CO129-361 - Public Offices - 1909 — Page 549

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(No. 309.) My Lord,

No. 18.

Sir E. Satow to the Marquess of Lansdowne.--(Received October 26.)

Peking, August 31, 1903. MR. GEORGE JAMIESON having learned from his principals in London that they had accepted the general railway arrangement come to recently between Prince Ching and Mr. Townley, as reported in the latter's despatch No. 299 of the 12th instant, asked Mr. Townley to notify to the Wai Wu Pu that he was about to proceed to Shanghae with a view to negotiating with Sheng Ta-jên the details of the arrangement for placing the Peking Syndicate's Tsechou-Taokou line on the same footing as the Chenting-Taiyuen line, as agreed to by the Chinese Government.

The Ministers having replied that the necessary instructions had been telegraphed to Sheng Ta-jên, Mr. Townley so informed Mr. Jamieson, who has now left for Shanghae.

I have, &c.

(No. 311.) My Lord,

No. 19.

(Signed) ERNEST SATOW.

Sir E. Satow to the Marquess of Lansdowne.--(Received October 26.)

Peking, September 3, 1903. WHILST at Rangoon on my way to China I received from Dr. Moule, the Bishop of Mid-China, a letter in which he informed me that he had entered into correspondence with the local authorities of the Province of Chekiang respecting the arrest of a baptized Chinese member of the Anglican Mission, who was imprisoned together with two other Chinese, not Christians. The Bishop inclosed to me copy of a letter addressed by him to the foreign Bureau of the province, in which be refers to the "liberties of my fellow Christians under Treaty," and he asked me to give him an interview on my arrival at Shanghae.

Accordingly, I received his Lordship at Shanghae on the 13th August. I found on inquiry that he had taken action in this case without putting the matter before His Majesty's Consul at Ningpo, and I thought it desirable therefore to point out to him that intervention on behalf of a Chinese subject could only be made under the Treaty if it appeared that Article VIII had been violated; that missionaries were not the accredited Agents of the British Government for seeing to the observance of the Treaty, and that his proper course would have been to lay the case before the Consul. Í acquainted him with the results of my conversation in April last on this and other matters with a deputation including representatives of his own Society, as well as of nearly all the Societies which are engaged in missionary work in China, and reminded him of the views expressed by the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society in October 1902 in a letter from their Secretary to the Fuhkien Mission, which were in accordance with my own.

Bishop Moule replied that he was glad to have this point laid down definitely and would be guided in future by what I had said to him.

Since return here I have received a further letter from the Bishop, asking me

my to send him in writing a statement of the principle on which I object to direct communi- cation between missionaries and mandarins. He also requested me to state how the principle should be applied in detail to cases such as were indicated by him in his letter.

The cases cited were one in which he appealed to the Governor in 1899 on behalf of one Yen Wante (described by him as "the T'ai-chow insurgent") in consequence of representations from the Magistrate and his subordinates of that region, where he acted as he states with the cognizance of His Majesty's Consul-General at Shanghae. His motive, he informs me, was "anxiety for the safety of foreign missionaries in T'ai-chow, seriously threatened by commotions which mandarins and Protestant missionaries alike attributed to Romanist unwisdom." And again in 1900-1901, having been invited by

His Majesty's Consul-General at Shanghae and His Majesty's Consul at Ningpo to send in claims for the wreck and plunder of Mission property during the riots of 1900, the missionaries charged with the preparation of these statements added petition for relief from native Christians. These were forwarded to Mr. Wilkinson and to Sir Pelham Warren, and the missionaries ultimately proceeded to the locality to arrange for the apportionment of the Award made after explanations had been furnished to Mr. Wilkinson and the Taotsi,

"The missionaries," he remarks, not unnaturally resorted to the District Magistrate for advice and assistance, and a practice of direct reference to him has therefore been strengthened, which has its inconveniences no doubt, but which it may be difficult to supersede entirely by reference to Consuls, in the case of places distant from any Consul's residence."

In another case, Sir Pelham Warren, having communicated the missionary state- ment to the provincial Bureau of Foreign Affairs, the latter directed the Magistrate to call on Bishop Moule with a view of fixing the amount to be paid on account of native losses.

Bishop Moule adds that he supposes I should not object to a missionary, situated as he is, making direct application to the district Magistrate for assistance in recovering property stolen from his house.

In replying to the Bishop I have admitted to him that I should not object to a any other missionary applying to a mandarin for redress, for himself, any more than to British subject taking such a step, if he considered it desirable to go direct to the mandarin instead of appealing first to the Consul for assistance.

With regard, however, to the cases cited by him by way of examples, it certainly appears that if the motive was anxiety for the safety of missionaries, it would have been for the Consular officer himself to take steps, and not to leave the protection of life to the missionaries themselves. But I feel that at this distance of time it would serve no useful purpose to express to the Bishop an opinion on this point, nor to criticise the method by which the claims of native converts were adjusted in 1900. I, therefore, contented myself by observing that it would be impossible for me to lay down rules for dealing with such cases, and that I do not feel authorized to make exceptions beforehand.

I reiterated, however, my verbal statement made at Shanghae, that the Consuls and the Minister, and not the missionaries, are the accredited Agents of His Majesty's Government for seeing to the execution of the Treaty, and that if a missionary has reason to believe that Article VIII has been violated, he should lay the case before a Consul or before the Minister, in order that the necessary steps may be taken to redress the wrong,

per- I pointed out that Article VIII seems to have been intended to prevent the secution of Christians on the ground of their religion, and that the object of the British Plenipotentiary was not to obtain a right of interference whenever a native Christian considered that he had been treated unjustly. Consequently, such complaints of converts would have to be carefully examined by the Consul in order to see whether the element of religious persecution could be discerned. I added that I hold this principle to be applicable to all cases, no matter the distance from a Consular officer at which the missionary or convert may be residing.

As the Bishop quoted instances in which direct and independent communication between the missionaries of his Society and Chinese officials had been authorized by Consular officers, it appeared to me desirable that His Majesty's Consuls should be made aware of the views I was expressing to the Bishop, and I, therefore, addressed to them simultaneously a Circular, copy of which I have the honour to inclose, embodying the substance of my reply to his Lordship,

The only case in which the direct interference of a missionary would be justifiable is, I think, when the missionary, or the convert on whose behalf a complaint is made, resides at a distance from one of His Majesty's Consuls, and there is imminent danger of an extreme character threatening the personal safety of the converts.

The most frequent complaint brought by the Chinese authorities against mission- aries is that they are too apt to interfere on behalf of their converts in both civil and criminal cases, and though I believe that the vast majority of missionaries, including all those of the China Inland Mission, entirely refrain from such interference, it is not the prudence of the many that influences opinion, but the mistaken zeal of the few that works harm. On the other hand, what has been written and printed on the subject shows that instances of Chinese affecting the attitude of "inquirers" in order to obtain It seems to me, consequently, that the protection of missionaries are by no means rare.