THE BOMBAY QUARTERLY REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1855. ART. I.-THE CHINESE EMPIRE AND ITS DESTINIES. 1. The Chinese Empire, forming a sequel to the work entitled "Recollections of a Journey through Tartary and Thibet." By M. Huc, formerly Missionary Apostolic in China. In 2 vols. Longman & Co., London. 1855. 2. Desultory Notes on the Government and People of China and the Chinese Language. By J. TAYLOR MEADOWS, Interpreter of H. B. M.'s Consulate at Canton. Allen & Co. 3. Impressions of China, and the present Revolution, its progress and prospects. By CAPTAIN FISHBOURNE, Commander of the "Hermes" on her late visit to Nanking. Crown 8vo. Seeleys, London. 1855. 4. Official Correspondence of Colonel Humphrey Marshall, United States' Commissioner to China. Papers laid before Congress. 5. Correspondence respecting the Attack on the Foreign Settlements at Shanghai. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Her Majesty. 1854. It is very difficult to awaken the interest of England in her remote dependencies, or in aught bearing upon her external relations with other countries. As a nation we are proverbially slow to take in things which are not in the sphere of our own immediate vision or activity. We are a home-loving, alien-despising people. Both characteristics we carry to a point bordering upon folly, and this is not unfrequently followed by evil consequences to those very interests and home preferences which so exclusively absorb us. It is, indeed, with nations as with individuals, never safe to show either ignorance or VOL. II.-NO. II. 29 indifference, in what concerns our relations with the rest of mankind; more especially where there is any mutual dependence arising from ties of blood or the interests of life. That England should often be the first to suffer by her stolid indifference to the concerns of her children abroad in a vast empire of dependencies and colonies, and to the growth and prospects of other states where she must look for customers and markets, is perhaps a fortunate as well as a just and wise dispensation. If we did not sometimes pay heavy penalties for this short-sighted habit of never looking far afield, and of neglecting all that does not knock at our own door, and clamour for attention, our egotism would become altogether intolerable, and our ignorance too dark to be enlightened. While suffering is confined to our neighbours or relations even, especially if we are neglecting to perform our own part in averting or lessening their trials, it is astonishing with what philosophy we regard those trials, and with what safe generalities we console ourselves for all the evil that is! John Bull indeed is at last getting thoroughly awakened to the fact that he has his hands full, and that this struggle with the modern Megatherium of empires, the most invulnerable of the Pachydermata,―is one pregnant with great events for good or for evil; but it seems to have required an expenditure of thirty millions sterling in one year, and the sacrifice of the finest army we ever sent from our shores, to open his eyes to the utter contempt for all the elements of success which too frequently mark our proceedings. Under the stinging inflictions of the Crimea, it may chance that he gets thoroughly awakened to the fact, that things which happen afar off are often of nearest interest, and that he can only prosper at home who takes care of his concerns abroad; and we have thought there is just a hope that he may be disposed to go further East than the Bosphorus or the Black Sea, and carry his survey of the present state of our relations and prospects on to India-and even to China. With such a vague hope we propose to ourselves the duty of showing forth something of the true state of our relations, with the latter country more especially, in which a British trade of some ten millions annually, and British and Indian revenue of like amount, are at stake, of drawing attention to the dangers which menace the existence of both, and of inquiring how far any policy or exertion on the part of the British Government, singly, or in union with other powers, might avail to avert the impending evil. We may call it a forlorn hope for what is more likely than that said John Bull, startled out of his habitual lethargy by events still nearer home, which threaten to pull his house down about his ears, will concentrate whatever faculties he possesses in a waking state to that one object of care, and to the total and absolute exclusion of all else? Modern works on China. 221 Well-in this world we must often be content to play our own part so far as we are able, and leave the disposal of the whole and the final issue to other and wiser hands, and in this spirit we proceed with our article. The work which we have placed at the head of our list has lately appeared in its English dress, translated from the French of Abbé Huc, formerly "Missionary Apostolic in China, of the Order of Lazarists." He is an old acquaintance, as the author of one of the most interesting books of travels which has appeared in our time, and we hail his return to the stage of his former triumphs very cordially. It is refreshing to have such a book on China to read; and we appreciate it the more on account of the exceeding rareness of the occasion. Russia and the Crimea have not been more fruitful in worthless trash, under the delusive titles of Narratives, Voyages, Journals, Histories, and every other public form of literary sweepings, all equally vapid and stale, than China since the days of DuHalde, and the various official accounts of embassies, Dutch, Russian, and English. The second work, "Notes on the Government and People of China," by one of the interpreters on our consular establishment in that country, notwithstanding some ten years have passed since it fell nearly stillborn from the press, is an exception. Little read,- -a source of expense very probably to its author, it is yet full of original and suggestive matter, collected evidently by a highly intelligent man, and given in a truthful spirit, though somewhat opinionative and egotistic in style. These two works form the Alpha and Omega of the list of readable books,-" books that are books," as Charles Lamb would say; all between being little better than blanks, if we except, as having a certain interest for the florist, several works by Mr. Fortune, which, we doubt not, have been very profitable on that account to both writer and publisher, but are not otherwise of much value, or calculated to throw