The foreign representatives therein state that it would seem that the yamên
holds the missionaries responsible for the late outrages, and they deny the
justice of this charge. They then recite at some length the benefits
conferred upon the Chinese, whether Christians or non-Christians, by the
philanthropy of the missionaries. These benefactions have never been
acknowledged by the Chinese Government, and hence ignorant people have been
induced to engage in rioting.
They complain, further, that the local officials have not done and are not
doing their duty; that rioters are unpunished and depredations still
continue.
The imperial edict of the 13th instant is treated as a first installment of
what is expected by the foreign powers, and, if it is not obeyed and
executed in the provinces, further action by the foreign powers may be
expected. What that action may be no one seems to apprehend. The foreign
residents talk loudly of reprisals and of bombarding the offending cities.
Such action, it seems to me, would only complicate the situation and would
furnish discontented Chinese subjects with an opportunity for another
rebellion. Disorder would prove destructive to foreign trade and in the end
would not benefit missionaries.
[Inclosure in No. 1328.]
Joint dispatch to the tsung-li yamên.
Your Highness: The undersigned, representatives
of Belgium, France, the German Empire, Great Britain, Italy, Japan,
Russia, Spain, and the United States, have had the honor to receive the
separate replies which your highness and your excellencies have
addressed to them on the 15th instant in answer to their joint note of
the 8th instant. To these replies a copy of the imperial edict issued on
the 13th instant was annexed.
At the same time your highness and your excellencies, while recognizing
the justice of the remarks contained in the joint note of the 13th
instant and the gravity of the situation, add the request that the
undersigned should instruct their respective consuls to advise the
bishops and missionaries that they shall, if a Chinaman wishes to adopt
the Christian faith, first inquire if the person in question belongs to
the law-abiding classes of the population, and that only after they have
obtained indisputable proofs of this, they shall be allowed to receive
him into the Christian community. Your highness and your excellencies
further state that all disputes between Christians and non-Christians
must be decided by the local authorities, and that, according to
existing treaties, the missionaries are neither to attempt to grant
their protection in
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the
presence of the authorities to an accused person nor meddle with the
duties of the local officials.
Your highness and your excellencies request the undersigned to make the
foregoing also the subject of orders to their respective consuls, and
you base this request, as well as the former one, upon statements you
declare to have been made to the yamên by, the representatives of the
treaty powers of their willingness to do so.
Your highness and your excellencies will allow the undersigned to state
that, while they have recognized the desirability of recommending great
prudence in general to all missionaries, the representatives of France,
the German Empire, and Great Britain have already, at the conference
held at the yamên on May 25, stated that even the greatest prudence
shown in the selection of persons admitted to the Christian faith might
prove useless, as nobody could foresee the future, and that even in the
Imperial Chinese Government service some persons in whom great
confidence had been placed turned out after some time as utterly
worthless of it. And certainly, if the Chinese Government, with all the
means of information at their disposal, can not prevent worthless
subjects from entering their service, how could a missionary be held
even only morally responsible if, notwithstanding all his prudence and
all the precautions taken, an unworthy person managed to enter the
Christian community of which each missionary is the spiritual head.
With regard to the principle that the fact of a Chinaman being converted
does not withdraw him from his native jurisdiction, the undersigned have
already formally stated their entire adhesion to it, and they here
repeat it once more. But your highness and your excellencies will
understand that the practical application of this principle is dependent
upon the strict execution of the engagement taken by the Chinese
Government in the treaties with foreign powers, that no Chinaman shall
be molested or prosecuted for embracing, exercising, and propagating the
Christian religion.
If this engagement is strictly kept and executed by the Chinese
authorities, if no false accusations are brought forward against
Christians and acted upon by the authorities as has been unhappily too
often the case, the necessity for a missionary to interfere with the
local authorities for the protection of native Christians will never
present itself.
The insistance of your highness and your excellencies in demanding at the
present moment from the foreign representatives a declaration enjoining
upon the foreign missionaries the necessity of great prudence in
admitting applicants into the Christian communities and forbidding
missionaries to extend illegal protection to the native members of
Christian communities, as will as the request put forward in the yamên’s
letter of the 14th instant, at the recommendation of his excellency
Chang Chi Tung, that no children should be received for the moment at
the Christian orphanages, would seem to indicate on the part of the
tsung-li yamên a certain desire to hold foreign missionaries and
Christian converts, to a certain extent at least, responsible for what
has been going on in the valley of the Yangtse during the last five
weeks.
If such should be the meaning of the yamên’s demands, the undersigned
would have to protest most energetically against any such attempt, not
the slightest pretext having been given by missionaries or converts for
the horrible and disgraceful outrages of which the valley of the Yangtse
has lately been the theater.
Whatever misfortune has fallen upon a part of the Chinese Empire,
missionaries of every denomination have, ever since the great famine in
1877–’78, come forward to offer substantial aid and assistance to those
whom misery and death stared in the face. Hundreds of thousands of taels
have been subscribed in China by foreigners and still larger sums in
Europe and America, and the money has been most carefully distributed to
the sufferers without inquiring if they were Christians or
un-Christians; many tens of thousands of children have been saved by
being received at the Christian orphanages, where they have been fed and
educated to become useful members of society; tens of thousands of lives
of Chinamen have been preserved by sick people being admitted
gratuitously or for a nominal fee to hospitals founded and kept by
missionaries; thousands of boys and girls have been educated at schools
kept by missionaries. But never a word of praise or acknowledgment has
been uttered by the Chinese Government for all these benefits conferred
modestly and silently upon innumerable Chinese, not even when, at the
conference at the yamên on the 10th instant, Her Britannic Majesty’s
minister had drawn the attention of the yamên to the above-enumerated
facts, and when your highness and your excellencies had promised that
the omission should be repaired in the imperial edict to be issued.
It is to this want, not only of sympathy, but of justice, shown by the
Chinese Government that the adverse feelings of the masses against
Christianity must be attributed, and if to this the absence of energy on
the part of the Chinese provincial and local authorities are added, and
the open hostility of some of the officials who are not ashamed to make
themselves—as in the case of the taotai of Wuhu—the mouthpiece of the
foulest and most calumnious accusations against Christians, it
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can not be wondered at that
ignorant persons should imagine that they serve their country in
destroying chapels, schools, and hospitals and persecuting their
Christian countrymen and foreign missionaries.
The undersigned regret that, notwithstanding all the promises and
declarations of the yamên, hardly anything has been done so far in the
valley of the Yangtse either to put a stop to further depredations and
outrages or to punish the rioters and to remove those officials whose
want of energy or tact has rendered these outrages possible. The band of
rioters who destroyed the missionary establishment at Tanyang has been
permitted to proceed to Wuhu and resume their outrages there, though at
this latter place Chinese soldiers are quartered in the immediate
neighborhood of the missionary establishment. None of the rioters at any
other place than Wuhu seem to have been punished so far, and those
officials who, like the taotai of Wuhu, have by their, to say the least,
highly imprudent behavior, caused the riots to spread, are still in
possession of their posts and functions.
The imperial edict of the 13th instant is a first installment of what
must be done by the Chinese Government to give satisfaction for the past
and guaranties against the repetition of similar outrages; but your
highness and your excellencies must understand that the edict
communicated to the undersigned has any value only so far as the orders
contained in it are practically executed, and that the further action of
the powers having treaties with China will depend in a great measure
upon the straightforwardness and energy shown by the provincial and
local authorities in the execution of the provisions of the edict.
The undersigned, while hoping to receive before long a communication from
the yamên informing them of the steps taken by the provincial
authorities for the execution of the edict of the 13th instant, avail
themselves, etc.
