464
every desire to induce the public to make the Gardens a favourite resort, we suggest that nothing could be calculated to serve that purpose better than the provision of easier means of access than now obtain.
(Daily Press, June 3rd.)
One of the most mischievous movements that has ever taken place in China un- doubtedly that for the so-called recovery of "Sovereign Rights," which analysed is only a return to the policy of entire isolation from the rest of humanity which brought on all the troubles of the eighteenth and the first sixty years of the nineteenth century. Under the early princes of the Manchu dynasty, China had been in the fore rank of the nations, but with the reactionary policy then introduced, and the attempt to rule China as a conquered nation, Manchu rule came to be one of utter distrust; and one of the first symptoms of this was the dread that with knowledge of the greater con- fidence placed in their people by European Governments, the Chinese as a people would grow discontented with their own state of dependence. Ignorance was therefore to be the sheet anchor of Manchu rule, and the most effective method of bringing about ignorance, was, the astute rulers who had now come on the scene at once saw, isola tion. So far as was posssible the various populations that constituted the empire were to be isolated from one another. The roads which during the Ming dynasty had been fairly looked after, were now as a matter of policy studiously neglected; mines, which induced the circulation of commodities were deliberately closed, and the traveller through the mining districts still sees graved on stone tablets by the wayside the numerous edicts issued sternly forbidding under the direst punishment the re-opening of the mines that had been encouraged un-
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
38
far
[June 7, 1909.
Having regard to the fact that the The wretched debauchee, HIENFUNG, on triguer, the new development could hardly proposed route is not right through the whom had fallen the mantle of K'ANGHI, have come about. The methods may, indeed, Gardens, as at Edinburgh, but on the met a rude awakening when after the out- seem strangely different, but the object of western edge of the new gardens, does not raged British ships came thundering at both is one-that of preventing at all the argument that the beauty and seclusion Canton he, still unconvinced, had to fly from bazards the entrance of China on the road of our Public Gardens will be destroyed his capital leaving to his ministers the task of that leads to civilisation. LI HUNG CHANG by a tram line seem over-stated ? If a re-creating the Empire. But, though China hoped to bring this about by the assistance gentleman's private park were in question had no more wars with Europe, except the of Russia, and in return for this was ready we could understand the plea for protec-short incident with France, the spirit to deliver over Manchuria, and bind China tion of its seclusion, but when there is was alive, and after the coup d'état of to a dependence not greatly differing from 1898 broke out in the attempted Boxer vassalage. With the same end in view, the massacre of 1900. The leading spirit in mo lern reactionary finds himself called upon this was the late Regent, who woman-like, to raise the cry of "China for the Chinese,” staked her all on getting rid of the intrud--well knowing that China being once more ing element at one fell blow, the result of entangled in the old fetters would have lost which was the capture of Peking by the all power of helping herself. The whole is foreigner, and the ignominious flight of the merely a distinction without a difference, CHINA'S "SOVEREIGN RIGHTS. offending Regent, More wise than his both leading to the same inevitable goal,-
councillors, the late Emperor recognised a return to the periods of TAOKWANG OF that unless China were prepared to enter on HIENFUNG, with universal famine and dis- equal terms the community of nations she content, and the re-enactment of the Taiping must be ever prepared to continue to eat Rebellion with all its horrors of pillage and humble pie; already the outer nations were destruction. laying plans to divide amongst themselves Lately we have had some notable ex- his mismanaged heritage, a dénouemnout amples of the process in the disappearance which at the time China was utterly power of the funds of the Hankow-Canton Railway less to prevent; and had it not been for the and the necessary calling in of the hated action of England and America, all of whose foreigner after the would-be patriots had influence was thrown into the scale, it is divided amongst themselves the entire morally certain that already the process swag. So, too, the Shanghai and Ningpo would have been far advanced. More than main line, opened to Kiahing, some forty or anything else the knowledge that the fifty miles, after a year and a half of work reactionary policy that followed was in the building a track which is a disgrace to all last degree galling to the Emperor himself,
concerned, and the expenditure of nearly as had excited the more generous spirit of much capital as the well-equipped line to England and America, who knew besides Nauking. Even more disgraceful, is the that a large and important section of the deliberate attempt at swindling private rising generation of statesmen were at one capitalists out of undertakings on which with the Emperor; and this influence it they had already advanced in good faith, was mainly that prevented the reactionary large amounts of money. The result, policy of the late Empress Dowager from
as the authors of the policy being used as a pretext for filching whole
concerned, has been perfectly provinces from the Empire.
