94 



CHINA. 



the Chen-Quan temple, having declined to be 

 received in the building used for audiences that 

 imply homage, and therefore the foreign minis- 

 ters 'believed that the exclusive principle had 

 been abandoned by the new Emperor until their 

 memorandum was disdainfully rejected by the 

 President of the Tsungli-Yarnen. 



Difficulties with the United States. The 

 Chinese Government, on learning that Henry 

 W. Blair, the newly appointed minister of the 

 United States to Pekin, had spoken in Congress 

 in favor of the exclusion of Chinese from the 

 United States, and in denunciation of the Mon- 

 golian race, immediately notified the Govern- 

 ment at Washington that he was persona non 

 grata, giving its reason for requesting the selec- 

 tion of some other person to represent the United 

 States at Pekin. President Harrison refused to 

 accede to this request, just as President Cleve- 

 land had done when the Austrian Government 

 objected to receiving Mr. Keiley as minister, be- 

 cause the latter's wife, being of Jewish birth, 

 was not presentable at court under the rules of 

 court etiquette established in Vienna. 



Following on this controversy came a protest 

 communicated by Toui Kwo Yin, Chinese minis- 

 ter at Washington in the beginning of May, 

 against the Chinese exclusion bill that had just 

 been enacted by Congress. The Chinese Govern- 

 ment objected to the act because it contained 

 the same provisions as the Scott law of 1888, 

 because it denied the right of habeas corpus to 

 Chinamen, and because it required a registration 

 of Chinese laborers which it is practically impos- 

 sible for them to comply with, in that every 

 Chinaman is obliged to produce before the col- 

 lector of internal revenue a white witness 

 who knew him previous to 1882, when the first 

 exclusion act was passed. The issuance of the 

 certificate is left to the discretion of the revenue 

 officer. A Chinamen who has been in the United 

 States ten years is ordinarily not able to prove 

 it by an American citizen, because the white 

 witnesses are not likely to be where he resides. 

 The law is held by the Chinese Government to 

 contravene the treaty of 1880, which guarantees 

 to Chinese laborers the treatment of the subjects 

 of the most favored nation. 



Anti-foreign Demonstrations. The sen- 

 timent against Europeans showed itself too 

 general and violent among high and low to be 

 attributed solely to the machinations of secret 

 societies plotting revolution and seeking the 

 overthrow of the Manchu dynasty. Foreign gun- 

 boats English, French, American, and others 

 took their station in the Yangtse river and the 

 waters near by after the riots and massacres in 

 Hunan and the neighboring provinces in 1891. 

 The English customhouse official. Mason, who 

 was detected in the act of smuggling arms into 

 Ching-Kiang to be used in a revolution against 

 the dynasty, and was said to have been connected 

 with the Kolao-Whei secret society, was tried in 

 the English consular court and sentenced to a 

 long term of imprisonment. Three Chinese 

 whom he had employed in his fantastic criminal 

 enterprise, probably without their guilty knowl- 

 edge, for they were employees in the customhouse 

 under his orders, were arrested and taken to 

 Shanghai, where they were tortured almost to 

 death by a Chinese magistrate without his being 



able to extract from them the confessions that 

 he sought. Many hundreds of people were ar- 

 rested and barbarously punished for their sup- 

 posed connection with the secret societies, and 

 yet high officials who were known to have con- 

 nived in or to have instigated the disturbances 

 were not molested. One of the principal authors 

 and disseminators of the scurrilous placards 

 and pasquinades directed against foreigners and 

 Christians, which were distributed by the trunk- 

 ful all over the Yangtse valley, was a mandarin 

 celebrated for his learning, named Chauhan, a 

 resident of Changsha, the capital of Hunan. In 

 the hall of the benevolent society of that city, 

 which is composed of the higher officials of the 

 province, officials of other provinces who were 

 natives of the place and were absent on leave, 

 and the many mandarins who had not yet re- 

 ceived official appointments, the movement for 

 the expulsion of the foreign devils was concocted. 

 They entered into a solemn compact, and set 

 about to accomplish their purpose by inflaming 

 the minds of the common people. The richer 

 members of this aristocratic club, which has its 

 counterpart in all the chief towns, gave liberal 

 sums to print and publish the lampoons that 

 their poorer associates wrote and illustrated. 

 Eight of them, for instance, paid for the print- 

 ing and distribution of 800,000 copies of a single 

 pamphlet. The abusive and obscene literature 

 was sent out from the pawnshops, which are the 

 property of officials. Chauhan, who was a high 

 official, openly signed his name to some of the 

 placards, and avowed his object of stirring up 

 the people to violence and outrage in letters 

 that he wrote to the Governor of Hupeh and to 

 various political magnates in other provinces. 

 When a relative was arrested for distributing 

 placards he boldly demanded his release, threat- 

 ening to denounce the official who arrested him 

 in Pekin. In consequence of the incendiary 

 incitements of this literary clique, the people 

 of the rich and populous provinces along the 

 Yangtse - Kiang for 800 miles wreaked their 

 blind vengeance on the Christian missionaries 

 and other Europeans at every point except at 

 Hankow, where the British consul and the Rev. 

 Griffith John were able to frustrate the move- 

 ment and also to lay bare the machinery of 

 the gigantic conspiracy. The foreign ministers 

 at Pekin, following the lead of Sir John Wals- 

 ham, the British representative, brought the 

 strongest pressure to bear on the Imperial Gov- 

 ernment, which had begun independently to act, 

 but not with the effective display of authority 

 demanded by the European diplomatists, who 

 never will admit the irresponsibility of the Gov- 

 ernment at Pekin for the Inches of the authori- 

 ties in the distant, decentralized, semi-independ- 

 ent provinces. Printers of the incendiary pla- 

 cards and tracts, participants in the riots, and 

 many other insignificant actors in the movement 

 were caught and beheaded or otherwise punished ; 

 yet the high mandarins known to be implicated, 

 and against whom the British minister lodged 

 information, were allowed to go scot-free. Yield- 

 ing at last to diplomatic pressure, the Imperial 

 Government in March ordered the Governor of 

 Hunan to arrest Chauhan, and the Viceroy 

 Chang-Chintung sent a deputy from Shanghai, 

 to see that his command was executed. Yet the 



