapse irretrievably, 
 she must leati u pon a str onger^ Power : and every considera- 
 tion of policy points towards maintaining China in the 
 position of protector which she has hitherto filled.' Let 
 me now describe how the experiment has fared, not of 
 substituting the protectorate of Japan for that of China — 
 for independence, and not a mere exchange of suzerainty, 
 
AFTER THE WAR 373 
 
 was the avowed object of the campaign — but of replacing 
 
 an accepted vassalage by an independence which the petty 
 
 little kingdom is far too corrupt to profit by, and too decrepit 
 
 to retain. I know of no more' interesting page in modern 
 
 history than the attempt to dragoon Korea into a civilisation 
 
 that is abhorrent both to her tastes and to her traditions. 
 
 Let it be admitted to start with that few countries in the 
 
 world have ever stood in greater need of reform than Korea, 
 
 and that the Japanese anxiety to apply the pui'ge, 
 
 thouffh only a secondary motive of the war, has ^f^*^ ^°^ 
 ° •' •' ' rerorm. 
 
 been of no make-believe character, but has been 
 /pushed with the professional earnestness of the physician 
 enforcing a disagreeable medicine upon some refractory 
 Vpatient. This book will have shown the accumulated mass 
 of abuses in Korea — the fearful extortion and misgovern- 
 ment of the ruling classes, the sale of offices, the confusion 
 of the Court with the administration, the judicial oppression 
 and negation of civil rights, the scandalous state of the 
 currency, of communications, and of native industry — with 
 which it should not have been outside the scope of cautious 
 statesmanship to grapple ; but for the successful eradica- 
 tion of which were required, not the canons of abstract 
 perfection, nor the servile standards of the class-room and 
 the copy-book, but a conciliatory temper, inexhaustible 
 patience, and a resolute though gentle hand. It has been 
 in too headlong a spirit that the Japanese have addressed 
 themselves to a task that would have frightened any less 
 eager or more experienced people ; and the fruit of their 
 hasty sowing is now manifest in the deplorable failure of 
 the harvest. If this is disparaging to Japan, it is equally 
 disappointing to those who would have liked to see the 
 Korean house swept and garnished, but had no particular 
 desire that it should be turned inside out or upside down. 
 
374 THE PROSPECT 
 
 The Japanese were well acquainted with the manifold 
 evils that called for redress in Korea, and long before the 
 war broke out, they were prepared, in the pigeon- 
 Japanese holes of Tokio bureaux, with a cut-and-dried 
 efforts. ' 
 
 scheme of reforms as precise as their military 
 
 plan of campaign. The first revelation of these was con- 
 tained in the demand addressed by Viscount Mutsu to 
 China in June 1894, to join with Japan in enforcing upon 
 Korea the reoi*ganisation of her finances, a reform of the 
 civil service, and the institution of a national army. These 
 suggestions, in the hands of Mr. Otori, the Japanese 
 minister at Soul, presently assumed a larger shape, as the 
 Chinese refusal to join Japan in this gratuitous programme 
 of purification became more obstinate ; and were found to 
 include educational and judicial reform, as well as the 
 compulsory development of Korean resources by mining, 
 railway, and commercial concessions, in which an opening 
 would be found for the profitable outlay of Japanese 
 capital. Before July was over, Mr. 0-tori had abandoned 
 all idea of co-operating with China, and had appointed 
 on his own account a sort of Royal Commission, which sat 
 daily in the Palace, and excogitated fresh revolutionary 
 plans, for the due execution of which the old Tai Wen Kun 
 was brought out from his retirement and temporarily 
 invested with a kind of Regency. In this third edition 
 of the Korean Charter, which extended to twenty-five articles, 
 were further included the abolition of slavery and of the 
 mourning-laws, the prohibition of imprisonment without trial, 
 the disappearance of the Foreign Advisers, the establish- 
 ment of an independent Korean era — or, in other words, 
 the repudiation of Chinese suzerainty, and the despatch 
 of duly accredited plenipotentiaries to Foreign Courts. 
 The war then followed : and for a time the reforming 
 
AFTER THE WAR 375 
 
 fever burned with a more subdued flame. With the early 
 victories of Japan, however, it broke out with renewed 
 activity, and before the close of the autumn a brand new 
 constitution, printed and bound, and embodying several 
 of the aforesaid changes, had been promulgated, and 
 Count Inouye had been sent to Korea as Imperial Com- 
 missioner, or practical Dictator, to carry it out. 
 
 In the first month of the new year (1895) the King went 
 in solemn procession (escorted by blue-coated 
 Japanese policemen) to the Ancestral Temple, ./°'^ ^'^^" 
 and there, before the ' Holy Spirits of the Im- Korean in- 
 perial Ancestors,' declared the independence of 
 jCoEfia, -and swore to the following fourteen articles of the 
 amended constitution : 
 
 1. Our dependence on China shall now be severed, and the 
 foundations of our independence iirmly established. 
 
 2. We will complete and make perfect the laws of the State. 
 
 3. The King alone being the true ruler, must acquaint himself 
 with all the affairs of the government, consulting with the various 
 Ministers before deciding. The Queen and her relatives must not 
 oppose these. 
 
 4. The affairs of the Palace and the affairs of the Government 
 must each be sej)arated from the other. 
 
 5. The powers and limits of the Council of State and of the 
 various Boards must be defined. 
 
 6. Taxes must all be collected according to fixed laws, and these 
 must not be exceeded. 
 
 7. The expenses incurred in collecting taxes must all be reckoned 
 and regulated by the proper yamen. 
 
 8. The expenses of the Palace and of the various magistracies 
 througliout the country must be diminished. 
 
 9. The expenses of the Palace, as well as of the various magi- 
 stracies throughout the country, must be calculated for one year, 
 and these sliall form the basis for future expenditures. 
 
 10. The regulations of the various magistrates must be reformed 
 and perfected, and their limits and powers defined. 
 
 11. Those students who possess ability must be sent abroad to 
 study the arts and sciences. 
 
376 THE PROSPECT 
 
 12. Military science must be properly studied, so as to make the 
 foundations of the State secure. 
 
 13. Laws for the punishment of crimes must be clearly defined and 
 not exceeded, so that life and property will be afforded security. 
 
 14. Those possessing ability must be appointed to office without 
 regard to social station. 
 
 If there was a considerable suspicion of vagueness about 
 
 these high-sounding phrases, there was no corresponding 
 
 dearth of precision in the steps simultaneously 
 
 A rain of taken bv Count Inouye to provide the machinery 
 
 reiorms. j j r j 
 
 for running the new regime. The Min faction 
 was degraded and exiled ; the existing Ministerial Depart- 
 ments were overhauled or abolished ; and government by 
 Cabinet was introduced. For the proper manipulation 
 of this system suitable instruments were required. One 
 Pak Yong Hio, who had been conspicuous among the con- 
 spirators and assassins in the revolution of 1884, and who 
 had since lived in retirement, under the name of Boku Eiko, 
 in ^ Japa n, was invited back and appointed Minister of Home 
 Affairs. A scarcely less notorious partisan, named So Kwang 
 Pern, was made Minister of Justice. These agents loyally 
 performed their part of the i)argain. Three times a week 
 the Cabinet met, under the titular presidency of the King, 
 but in the presence of Count Inouye, to pass resolutions, 
 nominally proposed by Pak and So, but in reality dictated 
 by the Dictator. Fresh Proclamations, Decrees, Constitu- 
 tions, and Reforms, continued to rain like hailstones from 
 heaven upon the devoted kingdom. Japanese advisers and 
 instructors overflowed in the Court, the Army, the Law 
 Courts, the Treasury and the Civil Service ; and the work of 
 reconstruction proceeded with a rapidity that almost equalled 
 the six days' wonder of the Mosaic Creation. 
 
 In A^i-jl 1895_appeared an order, under the signature of 
 Pak, whose zeal for regeneration knew no bounds, containing 
 
AFTER THE WAR 377 
 
 no fewei* than eighty-eight new rules of reform. I will not 
 here recapitulate the entire number, the majox'ity of which 
 were still-born, but the principal fell under the following 
 heads : — (1) Regulations against the abolished suzerainty of 
 China, and in vindication of the national independence of 
 Korea. — The honours paid to the Ming and Ching dynasties of 
 China were to be discontinued. The era of Kuang Hsu was no 
 longer to be employed in documents, but was to be replaced 
 by the adoption of a Korean Calendar. Particulars of the 
 service rendered by Japan in the recovery of the national 
 independence were to be circulated broadcast throughout 
 the country. Chinese literature was to be discouraged in 
 the educational curriculuin ; and Koreans were to be taught 
 the eunmun or native alphabetic script. (2) Regulations 
 against social inequality and against the aristocracy. — There 
 was to be no distinction between the yiu-im (including the 
 nyang-pari) and the nyang-im or middle class. Laws were 
 promulgated against extravagance, and against land robbery 
 for graveyards. A number of I'ules dealt with the rank, 
 etiquette, and commissions of officials, all tending to 
 obliterate the distinction between nobles and people. (3) 
 Regulations against superstitions and abuses : e.g. against 
 sorcerers, witchcraft, and secret societies, against gambling 
 and opium-smoking, against usury and compound interest, 
 against abortion, suicide, and castration. (4) Judicial and 
 administrative Reforms — relating to the methods of litiga- 
 tion, the regulation of the corvee, and of grain-advances 
 to the people, the registration of crops, labour, and produce, 
 the repair of high-roads, and relief to widows and orphans. 
 Amid these attempted i-eforms, many of which were ad- 
 mirable in theory, and some of which would be excellent 
 in practice, two appear to have been actuated by a more 
 questionable wisdom : viz. a decree rescinding the old law 
 
378 THE PROSPECT 
 
 by which the Korean monks (alleged to be the basest and 
 most profligate of the population) were restricted to their 
 monasteries and were prohibited from entering the towns ; 
 and a decree legalising the offspring of concubinage, who, 
 under the previous law, wei*e disqualified from holding 
 office, and bore the civil brand of illegitimacy. These 
 decrees were the manifest outcome of the Japanese views 
 respectively of religion and marriage. 
 
 Meanwhile the Japanese pushed their influence to a 
 control or readjustment of almost every department of the 
 
 State. The army was uniformed, drilled, and 
 Suorad^ officered by Japan. The King's Body-guard 
 
 exchanged the picturesque apparel, which I have 
 before described, for ready-made trousers from Osaka. A 
 new Japanese Post Office was started, with stamps printed in 
 the United States. The telegraphs were taken over by 
 Japan, and the overland line from Soul to Fusan was Avorked 
 as part of the Japanese Government system, with Japanese 
 forms, words, and stamps. An order was issued that all 
 lands should be surveyed and measured according to 
 Japanese standards, and that taxes should be assessed on 
 the Japanese model. Round the Treaty Ports and in the 
 neighbourhood of the projected railroads land was bought 
 up by Japanese speculators or merchants. The Chinese 
 were treated everywhere with indignity ; and persons ex- 
 pressing anti-Japanese sentiments were ^seized and thrown 
 into prison. The poor King, who at the outset of the war 
 had been kept, dressed as a coolie, in the Japanese camp, 
 but whom it was afterwards found politic to restore, was 
 shorn of all power, state, and income. His establishment 
 was run as part of the new Palace Department, who paid 
 his servants and provided his food. Finally, to such an 
 absurd pitch of bureaucratic triviality was the reforming 
 
AFTER THE WAR 379 
 
 craze carried that the Koreans^ with a certain unconscious 
 appositeness, were ordered to exchange their white garments 
 for black (made in Japan) ^ and were obhged to smoke short 
 pipes (also imported from Japan) instead of long ones. 
 Utopias have as a rule been constructed by scholars in the 
 harmless seclusion of their studies — a merciful dispensation 
 for which the world cannot be too grateful ; but here was 
 the imaginative doctrinaire^ with his pen in his hand^ and 
 with a posse of soldiers and policemen behind him^ running 
 riot through all the bureaux of state. 
 
 It will strike the reader, as it struck all observers, that 
 the methods above described were a somewhat curious way 
 of striking off from Korea the fetters of a foreign 
 dominion — the ostensible purpose of the war — thVoueen 
 and of re-establishing her independence. This is 
 the view that was also taken by the Koreans themselves. 
 The horse can be taken up to the trough ; but no amount 
 of persuasion in the world can compel him to drink if he 
 is not thirsty. The Koreans had no appetite for reform. 
 On the contrary, they abominated it in every shape ; still 
 more, when it was offered to them by their hereditary enemies 
 and recent oppressors, the Japanese. It is quite a mistake 
 to suppose that, whatever the official expressions of Korean 
 gratitude, anything but aversion was entertained by the 
 emancipated themselves for their so-called deliverers. From 
 the palace to the hovel, the new programme was met with 
 an obdurate conspiracy of resistance that only a slow-witted 
 and lethargic people could put forth. In the Court the old 
 intrigues were rampant. The Queen plotted to get rid of 
 Pak, and to restore her faithful Mins. Pak counterplotted 
 to remove the Queen either to another world, or to some 
 
 1 In the recent decline of Japanese influence this order has been rescinded, 
 and the old national costume revived. 
 
380 THE PROSPECT 
 
 more retired sphere of activity in this. The Queen heard 
 of the conspiracy and was about to strike, when Pak got 
 wind of her intentions, ran away, jumped on board a 
 Japanese steamer, which was appropriately coasting about 
 off the mouth of the river, and disappeared. He put as long 
 a distance as he could between himself and his beloved 
 country ; but in his distant retreat at Washington he must 
 have felt an exquisite triumph upon learning that where he 
 had failed the old Tai Wen Kun had succeeded, and that 
 Her Majesty had ceased to trouble. 
 
 The squalid drama of the Palace was reproduced in every 
 grade and circle outside. Attempts were made to assassinate 
 
 the philo-Japanese ministers, and to burn down 
 resistance ^^^^i^' houses. They were obliged to move about 
 
 escorted by Japanese policemen. The Cabinet 
 itself was obstreperous, and overwhelmed Count Inouye 
 with chronic resignations. It was easy enough to promul- 
 gate and post up the reforms, but there was no money in 
 the Treasury with which to carry them out ; and no officials 
 willing to execute them. Extortion continued rampant in 
 the provinces ; the new administrative machinery fell to 
 pieces ; and the people refused to j^ay taxes. The Tong- 
 haks, who had originally risen against the oppression of 
 the native government, and had accordingly attracted the 
 sympathy of the Japanese, now rose against their self- 
 accredited saviours, and made common cause with their 
 old tyrants against the new masters. Finally the Chinese, 
 with that elasticity of temperament that is indifferent to 
 defeat, began one by one to reappear upon the scene, as 
 
 shopkeepers, hucksters, and merchants, and were 
 
 received with enthusiasm. The result of eight 
 months of reform in Korea was bewildered chaos and passion- 
 ate resentment. 
 
AFTER THE WAR 381 
 
 In the month of June the King, with a pathos in which 
 the irony can scarcely have been unconscious, issued, or was 
 ordered to issue, the following decree : 
 
 ' Since we set about the task of reforming the administration 
 during summer last year, establishing the basis of independence, 
 and swore to Oijr ancestors and proclaimed the fact to Our people, 
 a year has elapsed, but no result has been attained. Old habits 
 and manners still exist, and administrative orders have not been 
 carried out. The high and low rauks do not know one another, 
 and domestic and foreign troubles are brewing at the same time. 
 The sufferings of the people and the dangers to the country are 
 felt more keenly than ever. Is all this due to Our lack of virtues 
 or to the neglect of Our servants of State } It being Our intention 
 to stir up ourselves, daily see the servants of State, and to consult 
 mutually on State affairs, so as to carry out judiciously and fairly 
 measures conducive to the welfare of the nation, you, Ministers 
 of State, shall strictly observe laws and enforce such measures as 
 will benefit the people, so as to realise our hopes. Viceroys and 
 Local Governors shall also carry out Our commands for reforming 
 abuses and preventing disorders, so as to let Our subjects gratefully 
 submit to us, respect laws, be happy in the enjoyment of their 
 
 lives and peaceful avocations, and also to let them know that the 
 
 reform measures are for their own good. ' 
 
 In fairness to Count, Tnou^, who is a man of high char- 
 acter and great ability, it should be borne in mind that he 
 had been charged with a task that was beyond 
 human capacity to execute, and which a little Inouye's 
 greater knowledge of the conditions of the pro- ession. 
 
 blem would have saved Japan from the mistake of ever 
 committmg to him. With how sick a heart he discharged 
 his thankless duties, and with what despondency he re- 
 garded the empty result, was obvious when in the course 
 of a short holiday in Japan he unburdened his mind, not 
 merely to his official superiors, but to his countrymen at 
 large, through the medium of the press. In an interview 
 with th.Q Nichi Nichi Shimbun in July 1895, he practically 
 
382 THE PROSPECT 
 
 admitted the hopelessness of his task, and plaintively re- 
 minded the Japanese that Korea was now (owing to their 
 exertions) not a protected but an independent State ; that it 
 was not a gold-mine from which Japanese alone had the 
 right to extract nuggets ; but that any privilege demanded 
 by them must, under the most-favoured-nation clause of 
 the Treaties, equally be conceded to the subjects of other 
 Powers. And then with a courage that bespoke true states- 
 manship, he proceeded to read his countrymen a lecture, 
 and to fit on to their heads the cap of self-incurred responsi- 
 bility. The Japanese in Korea, he said, were selfish, and 
 looked only to their individual gains. They were violent 
 and overbearing in manner to the Koreans, using their fists 
 without provocation, knocking down the natives and cutting 
 them about with swords. They displayed a luxury and a 
 swagger that were oifensive to the Koreans. Moreover, 
 they were guilty of commercial dishonesty, jeopardising 
 their trade and destroying confidence by the importation 
 of spurious manufactures. Summing up in words, which 
 relieve me from the task of passing any personal verdict, he 
 said : ' As the Japanese representative I am bound to pro- 
 tect the interests of my fellow countrymen in Korea. But 
 unless they reform themselves, no protection will be of any 
 use to them.' 
 
