A journal of the first French embassy to China, 1698-1700

Front matter

*1

A JOURNAL

OP THE

I

The urgent need of better intelligence respecting China and Japan. The Method adopted by Mr. Locke and Lord Somers to secure proper intelligence upon all our affairs beyond sea.

HARD as it may be, correctly, and in all their complex bearings, to estimate the prodigious

INTRODUCTION. Ill

passing events in the East, the intrinsic importance of those events deeply interests thinking men; while their novelty or their grandeur strikes the imagination of the most unreflecting. Their issue, for ill or good, perplexes the coolest reasoner ; but the more hopeful view of things on this occasion has powerful encouragements for us all. At least the persuasion gains strength daily, that, both for our own sakes and for the sake of our multitudinous fellow-creatures throughout Asia, we are bound to become better acquainted with whatever in their condition affects us, and upon all points in which our influence may affect them. These objects, it may be said, without presumption, will be materially promoted by examining such neglected details as are presented in this volume upon former communications, especially with China, by ourselves and the French. The dates of most of those details are comparatively recent ; and they bear directly on the actual condition of things in the East. Those details have been mainly collected from official and other inedited stores in our own and in foreign archives.

The substance of the volume is a journal kept

a 2

IV INTRODUCTION.

on board a French ship of war sent to China by Lewis the Fourteenth. The manuscript of that document is in the writing of the early part of the last century. It was obtained casually in London : and, from the character of other MSS. among which the Journal was discovered, it seems to have been in the possession of a distinguished emigrant of the first French Revolution— having probably belonged to the family of a former minister or intelligent sea-officer. This journal is ably compiled, but several errors in the spelling of even trivial words show it to have been a copy of a more correct original.

It contains a genuine narrative of proceedings to which the journalist was more or less a party, on board the ship or in Canton, from its sailing in 1698 and its return to France in 1700. The French mission to China in 1698, here described, was unknown to our later ambassadors, although it affords a valid precedent that must have helped their suitable reception at the court of Pekin, where such reception has been held to be of extremely difficult attainment, and is still not without perplexity. By the liberal decision, however, of the Chinese Em-

INTRODUCTION. V

peror himself, this French mission was originally destined for the northern port of Ning-po, and for the capital. It proceeded to Canton in consequence of the lateness of the season. But at Canton the Viceroy, it is expressly said, " wished to honour the French," — foreigners as they were, — and relieved them at once from the payment of customs. In regard to the prostrations of the Kotou, the Viceroy permitted the French officers to offer their respects to the Emperor in any way " creditable to both nations." This was, therefore, settled amicably and on equal terms, when the French envoy declined to do the act of humiliation often imposed in such cases.

This took place, indeed, in Canton, not at Pekin, in the actual presence of the Emperor. But the original plan of the embassy not being carried out, from stress of weather only, the narrative represents the Emperor as invested with a sort of ubiquity — the authorities in Canton studiously turning to the supposed imperial presence with the reverence that would have been given to their great head, if actually before them. The waiver, therefore, of the offensive ceremony in question at the provincial city in 1698 is to be iri INTRODUCTION.

held indicative of the disposition of the Chinese at that time to receive the foreigners with becoming courtesy. Consequently, in the actual condition of our intercourse with China, the production of this journal, containing such details, properly illustrated, will certainly promote the more peaceful tenor of that intercourse.

Lord Amherst in 1816, and Lord Macartney in 1792, were carefully provided with information in print and in manuscript, concerning what were thought to be all the former diplomatic communications with the Chinese Government from Portugal, Russia, Holland, and Rome.

