"Thel.G." These letters, meaningless at home, call up instantly in the mind of every foreigner in China a very distinct and striking image—hey are as familiar here in the Far East as H.R.H. or D.T. are home. And a remarkable proportion of those who hear them, tremble. For the image is that of the benevolent despot, whose outstretched hand unites or severs the Celestial Kingdom and the outside bar-parian world; through whose fingers tive hundred millions of dollars have run into the coffers of the Sun of Heaven, and never a one of them stuck; to whom the proudest Chinamen that ever wore pigtails turn for advice in difficulty or danger when coher helpers fail; who has staved off a war by writing a telegram; who has declined with thanks the profferred Minister Plenipotentiary of Her Britannic nity of an Envoy Extraordinary and
Majesty; who has ringed China round with an administrative commercial organisation the whole world cannot surpass; who, finally, born to struggle for the poet's bays, has laboured late and early all his life over dollars and duties, with a diplomatic nut which other people have failed to crack thrown to him now and then for relaxation. "The I. G." signifies a person and a post the former is Sir Robert Hart, K.C.M.G., the latter is Inspector-General of the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs. And the transcendence of the Customs Service in China may be judged from the fact that 8 Commissioner once took personal affront and quitted the sacred edifice when a missionary implored the Almighty to deliver thia people from their wicked customs." Just as Mrs. Gladstone is to have interpreted a pious allusion to One above" as polite reference to her husband in the deawing-room upstairs, After the above, I fear it will seem an anti-climax to say that Sir Robert Hart is far and away the most interesting and influential foreigner in China. To begin with, his power is enormous. Chinese, so far as his own field is concerned, is much the same as English'to him, and with the Tsung-li Yamen he has the influence which thirty years of close dealing with Chinese officials gives him, backed by the proud boast that they have never regretted taking his advice. Then he handles the service he has created from nothing to one which employs nearly 3,000 people, presides over an annual foreign trade of 188,000,000 dollars, collects twenty million dollars a year, clears 22,000,000 tons of shipping annually, and lights 1,800 miles of coast, exactly as an engineer handles a machine he has constructed—just as tenderly and just as ruthlessly. And yet very few of the men whose livelihood and prospects are absolutely and at every moment in his hands, without the possibility of appeal or even protest, would willingly see anybody else in his place. The mere irresponabilty of the "I. G." would ruin most men. Yet Sir Robert owes all his success to his free hand. Does he learn of an old friend or schoolmate fallen upon evil times? "Send your boy to me," he telegraphs, and the youngster's future depends then only "upon his own ability industry. When there was a particularly bad piece of work to be done by one of his subordinates in delimiting the new Tongking-Chinese frontier-——months of lonely labour, in savagery and solitude, with never a breath to draw that might not bring fever with it, whom did he send? His brother. Yet his avowal of nepotism is refreshingly frank. ''I have never," he says, advanced a worse man over a better, yet if promotion is due to one of two men of equal deserts, and one of them of my own flesh and blood, it would be simply unnatural to pass him over." More than once already he has brought out the son of some companion of his boyhood, seen him grow up in the service from student to Commissioner, save his competency and retire, leaving his bene factor and chief still working the same number of hours every day at his desk. But he rules with a despotism that a Tzart might envy. Any subordinate reported to the "I. G." by a Commissioner of Custoina of one of the Ports, for drunkenness or discrediting the service in any way, is instantly dismissed. But a Commissioner who should be discovered to have reported a subordinate unjustly would be fired from his high post as soon asa telegram could reach him. His secretary and representative in England, Mr. Duncan Campbell, C.M.G., who has already distinguished hinnself in diplomacy on behalf of China and his chief at, Paris and Lisbon, is expected to be absolutely impersonal in putting all applicants through their preliminary examination; but in return, and as a sop to nature, he is por-mitted to send out one of his own friends, otherwise properly qualified, to a certain number of impartial appointments. So the benevolent despotism works. Sir Robert Hart left the Consular Service for the Customs—it was barely in existence then—in 1869, and in 1863 he became Inspector-General. And during the thirty years that have intervened he lis been home twice, once for tivelve months and once for six—that has had in his whole lifetime less holiday than one of his subordinates gets every five ears, He has never been to the Western ills, a few miles away, to which all the foreigners in Peking retreat in summer, and he has never even seen the Great Wall, two days' journey distant, But next spring, he saya, he is certainly going home.
vice, when I tell them this: he's been "Pooh," say people in the Customs Ser-going henie in the spring' for the last ton years." As for the services he has rendered to China, to England, and to the world, the statesmen of Europe know them very well, and it would take a volume to tell them to others. Besides the creation of the Customs Service itself, which will be his immortality, to take the latest example, it was he alone who concluded the treaty between France and China. All negotiations had failed and matters looked very black and threatening. Then, as usual, the Ministers of the Tsung-li Yamen came to Sir Robert. He agreed to take up the task on his two invariable conditions—that he should have a free hand, and that his connection with the affair should be kept a profound secret till he either succeeded or failed. Then negotiations began by telok graph in cipher between his "den" in Peking and the Quai d'Orsay, and very awkward ones they were. Month after month they proceeded, and at last, when 80,000 taels had been spent in telegram the end was reached, the Protocol signed in Paris, and Sir Robert got into his chair and went to the Tsung-li- Yamen. The Ministers were there and he sat down to a cup of tea with them. By and by he remarked, with the apparent indifference of the Oriental diplomat, It is exactly nine months to-day since you placed the negotiations with France in my hands."
And the child is born!" instantly cried one of the Ministers, seeing the point and delighted at the truly Chinese way of conveying the information. And the funny part of the business was that all this tu special French envoy had been residing at Tientsin, chafing at the slow progress he was making, and not having the least idea that other negotiations had been on foot until he received word from home that he might return, as all was arranged. He was so angry that he would not speak to Sir Robert. After sending the last telegram settling the French business, Sir Robert went to the funeral service of Sir Harry Parkes, the British Minister, who had just died,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.