 Since this interesting admission that it is not so much 
 Korea, as Japan in Korea, that needs reforming, the situa- 
 tion has not improved, but has grown steadily 
 
 Japanese worse. The outbreak has occurred in which the 
 
 tailure. 
 
 Queen lost her life ; and the lesson which first- 
 hand experience has burned into the mind of Count Inouye 
 is being gradually realised by his countrymen. The reform 
 of Korea is like the task of Sisyphus. Pushed up to the top 
 with strained muscles and sweating limbs, the relentless 
 
AFTER THE WAR 383 
 
 stone bumps and ci'ashes down again to the bottom. The 
 Japanese now know that when, in hght-heavted enthusiasm 
 for reform, they engaged to civilise Korea, the undertaking 
 was more than they bargained for, and was beyond their 
 strength. There are signs that the venture will not be 
 much longer pursued. Already the Japanese Governnaent 
 has issued an official assurance to the Powers in the follow- 
 ing terms : 
 
 'The Japanese troops now stationed in Korea are to ensure 
 tranquillity, to protect our Legation, Consulates, and subjects, 
 and also to maintain the indispensable lines of communication 
 with our army, which is still in the occupation of the Liao-tung 
 Peninsula. The necessity of keeping such troops in Korea will, 
 however, cease at the same time as the Liao-tung Peninsula is 
 evacuated. [This has since been begun.] The Japanese Govern- 
 ment hope that the Korean Government, having entered upon the 
 work of reforms, may succeed in maintaining order and in pro- 
 tecting foreigners, even though our ti'oops withdraw. Japan, ' 
 having no other designs, does not desire to prolong the mainten- 
 ance of Japanese troops in Korea, and would be extremely grati- 
 fied if relieved of such an obligation. In our relations with Korea 
 our policy is one of non-interference. We will gladly share 
 equally with other powers the same line of action.' 
 
 It is safe to predict that the Japanese reform of Korea, 
 without Japanese troops to sustain it, will be snuffed 
 out like a taper in the wind. Within six months there 
 will not be a trace of it left; and the last state of 
 the wretched little kingdom will be worse than the first. 
 Perhaps people will then be able to see why some of 
 those who, like myself, had been in the country, argued 
 so strongly for the maintenance of the stixtus quo, and, in 
 the interest of Korea herself, viewed with such uncon- 
 querable suspicion the Greek gift of an impossible reform. 
 Had Japan been at liberty to annex the peninsula, and to 
 treat it, with her own instruments and in her own way, she 
 
384 THE PROSPECT 
 
 might in time have evolved a new order out of the existing 
 chaos. But this she has been prevented from doing by her 
 own pledges, and by the fear of others. She has cut the 
 single cable by which the crazy little ship rode precariously 
 at anchor in the Far Eastern roadstead ; and she has left it to 
 drift, without helmsman and without rudder, upon the stormy 
 waters. 
 
 That the recent change in the attitude of Japan has been 
 due to other causes than a tardy recognition of the hope- 
 
 _,, „ lessness of the struggle will be obvious to those 
 
 The Power °^ 
 
 in the back- who have followed events on the wider inter- 
 national stage. To fail in Korea, and at the 
 same time only to rear up a more menacing danger outside, 
 would indeed be a disastrous return to Japan for her victory 
 in the war. There is a neighbouring Power, whose interest 
 in Korea has already been described, and who has been 
 watching events with a not wholly unselfish interest. That 
 power could not brook a Japanned Korea, and has let it 
 clearly be known that independence, and not a mere change 
 of protectorates, must be the result, as it was the originally 
 professed object, of the campaign. I hope, in the light of 
 what has happened, that I may be pardoned for quoting 
 the terms of a forecast, upon which I ventured in August 
 I894, before the war had begun, in a letter to the Times : 
 
 ' There is one contingency in which Russia might be tempted out 
 of her philosophic and calcvilating calm ; and that is, the victory of 
 Japan and the substitution upon her Tiumen River boundary of the 
 influence of a young and militant power for the less aggressive and 
 more reliable Conservatism of China. I doubt if Russia would at 
 all welcome Japanese fleets in Gensan and Port Lazareff", or a 
 Korean army reorganised by Japanese officers in the occupation of 
 posts along the northern frontier. Japan must therefore contem- 
 plate this additional danger, as the probable price of victory, that 
 she may drive China and Russia into each other's arms, and may 
 only discomfit her ancient adversary at the expense of raising up a 
 
AFTER THE WAR 385 
 
 far more formidable modern one in his place. And equally^, if it is 
 not to the interest of Russia to have in too close proximity to her- 
 self the impetuous Chauvinism of Japan^ it is not to the interest of 
 Japan to array against her expanding ambitions the premature 
 hostility of Russia. The great future which she anticipates for her- 
 self may possibly not suffer^ and will clearly^ in her own judgment, 
 be confirmed by a war with China. It would be irretrievably 
 compromised if-she provoked a vastly more dangerous foe. 
 
 How the new issue, thus raised, is likely to affect the 
 fortunes of Korea primarily, and of the Far East in general, 
 the time has not yet come to discuss. Japan has ousted 
 China and is now retiring, for fear of being ousted herself. 
 Meanwhile Korea is the chief sufferer at the hands of her 
 many friends. She supplies the international football that 
 is kicked about between the rival goal-posts of Vladivostok 
 and Nagasaki. Poor forlorn and pathetic victim ! Last of 
 the nations and most miserable of peoples ! With the 
 achievement of independence her tragic vicissitudes have 
 only entered upon a new phase. It will not be long before 
 we hear of her again. 
 
 There remains the question of the effect that has been 
 produced upon the present, and the impetus that may be 
 given to the future of Japan, by the victorious 
 issue of the war. That it has exhilarated the pride fapan°'^ 
 and augmented the confidence of her people was 
 only to be expected. Already sanguine of the efficiency 
 of her naval and military resources, she has seen her ancient 
 enemy collapse at the first contact with her arms. Ambitious 
 of an equal, if not a controlling, voice in the destinies of 
 Farther Asia, she has with little difficulty dethroned from 
 her traditional hegemony the age-long arbiter of the remote 
 East. She has taught her Western tutors the unsuspected 
 lesson, that she has not merely absorbed, but has, in some 
 respects, improved upon their teaching. It would be absurd 
 
 2 B 
 
386 THE PROSPECT 
 
 to deny to Japan the legitimate satisfaction of so remarkable 
 a triumph. For my own part I am less disposed to cavil at 
 the sometimes extravagant heights of self-congratulation to 
 which her flattered vanity has soared^ than I am to admire 
 the temperate self-restraint with which her statesmen, in 
 the hour of victory, consented to forgo some of its most 
 cherished spoils, because they realised that Japan had already 
 undergone no ordinary strain, and because they feared to 
 compromise that for which they had ventured so much. If 
 the Japanese Government was blamed by many for the 
 precipitancy with which it originally rushed into the war, it 
 may claim to have expiated the offence by the statesmanlike 
 control which it has displayed since its termination. 
 
 I have already pointed out that some discount must be 
 made from the apparent brilliancy of the military victory of 
 
 Japan owing to the inexpressible debility of her 
 of As"^^*^ foe. If I do not join in the general chorus of 
 
 panegyric on this point, still less can I follow the 
 reasoning of that cultivated organ of opinion in England 
 which almost from the issue of the first engagement in this 
 war proclaimed that '^the victory of Japan involved the inde- 
 pendence of Asia,' ' and that it sounded the death-knell of 
 the European supremacy in that continent, upon which the 
 political and commercial symptoms of the modern world, to 
 a great extent, depend.' There is nothing, we have been 
 told by the same authority, to prevent Japan from stripping 
 Spain, Holland, and Portugal of all their Asiatic possessions. 
 Nay, stimulated by this glorious example, even China may 
 tardily reassert herself, and recover or wrest from Great 
 Britain Siam, Nepaul, and Hyderabad. These speculations 
 appear to me to be tainted by the same academic detachment 
 from the world of fact as are those, which I shall presently 
 discuss, of the late Mr. Pearson. They could not have 
 
AFTER THE WAR 387 
 
 emanated from any critic who had been upon the spot. 
 Because Japan has beaten China, it does not in the least 
 follow that she could beat any single European Power (of 
 those with whom she might conceivably come into collision), 
 much less any combination of a larger number. Because she 
 has acquired F.ormosa, it by no means follows that she can 
 seize -or that she aspires to seize the Philippines or Java. 
 Indeed, almost her first act after the war was to give to Spain "^§1 
 a formal pledge of abstention from any interference in the 
 Spanish Seas. In the victory of a young and energetic and 
 well-knit Asiatic power over the notorious invalid of the Far- 
 Eastern world, why should Europe read her own death- 
 sentence in that continent ? Nay, a man has but to go to 
 Japan itself to leai*n the truth of Count Inouye's impressive 
 warning to his own countrymen that a good deal of self- 
 reform will be required before Japan can take in hand the 
 readjustment of the fortunes of others. 
 
 These reflections, however, do not preclude the certainty, 
 as a result of the war, of a great increase, in another respect, 
 in the power of Japan. If she does not thereby 
 
 became a menace to the political influence of '-^°J"'^^r- 
 
 ^ cial and 
 
 Evu'ope in Asia, she may and probably will become industrial 
 a formidable antagonist to British and German 
 trade. Her industrial and mercantile future will receive a 
 decided impetus from this rise in her fortunes. Endowed 
 not merely with an intelligent and enterprising people, but 
 with ample riches, and free from the harassing responsibilities 
 of continental engagements or colonial possessions, there is 
 scarcely any limit that need be set, within a given area, to the 
 commercial expansion of Japan. Every year she becomes 
 more self-providing and less dependent vipon others. §ix__ 
 years ago she imported -6.7__per cent, of her requirements, ^ii^ 
 Shejiow only imports 25 per cent. She has instructed her- 
 
388 THE PROSPECT 
 
 self so efficaciously that she can now all but dispense with 
 outside tuition. Her railways were built and run-in the 
 first place, by foreigners. There is at present not a shigle 
 alj_eii employed upon them. In her cotton mills, where the 
 produce of over half-a-million spindles is Qhallenging the 
 command of the Far-Eastern market, there is a similarly 
 notable absence. In the recent war her soldiers fought with 
 rifles patented and manufactured, not in Europe, but in 
 Japan. Every cartridge, every shot and shell, nay, even 
 the Maxim guns employed, were of Japanese origin. Less 
 than half-a-dozen Europeans are now engaged in the 
 arsenals. When I first visited Japan in 1887, she 
 possessed but a few lines of steamboats, and those for the 
 most part, if not entirely, captained and engineered by 
 Englishmen and Scotchmen. She has now several first- 
 rate lines of steamers, subsidised by the Government, 
 running to every port in the Far East, and wholly officered 
 by natives. Her proximity to the immense and only half- 
 developed market of China, the skill of her artificers, the 
 low rate of wages and the long hours for which they are 
 content to work, give her an advantage with which no 
 European rival can cope. She has a currency which is_not 
 fettered by international or imperial exigencies, but which 
 she can regulate to suit her own fiscal needs. I do not 
 mean to say that there is not another side to the picture, or, 
 if the trade of Europe meets with a set-back in these 
 respects, that there are not other channels of recuperation 
 or untapped markets still waiting to be conquered. Japan 
 herself must, for a long time at any rate, be dependent upon 
 Europe for a good deal of the raw material which she 
 proposes to work up. A programme of shipbuilding or of 
 railway construction, or public works, or factories ^nd-Jtnills, 
 cannot be carried out without an appeal to European 
 
AFTER THE WAR 389 
 
 resource and invention. For a while these exchanges may 
 constitute an equipoise. But in the long run Japan may 
 expect to forge ahead of her rivals in the China Seas ; and^ 
 whatever may have then become of the political balance of 
 power^ she will have laid a hand upon the commercial scales 
 that will cause many a moment of disquiet in the counting- 
 houses of the West. In this brilliant and lucrative career, 
 the war with China, which was undertaken with far different 
 objects, may one day be reckoned as marking a very con- 
 spicuous stage. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 Prudens futuri temporis exitum 
 Caliginosa nocte premit Deus, 
 Ridetque si mortalis ultra 
 
 Fas trepidat. Quod adest, memento 
 Componere sequus. 
 
 Horace : Carm, iii. 29. 
 
 In the two remaining chapters I propose briefly to sum up 
 the conclusions to which I have endeavoured to lead the 
 
 readers of this book, and, in so far as they 
 Summary, appear to justify so venturesome an enterprise, 
 
 to cast the horoscope of the future. I desire 
 also to indicate the part that is now being played, or is 
 likely hereafter to be played, on the majestic stage to 
 ^ which I have invited attention, by the Government and 
 ^ the citizens of my own country. In this first portion of 
 my study of the kingdoms of the Far East I have dealt 
 with three States alone — Japan, Korea, and China. Of 
 these, Japan and China are powerful Empires (though in 
 very different senses of the term) whose orbit in the 
 firmament of nations may claim a certain fixity, and whose 
 national existence, in spite of the fact that their political 
 boundaries are liable to modification, is not likely at any 
 time to be submerged. Korea, on the contrary, belongs 
 to a class of States of whom future fixity is the last 
 attribute to be predicated, and before whom an anxious 
 course of vicissitudes, in no degree diminished by the issue 
 
 390 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 391 
 
 of the recent conflict^ opens. Though nominally inde- 
 pendent, her territories are still occupied and will probably 
 again be overrun by the armies of one or another of her 
 jealous neighbours. She is too feeble and too corrupt to 
 stand alone. They have successfully interfered to prevent 
 her from leaning upon China. Will Japan be content to 
 let her lean upon Russia ? Will Russia acquiesce in her 
 leaning upon Japan ? The main result of the war has 
 been to leave Korea, in an even greater degree than it 
 found her, the powder-magazine of the Far East. 
 
 The superficial features of Japanese character and politics 
 are known to all. Her nimble-witted and light-hearted 
 people, the romantic environment of her past, 
 and the astonishing rapidity with which she is KS ^^"^^ 
 assimilating all that the West has to teach her, 
 have been praised with an indiscriminate prodigality that 
 has already begun to pall, and has not been without its 
 bad effects upon herself. I conceive that no worse service 
 could have been rendered to Japan than the publication of 
 the last work in English which has been dedicated to her 
 charms by a well-known English writer and poet. These 
 overloaded encomiums not merely cloy the palate ; they 
 foster a growing vanity against which the Japanese require 
 to be upon their guard, and which may, unless abated, 
 both provoke and deserve the chastisement of some smart 
 rebuff. Japan is sure enough of a distinguished and even 
 brilliant future, without being told that she has exhausted 
 the sum of all human excellences in the present. More- 
 over, a time of internal fermentation lies before her in 
 the attempt to graft a purely democratic product on to a 
 stem from which the feudal sap has not been entirely 
 expunged, and to reconcile the widest aspirations of con- 
 stitutional liberty with the relics of a theocratic regime. 
 
392 THE PROSPECT 
 
 This struggle will I'equire the fullest measure of sense and 
 self-control, and may, perhaps, not be tided over without 
 crisis and suffering. From such a trial the patriotism of 
 her people and the liberal sentiments of her statesmen are 
 capable of bringing her forth, if not unscarred, at least 
 with vitality unexhausted ; and that in the course of the 
 next quarter of a century she will take her place on a 
 level of technical equality with the great Powers of the 
 West may be accepted as certain. The Revision of the 
 Treaties, effected just as these pages originally passed into 
 the printer's hands, will free her from all artificial trammels, 
 and while ratifying, will also test her right to international 
 autonomy. 
 
 Japan was frequently blamed before the war for squander- 
 ing too much money upon armaments, military and naval, 
 and for neglecting the requirements of industrial 
 Britain of ^^^^ commercial expansion. It is true that her 
 
 the Far resources are capable of very considerable de- 
 East. ^ -^ ^ 
 
 velopment, and that a prudent finance, already 
 
 in part inaugurated, will greatly increase both the numbers 
 
 and the prosperity of her people. But the critics to whom 
 
 I allude had lost sight of the part which Japan aspires to 
 
 play in the Far East, and to which her policy of expenditure 
 
 and organisation has been strictly subordinated. That 
 
 part is determined by her geographical situation. Placed 
 
 at a maritime coign of vantage upon the flank of Asia^ 
 
 precisely analogous to that occupied by Great Britain on 
 
 the flank of Europe, exercising a powerful influence over 
 
 the adjoining continent, but not necessarily involved in its 
 
 responsibilities, she sets before herself the supreme ambition 
 
 of becoming, on a smaller scale, the Britain of the Far East. 
 
 By ntleans of an army strong enough to defend our shores, 
 
 ,and to render invasion unlikely, and still more of a navy 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 393 
 
 sufficiently powerful to sweep the seas, she sees that 
 England has retained~tbat^unique and commanding position 
 in the West which was won" for us by the industry and 
 force of character of our people, by the minei'al wealth of 
 these islands, by the stability of our Government, and by 
 the colonising geniils of our sons. By similar methods 
 Japan hopes to arrive at a more modest edition of the 
 same result in the East. Like the English, her people 
 are stubborn fighters and born sailors. If she can but 
 intimidate any would-be enemy from attempting a landing 
 upon her shores, and can fly an unchallenged flag over the 
 surrounding waters, while from her own resources she 
 provides occupation, sustenance, clothing, and wages for 
 her people, she will fulfil her role in the international 
 politics of the future. 
 
