THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND WHAT ENGLAND SHOULD DEMAND. for the property destroyed and the lives
The progress of negotiations between the British Minister and the Tsung-li Yamen in reference to the recent atrocities at Kucheng, the missionary outrages in Szechuen, and the accumulated breaches of Treaty rights by the Chinese authorities is slow we may say very slow-when compared with the pace made by Count INOUYE when arranging the terms of the Treaty of Peace with LI HUNG-CHANG. There was then of course an incentive to despatch for the veteran Grand Secretary, since the cost of the war was great and further delay could only increase the difficulties of China Far otherwise is it with the Tsung-li Yamen at the present moment. They have fallen back upon their traditional policy of procrastination in the belief that by perpetual delay they will tire out the patience of the enemy, and in the hope that something meantime may turn up to embarrass and perplex Great Britain. Hence it is that they alternately cringe and cave in and bluster and evade. Brought for a moment to the point by the gathering of the British fleet in and near the Yangtsze they have at last consented to degradé LIU PING-CHANG,. the peccant ex- Viceroy of Szechuen, and an Imperial Edict has been reluctantly issued depriving him of his rank and declaring him incapable of ever again bearing office. This is all very well so far as it goes, but an effort was immediately made to rob the step of what deterrent influence it might possess by asserting that it was taken independently of the demand of the British Government. Meantime, too, the Imperial Commissioner in Fukien, working in league with the Viceroy of that province, was doing his best to render the inquiry at Ku- cheng a complete farce, with the result that the Commission will no doubt be formally. dissolved as useless. The resort to their ancient tactics 'therefore has so far heen made for the advantage of the Chinese Government.
Surely Lord SALISBURY is not going to rest content with such a dubious success as the degradation of an already disgraced official! His demands must embrace some- thing more than this, though as yet little has been disclosed concerning the terms proposed. The French assert that the terms of the British ultimatum were the degradation of the ex-Viceroy of Szechuen within a fortnight and the payment by China of an indemnity of Tls. 940,000. The German Press allege that the British demands include the cession by China to England of the island of Chusan. Not a hint of such a demand has yet reached the British Press, though it has been publicly advocated; nor has the amount of the indemnity for the relatives of the deceased and for re-erection of the mission premises destroyed in Szechuen, Fukien, and clsewhere been mentioned. That something more than the decapitation of a few coolies, the payment of a few thousands of dollars
sacrified, and the degradation of the most heinous of the higher mandarins, is required before justice is satisfied and a lesson read to the Chinese Government, is universally admitted. The massacre at Kucheng is but one item in the long bill that has been accumulat- ing against the Chinese Government since the last account was very inadequately settled by the Chefoo Convention, wrung from them by Sir THOMAS WADE twenty years ago. The British Government is pro- verbially slow to act, and will at last as a rule only ask for a mere instalment when they might insist upon payment in full. It is to be hoped, however, that on this occasion Her Majesty's Government will heed the national desire, and not only make their, demand but take neither excuse nor abate ment. It is impossible to raise any plea of extenuating circumstances on behalf of the Chinese Government. They have sinned knowingly; they have systematically shielded offenders and have tacitly en- couraged crimes against the stranger within their gates. Having inflicted injury after injury, they strenuously object to make any reparation beyond a monetary compensation, the amount of which they are always pre- pured to higgle over until the claimant is fain to abandon the claim in sheer disgust.
We hope, therefore, as we have said, that Lord SALISBURY has presented his bill to China and is prepared to exact all its items. It ought to include:-
1.—The adequate punishment of the in- stigators as well as the actual per- petrators of the missionary outrages
and murders.
2.-A sufficient indemnity to cover all losses sustained by the destruction of mission property and to compensate the relatives of those murdered and the wounded for the injuries received. 3. An indemnity to all British subjects having valid claims for losses caused by official misconduct or breaches of Treaty stipulations.
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[October 16, 1895.