History was diligently searched for instances of missions to and from the Emperors for the last six centuries, including the narratives of travellers. Even a Chinese Embassy to Lisbon was not quite overlooked, although not so fully described as its interest required. Such precedents were sought for in order to justify our claim of admittance to the Emperor on terms of reasonable equality, seeing that submission was not to be thought of, to ceremonies implying that subjection to China which must have weakened negotiations for fair trading, and for

INTRODUCTION. Vll

mutually useful social intercourse. It is to be regretted that the habitual secresy of diplomatic proceedings defeated the good intentions at that time manifested by us. Lord Amherst being unaware of any suitable example previous to Lord Macartney's of 1792, was unwilling to rely on that supposed solitary case. When, therefore, the Court of Pekin, under the influence of really fleeting jealousies, would not yield in 1816 what its representative at Canton had readily granted in 1698, our minister came away in no small discredit. From that time our trade with the Chinese has suffered much embarrassment ; wars have broken out between us ; and our opium smuggling has been persevered in to an amount and with an evil character unparalleled in the history of trade.

It is in the absence of proper intelligence respecting the disposition of the Chinese government and people towards us, that force has been mainly depended upon as the means of opening their country advantageously at once to us and to themselves. But the most eager advocate of force will gladly renounce it if the object we all aim at can be won by ways of viii INTRODUCTION.

peace ; and the discovery of these happier ways will assuredly be promoted by the publication of authentic reports of such communication with the Chinese government as this Journal of the Mission from France ; and also by the production of such particulars as are here collected from official sources respecting several important British missions to Pekin.

It will not be denied, that a competent knowledge of the matters which statesmen are concerned about, is indispensable to the discharge of their duties. Nor will it be doubted that the first of Italian philosophers, Vico, was right in making great powers and the best intentions subordinate to knowledge in the direction of life. It is then to be expected that eminent men should not neglect good means of acquiring such intelligence. Accordingly, we have not been without those of the highest reputation, who have studiously devised excellent methods of that kind of instruction. What the philosopher declared in theory, the wisest of our statesmen long ago developed practically in the analyses of national events beyond affecting us. The early plan of administering our colonies.

INTRODUCTION. IX

mainly traceable to the first Earl of Clarendon and Sir William Temple, and set forth in the royal Instructions of 1670 to the Committee of the Council for Plantations, expressly provided for the transmission of good intelligence from the Colonies home. That committee, after the Revolution of 1688, become the Lords of Trade and Plantations, framed, under the guidance of two other equally illustrious men, Locke and Lord Somers, a method of periodical analysis of that intelligence for the public instruction.

What was so deliberately planned, stands upon the Journals of Parliament to this day, as it was followed out during several years, until unwisely discontinued. The system included the Indian along with the Colonial Administrations ; and it aimed at securing in both a due regard to philanthropy in the exercise of our growing power abroad.

The department under which so much was well done, is now represented by two Secretaries of State for the Colonies and India ; and efforts have not been wanting to call the attention of the Government to a system admirably adapted to aid it in all its functions* No longer since

« 2

X INTRODUCTION.

than in 1841, the Earl of Derby, at that time Secretary of State for the Colonies, and commencing his Ministry with a zealous execution of its duties, encouraged a special plan for the revival of those periodical analyses ; but that plan was peremptorily put by, under an influence in the Colonial Office, which had been during many years hostile to publicity, and adverse to the best-conceived designs of Colonial reformation so much struggled for of late. In an evil hour, the Earl of Derby submitted to that influence ; but we are come to better times, when it may reasonably be expected, that with the present greater need of what may be thus easily obtained for our guidance at home, our Colonial and Indian ministries will ere long revive what is open to no objection, and must tend to the best results. It is hardly rash to assert, that with the timely publication of the documents respecting China to be here produced after sixty years' suppression of them, the present favourable opening of this rich country to our trade might have been commanded long ago ; whilst they will be seen to be of a character to silence all possible objections to their publication almost

INTRODUCTION. XI

concurrently with the events to which they relate.

We possess, in this way, means of intelligence at our command such as no nation ever had before ; and a field lies before us for the wise, humane, and vigorous application of that intelligence, surpassing even our own great colonizing works.