 And how important a one this may be, those who con- 
 sider, her position in relation both to the Pacific Ocean and 
 to the neighbouring mainland of Asia, in the light that is 
 cast upon it by the ambition of rival Powers, will easily be 
 able to judge. The opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway 
 and Trans-Pacific route on the eastern side ; the ultimate 
 completion of the Nicaragua or some other inter-oceanic 
 Canal farther to the south ; the maritime ambitions of 
 Russia, already dissatisfied with her base at Vladivostok and 
 thirsting for a Pacific commerce and a Pacific armament ; the 
 impetus that will be lent to these desires and the revolution 
 that will be produced in Northern Asia by the Siberian Rail- 
 way ; the emulous zeal with which foreign Powers, England, 
 America, France, and Germany, are snapping up the isles and 
 islets of Oceania ; the connection (certain to increase as time 
 advances) between Japan and the British Colonies of the 
 Australasian group — may in the course of the coming century 
 develop a Pacific Question, the existence of which is now 
 
S94 THE PROSPECT 
 
 not so much as suspected, and the outhnes of which can at 
 present be only dimly foreseen. In the solution of such a 
 question Japan, by virtue of her situation, should be capable 
 of playing a considerable part. That she should be free to 
 do so, and should develop the requisite moral force and 
 strength (in both of which she is at present lacking), it is 
 necessary — as I wrote before the war, and see no reason now 
 for altering — that she should hold herself aloof from foreign 
 entanglements, and, above all, that she should not come 
 into sustained or renewed collision with her old and heredi- 
 tary antagonist, China. She has fought and conquered 
 China ; has settled to her own satisfaction and in her own 
 interest the feud of centm-ies ; has demonstrated her military 
 and naval superiority and the reabty of her Western tuition ; 
 has rounded off her island-dominion by the captin-e of 
 Formosa ; and has, wisely for herself, been persuaded to 
 abandon those acquisitions on the Asiatic mainland, which, 
 though they would have placed Peking perpetually at her 
 mercy, would yet have left her a Continental Power, subject 
 to all the harassing and even perilous responsibilities, that, in 
 Asia not less than in Europe, attach to that position. She can 
 now afford to take a wider and more statesmanlike outlook. 
 That the true policy for Japan, ignoring tradition and 
 history and burying national antipathies, is a friendly under- 
 standing with China, interested like herself in keeping at 
 aJistance the single common peril — namely, the advance of 
 the Muscovite from the north — appears to me self-evident, 
 and is, I believe, appreciated by her own statesmen. Such 
 a solidarity, without taking the form of an off'ensive and 
 defensive alliance, would be strong enough to preserve the 
 balance of power in the Far East and to prepare the way 
 by which Japan may attain to that still higher place which 
 she yearns to fill among the nations of the world. 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 395 
 
 The future of China is a problem the very inverse of that 
 
 involved in the future of Japan. The one is a country 
 
 intoxicated with the modern spirit, and requiring 
 
 above all things the stamina to iniderstand the t,". "^^ 
 ° China. 
 
 shock of too sudden an upheaval of ancient ideas 
 and plunge into the unknown. The other is a country 
 stupefied with the pride of the past, and standing in need 
 of the very impulse to which its neighbour too incontinently 
 yields. Japan is eager to bury the past; China worships 
 its embalmed and still life-like corpse. Japan wants to be 
 reformed out of all likeness to herself. China declines to 
 be reformed at all. She is a monstrous but mighty 
 anachronism, defiantly planted on the fringe of a world to 
 whose contact she is indifi^erent and whose influence she 
 abhors; much as the stones of Solomon's Temple look down 
 upon an alley in modern Jerusalem, or as the Column of 
 Trajan rears its head in the heart of nineteenth century 
 Rome. 
 
 In the foregoing pages I have depicted in their own 
 country and capital the characteristics of this unlovely but 
 admirable people. But I am not sure that they 
 are not even more wonderful when seen outside Chinese 
 their native land. At Hongkong, Hanoi, Cholen, ^^ ^^'^°^' 
 Singapore, Penang, Bangkok, as also at Rangoon and Man- 
 dalay on the one side, and at Batavia and Manila on the 
 other, they have established great communities, living 
 contentedly under alien laws, and drawing into their fingers 
 the reins of a multiform and lucrative commerce. Not 
 merely do they absorb and frequently monopolise the retail 
 trades, but they farm the State monopolies ; they run big 
 steamships and own immense mills ; they float companies 
 with large capital; they own and work productive mines. 
 Under British protection 200,000 of them live serenely in 
 
396 THE PROSPECT 
 
 the city of Hongkong, and 180,000 on the island of Singa- 
 pore. In the adjoining native State of Jahore, 210,000 out 
 of a total population of 300,000 are Chinese. Throughout 
 the Malay States they far outnumber the Malays. In Siam 
 there are said to be between two and three millions of the 
 Yellow Race, or nearly one-third of the entire population. 
 Freed froni the exactions and inquisition of their own 
 Government, they develop on foreign soil, and for the 
 edification of foreign commerce, the very qualities which, if 
 applied to the regeneration of their own country, might 
 make her once again the mistress of the Eastern world. 
 
 It is sometimes questioned whether this ever-increasing 
 flood of Chinese emigration may not constitute an viltimate 
 
 danger to the countries which it overruns, and 
 , ^ r whether the invasion of the hordes of Jinghiz 
 Chinese re- Khan is not capable of a milder twentieth-century 
 
 reproduction. These apprehensions have recently 
 received a fresh and formidable impetus from the encourage- 
 ment given to them in the scholarly and remarkable work of 
 the late Mr. Pearson.^ Therein, supported by much learning, 
 confirmed by ingenious analogies, and rendered attractive by 
 a luminous and agreeable style, may be found developed at 
 length the dismal thesis that the future of Eastern Asia, if 
 not of parts of Central Asia also, is not for the White but 
 for the Yellow Race ; and that neither Great Britain, nor 
 France, nor Russia, but China, is the Power into whose hands 
 will pass the predestined sceptre of the Far East, With 
 both the premises and the conclusions of Mr. Pearson's 
 fascinating but melancholy argument I find myself in total 
 disagreement. Before explaining, however, the points and 
 grounds of difference between us, let m'e summarise Mr. 
 Pearsonla^rqpositions as far as possible in his own words. 
 1 National Life and Character : a Forecast, by C. H. Pearson. 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 397 
 
 With the view of sustaining his main and ultimate induc- 
 tion^ Mr. Pearson first marshals the evidences, as he 
 conceives them to be, of the power and vitality of 
 
 China. He points to her recovery of the revolted ^', ^^^' 
 " •' son s argu- 
 
 province of Chinese Turkestan or Kashgaria frona ments in 
 Yakub Beg in 1874-87; he says she dominates 
 Korea ; and he reminds us that she succeeded in finally 
 stamping out the Mohammedan rebellion in Yunnan. These 
 are the testimonies to her internal organisation and strength. 
 Casting his eyes over a wider range, he next observes the 
 phenomena to which I have already alluded. He sees 
 Chinamen flooding Singapore and the Malay Peninsula, begin- 
 ning to settle in Borneo and Sumatra, encroaching upon the 
 labour markets of California and Australia, and already 
 supplanting the natives in Hawaii and other islands of the 
 Pacific. He draws attention to the flexibility and versatility 
 of the Chinese character, to their easy adaptation to extremes 
 of climate, to their excellence as labourers, their industry as 
 merchants, and their docility as colonists. Finally, he 
 contemplates the acquisition by the Power, thus endowed by 
 nature, of the resources of modern invention, of a network 
 of railways connecting the great cities of the Empire Avith 
 each other and with adjoining countries, of telegraphs and 
 steamers, of the use of foreign capital, of large armies drilled 
 and equipped on the European model, of artillery and 
 scientific implements of war, and, above all, the leadership 
 of a really great man. Nay, intoxicated by the enchantment 
 of the picture, he is actually willing to dispense with the 
 last-named advantage : — 
 
 '^The Chinese do not need even the accident of a man of g-enius 
 to develop their magnificent future. Ordinary statesmanship, 
 adopting the improvements of Europe, without offending the 
 custom^ and prejudices of the people, may make them a State 
 
398 THE PROSPECT 
 
 which no Power in Europe will dare to disi-egard ; with an army 
 which could march by fixed stages across Asia^, and a fleet which 
 could hold its own against any that the strongest of European 
 Powei's could afford to keep permanently in Chinese waters.'^ 
 
 Such being the grounds of his confidence in the future of 
 
 China, Mr, Pearson next proceeds to indicate what in his 
 
 opinion she may be expected to do. ' On three 
 
 new gj(Jes of her lie countries that she may easily seize, 
 
 march •' •' ' 
 
 of the over which very often she has some old claim, and 
 in the climate of which her people can live. It is 
 more than probable that some of these will pass under 
 Chinese rule.' Borneo will certainly be hers. 'Expansion 
 towards the south and south-west seems most probable ; but 
 she is not debarred either towards the north and west.' 
 Nepal might be wrested from England, parts of Turkestan 
 from Russia, and the Amur Province from the same Power. 
 The danger of this military advance would be still further 
 accentuated if China became a Mohammedan Power. 
 
 Finally Mr. Pearson sums up his presentment of the triple 
 
 r A c future that awaits his protege, as a colonising 
 
 the future. Power, a military Power, and a trading Power, 
 
 and the corresponding decline that threatens the Caucasian 
 
 stock, in the following language : — 
 
 ■^On the whole, it seems difficult to doubt that the black and 
 yellow belt, which always encircles the globe between the Tropics, 
 will extend its area and deepen its colour with time. The work of 
 the white man in these latitudes is only to introduce order and an 
 acquaintance with the best industrial methods of the West. The 
 countries belong to their autochthonous races ; and these, though 
 they may in parts accept the white man as a conqueror and 
 organiser, will gradually become too strong and unwieldy for him 
 to control ; or, if they retain him, will do it only with the condition 
 that he assimilates himself to the inferior race. . . . The citizens 
 of the black and yellow races will then be taken up into the social 
 
 1 National Character, p. 112. 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 399 
 
 relations of the white races, will throng the English turf or the 
 salons of Paris, and will be admitted to iutermai-riage. . . . Does 
 any one doubt that the day is at hand when China will have cheap 
 fuel from her coal-mines, cheaj) transport by railways and steamers, 
 and will have founded technical schools to develop her industries ? 
 Whenever that day comes, she may wrest the control of the world's 
 markets, especially throughout Asia, from England and Germany. 
 ... A hundred years hence, when the Chinese, Hindus, and 
 negroes, who are now as 2 to 1 to the higher races, shall be as 3 
 to 1 ; when they have boriio-wed the science of Europe and developed 
 their still virgin worlds, the pressure of their competition upon the 
 white man will be irresistible. He will be driven from every 
 neutral market, and forced to confine himself within his own. . . . 
 With civilisation equally diffused, the most populous country 
 must ultimately be the most powei'ful ; and the preponderance of 
 China over any rival — even over the United States of America — is 
 likely to be overwhelming.' 
 
 It will be conceded that Mr. Pearson has not erred on the 
 
 side of timidity in this forecast, at once so complimentary to 
 
 China and so lugubrious for ourselves, and that 
 
 the colours of his palette are applied with no ^-^bjection 
 ^ ^^ CI unoccu- 
 
 hesitating or piecemeal brush. One objection pied area 
 
 alone he admits, and that in order to refute it. 
 The theory of continued Chinese expansion outside China 
 pi'oper might seem to be qualified by the enormous un- 
 occupied area at her disposal within. Equivalent in size to 
 twenty-two, or, as others say, to twenty-six Englands, she 
 could maintain a population of 650,000,000 or 750,000,000 ; 
 i.e. she might increase for fifty years before requiring relief 
 by exodus. In fact, from her superior fertility, China could 
 support more inhabitants than England to the square mile, 
 and might duplicate her numbers before she needed to 
 trouble her neighbours. To which considerations might be 
 added the conservative genius of Chinese government, and 
 the discouragement offered to native emigration. This line 
 of reasoning Mr. Pearson answers by pointing out that 
 
400 THE PROSPECT 
 
 though the Taiping Rebellion forty years ago,, which lasted 
 
 for fourteen years^ cost China from twenty to fifty million 
 
 liyeSj and though between 1842 and 1882 the nation is" cal- 
 
 culated to have decreased by thirty millions^ yet it was 
 
 during this very period that she continued to jxuir her 
 
 colonists into Siam, Malaysia^ the Straits Settlements, 
 
 America^ PerUj and Australia. 
 
 I have now summed up, I hope with fairness, Mr. Pearson's 
 
 argument, and will proceed to show why, in my opinion, it 
 
 is for the most part unsound. I am conscious, of 
 
 for'dis- course, of the extreme fallibility of any individual 
 
 puting Mr. speculations as to the future, and am quite pre- 
 Pearson. 
 
 pared to believed that a priori my own forecast is 
 
 more likely to be invalidated than one proceeding from so 
 accomplished a scholar as Mr. Pearson. But if the latter 
 '^^ > jJjT writer had, as I believe, never been in China, but only 
 studied the Chinese question from the academic djstjance of 
 an Australian study ; and if, further, I can show his premises 
 to be of questionable validity and authority, there will be 
 some reason for regarding his conclusions with suspicion ; 
 the more so that they are, to the best of my knowledge, 
 shared by no contemporary authority who either knows or 
 has resided in China itself. 
 
 I will follow Mr. Pearson's reasoning in the order in which 
 he has himself displayed it, premising that much of it has 
 .. , already been answered in anticipation in the pages 
 successes of this work. The suppression by China of the 
 rebellions in Kashgar and Yunnan justifies no such 
 complimentary inference as Mr. Pearson has drawn. The 
 former depended only upon the personality of a single in- 
 dividual, Yakub Beg, appealing to religious fanaticism and 
 taking advantage of the military weakness of China at a 
 distance of 3500 miles from her base. With the removal by 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 401 
 
 poison of the usurper, the movement, almost without fight- 
 ing, collapsed. Similarly the Taiping and Mohammedan 
 rebellions, so far from testifying to the might of China, 
 demonstrated the full measure of her weakness ; for the 
 resources of the Empire were strained almost to breaking 
 point to cope with the double peril, which not less than 
 twenty-five years of fighting were required to suppress. My 
 account of the situation in Korea will have shown that, how- 
 ever creditable to the astuteness of the suzerain Power, 
 China's authority there, even before the war, could scarcely 
 be cited as an evidence of material or military strength. 
 Now that it has ceased altogether to exist, Mr. Pearson loses 
 the support of'the Korean prop of his argument, the weight 
 of which, gfuch as it is, must be transferred to the opposite 
 scale, 
 
 I next turn to the argument based upon the colonising 
 genius of China, as illustrated in the maritime countries and 
 islands of the Far East, as well as in more distant „, 
 lands possessing a frontage on the Pacific Ocean, Colonial 
 It is assumed that the steady infiltration of 
 Chinese emigrants into these regions, and the control of the 
 labour market which they so rapidly acquire, are the in- 
 evitable precursors of a complete political and commercial 
 domination. These anticipations I do not share. Chinese 
 emigration I believe to be dictated by the animal interests 
 of self-maintenance, and by the craving of masculine labour 
 to find an outlet, which is denied to it by the selfish 
 and rapacious tyranny of the Chinese administrative and 
 economic system at home ; ^ and to be divorced from any 
 
 1 Since writing these words I have met with a curious confirnaation of their 
 accuracj^ in the reiJort of a Chinese official, who was sent by his Government 
 as Consul-General to Singapore in 1893, to report upon the reasons which 
 induced so many thousand Chinamen to voluntarily expatriate themselves 
 under foreign dominion. He wrote: I 'When asked why they do not take 
 
 2 C 
 
402 THE PROSPECT 
 
 ulterior intent of conquest or dominion. The Marquis 
 Tseng, in his famous article/ wrote, or was made to write, 
 as follows : — 
 
 ' The Chinese have never been an aggressive race. History 
 shows them to have always been a peaceful people, and there is no 
 reason why tliey should be otherwise in the future. China has 
 none of that land-hunger so characteristic of other nations, and, 
 contrary to what is generally believed in Europe, she is under no 
 necessity of finding in other lands an outlet for a surplus pojiula- 
 tion. Considerable numbers of Chinese have at different times 
 been forced to leave their homes, and push their fortunes in Cuba, 
 Peru, the United States, and the British Colonies ; but this must 
 be imputed rather to the poverty and ruin in which they were 
 
 the opportunity of returning and settling in their native land, their knitted 
 brows and frowning countenances might be observed, and the following com- 
 plaints were generally made : They said that they feared the so-called 
 "investigations" of their local mandarins; the oppression of the yanien- 
 underlings ; and the extortions of their clansmen and neighbours, instances 
 of which could be given without number. They comi3lained that those who 
 happened to return home had been maliciously accused as pirates and rob- 
 bers ; as purchasers of contraband in arms and ammunition in order to suj)ply 
 sea pirates ; and as buyers and kidnai^pers of coolie slaves for the ]Durpose of 
 supj)lying foreign ruffians. Some of them had had their baggage and belong- 
 ings — the savings of years — forcibly taken away from them and jjartitioned 
 amongst local ruffians ; and some had had their houses pulled down and were 
 forbidden to build on the land of their buying. Alone and unj^rotected, 
 considered to be strangers and aliens amongst their own kindred, to whom 
 could they apply for heliJ, surrounded as they were on all sides by rapacious 
 hawks, of high and low degree ? Hence, having taken a lesson from experi- 
 ence, none of the wealthier Chinese in foreign countries cared to return to 
 the land of their ancestors. Those who did go to China to trade or travel, 
 went either as British or Dutch subjects, under the protection of a foreign 
 Government.' I A further confirmation of the same opinion is furnished hj a 
 recent lecture 'of a well-known Dutch Professor, Dr. de Groot, of Leyden, 
 whose countrymen in the East Indies appear to have been seized with a 
 similar panic to Mr. Pearson. He argues in rep)ly that these fears are either 
 baseless or grossly exaggerated, and must be traced in the main to jjalpable 
 ignorance regarding the chief causes of Chinese emigration, which he limits 
 to the two provinces of Kuangtung and Fukien. These causes he describes 
 as the absence of irrigation and dearth of rain, the primitive condition of 
 agriculture, the discou.ragement and non-existence of native industries, the 
 superabundance of day-labourers, and the low rate of wages. 
 
