第一章：

INTRODUCTORY.

導言

The government of the Cliinese— Revolutions— Trade — Taxes— Our interests in Szechuan— Imports and exports— Comparative trade of all the provinces.

中國的統治—革命—貿易—稅收—我們在四川的利益—進出口—各省貿易的比較。

The history of our intercourse with China, from the days of the East India Company until now, is nothing but the record of a continuous struggle to open up and develop trade, with a people who, from the days of Pliny, "ipsis feris persimiles, coetus reliquorum mortalium fugiunt." There is something pathetic in the honest persistency with which the people and their officials have vainly struggled to keep themselves uncontaminated from the outer world, and it is impossible for any disinterested onlooker not to sympathize heartily with them. An enormous population has here solved, imperfectly, of course, but to a comparatively successful degree, the problem of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The venality of the officials notwithstanding, the people are, if not well governed, certainly not misgoverned; riches are fairly distributed, and the contrast of grinding poverty with arrogant wealth, the rule in Europe, is the exception here. Taxation is nominal, and such is the innate and universal love of order, that the reserve of force behind the decrees of the magistrate is limited to a

B

2 Through the Yang-tsc Gorges

few hundred men in a province as large as a European kingdom. Competent investigators compute the total cost of the central and local governments at not more than £40,000,000 a year, say two shillings per head for the whole population. Education is universal and voluntary.

自東印度公司時代以來，我們與中國的交流歷史，不過是與這個民族進行的一場不斷的鬥爭，目的是開拓和發展貿易。這個民族自普林尼（Pliny）時代起便已遠離其他文明世界，「幾乎如同野獸，逃避其他凡人」（ipsis feris persimiles, coetus reliquorum mortalium fugiunt）。這樣的努力帶有一種悲壯的色彩——這個民族及其官員竭盡全力保護自己不受外界影響，這樣的堅持引發了旁觀者的同情。儘管官員貪污腐敗，這裡的人民若非被很好治理，至少也不算被惡劣統治；財富分配相對公平，歐洲常見的極端貧富差距在此地少見。稅收幾乎象徵性，人民對秩序的熱愛根深蒂固，地方政府的武裝力量在與歐洲王國相仿的省份中，僅維持數百名士兵。權威人士估算，中央與地方政府的總開支每年約為4,000萬英鎊，相當於每人兩先令。教育普及，且完全自願。

No wonder that such results, due to the universal acceptance of the Confucian Ethics, should make the people look askance at innovations coming from the West, where, as the Chinese say, notwithstanding their marked superiority in applied mechanics, nations live in a permanent condition of armed peace, the monotonous pressure of which is only relieved by the still worse calamity of frequent wars, with their attendant burdens of debt and pauperism.

難怪這些因普遍接受儒家倫理而產生的結果，會讓中國人民對來自西方的創新抱有懷疑態度。正如中國人所說，儘管西方國家在應用機械方面有顯著的優勢，但這些國家卻處於長期的武裝和平狀態，而這種壓抑的局面僅在更糟糕的戰爭災難爆發時得到緩解，戰爭往往帶來債務和貧困的沉重負擔。

Revolutions occur at long intervals in China, but the normal state of the Empire is peace. Thus since the last change of dynasty (a.d. 1644), the Chinese have enjoyed the blessings of peace and prosperity uninterruptedly, with the exception of the petty wars of this century with ourselves and the French. Even the terrible Taiping rebellion (1848 to 1864) must be attributed to the unwanted presence of the " foreigner " in the inner land. It was the aggressive zeal of American missionaries in Canton fifty years ago which resulted in the conversion of the fanatical leader, Hung-hsiu-chuen, often cited as the most genuine although misguided convert to Christianity, which the Empire has produced, and who modelled his action on that of the Jewish leaders, his war-cry being " Sha yao ! " " Slay the idolaters ! " And slay he did ; it is calculated that over twenty millions of people perished by the swords of the Taipings and the attendant famines. It was the Thirty Years' War over again, re-enacted on another stage. Had it succeeded, China would undoubtedly have been Christian, though ix)ssibly differing from us in form. The cruelties practised by

Our Policy in China 3

the Taipings in their progress alienated pubHc opinion from their cause, and hence we joined our quondam enemies, the Manchus, in suppressing the rebellion, lent Gordon to the Imperialists to train and lead the " Ever-victorious Army" of six thousand disciplined men, and restored Confucianism and countenanced a conservative reaction which, after thirty years' undisputed sway, has now brought the mighty Empire once more to a crisis of dissolution. We have allowed the Chinese mandarins to persist in their outre conservatism which will have none of the evil thing called Progress. Instead of actively promoting reforms and innovations, in the way that Sir Harry Parkes, in Tokio, backed up young Japan, even at the cost of civil war, our Government has in China yielded to the corrupt Court at Peking, and, until quite recently, discouraged British enterprise with the pitiful result we see to-day — China ruined by her defeat at the hands of the Japanese, and the resulting exorbitant indemnity; and our trade generally stationary, and in part unfairly excluded from those outlying districts of the Empire already seized by our European rivals.

自 1644 年最後一次改朝換代以來，中國的正常狀態就是和平。自那時起，除了一些小規模的戰爭，如本世紀與英國和法國的戰爭外，中國人民基本享受著和平與繁榮。即便是可怕的太平天國叛亂（1848 至 1864 年），也歸因於外國人在中國內地的出現。太平天國的領袖洪秀全是一位美國傳教士的皈依者，被認為是中國產生的最真誠但誤導的基督教信徒之一。他的行動模仿了猶太領袖，戰鬥口號是「殺妖！」（Sha yao！），意即「殺死偶像崇拜者！」。太平軍所到之處進行了大量屠殺，據估計，約有兩千萬人因太平軍刀劍和隨後的飢荒而喪生。這場叛亂可以看作是“三十年戰爭”在另一個舞台上的重演。如果叛亂成功，中國很可能會成為基督教國家，儘管與西方形式有所不同。

然而，太平天國在進展中的殘酷行為最終使其失去了民眾的支持。因此，我們與曾經的敵人——滿清政府——聯手鎮壓了叛亂，派遣戈登（Gordon）去訓練並領導「常勝軍」，這支六千人規模的軍隊使中國恢復了儒家思想，並支持了一場保守的反動，這場反動在過去三十年無可挑戰的統治後，現在又將這個龐大的帝國推向了崩潰的邊緣。

我們允許中國官僚保持他們對進步的極端保守主義，而不是積極推動改革和創新。相反，當初在日本，帕克斯爵士（Sir Harry Parkes）即使在付出內戰代價的情況下，也堅決支持年輕的日本推行現代化改革，而在中國，我們的政府則屈從於腐敗的北京朝廷，直到最近才開始鼓勵英國企業的發展，這也導致了今天的悲慘結果——中國被日本打敗後陷入破產，巨額賠款使國力耗盡；同時，我們的貿易幾乎停滯不前，部分地被我們的歐洲競爭對手佔領的中國邊遠地區排斥在外。

For, viewing the enormous population, now again estimated at over 400,000,000, the richness of the soil, the genial climate, the inexhaustible mineral wealth, and, above all, the untiring industry of the people, the trade at present carried on is not a tithe of that which we should naturally look for. In the number of Great Britain's foreign customers, China proper takes seventeenth rank, being just on a par with Scandinavia. Our exports to the Celestial Empire are not one-fourth of those to the United States, with a population of 60,000,000; just one-sixth of our exports to British India, and not one-tenth of that to our Australian and other Colonies, all, except India, countries fenced in with hostile tariffs ranging from thirty to sixty per

4 Through the Yang-tse Gorges