CHAPTER XX.

THE BEST POLICY OF WESTERN STATES TOWARDS CHINA.

In the foregoing portion of this Volume, it has been shown by reasoning starting from the nature of the Chinese government system; and by conclusions drawn from the long experience of Chinese history, that periodical dynastic rebellions are absolutely necessary to the continued well being of the nation: that only they are the storms that can clear the political atmosphere when it has become sultry and oppressive. It has also been shown, by extracts from the most widely known and most venerated Chinese works, that the nation itself is perfectly well aware of the political function of its rebellions; and that it respects successful rebellions, as executions of the Will of Heaven, operating for its preservation in peace, order, security, and prosperity. Whether that political system, which renders such crises from time to time indispensable, is the best that could be devised, or is one of average goodness or is a very bad one, cannot be made the question. The system is there. It exists, and exists deeply rooted in the mental nature of a large and homogeneous people. When we have by moral agencies changed that mental nature, then we may begin to speak of forcibly interfering with that system for the benefit of that people. We may then begin to argue the question; for even then, it would be by no means certain that we had attained any right to interfere, i. e. that we should, by forcible interference, do the Chinese any good,-the only thing that can ever give us the right to interfere by force. Such disinterested interference

of one nation with another has never yet taken place, I believe, in the world. But there has often been a pretence of disinterestedness in such proceedings; and we are, at this moment, being loudly summoned to interference with the Chinese in the cause of humanity and of civilization; hence the necessity of arguing against it too.

That interference, by force, with the internal affairs of another state could, if unsuccessful, only produce a prolongation of the state of anarchy, or of civil war, is a proposition that requires but to be stated. Yet so true is it that all interference is bad, that unsuccessful interference is, after all, the least bad: when put an end to, by the final success of the party which it opposed, an internally very strong government is the certain result. On the other hand, if the armed interference is successful, the certain result is an internally weak government; and an internally weak government is identical with a cowardly government, a vicious government, and a cruel government. External aid and support imply external dictation in internal affairs. But so far as the internal affairs of a state are concerned, the rulers, to be good, must only rule, and never be ruled. It would be easy to show in detail, that, in all this, psychological deduction and historical induction fully concur. But I must content myself by pointing to Oude; to the externally supported, and therefore base and ferocious government of which, we have just put an end.

The propositions of the last preceding paragraph hold of all nations. That they nowhere can have greater force than when applied to China, with its peculiar nationality and institutions, is a truth that all my readers must by this time be ready to admit. I must beg them to rest assured that a man who knows the scene and the people practically, could trace out the very ways in which the results indicated would be produced.

But if interference with the internal affairs of the Chinese in the cause of humanity and civilization,-if a well inten

tioned and perfectly disinterested interference is inadmissible, because it would defeat its own objects; does not the right nevertheless remain to us of interfering by force in the justifiable protection of our general commercial interests, even though the Chinese nationality should be thereby destroyed? Most certainly not;—and after the question has been thus nakedly put, without its usual accompaniments of circumlocutory disguises and palliatives, it can hardly be necessary to prove at length why no such right remains to us. Whether, on shipwreck on the wide ocean, a strong man, who clings at the same moment with a weak man to a plank, insufficient to support both, has the right or not, in the cause of self-preservation, to thrust off his fellow-man to certain death, is a question that ethicists have much disputed on. But here there is no such nice question to be decided. British preservation does not absolutely depend on Chinese trade. Hence, if the protection of our commercial interests be (what is really not the case) at variance with the cause of humanity and civilization in that country, most assuredly our commercial interests must go unprotected; unless we prefer to engage openly in a war with humanity and civilization. We have no right to say to the Chinese or to any people, large or small: "Submit to bad government, to bodily misery and mental depression, that we may trade with you." The Chinese rebellions have not been got up to attack our trade; and wherever they injure it in the interior of the country, the injury is incidental. So long as that remains the case, we have no right to interfere by force, however great the injury may be. It is only when the power in China, by whomsoever wielded, turns from internal to external affairs, and attacks our commerce directly as such; or when any of the contending parties endangers, incidentally or wilfully, our persons and property at the Five Open Ports, that we are entitled, not indeed to interfere between other parties, but to protect and defend our own persons and rights by force.

Let us here place distinctly before ourselves what it is that constitutes non-interference. The doctrine of non-interference is: That no nation has the right to aid, by actual force or by intimidation, one of the contending parties in any other nation, unless it is to counterbalance the aid given to an opposite party by a third nation. This latter, the only justifiable description of armed interference, is analogous to the one justifiable case in which a poisonous dose may be administered to a man, viz. as an antidote to another poisonous dose. If the poisons exactly nullify each other, and are then pumped out or ejected, the man lives, though his system sustains a severe shock. If the armed forces exactly nullify each other's action in the body of the nation interfered with, and are then withdrawn or forced out, the nation lives, though it too, suffers heavily. The first interferer is an international poisoner; the second interferer is the doctor;who best shows his ability by administering no more of the deadly interference than is just necessary.

There is reason to hope that the doctrine of non-interference, so understood, will in time have the authority of an international axiom in the world. Then, possibly, wherever there is a poisoner there will be found one or more doctors. Let us apply the doctrine by way of illustration to one or two existing states. The republican Swiss hire themselves, in large numbers, with the avowed or tacit consent of their government, to aid the king of Naples in maintaining a despotic rule, a despotism by all accounts atrocious,-over the inhabitants of south Italy and Sicily. Here the republican Americans would be perfectly justified in fitting out an expedition to aid the people; and the American government is in nowise required to prevent citizens of the States from engaging in such an enterprise, but rather the reverse. So long however as the Piedmontese to instance another Italian people-settle their internal affairs among themselves, any nation in the world that would interfere by force, whether on the pretext of "order" or of "freedom," would commit

an outrage on the Piedmontese nation and a grave offence against humanity.

The four most powerful nations in the world are interested in China. England and America have large and increasing commercial interests; and influential parties in both countries interest themselves in the labors of the Protestant missionaries. France has small, but gradually extending commercial interests; and has hitherto greatly interested herself in the labors of the Romanist missionaries,-a large number of whom are French. Russia has considerable commercial interests; and necessarily interests herself in the condition of an empire which has a common boundary line with herself for thousands of miles,-and whose territories she has, moreover, shown herself determined to encroach upon.

With respect to the external affairs of States, or international relations, when we look back on the past 4,000 years of history, there is every ground for hoping that if some one country (Russia is in spite of her present check still the most likly one) does not, through the foolish disunion of the others, succeed in subjecting them all, there will be established in the course of time a Universal Congress, composed of deputies from every Soverign State in the world, large or small, to which will be referred the decision of the disputes between any two of them. The Congress will be based on the two principles that, happen what may, there shall be no territorial encroachments, and that, if any one of two disputing States should demur to its decision, then the aggrieved nation shall itself never take other than a pecuniary or at most a defensive part in the war of enforcement; which will be conducted by two or more, as may be necessary, of those nations which are least interested in the subject of dispute; or, if the refractory state is very powerful, by all the others (the aggrieved one excepted), all expenses, together with a heavy pecuniary penalty for widows and orphan's pensions, &c., being in the end invariably and strictly exacted from the common offender. Were this system once fairly in effective operation, wars