 1 'China, the Sleep and the Awakening.' Asiatic Quarterly Review, 
 January 1887. 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 403 
 
 iuvolved by the Taiping and Mohammedan rebellions, than to the 
 difficulty of finding the means of subsistence under ordinary con- 
 ditions.^ In her wide dominions there is room and to spare for all 
 her teeming population. What China wants is not emigration, but 
 a proper organisation for the equable distribution of the population. 
 In China proper much land has gone out of cultivation, whilst in 
 Manchuria, Mongolia, and Chinese Turkestan there are immense 
 tracts of country which have never felt the touch of the husband- 
 man. ' 
 
 This reasoning is for the most part true, though it is to 
 be regretted that neither the Marquis Tseng nor any other 
 Chinese statesman seems to have persuaded his Government 
 to deduce from it the only practical lesson, viz. that public 
 works in China would provide that very occupation and 
 outlet for lack of which expatriation is forced upon her 
 citizens. 
 
 An examination of the Chinese emigrant communities in 
 
 British, French, Dutch, or Spanish territories, leads to the 
 
 same conclusion as to their character and objects. _, 
 
 •' Character 
 
 For, on the one hand, the Chinese are by nature of Chinese 
 
 tractable, orderly, and content to be governed. °^'^ ^' 
 They fully appreciate the benefits of a just and organised 
 administration. In a petition which was being signed while 
 I was in Singapore, praying for a continuation of the term 
 of office of the retiring Governor, Sir Cecil Smith, the 
 Chinese population of the colony mentioned, among other 
 grounds of his popularity and of their gratitude, his suppres- 
 sion a few years before of the Chinese Secret Societies, which 
 were as much a curse to themselves as they were a danger 
 to others. On the other hand, the Chinese population in 
 the above-mentioned places is of a two-fold character. 
 
 1 This statement canuot be implicitly accepted, seeing that the emigration 
 of Chinamen to the ports and islands of the Eastern Archipelago, and to 
 Australia and America, had begun long before the Taiping or Mohammedan 
 rebellions, and was the natui-al consequence of poverty acting upon au 
 overcrowded population. 
 
404 THE PROSPECT 
 
 Either it is composed of a floating element who come down 
 from China to make money for themselves, because there 
 are a better opening and higher wages than at home, but 
 who contemplate as speedy a return as possible to their 
 native country ; or it consists of a sedentary population, who 
 never mean to go back at all, because they prefer the city 
 of their adoption, and have married the women of the 
 country. Ugly as is the Chinaman to the European eye, he 
 possesses the gift, unique in the world, of making himself 
 acceptable as a husband to the women of half-a-score of 
 different races. He weds, with equal readiness and satisfac- 
 tion to both parties, the Korean, the Annarnite, the 
 Cambogian, the Siamese. (With the Malays, who are 
 Mohammedans, it is, of course, different.) This connubial 
 facility is an^Xement on the side of order and good conduct, 
 for it establishes him, not merely as a wanderer, but as a 
 contented citizen in the land of .Moab. At the same time 
 it severs him, so to speak, from the parent stock; for he 
 loses the connection with the mother country which a 
 Chinese spouse and connections would fortify, while the 
 ensuing generation is hybrid both in origin and sympathy. 
 I doubt, indeed, whether emigrants have ever anywhere 
 established a pei'manent dominion who did not bring their 
 wives along with them.^ 
 
 1 This sentence lias been made the text of a charming essay by Sir Alfred 
 Lyall, entitled 'Permanent Dominion in Asia,' in the Nineteenth Century 
 of September 1895. He disputes the generalisation in the following terms : 
 ' On the whole, it seems donbtf ul, if the case of the English colonies proper 
 be set aside, whether permanent dominion has anywhere been established by 
 emigrants who have bronght their wives with them. One might even go 
 further, and contend not only that dominion has rarely been strengthened by 
 the importation of women from home, but also that, in some instances, it may 
 be weakened when a ruling race intermarries strictly within its own nation- ■ 
 ality, because such exclusiveness tends towards the formation of a caste.' 
 I would answer this contention by the existing cases, quoted by Sir A. 
 Lyall in a different context, of Great Britain in India and of Russia in 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 405 
 
 Passing from thence to the argument that rests upon the 
 capabilities of China as a great mihtary Power, I have said 
 enough in previous pages of this book to show that in my 
 judgment any such estimate is a delusion. Many European 
 writers appear to think that because China has so many 
 millions of stalwart and tough-limbed sons, she must there- 
 fore possess so many hundred thousands of . 
 excellent fighting soldiers ; and that because she weakness 
 has arsenals, where, under European eyes, she 
 turns out European cannons, projectiles, rifles, cartridges, 
 and powder, she has therefore an organised force capable of 
 being placed in the field against, and of giving serious 
 trouble to, a European army. No such opinion has, I 
 believe, ever been entertained or advanced by a competent 
 critic. There is no country in the world where the military 
 profession is of smaller account, or where the science of 
 warfare is less intelligently studied than in China. The 
 phrase cedant anna togce is there no aspiration for honourable 
 peace, no sigh of satisfaction over the conclusion of a 
 successful campaign^ but is the confession of an abiding 
 contempt for the art that prefers the sword to the pen. 
 The Chinese army, under Chinese officers, even with muskets 
 
 Asia. There is a Eurasian element in India, but it lends no strength to 
 British dominion. The latter is assvired by the presence of a foreign caste, 
 exclusively and matrimonially replenished from home. Since Englishmen 
 took their wives out to India, British jjower has not become less but more 
 secure. It is true that the governing society is transient and fluctuating. 
 But rapidity of steam-na^agation compensates for frequency of change, and 
 there is a constancy of structure in the mass whose molecules are indi- 
 vidually detached and fleeting. The Russians in Asia are equally a caste, 
 and though their jDower of assimilation with Asiatics is notorious, it is not 
 based upon marriage with Asiatic women. Neither in India nor in Asia 
 does the occupation of the governing race amount to permanent settlement, 
 and it ma.y by some be considered premature to speak of it as permanent 
 dominion. But where do we learn that permanence of dominion is necessarily 
 ideirtical with permanence of settlement, or that cajjacity for assimilation 
 involves marriage with an inferior race ? The Roman Empire perished, not 
 because its ruling class was, but because it ceased to remain, a caste. 
 
406 THE PROSPECT 
 
 in its hands and cartridges in its pouches, is an undisciplined 
 rabble of tramps, about as well qualified to withstand a 
 European force as a body of Hyde Park processionists would 
 be to repel a charge of the Life Guards. Whatever the 
 Chinese rank and file have already shown themselves capable 
 of doing under European lead, whatever they might do were 
 such lead repeated in the future,^ they are, viewed as a 
 national army, a relatively inferior military instrument to 
 the weakest contingent in the force of the feeblest European 
 State. This paragraph, which appeared ipsissimis verbis in 
 my original edition, has since then received the crowning 
 confirmation of the war with Japan. 
 
 Under these conditions, which might be predicted, in a 
 scarcely less degree, of the naval as well as of the military 
 
 ~ . forces of China, to talk, as Mr. Pearson does, of a 
 
 Chinese 
 
 recoriquest Chinese army marching by fixed stages across 
 ^ ■ Asia, or even confining itself to the more humble 
 
 operation of recovering the adjoining countries which once 
 acknowledged the sovereignty of Peking, appears to me the 
 wildest freak of fancy. No one who had the least acquaint- 
 ance with the state of the frontier garrisons in Kashgaria, 
 or with the feelings of the Mohammedan population of those 
 regions, could ever speak seriously of China wresting froxn 
 Russia any portion of Eastern Turkestan. The idea of her 
 marching through Tibet, and across the Himalayas, to i-e- 
 
 1 I am not here discussing the contingency, which I have elsewhere con- 
 templated, of the Chinese forces being utilised for purposes of defence, or 
 even ultimately of offence, by an alien Power either in complete or in partial 
 occupation of the countrj^ or j)laced (in virtue of a compact with the Chinese 
 Government) in control of the military and naval forces of the Empire. 
 Such a use of the Chinese army, which is not so utterly improbable in the 
 far futvire as to be unworthy of consideration, might invest China with a 
 defensive strength at present undreamed of ; and might even (though this 
 is less likely) suggest ideas of expansion. But it is obvious, ex hypothesi, 
 that the authority so extended would not be that of Chinese sovereignty, 
 which is the particular point raised by Mr. Pearson's argument. 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 407 
 
 cover Nepal from Great Britain, is scarcely less fantastic ; 
 while, on the day when Russia is compelled by military or 
 diplomatic repulse to hand back to her the Amur Pi-ovince, 
 it will no longer be possible to return a negative answer to 
 the question of the American poet — 
 
 ' Is civilisation a failure. 
 And. is the Caucasian played out ? ' 
 
 To an even more nebulous future, into which not even the 
 charms of an unfettered imagination will seduce me, belongs 
 the epoch when, according to Mr. Pearson, Chinese „, , 
 gentlemen will throng the salon's of Paris and the of social 
 clubs of Pall Mall ; when a Chinese patron of the 
 turf will lead back to the weighing-room a winner of the 
 English Derby ; and when the pi'oblem of superfluous woman- 
 hood will be solved by the apparition at Christian altars of 
 eligible Chinese husbands. 
 
 What Mr. Pearson appears to have lost sight of, in casting 
 
 his political horoscope for China, is, on the one hand, the 
 
 influence that must inevitably be exercised upon v n 
 
 '^ Influence 
 
 it by the faults as well as the virtues of the of national 
 national character, by the morale of Chinese 
 officialdom, and by the quality of Chinese administration ; 
 on the other hand, the lessons of history, which are written 
 in characters so large that he who runs may read. He 
 omits fi'om consideration the Chinese system of government ,;)£_i 
 - — short-sighted, extortionate, universally corrupt — and the ^ cjict^^^'^^^-'^** 
 'temper of the people, averse from national enterprise, un- \ o (^\J.(r^ 
 trained to conquest, devoid of patriotic ardour, content to stag- / ^ 
 nate. In the face of these obstacles not even the exemplary 
 sobriety of Chinamen, their industrial energy, or their genius 
 for accumulation, can turn that which is a stationary, if not a 
 receding, into a dynamic and aggressive force. 
 
408 THE PROSPECT 
 
 We are led by the teachings of history to the same con- 
 clusion. So far from taking naturally to a career of conquest, 
 it is rather in her power of assimilating those by 
 
 Lessons of ^j^^j^ ghe has herself been conquered, that China 
 
 history. ^ ' 
 
 has displayed her greatest strength. Two and a 
 half centuries ago the millions of China succumbed easily to 
 the assault of a few hundred thousand Tartars, whose yoke 
 they have ever since contentedly borne. Four centuries 
 earlier they had in similar fashion accepted a Mongol master. 
 What the Mongols did, and what the Manchus did, I fail to 
 see why others should not do after them, whose power, as 
 compared with theirs, is in the same ratio as a field-gun to a 
 Roman catapult, or a repeating rifle to the cross-bow. Nay, 
 the work of detrition has already begun and proceeds apace ; 
 nor is it the least peculiar feature of Mr. Pearson's daring 
 forecast that it should have been framed in an epoch which, 
 so far from revealing any symptoms of recovered or ex- 
 panding strength, has, on the contrary, witnessed a steady 
 and still unarrested decline. It is entirely during the last 
 half, and mainly during the last quarter, of a century that 
 Tongking, Annam, and Cochin China have been wrested 
 from the grasp of China by France, that Siam has repudiated 
 her ancient allegiance, that Burma, once a vassal, has been 
 absorbed into the British system, that the Liuchiu Islands, 
 also a tributaiy State, have been allowed to pass tacitly into 
 the hands of Japan,i that Korea, after becoming a playground 
 for the jealous rivalry of foreigners, has now been definitely 
 wrested from the Chinese connection, that the Amur and 
 
 1 The annexation hy Japan of the Liuchiu Islands, which had for cen- 
 turies accepted the overlordship of China, and had sent an annual Tribute 
 Mission to Peking, was the outcome of the Formosan Expedition in 1874. 
 The Chinese behaved feebly in the matter ; and the Japanese, who swaggered 
 and assumed the offensive, won. They then deposed the King, and in- 
 corporated the group of 36 islands in the administrative system of the 
 Empire. 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 409 
 
 Ussuri Provinces have been pusillanimously ceded to Russia. 
 And yet, in face of this unbroken record of contraction, 
 against which there is nothing to set but the recovery of 
 Kulja/ we are invited to beheve that the Power which 
 has suffered this continuous diminution is on the threshold 
 of a mighty revival, and is predestined to overrun the 
 universe.^ 
 
 Another danger which Mr. Pearson has overlooked, and 
 which, though it need not seriously affect the national 
 existence of China, must yet cripple her power 
 of external advance, is the chance of internal j.g^gfijgj^ 
 disruption. The items that compose the vast 
 congeries of peoples and communities still acknowledging 
 the Chinese sway are but loosely strung together. Even if 
 we omit from consideration the Tibetans, the Mongolians, 
 and the enormous mass of Turki and Mussulman subjects, 
 ever hovering on the brink of revolt, there is in China 
 proper little or none of that cohesion which is essential 
 
 1 China has received an even greater credit than she deserves for this 
 achievement, which was a personal triumph for the diplomacy of the Marqixis 
 Tseng. In consenting to the retrocession, which was, after all, the fulfilment 
 of a solemn compact, Russia took very good care to get her quid 2}ro quo, 
 which there was nothing in the compact to authorise. 
 
 2 Sir A. Lyall, in the article before cited, answers that, except the districts 
 ceded to Russia, ' these acquisitions made by France and England were in- 
 dependent states, that paid only a formal tribute to Peking and had long 
 ago separated themselves from China, if, indeed, they had ever formed a 
 substantive part of the Empire.' This also was Japan's contention with 
 regard to Korea, when entering uj^on the recent war. It was not true, 
 however, of Korea ; nor did it hold good of Tongking, for which the Chinese 
 fought as hard as for an integral portion of the Empire ; nor of Upper Burma, 
 in the outlying provinces of which Chinese influence had been so thoroughly 
 recognised that, upon annexing it, the British Government paid the Chinese 
 the diplomatic compliment of continuing the decennial tribute mission to 
 Peking. Each of these countries China either did fight to retain and was 
 beaten, or was too weak to defend and therefore lost. The question of the 
 probable gain to their present owners, which is raised by Sir A. Lyall, is 
 entirely distinct from that of the actual loss sustained by their former 
 suzerains. 
 
410 
 
 THE PROSPECT 
 
 to national strength. Each province is an independent 
 unit^ with its own government and army^ capable in times 
 of convulsion of breaking away without difficulty from the 
 central fabric. No real bond of union connects the northern 
 with the southern portions of the Empire, whose peoples 
 cannot even understand each other's dialect. There are 
 parts of the Empire into which the news of the war with 
 Japan, and of its disastrous consequences (for China) have 
 never yet penetrated. In some of the outlying provinces 
 the lower orders, though lightly taxed, are plunged in 
 chronic penury. The authority of the dynasty is main- 
 tained by its sacrosanct associations, by a highly organised 
 and interested official hierarchy, and by the prestige of 
 Peking. But were the capital occupied by an enemy, as 
 it could be with very little difficulty (particularly by an 
 enemy advancing from the north), the Emperor expelled, 
 and the dynasty overturned, it is doubtful whether China 
 would persevere in any protracted resistance, or initiate a 
 policy of revenge. The various elements of disorder scattered 
 throughout the Empire would each find its local focus, and 
 a reign of emulous anarchy and universal dislocation might 
 be expected to ensue. 
 
 What then, it may be asked, if this picture of a re- 
 suscitated and conquering China be rejected as a brilliant 
 extravag anza of t he imagination, is the alter- 
 dest'"^^^ native future that may be anticipated for this 
 extraordinary people ? As regards the physical 
 diffusion of the Yellow Race, Mr. Pearson is possibly right. 
 Borneo and Sumatra and New Guinea will be the industrial 
 spoil of her frugal colonists. She may completely swamp 
 the Malays in Malaysia ; she may gain a firmer foothold in 
 Siam. Her intrepid sons may cross the ocean and knock at 
 new and unexpected portals. Whether a Manchu Emperor 
 
THE DESTINIES OF THE FAR EAST 411 
 
 handles the vermihon pencil m the halls of the Forbidden 
 City^ or whether for the proclamations of the Son of Heaven 
 is substituted the ukase of a Muscovite Tsar, that expansion, 
 like the swelling of the sap within the rind, will continue. 
 But extension of race is not the same thing as extension of 
 empire, and physical multiplication may even be a symptom 
 of political decline. The extinction of China is impossible 
 and absurd. A population of 350,000,000 human souls 
 cannot be extirpated or bodily transferred. On the con- 
 trary, I believe it will increase, and swell, and continue 
 to overflow. But in this movement I detect no seed of 
 empire, and I foresee no ultimate peril for the White 
 Race. 
 