satisfactory; both foreigner and native Unable by direct ineans under the have learnt to their cost that Chinese circumstances of the case to accomplish its honour, formerly ranking high in the world aim of bringing back the bad old times of the of commerce and finance, is now no more to successors of KIEN-LUNG, the reactionary be depended on, and both equally have party found a new card to play in touching learnt to their cost that the louder the the susceptibilities of the nation at large, by representing that its "sovereign rights were being frittered away. Like most other party cries, which have been for a term suc- cessful it had its substratum of truth. The late Empress Dowager and her then hench man, the arch traitor LI HUNG CHANG, had indeed conceived the idea of bartering away the whole of the Manchu possessions of the throne, in return for the assistance of Russia; who was to aid them in their grand scheme of getting rid at one blow of all the exist. other foreign Powers. It does not, in- deed, appear that Russia ever entered into negotiations with this particular object, but she certainly gave Li and the EMPRESS DowAGER broad hints as to the advantages she had to offer in assisting China, (i.e. Li and the EMPRESS DOWAGER), to get rid of the pressure being brought to bear on her by England, America, and the other friendly Powers, to induce her in her own interest to introduce some of the more necessary re- forms, the lack of which, they pointed out, was the true cause of the alienation from the Government of the whole of the population. It casts no discredit on the tale that e'er the dénouement had come about, Lr and the DowAGER EMPRESS had parted in anger, and Lr had been sent, in what was intended for banishment, to Canton; he came back unasked after the taking of Peking; and renewed his intrigues with Russia, which it may be remembered were only closed by his
en.
der their predecessors; obstacles of all kinds were placed in the way of the inhabitants attending distant markets; taxes were raised on goods in circulation long before the advent of the greatest incubus that has ever befallea a nation, the growth of the industry-killing system of Likin; garrisons of untrained Manchus were placed in most of the provinces, as permanent pensionaries, originally to overawe the populations, but their training having been neglected, they became useless burdens on the provincial exchequers.
In the progaganda of ignorance the Manchus found their chiefest helpmate in the encouragement of the (so-called) literati of the Empire. These, they soon perceived, bad become so imbued with the anesthetic principles of the school of Chuhi, that they could safely be used to bulldose the nation at large. The false Confucianism of the school of Chuhi was elevated into the official cult of the Empire, and the successors of K'TENLUNG on the throne, having put the State to sleep, fondly conceive i Elysium had
come, and never should-
+
The hundred summers die,
And thought and time be born again, And never knowledge drawing nigh, Bring truth that sways the soul of men.
death.
Now, there is a clear connection between the new cry of the reactionary party and the misdeeds of Li; and without a knowledge of the hidden ways of that unpatriotic in-
18
patriot the more is he bent on self- aggrandisement. The immediate result as far as China is concerned, is that while
foreign capital which was prepared to do much for the regeneration of thr Empire, has been driven out of the country; native capital, but a little while siace creeping cautiously out of its hiding places, has been forced back into its olu concealment; and, as a factor working for the regeneration of the Empire, has absolutely ceased to
CROCK V. KETTLE.
(Daily Press, 4th June.)
for denying shore liberty to the men of the Manila has not forgiven ADMIRAL SPERRY Battleship Fleet, during the greater part of their stay in Manila waters last year because the cholera epidemic, which had hat not been entirely vanquished by the broken out in the City some months before,
time the Fleet arrived, One of our Manila contemporaries, received by yesterday' mail, contains a six column article on the subject, headed "Ananias and the Cruise of the Big Fleet, Mr. FRANK L. STRONG, Chairman of the being an article written by Reception Committee, for publication in Collier's Weekly, but which the Editor of that journal returned to its author, and the Cablenews-American explains the refusal of the article by saying Collier's "need not be expected to do the square thing for Americans in the Philippines, notwithstand- iug that we have bere a more sanitary city After than even Little Old New York'."
F
"}
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.