2
not also bring about the loss of any foreign lives is due not to any precautionary measures on the part of the authorities, but to the prompt and decisive action of His Majesty's consul, Mr. Hewlett, who took steps at once to warn and remove all It is true that the riots themselves do foreigners to the steamers lying in the river. not appear to have been particularly anti-foreign in nature; they arose on a difference of a purely domestic kind, and they turned into the channel of an organised and wilful attack upon foreign interests when certain powerful influences set a machinery in motion which had obviously been carefully prepared to seize an occasion for anti- foreign action.
But bad the foreigners remained on their various properties and perhaps tried to resist the mob, it is almost certain that lives would have been lost in the excitement of attack and the despair of defence. Praise is therefore due to Mr. Hewlett for having so promptly removed the possibility of such an occurrence, while the greatest blame attaches to the authorities for neglecting in such an open manner the most elementary duty of Government, that of preserving peace and order. For it cannot possibly be pleaded that the authorities were powerless. They had, as I have already indicated, at their disposal, in addition to the police of the city, a force of quite 6,000 troops trained on modern lines, ready to act against the rioters and resentful of the orders condemning them to inaction. No distrust of the loyalty of the troops can therefore he urged as a reason for inability to suppress the riot, and it is consequently impossible to resist the conclusion, at which all those most competent to judge have arrived, that the riots were directly encouraged by the gentry and tolerated by the authorities, who, in Hunan at least, have consistently acted according to the wishes of the local men of influence. This brings me to a consideration of the conditions obtaining at Changsha, which have made such a state of affairs possible.
The
In his despatch No. 496 of the 31st December last Sir John Jordan stated that, in his opinion, Changsha was, with the exception of Canton, the most likely city to be the scene of disturbances of an anti-foreign or anti-governmental nature. Hunanese are generally reputed for conceit in a country where self-sufficiency may almost be said to be the most salient national characteristic. The people of Changsha are proud of the fact that they resisted successfully the attacks of the Tai-ping rebels; they are proud of their exclusiveness, of their self-granted intellectual superiority, and of all the good qualities which they freely attribute to themselves. Above all, they rejoice in the fact that they are self-sufficient and do not need the help of the foreigner in order to progress on modern lines. When, therefore, Changsha was opened as a treaty port under the terms of the Japanese Treaty of 1903, opposition to this measure was at once forthcoming, and the leaders of the community seemed to have resolved to render nugatory its provisions. It would be outside the scope of this despatch to describe in detail the nature of this opposition. It is sufficient to say that the history of Changsha as a treaty port is the history of the attempts of the Changsha gentry to nullify in practice the rights conceded by the Central Government to foreign nations who have treaties with China. The accompanying succinct memorandum of the various questions which have been and still are the subject of negotiations between His Majesty's consul and the local authorities at Changsha will show that the most elementary rights acquired under treaty are denied, and that every single attempt on the part of British subjects to exercise these rights is made the pretext for irrelevant argument and successful procrastination. It might have been hoped that, as time went on, the advantages of co-operation with the foreigners, and the futility of opposing progress, would become apparent to the Hunanese, but no such result is to be recorded, and the gentry, who not only lead and control, but may be said to express in themselves what is called "public opinion," have not receded in the slightest from an attitude of unreasoning opposition. For this opposition their own selfish aims supply a motive. The term "gentry "in China is an elastic one, comprising all those who in England would be comprised in the words "upper classes." To the gentry belongs every man who by reason of his wealth, ability, or social position considers himself entitled to exercise a voice in the administration of his town or district. For centuries these gentry have been accustomed to make their influence felt in official circles, to stand between the bureaucracy and the common people, and to lead revolts against the gross abuses of the administration. Often they have succeeded in imposing their will upon a Government theoretically autocratic, but in practice extremely sensitive to the fluctuations of public opinion. China is essentially The land of compromise, and her rulers have nearly always realised the necessity that in its broad lines their policy should be acceptable to the people as a whole.