 On the contrary, I think it may be argued that European 
 administration and protection are essential conditions for 
 the continuance of that very progress which is 
 supposed to constitute their peril. It is in British ^.^\t^ 
 communities and under the security of British 
 rule that the expansion of Chinese energies has hitherto 
 attained its maximum development. Why is the Yellow 
 Race to turn round and rend its benefactors } Why is it to 
 destroy the very system to secure which it acquiesces in 
 expatriation from its own country, and to erect a reproduction 
 of that from which it has fled ? To me it appears no 
 more improbable that Chinamen should continue to accept 
 European domination, in aziy country to Avhich the overflow 
 of population may propel the emigrant stream, than is 
 the spectacle of their present condition in Hongkong or 
 Singapore. The Yellow belt in the Far East may con- 
 ceivably snatch from the White the bulk of the spoils of 
 commerce, and the best of the wages of toil ; but that 
 it will ever seriously clutch at the keys of empire, or 
 
412 THE PROSPECT 
 
 challenge the racial dominion of the West, I am quite 
 unable to believe.^ 
 
 There remains a modification, or rather a complete 
 metamorphosis of Mr. Pearson's argument, which some of 
 
 his disciples, anxious to cover the inglorious 
 s Japan _^ retreat enforced by the Chinese collapse, have 
 
 endeavoured to substitute for the original con- 
 tention. This is the '^ happy thought' that what Mr. 
 Pearson originally said of China may viltimately turn out 
 to be true of Japan, which was barely mentioned by him, 
 and of whose rise to greatness he seems to have been 
 unaware. Japan, according to this hypothesis, is to be 
 the triumphant bearer of the Yellow flag, which she has 
 torn from the hands of China, in the impending campaign 
 against the White ensign in the Asiatic tropics. I am not 
 here concerned to deal minutely with this suggestion, which 
 lies outside of my own argument in this chapter, and which 
 is the outcome of a hasty ratiocination upon the results of 
 the recent war. But I may say in passing that I disbelieve 
 in it for a number of reasons. The Japanese have not, and 
 are not likely for many generations to possess, the requisite 
 numbers. They are lacking in colonising (though certainly^ 
 not in commercial) energy, and in the hereditary instinct 
 for expansion. Nor in their long and dramatic history is 
 there any indication of capacity to rule or educate subject 
 races of different blood. All their most valuable national 
 properties they have acquired from, not given to, others. \ 
 
 ^ Sir A. Lyall {loc. cit.) meets these conclusions by the hypothesis of a 
 Chinese regeneration, as the result of the war with Japan. Until, however, 
 even a single one of the ifs and mays is replaced by an is, I prefer not to 
 share these dreams. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 
 
 Grave mother of majestic works, 
 
 From her isle-altar gazing down, 
 "Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks, 
 
 Aird, king-like, wears the crown. 
 
 Tennyson. 
 
 Perhaps the most gratifying reflection suggested by these 
 
 observations on the more distant kingdoms of the Asiatic 
 
 continent is the part that must inevitably be 
 
 ^ ^ The ro/e 
 
 played in their future by this country. The of Great 
 
 inhabitants of a small island on the face of the " ^'"' 
 northern seas, we exercise, owing to the valour of our 
 ancestors and the intrepid spirit of our merchants, a con- 
 trolling suffrage in the destinies of the Far East. That 
 influence may, fortunately, be employed in the undivided 
 interests of peace. Friendly relations between ourselves 
 and Japan will assist her in that mercantile and industrial 
 development in which she is following in our own footsteps, 
 at the same time that it will confirm to us the continued 
 command of the ocean routes. A similar attitude towards 
 China will strengthen her in a resistance, for which there is 
 yet time, against the only enemy whom she has real cause 
 to fear, and will facilitate our own commercial access to her 
 territories by land. Warfare with Russia need only ensue 
 from attacks made upon British interests or British teri'itory 
 elsewhere, and assuredly will not be provoked by ourselves. 
 
 413 
 
414 THE PROSPECT 
 
 The possibilities of dispute with France, with which I shall 
 deal in my next volume, are dependent upon her own action, 
 which, if it is confined to the regions at present under her 
 sway, and respects the liberties of intervening States, need 
 awake no protest from England. Whatever the future may 
 bring forth, to this country it cannot fail to be a matter of 
 capital importance, seeing that the Empire of Great Britain, 
 though a European, a Canadian, and an Australian, is before, 
 all else an Asiatic dominion. We still are, and have it in our 
 hands to remain, the first Power in the East. Just as De 
 "ST^ Tocqueville remarked that the conquest and government of 
 India are really the achievements which have given to 
 England her place in the opinion of the world, so it 
 is the prestige and the wealth arising from her Asiatic 
 position that are the foundation stones of the British 
 Empire. There, in the heart of the old Asian continent, 
 she sits upon the throne that has always ruled the East. 
 Her sceptre is outstretched over land and sea. ' God- 
 like,' she '^ grasps the triple forks, and, king-like, wears 
 the crown.' 
 
 But not only are we politically concerned in the evolution 
 of these complex problems by reason of our Imperial situation 
 
 in Hindustan : our own fellow-citizens are personal 
 Reflex ^ 
 
 influence actors in the drama which I have described, and 
 
 if °fTi d ^^^ reflex action which it exercises upon them is 
 
 a subject of study not less interesting than the 
 
 part which they play, or are capable of playing, themselves. 
 
 Englishmen and EugUsh influence have been taken to the 
 
 r\ Far East by one of three purposes — commerce, the diffusion 
 
 X / of the faith of Christ, or the responsibilities of empire. In 
 
 the first category we are the heirs of the Portuguese and the 
 
 Dutch, of whom the former survive only at the dilapidated 
 
 p ort of Macao, while the latter, in their island possessions. 
 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 415 
 
 He outside of the track which I have been examining. From 
 
 the former, too, we inherited the self-imposed duty of 
 
 carrying the cross which has sent our mis sionaries into all 
 
 lands, and which, if it inspires the enthusiasm of Exeter 
 
 Hall, is a source of not inferior anxiety to Downing Street. 
 
 In the domain of empire the conquest of India has carried 
 
 us forward on a tide of inevitable advance that leaves us 
 
 knocking at the inland door of China and overlapping the 
 
 northern frontier of Siam. The Avars at the end of the last 
 
 century and in the first half of this, which were part of that 
 
 Expansion of England which has been so ably portrayed by 
 
 a contemporary historian, gave lis Singapore, which, lying on 
 
 the ocean highway from West to East, is the greatest 
 
 coaling station of the Orient, and Hongkong, which is the 
 
 second port of the British Empire. It has not been 
 
 without war that we have won even a mercantile entry into 
 
 those countries at whose Treaty Ports our flag is now in the 
 
 ascendant, and which have benefited by our intercourse 
 
 with them not less than we ourselves. 
 
 I have shown by figures in the course of this book, in 
 
 the cases both of Japan and China, that the commercial 
 
 supremacy of Great Britain in the Far Eastern 
 
 seas, thouffh sharply assailed by an ever-increasina: -ommer- 
 ' ^ t^ -^ •' o qjjjI supre- 
 
 competition, has not as yet been seriously shaken, macy of 
 When we learn that out of the 3340 vessels Biitain 
 that passed through the Suez Canal in 1893, 
 no fewer than 2400 were British, while next on the list 
 came the Germans with 270, the French with 190, and 
 the Dutch with 180, we may form some idea of the 
 extent to which that ascendency is still pushed in Eastern 
 waters. How vital is its maintenance, not merely for the 
 sake of our Empire, but for the sustenance of our people, 
 no arguments are needed to prove. It is only in the 
 
416 THE PROSPECT 
 
 East, and especially in the Far East, that we may still 
 
 hope to keep and to create open markets for British manu- 
 
 factm-es. Every port, every town, and every village that 
 
 passes into French or Russian hands, is an outlet lost to 
 
 Manchester, Bradford, or Bombay. 
 
 In the comrnercial competition of the .£arJEast, German y, 
 
 as the above returns indicate, comes second, and never loses 
 
 ^ . ground. France is a doubtful third. The real 
 
 Our rivals. 
 
 rivalry, however, is rather between Europeans of 
 
 whatever nationality and the Chinese, whose unrivalled 
 business capacities now seek the widest fields, and, backed 
 up by immense capital and untiring energy, daily steal more 
 ground from beneath the feet of the West. The English 
 merchants complain in some places that their interests 
 are insujficientlyL cared for and pushed by their consuls 
 or diplomatic representatives ; and I have heard of cases 
 in which systematic dilatoriness or contemptuous indiffer- 
 ence in high places has seemed to justify some measure 
 of exasperation ; although the reply of the impugned 
 authorities is not without force — viz. that they are sent 
 out not to act as touts in behalf of this or that particular 
 enterprise, but to secure fair play to all ; and that the 
 prestige acquired with the native functionaries by an 
 attitude of vigilant impartiality in their country's interest 
 is forfeited upon suspicion of acting even as patriotic 
 partisans. The complaint seems, in China at any rate, 
 to have been partly prompted by the success that attended 
 the early efforts of a recent German Minister at Peking in 
 securing contracts for his countrymen, and by alarm at 
 the projected operations of some large financial syndicates 
 who swooped down a few years ago upon Tientsin. These 
 have now retired re prope infecta ; and I do not myself 
 think that over the whole field of action the charge of 
 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 417 
 
 neglect of British interests is one that has any serious 
 
 foundation.^ 
 
 At the same time, it is evident that business competition is 
 
 much keener now than it ever was before. Large fortunes 
 
 are made with difficulty ; the merchant princes „ 
 
 and magnificent hongs of an earlier day have tion of 
 
 business 
 disappeared ; Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co. 
 
 remain almost alone among the great houses whose estab- 
 lishments and operations a generation ago were the talk 
 of the East. Men do not now expect fortunes ; they are 
 content with competencies. Wealth is more evenly dis- 
 tributed, and is dislocated by slighter shocks. It may 
 be for this reason that speculation is more indulged in 
 than of yore, and that the share-and-stock market of 
 Hongkong has so many tales of woe to tell. Everywhere 
 the traveller finds the British merchants banded together 
 in a powerful confederacy, possessing strong views, and a 
 very outspoken articulation in the local English press, 
 regarding matters from a somewhat narrow but a very 
 intelligible and a forcibly argued standpoint, and occupied 
 in slowly accumulating the wherewithal which shall enable 
 them some day to return home. The struggles and the 
 
 1 When I first published an analogous statement to this in the pages of an 
 English review, I was answered by a British merchant, that what his class 
 complained of was not that British representatives or consuls declined to act 
 as touts for them, but that they did not prevent the representatives of other 
 foreign Powers in the Far East from acting in a similar capacity for their 
 countrymen. This is, I think, expecting a little too much of diplomatic or 
 consular intervention. He further complained of the ' j^ersistent attitude of 
 contemptuous indifference displayed by Parliament towards all commercial 
 matters,' and of the absence of discussions upon questions affecting British 
 Empire and Trade in the Far East. If only my correspondent knew how 
 ignorant is the House of Commons of those subjects, and how perilous is its 
 interference when it begins to dabble in matters which it does not under- 
 stand, he would hardly deplore an indifference which is at least preferable to 
 partisanship or stupiditj-. Parliament never did much to help, and will 
 probably, before it ceases, have done a great deal to injure, the Eastern 
 Empire of Great Britain. 
 
 2d 
 
Lfi'l 
 
 418 THE PROSPECT 
 
 interests of these men^ who bear the heat and burden of 
 the day in foreign lands, and whose gains, if they are 
 their own, are also their country's, deserve a warmer 
 sympathy than they commonly receive. 
 
 As regards the Christian missions, I may sum up my 
 
 former argument. They are no monopoly either of the 
 
 Protestant Church or of the English people. 
 
 . ^^? ^^^ In Japan, in Korea, in China, in Tonffkinar, in 
 
 missions. f > > > & &>•' 
 
 Annam, in Sianti, Roman Catholic missionaries, 
 French or Spanish, but chiefly the former, have been long 
 established, have drawn around themselves native com- 
 munities amongst whom they reside, and have acquired 
 a numerical hold unquestionably greater than that of 
 their Protestant successors. Among these the English, 
 after the China Wars and the Treaties, took the lead. 
 But an even greater activity is now being displayed by 
 the Americans, who are flooding the Far East with their 
 emissaries, male and female, and are yearly pouring 
 thousands of pounds' worth of human labour into China 
 and Japan. The English missionaries appear on the 
 whole to be more carefully selected and to belong to 
 a superior type. The good done by these men, in the 
 secular aspect of their work, in the slow but sure spread 
 of education, in the diifusion of ungrudging charity, and 
 in the example of pure lives, cannot be gainsaid. On 
 the other hand, it is impossible to ignore the facts that 
 their mission is a source of political unrest and frequently 
 of international trouble ; that it is subversive of the 
 national institutions of the country in which they reside, 
 because, while inculcating the Christian virtue of self- 
 respect, it tends to destroy that respect for others which 
 is the foundation of civil society ; that the number of 
 converts is woefully disproportionate to the outlay in 
 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 419 
 
 money, brain power, and life ; and that, from whatever 
 
 cause, the missionaries as a class are rarely popular with 
 
 their own countrymen. Indeed, one of the most striking 
 
 phenomena of English-speaking society in the countries to 
 
 which I have referred is the absolute severance of its two 
 
 main component items, the missionaries and the merchants, 
 
 neither of whom think or speak over favourably of the 
 
 other, and who are rarely seen at each other's table. The 
 
 missionary is offended at what he regards as the mere f,n\\ 
 
 selfish quest of lucre ; the merchant sneers at work which 
 
 is apt to parade a very sanctimonious expression, and 
 
 sometimes results in nothing at all. I have come to the 
 
 conclusion that it is futile either to apportion the blame 
 
 between the two parties or to hope that any argument 
 
 can effect a reconciliation. There are, of course, many 
 
 cases where no such divergence exists, and where a 
 
 harmony of interest and intercourse prevails ; but I have 
 
 not found them sufficiently numerous to invalidate the 
 
 general proposition. What may be the future of missionary 
 
 effort it is impossible to predict ; but it would be a service 
 
 of international value could some means be devised, not of 
 
 arresting or diverting, but of controlling its operations, 
 
 which are at present as random as the winds of heaven 
 
 simultaneously let loose from the ^olus-bag of all the 
 
 Churches in Christendom. 
 
 Everywhere that I have been I have found English life 
 
 retaining its essential characteristics. The Englishman 
 
 expatriates himself without a sigh in the pursuit gj^ jj^j^ 
 
 of livelihood, adventure, health or duty. He is life in the 
 
 Fcir Enst. 
 too robust to be homesick, too busy to repine. 
 
 But he keeps up a constant and unbroken communication 
 
 with home, and is familiar with all that is passing there. 
 
 For Parliament, perhaps, he cai-es little, because the 
 
420 THE PROSPECT 
 
 ^ debates are over and forgotten long before they reach 
 him, and because with the bulk of the votes he has no 
 concern ; but for the national Flag he cares a great deal. 
 Loyalty is his passion ; and the toast of ' The Queen ' is 
 drunk with as boisterous a fervour in Far Kathay as at a 
 Unionist banquet in St. James's Hall. Mr. Gladstone 
 would not have been complimented had he been informed 
 of the result of a voluntary poll that was taken among 
 the readers of the principal newspapers, at the time of 
 the last General Election, in Yokohama, Hongkong, and 
 Singapore. In business matters the merchant works on, 
 looks forward, and saves for his decennial holiday ; but he 
 means to spend his declining years nowhere else thaix on 
 his native soil. In the meantime he sustains a perpetual 
 and innocent illusion by an importation of all the adjuncts, 
 and a repetition of most of the habits, of home life. 
 Magnificent club-houses afford a meeting gi'ound for tiffin 
 in the middle of the day, for billiards and smoking when 
 the day's work is over. Some of these institutions, as at 
 Shanghai, Hongkong, and Singapore, are as well furnished 
 with English newspapers and periodicals as any of the 
 palaces of Pall Mall. In his passion for games, which 
 keeps him healthiest of all the foreign settlers in the East, 
 while the German grows fat, and the Frenchman withers,^ 
 the Englishman plays lawif-tennis under a tropical sun ; he 
 has laid out golf links at Hongkong and Chefoo ; cricket 
 matches are as frequent and excite as keen an interest as 
 the doings of a county team at home ; nay, I have even 
 heard of football and' hockey at Singapore, within seventy 
 miles of the Equator. A i^^course must be constructed 
 outside every town where there is a sufficient settlement ; 
 the annual race meeting, in which the owner frequently 
 buys or breeds, trains, and rides his own ponies, is one of 
 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 421 
 
 the events of the year; and the winner of the Hongkong 
 
 or Shanghai ' Derby' enjoys a more than ephemeral renown. 
 
 On festive occasions dances reunite the sexes ; and, where 
 
 it is not too hot^ riding is a favourite recreation. 
 
 Throughout the Far East excellent and well-informed 
 
 newspapers are owned and edited by Englishinen ; and 
 
 among them The Japan Daily Mail, The Noiih 
 
 The Press. 
 China Daihj News, and the Straits Times, as well 
 
 as several others, would be a credit to the Press of any 
 European country. Their telegraphic information is scanty 
 and bad ; but that is the fault of the telegraphic agency 
 upon whom they one and all depend, and whose short- 
 comings are a byword throughout the East. If these 
 papers frequently attack the local representatives of British 
 government, it must be remembered that Englishmen like 
 to grumble, and that the Press is commonly the mouth- 
 piece of the non-official and mercantile community, who 
 enjoy picking a bone with the salaried servants of Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The domestic environments of life are not less reminis- 
 cent of the old countiy. The exterior of the house 
 conforms to climatic needs, and spreads itself 
 out in airy verandahs ; but the fm-niture is not ..?^^^ ^^ 
 seldom impoi'ted direct from home. The national 
 love for neatness and decorum appears in the private 
 grounds, the bunds, and public gardens of the cities where 
 the English are in the ascendant ; and, were every other 
 mark of British influence erased to-morrow, it would always 
 remain a marvel how from a scorching rock had been 
 evolved the Elysian graces of Hongkong. 
 
 Everywhere, too, I have found the Englishman enjoying 
 that reputation for integrity and superiority to chicanery, 
 corruption, or intrigue, which has given him his commanding 
 
422 THE PROSPECT 
 
 positioH in the world. The officials are of a higher type 
 
 than those by whom other Powers are represented, and are 
 
 frequently drawn from services specially organised 
 
 Jinglisn ^^^^ recruited. Nothing, indeed, is more strik- 
 
 character. ^' ' 
 
 ing in travel than the character and personality 
 of the men who are sustaining in positions of varied trust 
 the interests of Great Britain in far lands. The larger 
 atmosphere of life and the sense of responsibility seem to 
 free them from the pettinesses of a home existence that is 
 too apt to be consumed in party conflict, and to suggest 
 broader views of men and things. The same high tone 
 exists through the various strata of society and employment, 
 and the clerk behind the counter of the English bank will 
 be no less a gentleman both in birth and education than the 
 Governor in his palace or the Minister in his Legation. I 
 do not think that the same can be said of the Germans, or 
 of the French, or of the Dutch. Commerce has not yet 
 become popular among the upper classes of German society. 
 In France promotion is too frequently the reward of political 
 fidelity, of journalistic service, or of successful Chauvinism, 
 to admit of a continuous evolution of useful public servants. 
 How many of the blunders made by that people in Tong- 
 king have been due to the character of the men who in times 
 past have been appointed to positions of importance without 
 the faintest knowledge of the country or qualifications for 
 the post, it would be hard to conjecture. 
 