At the same time, proof exists, amounting to demonstration, that the neglect of what was approved in 1842, by our Colonial Minister, has led to unparalleled horrors, and enormous waste of treasure in one region alone — South Africa. That region was selected at the time, to develop the method of our Colonial analyses proposed ; and with due intelligence, the best and most successful system of Colonial rule ever carried out with the sanction of Parliament, could not have been abandoned, as in ignorance it then was. Without that intelligence, — for Parliament was kept in the darken the subject of South Africa ten whole years, — we first had the burthen of the two needless Caffre wars of '46 — '51 to bear, — and they have been followed by the utter ruin of a small people, — our neighbours eager to

Xli INTRODUCTION.

share our civilization upon fair terms. Yet their ruin is at this moment on the brink of completion, whilst we are parcelling out their ands, for which we have paid an enormous price, both in coin, blood, and honour.

II

The need of improved principles of intercourse with the Chinese. The Earl of Elgin to the Merchants of Shanghae. Our conquests to be stayed in the East, and its people to be treated with more justice.

THERE is urgent need, moreover, of much improvement in the political and commercial principles by which we are to conduct our intercourse hereafter with the people of China. Since the late treaties, indeed, with its government, the cautions sagaciously given a few months since by the Earl of Elgin to the merchants of Shanghae, in order to moderate their too eager expectation of profit from the trade of that vast country, and in order to guide all our proceedings with its inhabitants, have become

INTRODUCTION. Xlll

of paramount urgency to the Western Nations, in all their relations with the East. Proper inquiries into the special history of the Chinese, and into the history of the travels, the trade, and diplomacy of the more western world with the far East, will show that a great debt is owing from us to that too little known people. The Earl of Elgin, in reply to a previous address from the merchants of Shanghae, conceived not only no sanguine anticipations of commercial success, but also in a spirit of aggression, as if the government of China required extraordinary stray " demonstrations before its lofty pretensions could be reduced to pliancy," says —

" You express the trust that the result of my exertions may be ' more fully to develop the vast resources of China,' and to ' extend among the people the elevating influences of a higher civilization.'

" The expectations held out to British manufacturers at the close of the last war between Great Britain and China, when they were told that a new world was opened to their trade, so vast that all the mills in Lancashire could not xiv INTRODUCTION.

make stocking stuff sufficient for one of its provinces, have not been realized ; and / am of opinion that when force and diplomacy shall have done all that they can legitimately effect, the work which has to be accomplished in China will be but at its commencement.

" When the barriers which prevent free access to the interior of the country shall have been removed, the Christian civilization of the West will find itself face to face, not with barbarism, but with an ancient civilization in many respects effete and imperfect, but in others not without claims to our sympathy and respect." *

This solemn and most wise judgment from our own ambassador, purports that besides the " legitimate uses of force and diplomacy," there are other proper means of intercourse with the Chinese wherewith to win our way to their reasonable confidence; and the precept must be made our familiar text, and be enrolled among our household words. There is need of such spurs to just and prudent resolves in all our proceeedings in the supposed new work

* See Appendix A, for the entire address of Lord Elgin.

INTRODUCTION. XT

now opening upon us. The great principle of humanity which Lord Elgin really rests upon, cannot fail to become at once the subject of earnest investigation, if the present occasion be properly used by the men appointed to watch, that the policy of this country be shaped to its lasting and honourable advantage. We shall not assuredly be wanting in our old, brave qualities by becoming more resolutely peaceful. But that principle of humanity, bitterly as we have to repent of its violations by us, lies deep enshrined in our history ; and it has been settled by the parliamentary declaration that wars for conquest and the enlargement of dominion are repugnant to the true genius of our people and the best dictates of the constitution. Upon our relations with the whole East, critical events are before us ; and we are under the holiest obligation to give heed to these portentous signs, however bravely danger must be repelled and difficulties struggled against. With no thought of abandoning what we hold, the past may be repaired with honour by listening to the counsels of experience. Our hopeful prospects in China and Japan offer easier means of com-

XVI INTRODUCTION.

pensating the Eastern world for great commercial and political wrongs done there by us. Those vast regions are also linked to us by another more newly- opened world from Hudson's Bay, " the Baltic of North America," * destined at no distant period to teem with the free and hardy founders of settlements direct across to British Columbia, and to prosper in friendly rivalry with our republican brothers in the south.