light upon our relations with China. "Les Lettres Edifiantes"-themselves a compilation by Du Halde from the letters of Missionaries, when China was open to the Jesuits from Pekin to Canton,-and the official accounts of the several embassies, seem to have formed the foundation and supplied the chief material for all that have followed,-mere compilations and rechauffés when they contain anything authentic, and only laying claim to originality when the writers have drawn upon their imagination for their facts. To the whole class of such writers, with and without "illustrations," Zimmerman's saying very fitly applies for what is new in their pages is not true, and what is true is by no means new! Of the various embassies, beyond the one lesson the writers of these official accounts convey in very unmistakeable characters, it is difficult to say what profit is to be found in them. The declaration of a follower of Lord Macartney's, has a certain application to them all" We entered Pekin like beggars, stayed in it like prisoners, and were driven from it like thieves." Kiaking, still later, in speaking of Lord Amherst's mission, gave an authoritative version not a whit more complimentary,-" You brought little and have taken much away,"-and, verily, if the little apply to the wisdom they brought, and the much to the contempt they took with them, the Emperor's account was not so far from the truth! But nations gather wisdom slowly, and, like individuals, only by much and dear-bought experience. We are just beginning, in the year of our Lord 1855, to see that no policy can be a good or successful policy in China which has not a special adaptation to the traditions, character, and prejudices of the nation, governors, and people; that there must be no ko-tooing to them-the one besetting sin of the past,-but rather an assertion, in proper time and place, and with all temper and discretion, of the dignity and rights of other nations immeasurably their superiors in all that constitutes a nation's worth, or a people's strength. Such special adaptation to the exigencies of the case is really required, and to know both their weak and their strong points; whereas truckling and temporising will never have any other issue than to add insolence to arrogance, and impracticability to conceit. We shall have occasion to refer to some episodes in the history of the last ten years' transactions, bearing on these views in a singular degree; and M. Huc gives some very rich, and all but farcical, illustrations of what is to be done by boldness and decision in China; and how much must be suffered by the abject, the weak, or the vacillating! But to return: we propose taking the two works, which we have specified, more particularly as our text books, and while travelling through the country with such a pleasant and well-informed companion as M. Huc, to glance by the way at the Chinese as a people, at their existing social and political institutions, with all that blending of traditions and habits which makes them a race, one and homogeneous as regards themselves, but widely separated from all other races, Western or Oriental, in many essential points. We shall then be better prepared, and so will our readers we trust, to enter into the present state of our relations in their political, commercial, and religious aspect, and to estimate the true bearing of our policy, past and present, for the improvement of these. M. Huc in his preface, very brief but full of pregnant matter, glances cursorily at many of the more interesting subjects which present themselves in this somewhat extensive field M. Huc and Mr. Meadows. 223 of inquiry; and although he necessarily can do no more than vindicate the salient points of European intercourse and Chinese character in their action and reaction on each other, there is quite enough to show that the great problems of that intercouse have been long and maturely considered by him, although he inflicts no disquisitions, political or religious, on his readers-enough to show that he is familiar with those questions, precisely where a large and accurate knowledge of the subject is most required, to enable a writer to deal either fairly or usefully with them. We could almost regret, with so much information at his command, that he had not been tempted to give his matured views on some of these more at length, for there are many of his observations in which, with some knowledge of the country, we very heartily concur. He is certainly not one of those M. Remusat describes, who having "seen little write much;" on the contrary, with his fourteen years' residence, his familiarity with the language, and various experience in the strange circumstances in which he was latterly placed, he is perhaps better qualified than any others of the present day to give good and valuable information on that of which we know least-the genius and social habits of the people and their governors, the working of their institutions, especially of the democratic element in them, and their habits of thought and action in the various relations of life. Until we have penetrated to these inner arcana, we know very little of either man or nation, and must be very much abroad in all our intercouse with them, and more especially in our negotiations. It is from this latter point of view that we regard Mr. Meadows' work as a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of the Chinese. Clear-headed and observant, he seems to have very early felt in his official relations with Chinese authorities and people, that no progress was to be made until we had obtained some landmarks in this direction. How a man thinks; from what point of view subjects are habitually noticed by him; what are the usual and therefore the governing principles of his action-these are the things most essential to be known in our intercouse with our fellowmen if we seek to exercise any influence over them. If we have not these, we are navigating without chart or compass, and know not how to shape our course, or upon what hidden rocks and shoals we may be driving with fatal certainty and force. Great is the influence of such knowledge on the progress of affairs in China more especially, where from certain broad divergencies it is not safe to go upon the general analogy which in Europe we presume to exist between our habits of thought and action, and those of our neighbours. Little notice therefore as this unpretending volume has attracted-resulting in some measure from the aforesaid apathy of the British public to all |