"there was hardly a countenance in Calcutta, save that of the Governor"General, Lord Canning, which was not blanched with fear-I shall "never forget the cheers with which the 'Shannon' was received as "she sailed up the river, pouring forth her salute from those 68"pounders which the gallant and lamented Sir William Peel sent up "to Allahabad, and from those 24-pounders which, according to Lord "Clyde, made way across the country in a manner never before wit"nessed." (P. 198.)

Tell Lord Elgin,' wrote some time afterwards Sir William Peel, whose heroic character fitted him to play a part in these great events, tell Lord Elgin that it was the Chinese Expedition that relieved Lucknow, relieved Cawnpore, and fought the battle of the 6th December.' For Lord Elgin had thus indirectly brought about the success and triumph of other men, even more essential to the stability of the empire than the enterprise in which he was himself engaged.

Lord Elgin's own view of the crisis is simply recorded by himself in the following passage from his journal:-

The Government and public in England would not believe there was any danger in India for a long time, and consequently allowed the season for precautionary measures to pass by, and then made up for their apathy by the most exaggerated apprehensions. My mind has been more tranquil, for it has not presented these phases. As soon as I heard of Canning's difficulties, I determined to do what I could for him; but it never occurred to me that we were to act as if the game was up with us in the East.

case.

"The secret of governing a democracy is understood by men in power at present. Never interfere to check an evil until it has attained such proportions that all the world see plainly the necessities of the You will then get any amount of moral and material support that you require; but if you interfere at an earlier period, you will get neither thanks nor assistance! I am not at all sure but that the time is approaching when foresight will be a positive disqualification in a statesman. But to return to our own matters. The Government and public are thinking of nothing but India at present. It does not however follow, that quite as strong a feeling might not be got up for China in a few months. If we met with anything like disaster here, that would certainly be the case.' (Pp. 207, 208.)

The operations against Canton commenced on January 1, 1858. The city was soon taken. Yeh was captured. The plenipotentiaries moved northward to Shanghai, and at last to Tientsin, where the Treaty was signed, which may be regarded as the basis of our relations with the Chinese Empire. Lord Elgin said that he felt very sensibly the painfulness of the position of a negotiator, who has to treat with persons who yield nothing to reason and everything to fear, and who are at the same time profoundly ignorant of the subjects under

discussion and of their own real interests.' His policy was therefore to practise the utmost forbearance and moderation, and not to ask for more than the Chinese themselves could fairly grant. In this he was admirably seconded by the French Plenipotentiary, Baron Gros. But he obtained the right to send an Ambassador of the Queen to Pekin; religious toleration; liberty of trade, with the addition of five commercial ports; a revision of the tariff fixed by a previous treaty; and a sum of about 1,300,000l. for the losses at Canton and expenses of the war. But Lord Elgin foresaw that the future relations of the West with China must rest mainly on our own conduct as Christian and more highly civilised Powers :

'When the barriers which prevent free access to the interior of the country shall have been removed, the Christian civilisation of the West will find itself face to face, not with barbarism, but with an ancient civilisation in many respects effete and imperfect, but in others not without claims on our sympathy and respect. In the rivalry which will then ensue, Christian civilisation will have to win its way among a sceptical and ingenious people, by making it manifest that a faith which reaches to Heaven furnishes better guarantees for public and private morality than one which does not rise above the earth.

At the same time the machina-facturing West will be in presence of a population the most universally and laboriously manufacturing of any on the earth. It can achieve victories in the contest in which it will have to engage only by proving that physical knowledge and mechanical skill, applied to the arts of production, are more than a match for the most persevering efforts of unscientific industry.' (P. 240.)

Immediately after the termination of the negotiation with China, Lord Elgin made that brilliant and successful excursion to Japan, so well related by Mr. Oliphant, which raised for the first time in modern days the mystery hanging over that ingenious people. Viewed by the light of subsequent events, it appeared that Lord Elgin had taken too favourable a view of his new friends, when he said they were the nicest people 'possible,' and he certainly was misled when he negotiated with the Tycoon, who after all was not the sovereign of Japan. But more recent experience has proved that he did not overrate their extraordinary aptitude to learn the arts of civilised life, their wonderful acuteness in business, and their practical sense and goodnature-qualities which have since led to one of the most sudden and extraordinary revolutions in the history of the world.

Although Lord Elgin had taken every precaution to insure the faithful observance of the Treaty of Tientsin by the Chinese, and had left his brother, Sir Frederick Bruce, in

charge of our newly-established relations, besides making himself a remarkable expedition to the interior of China as far as Hankow on the Yang-tsi-Kiang, fresh troubles soon broke out, the ratification of the Treaty was evaded, and our ships were fired upon from the Peiho forts. So that within a year of his return to England in 1859, Lord Elgin was again despatched to China as Ambassador Extraordinary. Frederick Bruce was not to be outdone by his brother in magnanimity. When the unfortunate affair took place in June 1859, at the Peiho forts, and the British attack was beaten off, he might have stated that he had done all he could to dissuade the admiral from making the attack at all, and had even written a despatch to that effect. After the event, Lord Elgin says: Frederick, partly from generosity of character, and partly from sympathy with the admiral and admiration of his valour, abstained from stating in his own justification all the circum'stances of the unfortunate affair at the Peiho last year.' The fact is, that the despatch he had written against the expedition was never produced, and Sir Frederick Bruce took upon himself a considerable share of the discredit which arose from the failure, although he was in no way responsible for it. Only now has this fact come to light; but it is one that deserves to be remembered.