 Similarly, though our rivals and antagonists invariably 
 ascribe our political success and our widespread Empire to 
 
 a more than ordinary duplicity, I have not found 
 jj'^Y^ that this impression is anywhere shared by the 
 
 Eastern Powers with whom, by virtue of our 
 commanding commercial position and the multiplicity of 
 our interests^ we are brought into frequent, and sometimes 
 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 423 
 
 contentious, contact. On the contrary, it appears that 
 English Governments compose their disputes, settle their 
 boundaries, and conclude their treaties, with a greater 
 facility than other Powers, and that English consuls are 
 looked up to as the lea3iT^<i^eii by every section of the v 
 community in which they reside, and are frequently ap- 
 pealed to by others as arbiters in matters lying outside their 
 official ken. Though, too, we are credited by France with 
 being the most aggressive of peoples, this accusation does 
 not seem to tally with the voluntary evacuation of Port 
 Hamilton, in deference to the susceptibilities of China and 
 Korea, noi' with our conduct in disposing of the vast heritage 
 that came into our hands upon the annexation of Upper 
 Burma, nor with our policy during the recent war, in which 
 we seem to have been the only interested party that secured 
 no pickings from the bone ; whilst the charge comes with 
 ill grace from a people who have recently perpetrated the 
 indefensible outrage upon Siam. Similarly, though it 
 frequently appeared in print, particularly in America, that V^ 
 Great Britain alone stood in the way of Treaty Revision iy''^ | 
 Japan, the facts which I have elsewhere displayed and the 
 signature of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty in July 1894, will 
 have shown the baselessness of the insinuation. 
 
 There are certain points in connection with our diplomatic 
 representation in the Far East to which it may not be out 
 of place to call attention. The Foreign Office has ^ . . , 
 sometimes appeared to regard certain of these representa- 
 posts as of only secondary importance, and as 
 refuges for failures elsewhere, or at least for persons posses- 
 sing no peculiar qualifications. To my mind, there are few 
 more important appointments than those to the Courts of 
 Japan and of China, and, in a somewhat less degree, of 
 Siam ; and yet it has in times past occurred that gentlemen 
 
424 THE PROSPECT 
 
 have been appointed to these posts who have no personal 
 acquaintance with the East or knowledge of the problem 
 with which they may require to deal. The reception 
 accorded to Sir N. O' Conor, on his nomination to the British 
 Legation at Peking in 1S92, sufficiently indicated the re- 
 joicing of the British community in the Far East at the 
 appointment of a man who really knew both the country to 
 which he was accredited and the business which he would have 
 to transact. There appears to be still an immense opening 
 in the Far East for a diplomatic career. We maintain at 
 Tokio, at Peking, and at Bangkok, a number of so-called 
 (^udent Interpreters, who, after passing a preliminary ex- 
 amination at home, go out to the East, undergo a steady 
 ^ (eburse of instruction in the language of the country in which 
 ithey will pass so much of their lives, and thence are drafted 
 'into the Consular Service. From their ranks have sprung 
 such men as the late Sir Harry Parkes, whose name is as 
 familiar a household word in Japan and in China as is that 
 of his still-surviving namesake in Australia ; Sir. E. Satow, 
 the present British Minister at Tokio ; and others whose 
 names will occur to the memory. There is just as great 
 scope for the production of such men, and even greater need 
 for their services now than in bygone days. The Far East 
 demands a knowledge that can only be acquired after years, 
 and a statesmanship that must have been in part nurtured 
 in a local atmosphere. The great position attained by the 
 late Sir William White at Constantinople, starting from a 
 similar origin, may be emulated in countries where also 
 there is an Eastern Question not much less important than 
 the control of the Bosphorus or the ownership of St. Sophia. 
 I would fain hope that among the rising generation may 
 be found some who will be worthy heirs of these great 
 traditions. 
 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 425 
 
 In another respect the Foreign Office appears to me to 
 have neglected an elementary part of diplomatic education^ 
 
 and an indispensable adjunct to the smooth ^ 
 
 ^ Suggested 
 
 working of the diplomatic machine. One would libraries of 
 surely expect to find in the British Legation in ^gfg"gjj(,g 
 every foreign country, most of all in the East, a 
 compact, well-chosen, and serviceable library of the best 
 books relating to the country in question, and the political 
 problems which it is likely to suggest. Such libi'aries were 
 in part collected many years ago. I found the fragments 
 of such a one at Peking, just as I remember routing out 
 from a dusty closet the debris of another at Teheran. At 
 Meshed I could not discover a single publication on the 
 Afghan Frontier Question. Similarly, at Bangkok there 
 was not one volume relating to the frontier between Burma, 
 Siam, and China, though a small but excellent literature 
 exists upon the subject, and might at any moment be re- 
 quired for official reference. My impression is that at Tokio 
 there is a similar absence. What is wanted in each case is, 
 not a library of general reference, but a collection of authori- 
 tative works, within a limited range, to which recourse can 
 be had at any moment. As soon as the nucleus of such a 
 collection had been formed, a few pounds a year would 
 amply suffice for the necessary increment, which should 
 be carefully selected and sent out from home. The 
 India Office has sometimes extended such a patronage to 
 useful publications, purchasing a certain number of copies, 
 and distributing them among the localities concerned ; but 
 I have never heard of the Foreign Office exercising a 
 similarly wise generosity. 
 
 Other diplomatic anomalies, easily removable, if deemed 
 of sufficient importance, have come under my notice while 
 travelling in the Far East. At Peking it might be well 
 
426 THE PROSPECT 
 
 were the diplomatic staff" of Great Britain to include an 
 
 Indian officer or aUache, so many are the purely Indian 
 
 questions that come up for discussion with the 
 
 ip oma ic 'j'g^ijjp-li Yamen, upon which there is no one on 
 
 anomalies. ° ' ^ 
 
 the spot to throw the necessary light. An even 
 greater desideratum is the appointment of a commercial 
 attache (similar to one or two analogous officials in Europe), 
 who should travel about from post to post in the Far East, 
 and visit the inland districts ; and who should report upon 
 the changing taste and style of the native markets and upon 
 the economic products of the country, as well as collect any 
 information that might be of service to British merchants. 
 In days of such acute competition, when the representatives 
 of foreign Powers I'esort to a more than diplomatic strategy 
 in the interests of their countrymen, no legitimate step 
 should be neglected for the protection and extension of 
 British trade. To the uninstructed eye it further seems a 
 strange anomaly that whilst Japan, China, and Siam are 
 under the Foreign Office, Hongkong, which all but touches 
 the Chinese mainland, and the Straits Settlements, which 
 actually touch Siam, should be under the Colonial Office ; 
 while Burma again, which touches both Siam and China, is 
 under the India Office. Perhaps some day we shall arrive at 
 a more rational concentration of interests, possibly even, as 
 has been suggested, at the creation of a new department 
 which shall deal with the British affairs of the Asiatic con- 
 tinent. 
 
 Great as is the position which I have depicted as being 
 Future of enjoyed by Great Britain in the Far East, I believe 
 
 Great that it will be greater still. The improvement 
 
 Britain 
 
 in the of existing and the creation of new means of 
 
 ^^ ■ communication are rapidly developing a solid- 
 arity between the East and the West which our grand- 
 
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE FAR EAST 427 
 
 parents would have deemed impossible. Fusion and not 
 disintegration will be the keynote of the progress of the 
 coming century. There remain now but few countries to 
 which access has not already been gained ; though there are 
 several whose political stability is precarious^ or whose politi- 
 cal boundaries are not determined. As soon, however, as 
 fixity can be predicated of either of these departments — 
 much more, if of both— commercial exploitation will begin. 
 For this object British energy, British capital, and British 
 experience will be I'equired. The Power which has been 
 longest in the field, which enjoys the best geographical 
 position for the distribution of its commerce, or the dissemi- 
 nation of its influence, and which can command the largest 
 resources, must infallibly triumph in any such competition. 
 Our position in India gives us the certain command of the 
 main land-routes and railroads that will lay open the Far 
 East in the not distant future. Our position upon the ocean, 
 if duly safeguarded, should assure to us the control of the 
 maritime highway.^ Furthermore, the country which has 
 scattered millions in propping up the rotten Republics of 
 
 1 I iutrodiice this qualification because the naval strength of Great Britain 
 in the Far East, i.e. in the waters between Singaf)ore and Vladivostok, when 
 compared ^\^th the combined fleets of France and Russia, can scarcely be said 
 to possess that incontestable predominance without which security cannot be 
 predicated. In A^jii l 1Sfl4 the British squadron in the Far East consisted of 
 2 ironclads (aggregating U.^150 tons), 20 unarnioured vessels, comprising 7 
 cruisers and 7 gunboats ; and 6 torpedo-boats (aggregating 29,850 tons) ; or a 
 total tonnage of 41,000, with a complement of 3400 men. At the same 
 period th£jFrench fleet consisted of S; ironclads (6350 tons), 1 cruiser, and 20 
 smaller vessels, mainlj^ gun-boats, as well as 14 river steamers ; with a total 
 tonnage of 14,370, or, excluding the river-steamers, 12,050, and a complement 
 of 2580 men. The Russian squadron consisted of .11 vessels, viz. 1 cruiser, 
 5 sloops, and 5 gunboats, with a total tonnage of 15,510, and a complement 
 of 1650 men. Nor, in speaking of the Russian forces, mvist sight be lost of / 
 the Dobra Volna Flot, or Volunteer Fleet, the princijjal cruisers of which ; 
 can carry from 1500 to 2000 troops, and are the swiftest vessels east of; 
 Suez. In peace they are used to transport soldiers and stores to Vladivostok. | 
 What they would do in war it might he premature to forecast. 
 
428 THE PROSPECT 
 
 the New World may very well repay its age-long debt to 
 the Old by a similar, even if a tardy, service. 
 
 Above all will this task be facilitated by the increasing 
 diffusion of the English tongue. Already spoken in every 
 _,, store from Yokohama to Rangoon ; already taught 
 
 English in the niilitary and naval colleges of China, and 
 in the schools of Japan and of Siam ; already 
 employed in the telegraphic services of Japan, China, and 
 I^orea, and stamped upon the silver coins that issue from 
 the mints of Osaka and Canton ; already used by Chinamen 
 themselves as a means of communication between subjects 
 from different provinces of their mighty Empire — it is des- 
 tined with absolute certainty to be the language of the Far 
 East. Its sound will go out into all lands, and its words 
 unto the ends of the world. That this splendid future is no 
 idle dream of fancy, but is capable of realisation at no in- 
 definite period, none who have travelled widely in Eastern 
 Asia will doubt. Moral failure alone can shatter the pro- 
 spect that awaits this country in the impending task of 
 regeneration. . '.^ 
 
 We sailed wherever ship could sail, 
 
 founded many a mighty State ; 
 'ray Go^our greatness may not fail 
 
 irough craveiT fears of being great ! 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 I. Treaty of Shimonoseki. (Signed, April 17, 1895; ratified 
 at Chef 00, May 8, 1895.) 
 
 Article I. — China recognises definitively the full and complete 
 independence and autonomy of Korea, and in consequence the pay- 
 ment of tribute and the performance of ceremonies and formalities 
 by Korea to China in derogation of such independence and auto- 
 nomy, shall wholly cease for the future. 
 
 Article II. — China cedes to Japan in perpetuity and full sove- 
 reignty the following territories together with all fortifications, 
 arsenals, and public projjerty thereon : — 
 
 («) The southern portion of the province of Feng-Tien within 
 the following boundaries : — 
 
 The line of demarcation begins at the mouth of the River Yalu 
 and ascends that stream to the mouth of the River Anping ; from 
 thence the line runs to Feng Huang ; from thence to Haicheng, 
 from thence to Ying Kow, forming a line which describes the 
 southern portion of tlie territory. The places above named are 
 included in the ceded territor)^ When the line reaches the River 
 Liao at Ying Kow it follows the course of that stream to its mouth, 
 where it terminates. The mid-channel of the River Liao shall be 
 taken as the line of demarcation. 
 
 This cession also includes all islands appertaining or belonging to 
 the province of Feng-Tien situated in the eastern portion of the 
 Bay of Liao-Tung and in the northern part of tlie Yellow Sea. 
 
 (6) The Island of Formosa, together with all islands appertain- 
 ing to the said Island of Formosa. 
 
 (c) The Pescadores Group, that is to say, all islands lying 
 between the 119th and 12tli degrees of longitude east of Greenwich 
 and the 23rd and 240th degrees of north latitude. 
 
 429 
 
430 APPENDIX 
 
 Article III. — The alignments of the frontiers described in the 
 preceding Article^ and shown on the map, shall be subject to verifi- 
 cation and demarcation on the spot by a Joint Commission of 
 Delimitation, consisting of two or more Japanese and two or more 
 Chinese Delegates to be appointed immediately after the exchange 
 of the ratifications of this Act. In case the boundaries laid down 
 in this Act are found to be defective at any point, either on account 
 of topography or in consideration of good administration, it shall 
 also be the duty of the Delimitation Commission to rectify the same. 
 
 The Delimitation Commission will enter upon its duties as soon 
 as possible, and will bring its labours to a conclusion within the 
 period of one year after appointment. 
 
 The alignments laid down in this Act shall, however, he main- 
 tained until the rectifications of the Delimitation Commission, if any 
 are made, shall have received the appro\'al of the Governments of 
 Japan and China. 
 
 Article IV. ^ — China agrees to pay to Japan as a war indemnity 
 the sum of 200,000,000 Kuping Taels. The said sum to be paid in 
 eight instalments. The first instalment of 50,000,000 taels to be 
 paid within six months, and the second instalment of 50,000,000 
 taels to be paid within twelve months after the exchange of the 
 ratifications of this Act. The remaining sum to be paid in six equal 
 annual instalments as follows : The first of such equal annual instal- 
 ments to be paid within two years ; the second within three years ; 
 the third within four years ; the fourth within five years ; the fifth 
 within six years, and the sixth within se^'en years, after the 
 exchange of the ratifications of this Act. Interest at the rate of 
 5 per centum per annum shall begin to run on all unpaid portions 
 of the said indemnity from the date the first instalment falls due. 
 
 China, however, shall have the right to pay by anticipation at 
 any time any or all of said instalments. In case the whole amount 
 of said indemnity is paid within three years after the exchange of 
 ratifications of the present Act, all interest shall be waived and the 
 interest for two years and a half or for any less period if then 
 already paid shall be included as a part of the principal amount of 
 tlie indemnity. 
 
 Article V. — The inhabitants of the territories ceded to Japan, 
 who wish to take up their residence outside tlie ceded districts, 
 shall be at liberty to sell their real property and retire. For tliis 
 purpose a period of two years from the date of the excliange of the 
 ratifications of the present Act, shall be granted. At the expiration 
 
TREATY OF SHIMONOSEKI 431 
 
 of that period, those of the inhahitaiits who sliall not have left such 
 territories shall, at the option of Japan, be deemed to be Japanese 
 subjects. 
 
 Each of the two Governments shall, immediately upon the 
 exchange of the ratifications of the present Act, send one or more 
 Commissioners to Formosa to eifect a final transfer of that Province, 
 and within tlie space of two months after the exchange of the 
 ratifications of this Act such transfer shall be completed. 
 
 Article VI. — All treaties between Japan and China having come 
 to an end in consequence of war, China engages immediately upon 
 the exchange of the ratifications of this Act, to appoint Plenipoten- 
 tiaries to conclude, with the Japanese Plenipotentiaries, a Treaty of 
 Commerce and Navigation and a Con^'ention to regulate Frontier 
 Intercourse and Trade. The Treaties, Conventions and Regulations 
 now subsisting between China and European Powers shall serve as 
 a basis for the said Treaty and Convention between Japan and 
 China. From the date of the exchange of the ratifications of this 
 Act until the said Treaty and Convention are brought into actual 
 operation, the Japanese Government, its officials, commerce, 
 navigations, frontier intercourse and trade, industries, ships and 
 subjects, shall, in every respect, be accorded by China most favoured 
 nation treatment. 
 
 China makes in addition the following concessions, to take eifect 
 six months after the date of the present Act : — 
 
 1st. — The following cities, towns, and ports, in addition to those 
 already opened, shall be opened to the trade, residence, industries, 
 and manufactures of Japanese subjects, under the same conditions 
 and with the same privileges and facilities as exist at tlie present 
 open cities, towns, and ports of China : 
 
 1. Shashih, in the Province of Hupeh. 
 
 2. Chung King, in the Province of Szechuan. 
 
 3. Suchow, in the Province of Kiang Su. 
 
 4. Hangchow, in the Province of Chekiang. 
 
 Tlie Japanese Government shall have the right to station Consuls 
 at any or all of the above-named places. 
 
 2nd. Steam navigation for vessels under the Japanese flag for 
 the conveyance of passengers and cargo, shall be extended to the 
 following places : 
 
 1. On the Upper Yangtsze River, from Ichang to Cluing King. 
 
 2. On the Woosung River and the Canal, from Shanghai to 
 Suchow and Hanffchow. 
 
432 APPENDIX 
 
 The Rules and Regulations which now govern the navigation of 
 the inland waters of China by foreign vessels shall^ so far as appli- 
 cable, be enforced in respect of the above-named routes, until new 
 Rules and Regulations are conjointly agreed to. 
 
 3rd. Japanese subjects purchasing goods or produce in the 
 interior of (^hina or transporting imported merchandise into the 
 interior of Chiiaa, shall have the right temporarily to rent or hire 
 warehouses for the storage of the articles so purchased or trans- 
 ported without the payment of any taxes or exactions whatever. 
 