As the friends of the people the gentry have been admitted to power; as the
3
friends of the officials they have used that power to advance their own material interests; in other words, they have shared in the plunder which is the perquisite of the official classes. They are thus directly interested in the maintenance of the old Corder of things, and threatened, as they conceive, by the advance of China along the paths of progress which, slow as it may appear to those who do not realise that a country with an area of over 5,000,000 square miles and a population estimated at 400,000,000 cannot be dragooned into reform in the space of a few years, has yet reached a stage when it must be evident even to a Hunanese local dignitary that his old influence and power are slipping away from him, and that he will have to reform himself if he means to preserve his place in the social system. Moved to action by the danger which thus threatens them, too selfish to seek anything beyond immediate gain, too short-sighted to perceive that by taking the lead in the movement towards national regeneration they would acquire a new influence of a better and more lasting kind, the gentry in many parts of China have deliberately set their faces against progress and its advance guard of foreign interests, and in no province is this tendency more pronounced than in Hunan, where they have formed an alliance to this end with the very forces and influences which, one would suppose, would naturally be striving in the opposite direction.
The native newspapers, whose proprietors have not tasted of the liberty of speech long enough to have acquired a sense of the importance of restraint or the dignity of moderation, have daily opened their columns to violent anti-foreign articles, and have disseminated news which far surpasses in falsehood and libel the very best efforts of the yellow press of more civilised countries. It is gravely asserted that the Powers of Europe intend to partition China, that for this purpose England is massing troops at Hong Kong, French forces are gathering in Tonquin, and Russian hordes are making ready to descend upon Mongolia. The people are exhorted to prepare to defend their country and to resist by every means in their power the encroachments of foreigners, under which term are grouped all enterprises, such as the construction of railways, in which foreign interests are involved. In my despatch No. 108, Confidential, of the 14th ultimo, I dealt with the pernicious influence of the native press and the difficulty of counteracting its effects. It is fortunate that only a very small percentage of the Chinese nation can read this nonsense, or the result of this continual exhortation to violence might be infinitely more serious. As it is, its effect upon public opinion is by no means inconsiderable, and it speaks well for the innate stolid sense of the common people of China that they take these assertions with a grain of salt, and have not yet universally responded to these appeals to be up and doing.
If liberty of the press has not up till now borne good fruit, education in Hunan appears to have been as little successful. The Hunanese students who have been sent abroad, mostly to Japan, to fit themselves for the task of directing the destinies of their countrymen, seemed to have returned with just that amount of knowledge which reinforces conceit without inculcating wisdom. The chief acquisition of these young men consists of a few ill-digested notions of international law and a consequent desire to talk loudly about the encroachments of foreign Powers upon the sovereign rights of China whenever the local authorities are requested to observe the treaty engagements of the Central Government. They contribute largely to the vapourings of the press, to the sullen hostility of the officials whose ranks they all hope to join, and to the agitation of the gentry whose aims they further. Yet another accession of strength has come to the gentry owing to the creation of provincial assemblies. Since they practically form the only class from which both electors and elected are recruited, this new institution has merely given them a better meeting place, provided at public expense, a stronger organisation, and has invested their deliberations and resolutions with a constitutional and legal sanction which they hitherto lacked. Thus, as I have said, the very forces of progress in Hunan have been harnessed to the chariot of reaction.
That the recent riots in the capital of the province were carefully prepared by the gentry, with the connivance and active assistance of the principal officials, except the Governor, is, as I have already indicated, beyond doubt. Full particulars proving this point are contained in the despatches, copies of which accompany this despatch, and I do not feel that I could usefully add anything to the conclusions formulated by His Majesty's consular officers beyond stating that I am in complete accord with them. The guilt of the treasurer is as proved as is the complicity in the September massacres of Danton and Billaud Varennes, of whose conduct on that memorable occasion he appears to have been an unconscious imitator. The Customs Taotaî,
340