7th April.
the penultimate number of the! Chinese Times there was an article on the British Consular Service that was evidently the fruit of long and matured observation; and the departure for home on Saturday of the senior member of that service tempts us to a farther consideration of the article, which is so highly thought of, that it has been reprinted in pamphlet form, We are glad to see that the writer takes the proper and sensible view of the ill-considered reversion by the Foreign Office to the discarded system of com-hiving the judicial and consular func~ tious in Shanghai in one person. "Such is-the power," he says, "over the persons and property of the honest working world wielded by mere jacks-in-office at home and abroad who, knowing little and caring less for the important interests they are playing with, by a stroke of the pen effect damage which a lifetime of their exertion would never suffice to remedy The usual complaint of British residents in China against their consuls that they "do nothing."
The British P&S resident is always wanting to "get on with it," to make every day some fresh and permquent impression on the puttylike mass. that surrounds him, and in this enterprise he expects to get the assistance of his consul. Here and there he finds a consul as enterprising as himself; and it is probable that all or nearly all the students when they set out from home are as full of enterprise, and of the best intentions of exercising their energies, as could be wished. How is it that they fall off so in practice? The Chinese Times attributes it primarily to the effect on the service of "two great blights, the Alcock mécrococcus and the Burlingawe bucteriwn." the effect of the Burlingame bacterium as, we believe, long since passed away; the 'Burlingame bubble burst even before the premature death of the Minister who blew it. But the repression which Sir Rutherford Alcock, and still more Thowas Wade, exercised on the enterprising spirits' still remains, and we believe, as we mentioned the other {day, that the direct. influence of the latter is not yet entirely removed. They let it be clearly seen that the less a consul troubles his Minister the more likely he is to rise; the British Legation at Peking does not want to be worried, and as the consul who presses a British claim or demand on a local official is almost sure to have to refer it to Peking before it is done with, and invade the sacred repose of Legation Street, he is soon taught not to be inconvenient. Sir Thomas Wade in his later years invented a system for discouraging enterprising consuls, which has been perfected by Sir John Walsham. It consisted in never answering letters and never giving instructions. Both men are distinguished for their personal courtesy, and it must have been difficult for them to make a practice of the grave discourtesy involved in not an-sworing letters or despatches. But there can be no peace at Peking if the Minister or Charge d'affaires gives way to the temptation to acknowledge the communications of his subordinates and in the interests of peace the Ministers we have named reluctantly, we may presume, sacrificed their natural inclination to courtesy. If the consul can get no answers to his letters and no instructions, he naturally ceases to write the former or ask for the latter. Iumportuuity will not be favourable to his advancement in the service, and he soon learns to pigeon-hole the letters of his nationals as the minister pigeonholes his. He becomes " pro-Chinese" not from any conviction that in most cases in dispute the Chinese are right and the British claimants wrong, but because to say that after all there is a good deal in what the Taotai says is the easiest way of doing nothing; and doing nothing is the chief duty of a consul as taught from Peking. Now and then British interests are put in charge of a man of action like Sir Harry Parkes, and a wave of activity es over the whole service. But it is stifled by the traditions of Legation Street. Sir Harry Parkes died in harness; but before that he was so disgusted by the position in which he found himself, that he had determined not to accept renewal of his term as Minister, unless he was given a freer hand.
To succeed in the service a consul must be judicious as well as judicial. and Mr. Hughes was eminently judicious. He knew how much he could ask from the Chinese with a probability of getting Lit. He saw both sides of any question, the Chinese side as well as the British, and the chinese might, if they chose, have safely left the decision in his hands. "This Sumine two-sidedness of character prevented his being popular with his own countrymen until the very close of his career, when it began to be realised that with all his seeming want of resolution he gained as much from the Chinese as more sive meu. But successful as Mr. Hughes ultimately was in securing the equal respect of his own countrymen and the Chinese, we should not recommend him as an example to younger members of the service. It is to be feared that the amalgamation of the posts of judge and consul, and the knowledge hat it is proposed hereafter to appoint to the joint post from the consular ranks, will tend to encourage the judicial spirit in the service, and this is one of the greatest drawbacks of the system. The consul should not be an arbitrator, but the advocate of his countrymen. The Chinese authorities, partly from fear of consequences and partly from ignorance, not necessarily from dislike of foreigners, are prepared to refuse everything. If the consul considers himself an arbitrator, represents equally both sides of the question, the forces against the British claim or demand which he is asked to uphold, are three to one: there is, to put it roughly, the whole Tavtai and half the consul against half the consul. The consequence is that nothing is done, and this cannot fail to be the result of the encouragement in consuls of the judicial spirit. It is not given to many consuls to attain by length of service and the "courteous demeanour and reasonable counsels" commemorated by Mr. Mac-greg in his speech atthe great, farewell dinner, the position in which the Chinese authori will grant his requests as soon as they are made. he majority of consuls will always have to fight to pet their contrymen's demands conceded, and the cultivation of the judicial spirit weakens the fighting arm. rare cases, the Chinese will Yield nothing tmustbe remembered thatexceptin very
without fighting, and they will recover, if they can, what they have already once yielded, unless they know that the consul is prepared to fight for it. Soa stickler for his country's rights, like Mr. Alabaster, is, as the Chinese Times says, "out of all reckoning the greatest consul which the fifty years of open intercourse have produced but he is not the kind of consul that will be most grateful to the Alcocks and the Wades. Happily, the British spirit is still independent; and the tendency to pigeon-hole everything at Peking is less dangerous than it might be, for it disgusts the consuls who get no answer to their letters, and makes them see the drawbacks of the policy of "how not to do it."
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alt. 28ja-93 221
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.