753
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remain a purely Chinese office, or are we to become the bondholders' trustee and the protected representative of the will of the Treaty Powers or Legations?" If we are to be the last, we at once antagonize China, and can only exist with foreign support. Can we rely on such foreign support as will be united, thorough, and effective both now and for all time? I doubt it! If we are to be a Chinese office, we will live a longer and pleasanter life if left to ourselves, for the more subordinate we are and the less the Legations interfere on our behalf, the more likely will the Shui-wu Ch'u be to allow a modus vivendi. As I told you yesterday, I have never asked for advice or for support; and now, in the face of this Edict difficulty, while I recognize all the gravity of the possibilities of the situation, I can only say this: the creation of the Shui-wu Ch'u means the absorption and disappearance of the Inspectorate sooner or later; but, seeing that my age tells me my Chinese career is ending and the future is no longer for my manipulation and management, it is best to leave it to others to determine whether the last years of the Inspectorate are to be in harmony with, or opposed to and by, the Chinese Government. The Inspectorate must now be one thing or the other, a native or a foreign institution. Can the united action of the Legations be relied on to maintain it on a foreign footing, or the good-will of the Chinese be looked for to support it as a native Department, and which of the two positions would be best for the Inspectorate, for Treaty Powers, and for China? If I had to decide for myself as Inspector-General, and were thirty years younger with thirty years' more work ahead, I should still prefer, in the future as in the past, to "paddle my own canoe."
Sincerely yours,
(Signed)
(Extract.)
Inclosure 3 in No. 1.
Sir R. Hart to Sir R. Bredon.
WE must either depend on foreign support, which I do not think likely to ... or effective, or on native, which will only be cordial if we accord with and do not antagonize the Ch'u. I do not see how we can co-operate with the Legations without damage to both character and status.
Dear Mr. Carnegie,
Inclosure 4 in No. 1.
Sir R. Hart to Mr. Carnegie.
Peitaiho, August 4, 1906. IN reply to your three questions of the 1st instant, I write to say that--
1. The instructions contained in the Shui-wu Ch'u's despatch do not in themselves conflict with the stipulations in the Loan Agreements.
2. These instructions are not at variance with those given me verbally by T'ieh and T'ang.
3. The change ordered relative to publication of statistics, viz., that they are to be submitted to the Ch'u in manuscript before being printed, will probably delay publication and transfer to the Ch'u some responsibility that has hitherto been borne by the Statistical Secretary; it may prove inconvenient, but in itself there is nothing objectionable in it. And as regards the Amoy question, it is the native custom-house that is concerned; we proposed to rebuild it, and the Tartar-General, who is head of the Fukien native customs, asks if we have submitted the matter to the Shui-wu Ch'u, a query which shows that provincial officials regard the Ch'u as supreme; this query does not affect me materially, seeing that before rebuilding I should have required either the Tartar-General's consent or the Wai-wu Pu's authority.
Copies of the various despatches from the Shui-wu Ch'u have been sent to me by the Deputy Inspector-General, and, as he had acquainted you with their general purport, I did not feel called on to write, more especially as they have so little in them that can be styled instructions. In any case, we should be pulled up by the Ch'u were we to give copies of them without its authority.
My three replies, you see, are, so to speak, in the negative; the Ch'u's instructions do not in themselves, i.e., in the matter they write about or in the procedure they order, violate the Loan Agreements; but the feeling these despatches create is that, bit by bit,
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the Shui-wu Ch'u will take to himself the duty of deciding every matter hitherto decided by the Inspector-General; it will in fact absorb the work of the Inspectorate and the Inspectorate will disappear.
The Loan Agreement's clause is vague, in so far as it seemingly admits of debate. On the other hand, this vagueness, or the general nature of its promise, may also be said to make that promise all the wider and all the stronger. While one set of men might argue that not to change the constitution of the Imperial Maritime Customs simply means that foreigners still continue to be employed, another might assert that the promise undertakes that the Inspectorate, as then existing, is to continue, that it is to remain in connection with the Wai-wu Pu, that the work is to be done at the ports as hitherto by the Commissioners and their mixed staff, and the management and control to remain in the hands of the Inspector-General. If this second is the correct interpretation of the clause, the very transfer of the control from the Wai-wu Pu to the Shui-wu Ch'u is a direct and complete violation of the Loan Agreement as sanctioned by Edict; and I believe this second interpretation is what the banks and bondholders considered to be the meaning of the promise, so that from this point of view the very issue of orders by the Shui-wu Ch'u to the Inspector-General, irrespective of their nature or matter, is at variance with the clause concerned. The Inspectorate is, however, a Chinese office, and as such cannot question or oppose an Edict.
In this connection there are two other thoughts worth considering. The substitution of the Shui-wu Ch'u for the Wai-wu Pu will or will not interfere with the discharge of loan and indemnity obligations in the matter of payment, and, now that the Edict has been issued, opposition to the Shui-wu Ch'u will or will not eventually, if not immediately, react prejudicially on the Inspectorate. The right to establish the Ch'u could not be contested, but the Loan Agreement made its assumption of the Wai-wu Pu's attributes a matter for the consideration of the lending flags, and this has seemingly been consented to on the assurance that it will not alter the Inspectorate in composition, status, or work; whether the Ch'u's creation will affect the safety of loan moneys, &c.; and whether opposition to its action will hurt or benefit the Inspectorate, are points on which opinions will differ. My own belief is that loan payments will continue to be made just as before, and that the Inspectorate--never expected to last for ever, though now, perhaps, doomed to earlier disappearance by the creation of the Shui-wu Ch'u--whatever it may apparently gain from foreign support if united and effective, will sensibly and eventually lose wherever that support means opposition to the action and development of the Ch'u as a Chinese and Imperially created office. Others may not share these views, and I do not want them to be taken for more than they are worth, more especially as my presence as Inspector-General cannot be relied on much longer.
The position is now just as you put it: all Customs matters are to be reported to the Shui-wu Ch'u, while the Wai-wu Pu and Hu Pu are respectively to deal with foreign questions and appropriation of revenue.
Very sincerely yours,
(Signed) ROBERT HART.
P.S.-The Shang Pu (Board of Commerce) once began sending me instructions direct, but I objected, and thereafter we communicated through the Wai-wu Pu.
R. H.
Inclosure 5 in No. 1.
Sir R. Hart to Mr. Carnegie,
Dear Mr. Carnegie,
YOURS of the 3rd has reached me.
Peitaiho, August 6, 1906,
I have never officialized the "carry on as before" instructions of T'ieh and T'ang, but in letters to various Commissioners I told them what had been said to me. To issue a Circular containing those instructions could, of course, be done. I deferred it, waiting for the arrangement of the relations of the Shui-wu Ch'u with Wai-wu Pu and other Boards, and also because expecting written orders concerning future procedure, &c. The orders that have so far come are of the briefest and most non-committal kind, as you know, and our position is such that I doubt the expediency of crying out before we are either hit or hurt, and I would prefer letting the Ch'u develop, or show how it will develop, on its own lines. I shall have to gather up various threads on return to Peking, and I can use that occasion both to issue the Circular and also put its issue on record in ...