But the loftier principles of humane policy must be made our pole-star in this fresh career of real, national greatness, in the spirit in which Parliament declared in the last century, " that to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India are measures repugnant to the wishes, the honour, and policy of this

* It will be permitted to the editor of this Journal to state, that this designation of Hudson's Bay, so strongly significant of capabilities equivalent to those commanded by Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, and Russians, on another freezing sea, was, he thinks, first given to the American Hudson's Bay in letters written some years ago by a relative of his from California, to urge on ministers to take timely steps for colonizing our northern possessions from these islands.

INTRODUCTION. XVII

nation ;" * and therefore expressly forbade all wars without authority from home, except in case of actual or prepared hostility.

It is, then, our policy at home that must be curbed ; and after half a century's fatal abandonment of the sagacious resolution by the parliament of George the Third, her present Majesty has wisely been advised to proclaim to India that " we desire no extension of our present territorial possessions" there ; and the Queen promises what a great minister, Charles James Fox, so earnestly called for, " a system of measures that would secure peace and prosperity to India."

Another great man arrived at an analogous conclusion respecting the East, by historical deduction. Principal Robertson, at the close of his eminently honoured life, declared his confidence and satisfaction that his own labours upon India would tend to correct the erroneous opinions which commonly prevailed, to the injury of its swarthy tribes. He was persuaded that with more KNOWLEDGE the European rulers o* xviii INTRODUCTION.

India would direct their sway there more and more humanely.

Such observations, to be found among the very last of the writings of the eloquent Scottish divine, have the solemnity of a dying man's declaration; and they should be weighed at a crisis when our churches are too prone to offer up their prayers for our own people, instead of the " whole race of mankind," the objects of a broader and therefore wiser service. The authority of Dr. Robertson is not the less deserving of trust, since in his works is displayed the rare excellence of profound historical truth united with brilliant grace of style,* and his just conclusion upon India applies with equal force to China. It was a conclusion formed at a memorable period in our own career beyond sea. There had also been growing up for half a century all over Europe, throughout the Christian world, a warm feeling in favour of our more humane treatment of the world not Christian. The liberation of France and Germany was becoming deeply imbued with phi-

* Lord Brougham's Lives of the Men of Letters of the time of George the Third, p. 258.

INTRODUCTION. XIX

lanthropy. America shared the spirit in the avowed sentiments of Franklin, Benezet, and Washington. Here, independently of the avenging inquest by Mr. Burke and his illustrious supporters into atrocities committed in Hindostan, the King's ministers zealously entered upon a diplomatic intercourse with China, which originated in a cordial invitation of such intercourse from the Court of Pekin.

Indeed, of the good influences of the eighteenth century, so fit to be set off against its corruptions and its crimes, not the least important was the earnest endeavours of France and Britain to search out and enlighten the dark places of remote regions. The peaceful missions of the time to China and Japan are to be traced to such explorations under the Bougainvilles and the Cooks of those days. To set the negro slave free, and to bring hope to the convict's cell, were great works ; but it was better to aim as men then did, and are only beginning to do so again, at the prosperous spread of our civilization far and wide, without sacrificing our fellow-men of any class or nation in our progress.

XX INTRODUCTION.

III

The Chinese Government well disposed in the last two centuries to encourage friendly intercourse with foreign governments ; and at a critical period, prepared to grant domestic reforms, based upon a love of TRUTH, and calculated to facilitate such intercourse with us.