 4th. Japanese subjects shall be free to engage in all kinds of 
 manufacturing industries in all the open cities, towns, and ports of 
 China, and shall be at liberty to import into China all kinds of 
 machinery, paying only the stipulated import duties thereon. 
 
 All articles manufactured by Japanese subjects in China shall, in 
 respect of inland transit and internal taxes, duties, charges, and 
 exactions of all kinds, and also in respect of warehousing and 
 storage facilities in the interior of China, stand upon the same foot- 
 ing and enjoy the same privileges and exemptions as merchandise 
 imported by Japanese subjects into China. 
 
 In the event additional Rules and Regulations are necessary in 
 connection with these concessions, they shall be embodied in the 
 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation provided for by this Article. 
 
 Article VIL — Subject to the provisions of the next succeeding 
 Article, the evacuation of China by the armies of Japan shall be 
 completely eifected within three months after the exchange of the 
 ratifications of the present Act. 
 
 Article VIII. — As a guarantee of the faithful performance of 
 the stipulations of this Act, China consents to the temporary 
 occupation by the military forces of Japan, of Wei Hai Wei, in the 
 Province of Shantung. 
 
 Upon the payment of the first two instalments of the war indem- 
 nity herein stipulated for and the exchange of the ratifications of 
 the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, said place shall be 
 evacuated by the Japanese forces, provided the Chinese Govern- 
 ment consents to pledge, under suitable and sufficient arrangements, 
 the Customs Revenue of China as security for the payment of the 
 final instalment of said indemnity. 
 
 It is, however, expressly understood that no such evacuation 
 shall take place until after the exchange of the ratifications of the 
 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation. 
 
TREATY OF SHIMONOSEKI 433 
 
 Article IX. — Immediately upon the exchange of the ratifications 
 of this Act, all jjrisonei-s of war then held shall be restored, and 
 China undertakes not to ill-treat or punish prisoners of war so 
 restored to her by Japan. China also engages to at once release all 
 Japanese subjects accused of being military spies or charged with 
 any other military offences. China further engages not to jjunish 
 in any manner, nor to allow to be punished, those Chinese subjects 
 who have in any manner been compromised in their relations with 
 the Jajjanese army during the war. 
 
 Article X. — All offensive military operations shall cease upon 
 the exchange of the ratifications of this Act. 
 
 Article XI. — The present Act shall be ratified by their Majes- 
 ties the Emperor of Japan and the Emperor of China, and the 
 ratifications shall be exchanged at Chefoo, on the 8th day of the 
 5th month of the 28th year of Meiji, corresponding to 14th day of 
 the 4th month of the 21st year of Kuang Hsii. 
 
 In witness whereof, the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed 
 the same and have afifixed thereto the seal of their arms. 
 
 Done at Shimonoseki, in duplicate, this I7th day of the 4th 
 month of the 28th year of Meiji, corresponding to 23rd day of the 
 3rd month of the 21st year of Kuang Hsii. 
 
 COUNT ITO HIROBUML 
 VISCOUNT MUTSU MUNEMITSU. 
 LI HUNG-CHANG. 
 LI CHING-FONG. 
 
 Separate Articles. 
 
 Article I. — The Japanese Military Forces which are, under 
 Article viil of the Treaty of Peace signed this day, to temporarily 
 occujjy Wei Hai Wei, shall not exceed one Brigade, and from the 
 date of the exchange of the ratifications of the said Treaty of Peace, 
 China shall pay annually one-fourth of the amount of the 
 expenses of such temporary occupation, that is to say, at the rate of 
 500,000 Kuping Taels per annum. 
 
 Article II. — ^The territory temporarily occupied at Wei Hai Wei 
 shall comprise the Island of Liu Kung and a belt of land 5 Japanese 
 ri wide along the entire coast-line of the Bay of Wei Hai Wei. 
 
 No Chinese Troops shall be permitted to approach or occupy any 
 places within a zone 5 Japanese ri wide beyond the boundaries of 
 the occupied territory. 
 
 2e 
 
434 APPENDIX 
 
 Article III. — The Civil Administration of the occupied territory 
 shall remain in the hands of the Chinese Authorities. But such 
 Authorities shall at all times be obliged to conform to the orders 
 which the Japanese Army of occupation may deem it necessary to 
 give in the interest of the healthy maintenance^ safety^ distribution 
 or discipline of the Troops. 
 
 All military offences committed within the occupied territory 
 shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the Japanese Military 
 Authorities. 
 
 The foregoing Separate Articles shall have the same force, value, 
 and effect as if they had been word for word inserted in the Treaty 
 of Peace signed this day. 
 
 In witness whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed 
 the same and have affixed thereto the seal of their arms. 
 
 Done at Shimonoseki, in duplicate, this 17th day of the 4th 
 month of the 28th year of Meiji, corresponding to the 21st year of 
 Kuang Hsii. 
 
 COUNT ITO HIROBUMI. 
 VISCOUNT MUTSU MUNEMITSU. 
 LI HUNG-CHANG. 
 
 II. — Imperial Rescript. {May 10, 1895.) 
 
 We recently complied with the request of China, and in conse- 
 quence appointed Plenipotentiaries and caused them to confer with 
 the Plenipotentiaries appointed by China and to conclude a Treaty 
 of Peace between the two Empires. 
 
 Since then the Governments of their Majesties the Emperors of 
 Russia and Germany and of the Republic of France have united in 
 a recommendation to our Government not to permanently possess 
 the Peninsula of Feng-Tien, our newly-acquired territory, on the 
 ground that such permanent possession would be detrimental to the 
 lasting peace of the Orient. 
 
 Devoted as we unalterably are and ever have been to the princi- 
 ples of peace, we were constrained to take up arms against China 
 for no other reason than our desire to secure for the Orient an en- 
 during peace. 
 
 Now, the friendly recommendation of the three Powers was 
 equally prompted by the same desire. Consulting, therefore, the 
 best interests of peace and animated by a desire not to bring upon 
 our people added hardship or to impede the progress of national 
 
TREATY OF SHIMONOSEKI 435 
 
 destiny by creating new complications and thereby making the 
 situation difficult and retarding the restoration of peace, we do not 
 hesitate to accept such recommendation. 
 
 By concluding the Treaty of Peace China has already shown her 
 sincei'ity of regret for the violation of her engagements, and thereby 
 the justice of our cause has been proclaimed to the world. 
 
 Under the circumstances, we can find nothing to impair the 
 honour and dignity of our Empire if we now yield to the dictates of 
 magnanimity and, taking into consideration the general situation, 
 accept the advice of the friendly Powers. 
 
 Accordingly we have commanded our Government, and have 
 caused them to reply to the three Powers in the above sense. 
 
 Regarding the arrangements by which we will renounce the 
 permanent possession of the Peninsula, we have specially commanded 
 our Government that the necessary measures shall be made the 
 subject of future negotiations and adjustment with the Government 
 of China. 
 
 Now, the exchange of i-atifications of the Treaty of Peace has 
 already been effected ; the friendly relations between the two 
 Empires have been re-established, and cordial relations with all 
 other Powers are also strengthened. 
 
 We therefore command our subjects to respect our will; to take 
 into careful consideration the general situation ; to be circumspect 
 in all things ; to avoid erroneous tendencies ; and not to impair or 
 thwart the high aspirations of our Empire. 
 
 [Imperial Sign Manual]. 
 (Countersigned by all Ministers of State). 
 
INDEX 
 
 Addresses to the Throne, Japanese, 
 
 27, 32-3» 35-6, 62-3. 
 Alcock, Sir R., 210 n. 
 Americans in Japan, 46. 
 in Korea, 135, 146, 163, 169, 
 
 176, 202, 215. 
 Amherst, Lord, 268. 
 Amur, The, 208, 316, 334. 
 Ancestor Worship in China, 240, 
 
 287-8, 344. 
 
 in Korea, 109, 186. 
 
 Aoki, Viscount, 59. 
 
 Aomori, Rail to, 13. 
 
 Army, v. sub Names of Countries. 
 
 Arthur, Port, v. Port Arthur. 
 
 Asia, Fascination of, 1-6; Influence 
 
 on Europe of, 2 ; d uality of, 
 
 3 ; Contrasts of, 3-4. 
 Athletics, English, 420. 
 Audience Question at Peking, The, 
 
 264-75. 
 
 Barrow, Colonel E. G., 39. 
 Beacons in Korea, 122. 
 Bell, John, 267 «. 
 
 Colonel Mark, 278, 330. 
 
 Bellonet, M. de, 2or. 
 Black Flags, The, 324. 
 Brandt, Herr von, 272-3. 
 ' Braves, The,' 323. 
 Brinkley, Captain, 17. 
 Broughton Bay, 92. 
 Broughton, Captain W. R., 92 n. 
 Buddha, i, 352. 
 
 Buddhism in China, 343-58. 
 — - — • in Japan, 49. 
 
 in Korea, v. sub Monks ; and 
 
 Korean Religion. 
 
 Campbell, C. W., 88, 100 11, 106. 
 Canton, 282, 302, 321, 332. 
 Carles, W. R., 88, 99 n. 
 Cesarevitch in China, The, 272, 277. 
 Chang An Sa, iii. 
 Chang Chih Tung, Viceroy, 318. 
 Chefoo Convention, The, 223. 
 Chemulpo, 89, 93-4, I49) 168, 172,^ 
 
 173, 175-6, 200. 
 Cheng-tu Massacres, 304. 
 Chia Ching, Emperor, 269. 
 China, Collapse of, 364-9. 
 
 The Emperor of, 223, 231, 233,. 
 
 237-8, 242-6, 272, 348. 
 
 — — The Empress Dowager of, 238,. 
 
 241, 256, 271, 315, 317. 
 Future of, 320, 340-2, 395, 396- 
 
 412. 
 
 Results of the War on, 369. 
 
 Chinese Administration, 208, 223 ii^ 
 
 261, 282, 338-9, 407- 
 
 Agriculture, 399, 403. 
 
 Army, 321-31, 364, 405. 
 
 Awakening, 311-42. 
 
 Character, 221-2, 301, 336, 341, 
 
 397, 407- 
 
 Colonists, 395-7 401-4. 
 
 Customs Service, 178-9) 206, 276. 
 
 Foreign Policy, 197-207, 264, 
 
 275-83- 
 
438 
 
 PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 Chinese Horses, 221. 
 
 in Japan, 66. 
 
 Inns, 221. 
 
 as Mercenaries, 334, 406 n. 
 
 Minerals, 319. 
 
 Navy, 331-4- 
 
 Newspapers, 335, 336 n. 
 
 Officialism, 338-9, 366, 373. 
 
 Population, 229, 232, 399, 411. 
 
 Railways, 277, 314-20. 
 
 Relations with the Powers, 260- 
 
 83. 
 Religion, 246, 250, 288. 
 
 Secret Societies, 403. 
 
 ■ Scenery, 227-8. 
 
 Trade, 281, 336. 
 
 ■ Village Life, 228. 
 
 Women, 242. 
 
 Ching, Prince, 262. 
 
 Chinnampo, 168 n. 
 
 Chow Han, 304. 
 
 Christianity in China, 283-310. 
 
 — — in Japan, 49-50. 
 
 Korea, 136, 142, 148, 288 ; and 
 
 V. sub Missionaries. 
 Chun Chi Chu, The, 223 «. 
 Chun, Prince, 223 n, 239. 
 Clan Government in Japan, 23, 30-1. 
 Clepsydra at Peking, 248. 
 Climate of the Far East, 8, and v. 
 
 sub Names of Countries. 
 Coal Mines in China, 314, 319, 337, 
 
 338- 
 
 Japan, 44. 
 
 Korea, i8r. 
 
 Codes, Japanese, 59, 61-2, 67. 
 Commerce, v. siih Trade. 
 Confucianism in China, 249, 288, 344^. 
 
 Korea, 137, 150. 
 
 Cremation in China and Japan, 357. 
 
 Dallet, Pere, 87, 96 n, 154 «, 19872. 
 Daveluy, Eveque, 96 n. 
 Diamond Mountains, The, 102. 
 
 Diet, Japanese, v. sub Japanese. 
 
 Dockyards, Chinese, 332. 
 
 Douglas, Professor R. K., 223 n, 
 
 261 71. 
 
 Du Halde, 229. 
 Dutch in Korea, 87, 97. 
 
 East, The, Books on, 4, 87-8, 305 n, 
 
 425- 
 
 The Far, Idiosyncrasies of, 7> 221. 
 
 Destinies of, 390-412. 
 
 East India Company, The, 6 n, 168 w, 
 178 n. 
 
 Elections, Japanese, v. Diet. 
 
 Elgin, Earl of, 53, 253, 293. 
 
 Emperor of China, v. sub China. 
 
 of Japan, v. i-2<^ Japan. 
 
 England in the East, Early appear- 
 ance of, 6 ; Importance of, 68 ; 
 Russian interests and, 213-4, 275- 
 83, 413; Japan and, 215, 413, 
 423 ; China and, 210, 214, 225, 
 264, 275-83, 414 ; France and, 
 414; Power of, 414; Diplomacy 
 of, 422 ; Representatives of, 423-4, 
 426 ; Future of, 426-8 ; Naval 
 strength of, 427 u. 
 
 English in the Far East, The, 68, 417- 
 22; Character of, 421-2. 
 
 Language in the Far East, The, 
 
 428. 
 
 Enomoto, Viscount, 61. 
 
 Extra-territoriality in Japan, 53. 
 
 in Korea, 195 n. 
 
 Family Ties, Strength of Chinese, 
 
 240, 346, 351. 
 Fengshui, The, 233, 302, 317. 
 Feudalism in Japan, 14, 18, 40, 90, 
 
 392. 
 Foreigners in China, v. Missionaries, 
 Treaty Ports, etc. 
 
INDEX 
 
 439 
 
 Foreigners in Japan, 28, 45-6, 52 n, 
 53. 56. 59-60, 64-S, 67, 69-81. 
 
 in Korea, 87, 97 n, 126, 169-70. 
 
 Formosa, 3, 191, 333, 338, 408. 
 
 France in the Far East, 9, 43, 215, 
 279, 414, 416. 
 
 Franco-Chinese War (1884), The, 
 210, 319, 321, 328-9, 333. 
 
 Frazer, J. G. , 154. 
 
 French in China, 279, 292, 294-95. 
 
 in Korea, 122, 184, 191, 215. 
 
 in Siam, 423. 
 
 Fusan, 89, 90, 189, 212. 
 
 Gardner, C. T., 305. 
 
 Gensan, 88, 89, 90, 92, loi, iii, 
 
 168. 
 Geo Mun, The, 139. 
 Germans in Korea, 169, 170, 215. 
 
 in China, 322. 
 
 Ginse7tg, 168, 179, 199. 
 
 Gold in Korea, 181 -2. 
 
 Gordon, General C. G., 223, 329, 
 
 334- 
 Granville, Earl, 214 ;;. 
 Gray, Archdeacon, 350 71. 
 ' Great Japan Union, The, ' 28, 64. 
 Griffis, W. E., 88, 96, 148, 154 n. 
 Grimaldi, 229 11. 
 Groot, Dr. de, 402 ;/. 
 
 H 
 
 Hakodate, 52 n. 
 
 Hamel, Hendrik, 87 n, 97 n, 105, 
 
 108, 118, 141, 160, 198. 
 Ham-heung, 105, 113. 
 Hamilton v. Port Hamilton. 
 Han River, 93, 125, 134, 168, 175, 
 
 202. 
 Hanabusa, 149, 191. 
 Hankow, 318, 336. 
 Hanneken, Captain von, 327. 
 Hara Kiri, 41. 
 
 Hart, Sir Robert, 179, 276, 
 
 Hideyoshi, 86-7, 90, 190. 
 
 Hillier, W. C, 159. 
 
 Hongkong, 313, 317, 336, 395, 
 
 420-21. 
 Hong Sal Mun, The, 138. 
 Hope, Sir J., 210. 
 House of Representatives in Japan, 
 
 V. sub Japanese Diet. 
 Hsien Feng, Emperor, 238, 270. 
 
 I 
 
 Ieyasu, 30-1. 
 
 Ignatieff, General, 208 ;/. 
 
 Imbert, Msgr., 183. 
 
 Imperial Rescripts, Japanese, 26, 28. 
 
 India, Importance of, 8-9, 414. 
 
 Inouye, Count, 21, 22 «, 57, 375, 
 381-82. 
 
 Intermarriage of Dominant and Sub- 
 dued Races, 404. 
 
 Islam, Conservatism of, 8. 
 
 Ito, Count, 21-3, 27, 29, 33, 36, 62, 
 68, 196. 
 
 Iwakura, 191. 
 
 lyemitsu, 190. 
 
 Japan Daily Mail, The, 17, 421. 
 Japan, Democracy in, 17, 30, 32. 
 
 Effect of the War upon, 381. 
 
 Emperor of, 26, 30, 33-5. 
 
 Failure in Korea of, 374-84. 
 
 Feudalism in, 14, 18, 40, 90. 
 
 Future of, 18, 30, 31, 386-9, 
 
 391-4, 412. 
 
 Growth of, 13-15, 38, 54. 
 
 Newspapers in, 17. 
 
 Passports in, 80. 
 
 Railways in, 13. 
 
 Revolution in. The, 24, 30. 
 
 Japanese Administration, 24, 30, 32-7. 
 
 Army, 14, 39-41, 364. 
 
 Character, 45-8, 194, 196, 412. 
 
44-0 
 
 PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 Japanese Clans, 30. 
 
 Codes, 59, 61-2, 67. 
 
 Constitution, 15, 20, 26, 36, 37, 
 
 58. 
 Constitution for Korea, 374-9. 
 
 Diet, 15-19, 20, 24-9, 32 n, 
 
 35-7, 58-9, 61-3. 
 
 Electoral Qualifications, 15 n, 
 
 19. 
 
 ■ Finances, 23, 25-6, 42. 
 
 ■ Imports, 43-4, 387. 
 
 Land-tax, 24, 55. 
 
 Law and Law Courts, 14, 56, 
 
 60. 
 
 Losses in War, 365. 
 
