140 



CHINA. 



privileges secured to Europeans as the result of 

 victorious wars and enforced by gunboats. The 

 presence of Europeans has caused a great in- 

 crease in the imperial taxes, and for every out- 

 break of mob violence against the " foreign 

 devils " a heavy indemnity is exacted -from the 

 offending district. Before the French and Brit- 

 ish governments assumed the protection of mis- 

 sionaries and made their grievances a plea for 

 demanding humiliating concessions, the Roman 

 Catholic missionary orders made thousands of 

 converts ; since the missionaries were made a 

 counter in the political and commercial game 

 and, relying on being backed by armed force, 

 assumed offensive airs of authority, their labors 

 have not been fruitful, and they have provoked 

 many riotous attacks, ending usually in the de- 

 struction of their churches and mission build- 

 ings, which have been rebuilt on the demand of 

 the European diplomatic representatives at the 

 cost of the native community. The Christian 

 converts are not respected or liked by the China- 

 men who cling to the ideas and civilization of 

 their fathers, and they become an outcast class, 

 and continue so even when they have fallen away 

 from their Christian teachings. The Taiping 

 sect was largely composed of descendants of 

 Christian converts, and since the great rebellion 

 conservative Chinamen have regarded with anx- 

 iety the prospect of a spread of Christianity and 

 of European influence and civilization. The 

 anti-foi'eign sentiment is strongest in the places 

 where Europeans have most recently made their 

 appearance, and where a disturbance of the cus- 

 tomary channels of trade and the professions by 

 which people gain their living is anticipated 

 from their competition and the introduction of 

 steamboats and other modern inventions. Ichang 

 and the other treaty ports on the Yangtse river 

 are the only places in the interior of China in 

 which Europeans other than missionaries are 

 permitted to reside and carry on business. The 



Eeople of the river towns have been exasperated 

 itely by the persistent demands of the English 

 Government to have Chungking, the commercial 

 capital of the great province of Szechuan, made 

 an open treaty port. The Chinese authorities 

 resisted this claim for years, denying that the 

 Chefoo convention required them to open that 

 town to trade or the Yangtse to foreign ves- 

 sels beyond Ichang. The place was nominally 

 opened and a custom house inaugurated at last 

 on March 1, 1891, though the fear of mobs still 

 prevents the English from taking advantage of 

 it, for they have obtained no concession of 

 wharves and building sites and have agreed not 

 to run steamboats in the upper river. The popu- 

 lace in the Yangtse valley in 1891 was in a con- 

 dition to be easily excited against the Europeans 

 or against the Government that had shown com- 

 plaisance to foreign demands. The foreign tea 

 trade had been taken away from them by the 

 great planters of Assam and Ceylon, causing an 

 increasing amount of idleness and distress year 

 by year, and in this year a drought had pre- 

 vented the farmers from raising crops and de- 

 prived farm hands of work. 



This country, in which these special conditions 

 worked together to cause a recrudescence of the 

 anti-foreign spirit, had been the theatre of some 

 of the chief conflicts of the Taiping war, and 



the army that put down the rebellion was largely 

 drawn, as is the Chinese army to-day, from the 

 rude and truculent peasantry of the Yangtse 

 country, and particularly from the great prov- 

 ince of Hunan. In Hunan was founded, about 

 fifty years ago as a mutual benefit and protective 

 association, a secret order called the Kolao Hui, 

 which was composed in the beginning entirely of 

 active and discharged soldiers of the Chinese 

 army. This society attained great power among 

 the soldiers engaged on the imperial side during 

 ihe Taiping rebellion. Its chief object was to 

 protect them from the plunder and extortion of 

 the civil officials, who used them, as they do 

 now, to embezzle money appropriated by the 

 Central Government for the pay and maintenance 

 of troops. Authorities who ill-treated the sol- 

 diers incurred the vengeance of this secret soci- 

 ety. Some were assassinated, others had their 

 houses or property destroyed, or sometimes their 

 punishment consisted in sudden and turbulent 

 disorders that were incited in their districts for 

 the mere purpose of bringing about their official 

 disgrace. Oaths and ceremonies characteristic 

 of Chinese secret societies were gradually intro- 

 duced, such as killing a cock and drinking its 

 blood in wine at initiation, and the importation 

 of the supernatural by reading the oracles traced 

 by a pencil suspended from a board and moved 

 involuntarily by superimposed hands. As the 

 society grew in size and came to admit civilians, 

 as well as soldiers and officers, the scope and 

 purposes were enlarged, though its original mil- 

 itary objects were not lost sight of ; and it pre- 

 served its secular character, keeping free from 

 the religious tendencies that distinguish some of 

 the great secret societies, and thus inclining the 

 more readily to political activity. Like others 

 of these bodies, it entertained a strong hostility 

 toward foreigners, and has long been known to 

 be specially antagonistic to Christians and mis- 

 sionaries, probably owing to its traditions in con- 

 nection with the Taiping rebellion. The perse- 

 cutions of the Jesuit priests and their congrega- 

 tions in Yunnan and Szechuan have been attrib- 

 uted to the machinations of the Kolao Hui. The 

 society is supposed to have a membership of 40,- 

 000,000. Its ramifications extend into all parts 

 of northern and central China. It has repre- 

 sentatives in all classes, even among high-placed 

 mandarins. Powerful viceroys have endeavored 

 to crush it out, but it has continued to spread 

 and flourish, owing to the corruption and ti- 

 midity of local officials. In troubled times it is 

 suspected of anarchistic and anti-dynastic plots, 

 and then the detection of a ticket of membership 

 is followed by the immediate execution of the 

 holder. Apart from political objects, the associ- 

 ation has a criminal character, for members ar 

 sworn to avenge one another's private wrongs. 

 When Chinese officials give offense to the peo- 

 ple, it is a common practice to compel them to 

 amend their faults by producing riotous disturb- 

 ances that have no immediate connection with 

 the question at issue. Any matter on which the 

 mind of the mob can be easily inflamed will 

 complish the object. The Kolao Hui has recent! j 

 had a special grievance in the discontinuance of 

 a pension of 50,000 taels a month that has beer 

 distributed since 1864 among the veterans of the 

 Taiping war by the Kiangnan viceroy. 