OFFICIAL RESPONSIBILITY-FOR: THE KUCHENG OUTRAGE. \
A Shanghai contemporary, the Mercury, draws an interesting contrast between the treatment of the criminals arrested in con- nection with a case of burglary at Sinyang hien and the perpetrators of the Kucheng massacre. In the Sinyanghien case there was no murder committed; it was a case of simple burglary. Eleven of the men con- cerned in it came to Shanghai to dispose of the booty and were arrested by the Muni- cipal police. Being sent into the native city for trial they were promptly convicted and executed, the interval between the com- mission of the crime and the execution being about six weeks. The Kucheng case, on the other hand, is still dragging on, although ten weeks have elapsed since the occurrence of the massacre. A few of the men, alleged
to have been concerned in the affair have had their heads struck off, as an instalment to satisfy the exigent representa- tives of Great Britain and America, but every possible obstacle has been placed in the way of a thorough and impartial trial of ̈ the case and the punishment of the really guilty parties. When the outrage occurred deep regret was formally expressed by the Emperor of China through his repre sentative in London, but the after proceedings have made it abundantly clear that had it not been for the pressure of the foreign Powers not the slightest effort would have been made to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Govern- ment, had it dared, would have been only too glad to have sheltered itself under the fictitious plea of inability to cope with the Vegetarian Society, which was alleged to be very powerful and antagonistic to the Government. The power of the Society has best proved to be a myth, and as to its antagonism to the Government, it is much more probable that the high officials are in collusion with it. If this were not the case, why the attempt to screen the criminals and the facilities afforded to many of them to escape? The Peking and Tientsin 1 imes, in an article which was quoted in our columns a day or two ago, summing up the evidence given at the Ku- cheng investigation arrived at the conclusion that most of the confessions were lies, that we have not yet touched or found one trace of the real organisers, the greatest culprits in this savage tragedy; and that the officials who so cloak and screen the deed they were responsible to prevent are not clean handed, but tremble lest their guilt should be 6. The opening of the West River to
revealed. These conclusions we fully foreign trade and uavigation, the towns of Wuchow, Tsunchow, and endorse. If there is a burglary, in which natives are the sufferers, as at Sinyanghien, Nanning being made Treaty ports.
the culprits are promptly punished, but 7.-The opening of the Tungting Lake when it is merely the massacre of half a
and of Changsha and Siangtan on the
score of foreigners, then the zeal of the river Siang to foreign trade.
officials is directed to the obstruction of It would be well if yet another stipulation justice, facilitating the escape of the mur- could be made, for the withdrawal of the derers, and hoodwinking the foreign cóm- Chinese Embassy from London until such missioners who have been appointed to assist time as the Chinese Government falls info at the investigation. It is of course neces- line with the usages of civilised Powers and sary that the punishment of the instruments the EMPEROR officially and actually reof the crime should be insisted upon, but cognises the equality of other sovereigns. A deathblow should at once be dealt to the ex- aggerated pretensions of the Chinese for their sovereign and country. It is, we fear, too much to hope that the settlement with China will embrace all these points, reason- able and necessary as they appear, but we trust that the more important of them at least will be secured. Lord SALISBURY has but to insist upon his own terms and they will be conceded in the end, though a wordy struggle may first ensue.
4.-The cession of the island of Chusan and its dependencies to Great Britain in perpetuity. 5.--The rectification of the boundaries of the colony of Hongkong by the cession to it of all the islands to the south as far as Gap Rock and of that portion of the mainland between the present Northern boundary of Kow- loon and the head of Mirs and Castle Peak Bays.
the decapitation of a hundred coolies would have, less effect in securing future im- munity from outrage than would the effective punishment of one mandarin. The Kucheng Commission, being concerned simply with the punishment of the instru ments of the crime, is calculated to do more harm than good, because it obscures the point of real importance, the punishment of the mandarins, without whose connivance or culpable neglect and indifference the out-12 rage would never have occurred. The
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