 Manufactures, 43-4. 
 
 — — - Minerals, 44. 
 
 Ministers, 16, 21, 35. 
 
 National Debt, 42. 
 
 Navy, 14, 30, 31, 38-9. 
 
 Religions, 49. 
 
 ■ Reasons for War with China, 
 
 362-3. 
 — ■ — ■ Salaries, 17, 25. 
 
 • Societies, 28, 64. 
 
 Trade, 43, 53, 55, 177, 386-9. 
 
 Women, 95. 
 
 Jardine, Matheson & Co., Messrs., 
 
 417. 
 Jehol, 256, 268. 
 Jesuits in China, 247, 255, 266. 
 Jinghiz, Khan, 2, 230 n. 
 Jinsen or Inchiun, 93 n. 
 Jiyuto Party, The, 25. 
 
 K 
 
 Kaishinto Party, The, 25. 
 Kang Hsi, Emperor, 244, 247. 
 Kashgar, 328, 397, 400, 406. 
 Keum Kang San, 102, 106, iii. 
 Kien Lung, Emperor, 244, 249, 251, 
 
 253> 255, 267-8, 275. 
 Kim Ok Kiun, 149 jt. 
 Kioto, 13, 49. 
 
 Kirin, 251, 315, 321, 323. 
 Klaproth, 229. 
 Kobe, 13, 52 ;«. 
 Korea, 85-217. 
 
 Area of, 96. 
 
 British policy towards, 213-215. 
 
 -Chinese in, 93, 97, 115, 118-9, 
 
 126, 174, 177, 197, 208, 217. 
 Chinese Resident in, 161, 169, 
 
 175, 207. 
 Chinese Suzerainty of, 86, 120, 
 
 139, 149, 161, 189, 190, 192, 189- 
 
 207. 
 
 Climate of, 90, 98, 109. 
 
 Crown Prince of, 143, 148, 154, 
 
 159- 
 
 ■ Effects of the Chino-Japanese 
 
 War on, 372. 
 • Europeans in, 87-8, 97 7t, 169- 
 
 70. 
 
 Future of, 174, 176, 182, 391. 
 
 Independence of, 201-2, 203, 
 
 2i4-5> 373-6. 
 Japanese policy towards, 48, 
 
 139, 150, 152, 190-7, 363. 381-4. 
 in, 22 n, 86, 90, 91, 92, 
 
 139, 149, 152, 167, 172, 176, 177, 
 
 178, 187, 189, 190, 192, 194. 
 King of, 85, 109, 140-1, 147- 
 
 52, 158-9, 167, 203, 204, 375. 
 
 Name of, 85. 
 
 Obstacles to the advance of, 
 
 98, 168, 174, 176. 
 Queen of, 148, 151, 153-4, 
 
 379-80. 
 
 Rivers of, 175. 
 
 Russia and, 92, 154, 176, 178, 
 
 208-13, 214 n. 
 
 Seclusion of, 85-7. 
 
 Situation of, 189, 216. 
 
 Korean Administration, 98, 99, 100, 
 
 116, 165-7. 
 
 Agriculture, 113, 174. 
 
 Alphabets, 97. 
 
INDEX 
 
 441 
 
 Korean Amusements, 130, 134, 135- 
 
 Aristocracy, 98, 100, 157-8. 
 
 Army, 140, 144, 160-I, 163-4, 
 
 212, 378. 
 
 Banks, 173. 
 
 Character, 94, 95, 97-8, 100, 
 
 loi, 103, 104, 187. 
 
 Classes, 98-100, 112-3, 133. 
 
 Currency, 17 1-3. 
 
 Customs Service, 167, 179-80. 
 
 Dancing-girls, 130. 
 
 • Dress, 94, 95, 107, 126, 127, 
 
 129-30, 131-3, 157. 
 
 ■ Education, 171. 
 
 • Envoys, 204-5. 
 
 . Examinations, 166. 
 
 ■ Executions, 140. 
 
 Harbours, 89-94, 213. 
 
 Hats, 94, 13 1-3. 
 
 Horses, no, 115. 
 
 Houses, 1 12-13, 124. 
 
 Implements, 136. 
 
 Inns, 1 16-7. 
 
 Language, 97. 
 
 • Memorial Tablets, 115. 
 
 Minerals, 180-3. 
 
 ■ Mints, 172-3. 
 
 ■ Ministers, 155-6. 
 
 Monarchy, 154. 
 
 Monasteries, 102-6, 378. 
 
 Mourners, 132. 
 
 Music, 105. 
 
 Navigation, 175-6. 
 
 ■ Officialism, 28. 
 
 Paper, 134. 
 
 Peasant-life, 112-4. 
 
 Population, 94-6. 
 
 Produce, 168, 174, 177. 
 
 Race, 94, 96-7. 
 
 • Railvi'ays, 176. 
 
 Rebellions, 147-54, 192, 206, 210. 
 
 Reforms made by Japan, 374. " 
 
 Religion, 86, 104, 107, 108, 137. 
 
 Resistance to Japan, 379-82. 
 
 Korean Revenue, 165, 167-8. 
 
 Roads, no, 174. 
 
 Scenery, 89, 91, 92, 94, I02, 
 
 104-5. 
 
 Smuggling, 168, 177, 179-80. 
 
 Spirit-vi^orship, 108. 
 
 Sport, 1 10-12. 
 
 — — Stone-throwing, 135. 
 
 Superstitions, 108-9. 
 
 Telegraphs, 122, 207, 212. 
 
 Temples, 86, 107. 
 
 Tombs, 115. 
 
 Trade, 170-80. 
 
 Travel, 100-3, 109-10, 116. 
 
 Women, 95, 98, 113, 129, 1 30-1. 
 
 Kowtow, The, 265, 275. 
 
 Kuang Hsu, Emperor, 238, 240, 271, 
 
 273- 
 Kublai Khan, 230 n, 247. 
 Kulja, 209, 264, 278, 329, 419. 
 Kung, Prince, 238-9, 262. 
 Kurile Islands, 47. 
 Kutien, Massacres at, 301. 
 
 L 
 Lang, Captain, 327. 
 Lay, H. N., 331. 
 Lazareff, Port, 92, 209 n. 
 Liao-Tung Peninsula, The, 279, 332, 
 
 365. 383- 
 
 Libraries on Eastern Questions, Con- 
 sular, 425. 
 
 Li Hung Chang, Viceroy, 149, 169, 
 179, 197, 202, 204, 205, 206, 208, 
 211, 223-7, 314-5, 3i7> 322, 323, 
 
 329- 
 Liturgy, Buddhist, 355. 
 Liu Ming Chuan, 319. 
 Liuchiu Islands, The, 408. 
 Lowell, P., 88. 
 Lyall, Sir A., 404, 409, 412. 
 
 M 
 
 Macao, 414. 
 
 Macartney, Earl of, 229 n, 268, 275. 
 
442 
 
 PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 Macartney, Sir H., 263. 
 
 Maitreya, 251, 352, 354. 
 
 Malay Peninsula, 395, 396, 397. 
 
 Mandarins, v. Chinese Officialism. 
 
 Mapi, The Korean, 98, 1 10. 
 
 Marco Polo, 230 w, 248. 
 
 Massacres in China, v. sub Mission- 
 aries ; Kutien, Tientsin, Cheng-tu, 
 Wuhsueh, 
 
 Maubant, M., 183. 
 
 Michie, A., 305 n. 
 
 Mikado, v. sub Japan, Emperor of. 
 
 Ming Tombs, The, 257-8. 
 
 Missionaries in China, 247, 255, 283- 
 310, 418, 
 
 in Japan, 46, 50, 418. 
 
 in Korea, 87, 132, 142, 183-7, 
 
 418. 
 
 Mitford, A. B., 41 n. 
 
 Mixed Residence in Japan, 64-5, 67. 
 
 Mokpo, 168. 
 
 Monasteries and Monks in China, 
 343-58. 
 
 in Korea, 102-6, 140. 
 
 Moriyama, 191. 
 
 Morrison, Rev. R., 285. 
 
 Moukden, 315, 316, 323. 
 
 Mouravieff, General, 208 n. 
 
 Mutel, Msgr., 185. 
 
 Mutsu, Viscount, 22 and «, 28, 374. 
 
 N 
 
 Nagasaki, 14, 52 n. 
 
 Naktong River, The, 175. 
 
 Nam San, 121-2. 
 
 Nanking, 118, 282, 320, 321. 
 
 Napoleon, Fascination of the East 
 
 for, 2. 
 Nature-Worship in Korea, 104-5. 
 Newchwang, 185, 282, 315, 
 Newspapers, v. sub Names and 
 
 Countries. 
 
 English, of the East, 421. 
 
 Ni Taijo, 119, 198. 
 Niigata, 52 n. 
 
 Novoe Vremya, The, 210, 211. 
 
 O'CONOR, Sir N. R,, 175, 216, 273, 
 
 424. 
 Officers, Chinese, v. Chinese Army. 
 Okubo, 191. 
 
 Okuma, Count, 23, 25, 58. 
 Oliphant, L., 210. 
 Opium Question, The, 283. 
 Oppert, E., 96 n. 
 Osaka, 52, 173, 428. 
 
 Pacific Ocean, Access to the, 394. 
 
 Question of the, 395. 
 
 Paik-tu-san, 104-5. 
 Pak Yong Hio, 137, 376, 379-80. 
 Pamirs, Chinese and the, 277. 
 Parkes, Sir Harry, 60 n, 96 11, 202, 
 
 262 n, 424. 
 Party Government in Japan, v. Diet. 
 Pearson, C. H. {National Life and 
 
 Character : A Forecast), 396-412. 
 Pechili, Gulf of, 222. 
 Peiho River, The, 222. 
 Peking, 118, 120, 127, 183, 198, 199, 
 
 221, 227-259, 370. 
 
 • Audience Halls at, 266-275. 
 
 Bells of, 248, 253. 
 
 British Legation at, 259. 
 
 Drum and Bell Towers of, 
 
 248-9. 
 
 Examination Building at, 248. 
 
 Ground Plan of, 232. 
 
 Hall of the Classics at, 250 
 
 Lama Temples of, 250-2. 
 
 Observatory at, 247-8. 
 
 Palace at, 237, 253, 255, 266, 
 
 267, 269, 270. 
 
 Parks near, 258. 
 
 Population of, 229. 
 
 Streets of, 127, 234-7. 
 
 Summer Palace at, 253-5, 269, 
 
 294. 
 
INDEX 
 
 443 
 
 Peking, Temple of Confucius at, 249. 
 
 of Heaven at, 244-5. 
 
 Traditions of, 232. 
 
 ■ Walls of, 230-3. 
 
 Wedding Customs in, 236. 
 
 Peking Gazette, The, 241, 271, 335. 
 
 Perry, Commodore, 52. 
 
 Pillars of Korea, Memorial, 136-7. 
 
 Ping Yang, Battle of, 325. 
 
 Port Arthur, 197, 315, 332, 365. 
 
 Hamilton, 207, 210, 214-5, 423. 
 
 Lazareff, 92, 209 n, 213, 384. 
 
 Pouk San, 121, 140. 
 Printing in the East, 97 «. 
 Prjevalski, General, 278, 330. 
 Pyong-yang, 92, 175, 181-2, 197. 
 
 Q 
 
 QUELPART, 87, 214. 
 
 R 
 
 Railway, The Siberian, 277, 279, 
 
 316. 
 Railways in China, 314-20. 
 
 in Japan, 13. 
 
 in Korea, 176. 
 
 Rosebery, Earl of, 68, 214 n, 226. 
 
 Ross, Rev. J., 88, 185. 
 
 Russian Policy, 178, 208-13, 276-80. 
 
 forecast in 1894 of, 384. 
 
 towards China, 208-13 
 
 277-80, 409. 
 Russians in Korea, 92, 154, 176, 178, 
 
 208. 
 Ryong-San, 168, 175. 
 
 s 
 
 Saghalin, 3. 
 Saigo of Satsuma, 192. 
 Sak Wang Sa, 119, 139- 
 Sakyamuni, 346. 
 Salisbury, Lord, 59, 308. 
 Sam Kok San, 122, 140. 
 San Kuo Chih, The, 138. 
 Satow, Sir E. M., 97 n, 424. 
 Satsuma Clan, Inflence in Japanese 
 Navy of the, 30-1. 
 
 Satsuma Rebellion, 22, 31, 41 «, 192. 
 Scherzer, M., 198 n. 
 Sen Kuang Kio, The, 137. 
 Shanghai, 46, 178, 313, 321. 
 Shang-ti, 246, 289. 
 Shan-hai-kuan, 256, 314. 
 Shimonoseki, 13, 39, 52, 282 n. 
 
 Treaty of, 429-5. 
 
 Shufeldt, Commodore, 202. 
 
 Shun Chih, Emperor, 266. 
 
 Siberian Railway, The, 277, 279, 316. 
 
 Siuen, Emperor, 249. 
 
 Singapore, 396, 397, 415, 420. 
 
 Soshi, Japanese, 28. 
 
 Smith, Sir C, 403. 
 
 Soul, 87 n, 89, loi, 109, 1 18-164. 
 
 Arsenal at, 164. 
 
 Beacons at, 122-3. 
 
 Big Bell of, 135. 
 
 Court at, 156-9. 
 
 Ground Plan of, 125. 
 
 Houses in, 123, 126-7. 
 
 Mint at, 172-3. 
 
 Pagoda at, 136. 
 
 Palaces at, 140-6, 156, 161. 
 
 Population of, 123-4. 
 
 Royal Procession in, 160, 162-3. 
 
 Streets of, 124, 125, 134. 
 
 Temples in, 137-8. 
 
 Walls and Gates of, 1 19-21, 
 
 138-9. 
 
 Warehouses in, 136. 
 
 Steamship Lines in the East, 175, 
 
 178, 212. 
 Sternburg, Baron Speck von, 322 n. 
 Student Interpreters, 424. 
 Sungpu Murders, The, 306. 
 Syel Chong, 97. 
 Szechuan Riots, The, 306. 
 
 T 
 
 Taijo Tai Woang, 135. 
 Taiping Rebellion, The, 223, 299, 400. 
 Tai Wen Kun, The, 135, 142, 14S-51. 
 184, 206, 374, 380. 
 
444 
 
 PROBLEMS OF THE FAR EAST 
 
 Taku, 222, 293, 314, 324. 
 Tariff Reform in Japan, 44. 
 Temples, Chinese, 353-5. 
 Tientsin, 211, 222, 268, 322, 324. 
 
 Treaty of (1858), 292-4. 
 
 Convention (1885), 192-3, 205-6. 
 
 Massacres (1870), 186, 222, 263. 
 
 Tigers, Korean, 11 1-2. 
 
 Ting, Admiral, 367. 
 
 Tinmen River, The, 208, 384. 
 
 Tokaguto, The, 186, 380. 
 
 Tokio, 13, 14, 53 n. 
 
 Tonghaks, v. Tokaguto. 
 
 Trade in the Far East, British, 6, 43, 
 
 177,415-18. 
 
 with China, British, 281, 415. 
 
 with Japan, British, 43, 70-81. 
 
 with Korea, British, 177, 213. 
 
 French, in the Far East, 43, 
 
 281, 415. 
 German, in the Far East, 281, 
 
 415- 
 
 -Japanese, 43-4, 177, 387-9- 
 
 Korean, 168-9, 176-9. 
 
 Treaties, Texts of ; ( i ) Anglo-Japanese 
 
 (1894), 70-81 ; (2) Shimonoseki, 
 
 429-35- 
 
 British, with China, 269, 292. 
 
 with Japan, 51, 68-9, 7081. 
 
 with Korea, 60 «, 169, 178. 
 
 French, with China, 294. 
 
 Japanese, with Korea, 90 n, 
 
 168, 191-2. 
 
 with Mexico, 65. 
 
 Russian, with Korea, 169, 212. 
 
 with China, 208 n. 
 
 Treaty ports of China, 276, 282. 
 
 Japan, 13, 52, 66. 
 
 Korea, 88-94, 168. 
 
 Treaty Revision in Japan, 23, 27, 28, 
 
 46, 51-69, 391. 
 Tseng, Marquis, 207, 223, 225, 31 T, 
 
 331, 402. 
 Tsi An, Empress, 238. 
 
 Tsungli Yamen, The, 201, 214, 223, 
 
 260-4. 
 Tsushima Islands, 210. 
 Tung Chih, Emperor, 238, 271. 
 Tungchow, 316. 
 Tzu-chin-cheng, The, 232. ■ 
 
 V 
 
 Varat, Ch., 96 «. 
 Verbiest, F., 247. 
 
 Vladivostok, 47, 89, 92, 175, 178, 
 209, 316, 
 
 W 
 
 Wade, Sir T., 271, 344 «. 
 
 Wall, The Great, 256-7, 314. 
 
 War, Chino-Japanese (1894), 194-7, 
 
 361-89. 
 Wei Hai Wei, 197, 332, 367, 369. 
 Weltervree, Jan Jansson, 87 n. 
 Whampoa, 293. 
 Williams, Dr. W., 257, 271. 
 Witchcraft in Korea, 108. 
 Woosung, 293, 314. 
 Wuhsueh Massacres, 304. 
 
 Y 
 
 Yakub Beg, 328, 397. 
 
 Yalu River, The, 105, 11 1, 175, 197, 
 
 365- 
 
 Battle of, 365. 
 
 Yamagata, Count, 22 and n, 58. 
 Yamens, Korean, 99-101. 
 Yarg-hwa-chin, 134, 168. 
 Yellow Races, Future of the, 341, 
 
 396-412. 
 Yellow Sea, The, 89. 
 Yen-king, 230 n. 
 Yezo, 64. 
 
 Yokohama, 13, 52 n. 
 Younghusband, Capt. G. J., 41 7i,2'j8. 
 Yuan Shih Kai, 207. 
 Yung Lo, Emperor, 249, 258. 
 
 Bells of, 253. 
 
 Yunnan Rebellion, The, 328, 397. 
 

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