THE invitations from two aged and most distinguished Chinese Emperors, Kang-hi, in 1697, and Kien-Long, in 1786, to European powers of the first rank, to open diplomatic intercourse with Pekin, were surely conclusive refutations of the common opinion respecting the exclusive character of the Chinese government. Allowance will be readily made for circumstances which have given rise to that erroneous opinion ; and the difficulties of the whole case can be properly accounted for by a fair consideration of the perplexity with which a proud and not incorrupt Eastern Court must have looked upon the steady progress of Western nations — the Russians in the North— the British in India for a century— towards its greatness. The conduct of the Western ecclesiastics, admitted liberally

INTRODUCTION. XXI

into the heart of China, had not always proved their Christianity to be humble and peaceful as they professed it was. Other bodies of men — of various European nations, long frequenters of the Chinese coasts, and only of latter times limited to the trade of Canton — had too often exhibited habitual disorders and mutual jealousies, that lowered them all in the eyes of the Chinese government and people. And when, at length, the dominant traders, the agents of the East India Company, acquired with their greater wealth a higher character, there was permitted to grow the frightful opium smuggling, to our immense profit, and ruinously to China, which alone was enough to mar all the good we ever did there.

What influence is justly to be attributed to European agencies, as stimulants to the Chinese troubles of the last fifty years, cannot be well estimated ; but the efforts made by the Imperial government to stay the source of those troubles, call for our profound respect.

Concurrently with our diplomatic mission to Pekin, under Lord Amherst, in 1816, offering to China that just system of intercourse with

Xxii INTRODUCTION.

the west which the former sovereigns had approved, the Emperor issued a proclamation to his people, in order to initiate an era of great reformation in the country itself, declaring such reformation to be the only way to save it from convulsion.

" Govern," said his Imperial Majesty to the officers of the state, "govern with truth and sincerity, and order will be the result ; if not, anarchy will ensue. To an individual, to a family, even to the sovereign, and the whole empire, nothing further is required but TRUTH. At this moment great degeneracy prevails ; the magistrates are destitute of truth, and multitudes of the people are false."

The gigantic rebellion then begun in China, and raging to this day, is attributed by the Emperor, in the spirit familiar to Chinese usage, to his own " moral defects ;" but it is to the Imperial functionaries of all ranks that this appeal is the most earnestly addressed.

It was an appeal of the highest authority for administrative reform on a gigantic scale, and to be based upon popular sympathies.

INTRODUCTION. XX111

The document* is to be found among our records collected preparatory to Lord Amherst's mission ; and it may well have been held to indicate a disposition to accept from us good offices, in aid of the reformation so earnestly desired, and so much in harmony with the best Chinese constitutions.

Assuredly it is not for us, who justly assert our purer, Christian civilization, to add fresh difficulties to those that beset the Chinese government. We are earnest at home for many reforms ; and are bound to assist the efforts of those whose chief calls for a reign of TRUTH upon earth.

The application of the lesson rests with the true statesmen ; and with the sincere philanthropists— terms that should be largely synonimous, — with all whom the genius and the counsels of the Burkes and the Robertsons of the last century should more and more in-* fluence, when dealing with the East. Fresh appeals must be made with energy to the national spirit which then did much for Indian

* Appendix E.

Introduction

reforms ; and whatever the Earl of Elgin may have accomplished more to justify his warning to the merchants of Shanghae, must be supported with zeal, to do honour to that good natural spirit claimed by illustrious men for centuries as the genuine spirit of the British constitution, hating fraud for any gain, and sanctioning force only for beneficial purposes.

At the same time, what an envoy may have erred in, must be boldly corrected. The result will be the development of means to strengthen and extend the solemn Parliamentary declaration of 1783 and 1793 against aggressive war, by shewing a way to natural aggrandisement superior to, and far more enduring than the sanguinary conquests of the Alexanders and Caesars, and their modern imitators. This better policy will consist in a just system of commercial interccurse, calculated to secure benefits to all who respect it, and who are willing to impose upon men only honest obligations.

INTRODUCTION. XXV

IV

The general opinion respecting the dislike of Foreigners by the Chinese, erroneous.