The allied forces of England and France which were assembled in July 1860 in the Gulf of Pecheli, about two hundred miles from the mouth of the Peiho, were incomparably more powerful and efficient than those engaged in the former war. The expedition was in fact too large. Lord Elgin had said to Lord Palmerston before he started that he had much rather undertake to march to Pekin with 5,000 men than with 25,000; and he afterwards declared that the delays incident to conveying a large army were the principal cause of the loss of the prisoners, and nearly made the whole thing break down. He states the forces actually engaged to have amounted to 30,000 English (fleet and army) and 10,000 French; but I 'suppose,' he adds, we must not crow till we see what the Tartar warriors are.' The Tartar warriors were not formidable, either behind their forts or in the field, although the forces collected by the Chinese Government were considerable, and fully demonstrated their determination to break, if possible, the Treaty they were bound to ratify. It was the procrastination and treachery of the Tartar generals that proved our worst enemies, and led to the very formidable incident of the seizure of Mr. Parkes, Mr. Henry Loch, and others, and their capture in the dungeons of Pekin, which has been so simply

and graphically related by one of themselves in pages which are a genuine record of British heroism.* Nothing could be more painfully embarrassing to Lord Elgin than the knowledge that these distinguished members of the embassy, many of whom were personally dear to him, had fallen into the hands of enemies to whom pity, justice, and the usages of war were alike unknown. He was perfectly aware of the extreme danger of their position. But he deviated not one hair's breadth from the path of public duty. The Chinese endeavoured to stop the advance of the army by alternate promises and threats about the prisoners. But the allied forces steadily moved onwards. They took the Summer Palace; they advanced to the walls of Pekin; in a day or two more the city would have been stormed. The Emperor had already fled from it. In this extremity, on October 8, those of the prisoners who survived were sent back to the camp. But several of them had miserably perished; and it was as a measure of signal retribution for this atrocious crime that Lord Elgin resolved upon the destruction of the Yuen-ming-yuen, the favourite Summer Palace of the emperors of China. As this is the only act of Lord Elgin's life to which a doubt, approaching to censure, has in some minds attached, we think it right to republish his own justification of it:

'Having, to the best of my judgment, examined the question in all its bearings, I came to the conclusion that the destruction of Yuenming-yuen was the least objectionable of the several courses open to me, unless I could have reconciled it to my sense of duty to suffer the crime which had been committed to pass practically unavenged. I had reason, moreover, to believe that it was an act which was calculated to produce a greater effect in China, and on the Emperor, than persons who look on from a distance would suppose.

'It was the Emperor's favourite residence, and its destruction could not fail to be a blow to his pride as well as to his feelings. To this place he brought our hapless countrymen, in order that they might undergo their severest tortures within its precincts. Here have been found the horses and accoutrements of the troopers seized, the decorations torn from the breast of a gallant French officer, and other effects belonging to the prisoners. As almost all the valuables had already. been taken from the palace, the army would go there, not to pillage, but to mark, by a solemn act of retribution, the horror and indignation with which we were inspired by the perpetration of a great crime. The punishment was one which would fall not on the people, who may

* We refer to the 'Personal Narrative of Occurrences during Lord 'Elgin's Second Embassy to China, 1860, by Henry Brougham Loch,' which was published in 1869. Mr. Loch was made a Companion of the Bath for his gallant services, and has since been appointed Lieut.Governor of the Isle of Man.

be comparatively innocent, but exclusively on the Emperor, whose direct personal responsibility for the crime committed is established, not only by the treatment of the prisoners at Yuen-ming-yuen, but also by the edict, in which he offered a pecuniary reward for the heads of the foreigners, adding, that he was ready to expend all his treasure in these wages of assassination.

'On Thursday, the 18th of October, the extensive buildings of the palace were given to the flames; and during the whole of the 19th they were still burning. "The clouds of smoke," says Mr. Loch, "driven by the wind, hung like a vast black pall over Pekin; " well calculated to enforce with their lurid gloom the lesson conveyed to the citizens in a proclamation which Lord Elgin had caused to be affixed in Chinese to all the buildings and walls in the neighbourhood, to the effect "that no individual, however exalted, could escape from "the responsibility and punishment which must always follow the com"mission of acts of treachery and deceit; and that Yuen-ming-yuen "was burnt as a punishment inflicted on the Emperor for the violation "of his word, and the act of treachery to a flag of truce."

'Five days later, on the 24th of October, the Convention, which had been the subject of so much dispute, was finally signed, and Lord Elgin exchanged with the Emperor's brother the ratifications of the Treaty of Tientsin.' (Pp. 366, 367.)

No man was more opposed than Lord Elgin to the bloodshed and vandalism of war. He may be said to have hated

them. But the acts of war would be even more detestable than they are, if they were not governed and directed by a high sense of moral justice. We believe that in this instance the punishment inflicted was just, necessary, and signal, and though it destroyed a palace which was the pride of a nation, it did not touch a single human life.

The treaty of peace signed by Lord Elgin shortly afterwards (on October 24), at Pekin, has fulfilled the expectations of its authors. It placed the relations of the two Empires on a sound foundation; it established a peace which has already lasted for twelve years; it has led to enormous development of trade; and far from weakening the Chinese Government, it has rendered it materially stronger than it was at the time when the interior of the country was devastated by a frightful rebellion and its coasts were threatened by foreign war.

Lord Elgin returned to England in April 1861, having made an excursion to the Philippines and to Java on his way home, in which he had an opportunity of comparing the Spanish and Dutch systems of colonial government in the East with our own. How different is the picture! In those dependencies he saw the religious intolerance of Spain and the commercial restrictions of Holland used to crush the native population to the earth, whilst the policy of England tends to inculcate self