Glass. Book. COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE FIRST CHINESE MISSION TO FOREIGN POWERS ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE FIRST CHINESE MISSION TO FOREIGN POWERS BY FREDERICK WELLS WILLIAMS Assistant Professor of Oriental History in Yale University NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1912 o /X . COPYEIGHT, 1912, BT CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published September, 1912 gCLA32052i ' ft_ 7k)J. PREFACE This is a study of a career and of an enter- prise that were misconstrued by their own gen- eration. They demand requital from generations that are to come. As a romance in the stirring period of American history the hfe of Anson Burhngame deserves a biographer capable of giving its epic movement lasting literary form. My purpose in these pages has been less ambi- tious. So far as the character of the man is con- cerned I have tried to show that it was justly estimated by few even of those who admired him; that the work he set out to perform was left un- completed but did not end in failure. Yet the real importance of Anson Burlingame lies not so much in the man or in the endeavour as in the use of an idea which he made the guiding prin- ciple of his service abroad. He believed in the practical application to the business of diplo- macy of one of those commandments upon which hang all the law and the prophets: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." With this pre- cept in control I have endeavoured to show how vi PREFACE he secured first a hearing, then attention, and at last the conversion of the most disdainful group of civilised officials in Asia. Once won to a belief in his adherence to the Confucian maxim of trying to place one's self in the other side's position, these self-opinioned statesmen determined to engage his co-operation in setting their country right before the world, while they addressed themselves to the herculean labour of bringing a recreant court to reason and of leading the Chinese Empire out of its isolation. The far-reaching wisdom of the Burlingame policy of awaiting a natural reversal in China instead of pressing her refractory people by force of arms is acknowledged by the great powers to-day. As a policy it appears to be the only provident prophylaxis against the evils involved in the alternative of interference and subjection. Fifty years ago, when the white man recognised no limit to the prevalence of newly perfected weapons which he alone em- ployed, this was not generally perceived. With such advantages on their side it was natural that representatives of the Western world should clamour for a physical conquest that seemed easily within their reach. I have tried to treat PREFACE vil the exponents of this element of our own civili- sation with justice and even with consideration. It has been shown, I think, that their attitude was the same among all the Nationals repre- sented in the Far East. But the fact must not be obscured that the cupidity of this group of foreigners, when alarmed for the safety of their commercial profits, was the chief cause of the defeat of the Burlingame doctrine and its rele- gation for a generation to the limbo of exploded theories. The begetter of this great idea has suffered in reputation under its eclipse. A worse thing has befallen. Though his plan has been re- vived the dignity of his name has never been vindicated. His idea has become the professed policy of the nations during China's present turmoil, but his clear right to its authorship and the splendid spontaneity of his champion- ship of a discredited people in the hour of their abasement has been obscured and even denied. It was he who first declared abroad the neces- sity of assisting China to find herself, and of elevating the diplomacy of Western powers in Asia to something higher than securing for their traders the largest possible advantages in a sec- viii PREFACE ular struggle for profits. He recognised, what the merchants themselves could not compre- hend, that there was danger to China in sum- marily accepting the materialism of the West; and danger to China meant and still means the cancellation of every political equation in the arrangement of civilised society. In this sense it appears to me that Mr. Burlingame can properly be called the father of the open-door principle which Mr. Hay proposed as a symbol for the unification of outside interests when China threatened, in a moment of aberration, to become a derelict among nations. The power of urbanity, its importance as an' international asset, especially when dealing with exotic peoples, is not sufiiciently realised by Western states. Mr. Burlingame's credit in China, secured by the exercise of his unfailing courtesy, needs to be studied as a lesson by the men of our race. His personal popularity was too lightly dismissed by his countrymen as a thing apart from the real work of diplomacy; his affability and his enthusiasm led them to under- rate a quick inventive brain. And while he was not taken seriously enough by contemporaries during life, after his untimely death he was dis- PREFACE ix credited by a suddenly aroused fear of Chinese immigration associated with his treaty, and loaded with obloquy by orators of the sand-lot type. Those who had submitted to the persua- sive spell of his eloquence forgot then the pur- port of his great idea. He had published noth- ing, therefore it had no visible expression in print and was only to be found buried among official documents. For these reasons, therefore, the significance of his demeanour has been forgot- ten, the true value of his work effaced. But now that the antagonisms of the past are allayed he should be returned to our knowledge and his purpose of peace and goodwill, his lofty prin- ciple of forbearance, and his method of perse- vering suavity appreciated. It is time to disabuse ourselves of the notion that the Chinese are a stupid and unchangeable folk because they have evolved a philosophy of life that, unlike our own, does not find its su- premest satisfaction in wealth and in war. We must credit them with intellectual powers that only need proper direction to accomplish great things. If they erred in the past through exces- sive caution they promise in the near future to make good any defect of this sort by too great X PREFACE temerity in change. The ejffect of any untoward transition in an enormous mass of people pos- sessing the quahties of the Chinese cannot be disregarded by intelhgent minds. Mr. Burhn- i game understood the risks involved both to oth- ers and to themselves in such a lapse; and to the welfare of the Christian world as well as to the task of serving China in the interests of her own revival he gave his heart and soul with a devotion that ended in the sacrifice of his life. As an embodiment of the true missionary spirit he stands among the foremost public men of his generation, and it is a spirit which is still effi- cient. Professor William Garrott Brown has ad- mirably appraised the influence thus cut short but not concluded: "If Burlingame's name be not forever associated with an epochal readjust- ment of the world's civilisations, then few names have missed immortality more narrowly." ^ New Haven, Connecticut, August, 1912. 1 Atlantic Monthly, June, 1905, p. 32. CONTENTS FAQB The Evolution of a Diplomatist . 3 The Genesis of the Mission .... 73 The Mission in America 113 The Clarendon Letter and British Policy 161 The Opposition in China 192 The End of the Mission 230 Appendices 273 Bibliography 359 Index 367 ANSON BUELINGAME AND THE FIRST CHINESE MISSION TO FOREIGN POWERS ANSON BURLINGAME AND THE FIRST CHINESE MISSION TO FOREIGN POWERS THE EVOLUTION OF A DIPLOMATIST yl NSON BURLINGAME was pre-eminently A\ a man of his generation in America. From both Hneage and training he de- rived qualities that in his maturity revealed him as a product of the formative period when the United States was passing from the position of a remote agricultural community to assume, through expansion of territory and the develop- ment of its natural resources, a place among the great nations of the world. Like most of the men who became leaders in this timet of transi- tion, he was descended from the early English settlers in America, inheriting from that sturdy stock a temper which made for independence in action and ideas. His ancestors, who first came in the Puritan period to Rhode Island, had their share in the French-Indian War on this continent, and subsequently fought in the 4 ANSON BURLINGAME AND War of American Independence, his mother's grandfather being Colonel Israel Angell, of Wash- ington's army. The son of Joel Burlingame, a settler and farmer on the frontier, he was born in New Berlin, Chenango County, New York, November 14, 1820. Before he was three years old his father removed to Seneca County, Ohio, to occupy a farm in what was, a century ago, the forest country of the Western Reserve. Joel Burlingame is described by one of his neighbours there as "a devout Methodist, an earnest free- mason, a school teacher, ambitious but impracti- cable. He spent his time attending two-day meet- ings, quarterly meetings, and camp-meetings, and had little love for the hard work required to improve a farm in the wilderness. He was a man of fine personal appearance, and his gen- eral knowledge and fine conversational powers gave him favour in every cabin, while his ve- hement prayers and eloquent exhortations gave him notoriety among the pioneer Christians.