No conviction is more deeply rooted among us than the opinion that the Chinese people and Government have, time out of mind, been insuperably opposed to fair intercourse with foreigners, unless under the compulsion of armed force. This opinion has not, indeed, been undisputed, but it is become almost universal. It is expressed in strong language, in a very able work, written to counteract the exclusive principle thus vehemently imputed to a people with whom we have long wished to trade on equal terms. " The Mandarins," it is asserted in that book, " have rejected, as they would avoid contact with the plague, every proposal from a foreigner for the establishment of friendly intercourse. Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes, has been the never-failing answer of the Chinese government to offers of friendship and advantage from other governments."31

* England and America. Loud. 8vo. 1833. vol. i. p. 296.

b

Xxvi INTRODUCTION.

This unqualified statement occurs in the work of one who by that work thoroughly exposed our colonial maladministration ; and who, familiar as he was with all forms of its corruption, might well have looked more carefully upon the policy of a great people, not only not indisposed to meet us upon equal conditions, but also capable of appreciating things respecting which we have superior intelligence. That people, too, have been the source from which we have perhaps derived more than one institution essential to our social welfare, and certainly obtained some of the valued most of industrial products.

But the author of England and America shared the enormous error commonly prevalent on this subject. From the point of view in which he examined it, the leading part of his case was mistaken, and he was ako misled by a common unfounded assumption, arising out of the superficial estimate habitually taken by our most experienced statesmen, and by our greatest advisers of important affairs beyond sea. These affairs have never secured attention except by fits and starts — upon the occurence of some calamity — a war, or an insurrection — upon the renewal of charters

INTRODUCTION. XXV11

to rich companies, or upon a great discovery of precious metals. Hitherto, as soon as a disturbing incident has passed by, our indifference to its colonial or Indian scene is fleeting about, returns. After the trial of Warren Hastings, and during the first quarter of the present century, commercial monopoly and administrative abuses revived, to be followed by a marvellous indifference respecting India ; and the result of that trial really concealed from us the fields of peaceful enterprize at our command from Bombay to Japan. There was then set up in its place a system of unlimited conquests, which, in defiance of the injunctions of Parliament, was fast overleaping the Himalayas, and alarming, when not threatening, all eastern Asia.

France has shared our faults of ignorance and ambition on this head of territorial rule beyond sea ; and she has more than shared our punishment. Whilst we have secured many indemnities for our frequent disasters, France has been stripped by us successively of her colonial possessions in Canada, in the West Indies, in the Indian Ocean, and upon the Continent of India. Nor has France any corrective

XXVJii INTRODUCTION.

as Britain has, in the freedom and energy of individuals, against administrative corruption and incapacity. While Downing Street has been in profound sleep, or bewildered for want of intelligence, or misled by intrigue respecting the proper policy for our colonies, the colonists for the most part have taken care of themselves, and saved the national honour so far as their own material interests are concerned. But the cabinet of the Tuileries, pretending despotically to rule its remotest dependencies, paralyses them by fatal official influence. The want of intelligence respecting French affairs beyond sea betrayed by the French Cabinet, as could be shown by astounding examples, surpasses even the ignorance of Downing Street respecting our own remote affairs. How much the French have forgotten events so honourable to them as this Journal records the proceedings of their government to have been respecting China, was lately proved by the highest authority. The Moniteur says, that the power of France " has been little known in Pekin, save by the vague remembrances left by the Jesuits con. earning the grandeur of Lewis XIV., and subse-

INTRODUCTION. XXIX

quently by the grandeur of Napoleon's name."

This utter oblivion of the really successful intercourse of Louis the Fourteenth with the Emperor of China — a success unquestionably won by the renown of the Grand Monarque — stands in amusing contrast with the assumption of the first Napoleon's influence in the East. We took care that he should possess no power as a conqueror there ; and his want of it was not certainly compensated by his renown as a humane reformer. The vanity may be pardoned that prompts the French official organ in 1858 to claim " the first rank in breaking down the barriers of ages, which have kept nearly three hundred millions of people in isolation." But it is for the interest of France that her statesmen should be better read in diplomatic history, which records a much earlier and much worthier opening of the mysterious land, than that which we are now busy about It is much more incumbent upon French statesmen to call carefully to mind the causes of the failure of France in China so soon after the country had been fairly opened to them one hundred and fifty years