CHAPTER XIV.

HONGKONG.

Two British landmarks -- Chinese customs and Hongkong -- Choice of the island -- Vitality of colony -- Asylum for malefactors -- Chinese official hostility -- Commanding commercial position -- Crown Colony government -- Management of Chinese population -- Their improvement -- English education -- Material progress -- Industrial institutions -- Accession of territory.

The past sixty years of war and peace in China have left two landmarks as concrete embodiments of British policy--the Chinese maritime customs and the colony of Hongkong. These are documents which testify in indelible characters both to the motives and to the methods of British expansion throughout the world. For good and for evil their record cannot be explained away. Both institutions are typically English, inasmuch as they are not the fulfilment of a dream or the working out of preconcerted schemes, but growths spontaneously generated out of the local conditions, much like that of the British empire itself, and with scarcely more conscious foresight on the part of those who helped to rear the edifice.

The relation of the British empire to the world, which defies definition, is only revealed in scattered object-lessons. India throws some light upon it--the colonies much more; and though in some respects unique in its character, Hongkong in its degree stands before the world as a realisation of the British ideal, with its faults and blunders as well as with its excellences and successes.

The want of a British station on the China coast had long been felt, and during the ten years which preceded the cession innumerable proposals were thrown out, some of which distinctly indicated Hongkong itself as supplying the desideratum. But as to the status of the new port the various suggestions made neutralised each other, until the course of events removed the question out of the region of discussion and placed it in the lap of destiny.

The earliest English visitors to the island described it as inhabited by a few weather-beaten fishermen, who were seen spreading their nets and drying their catch on the rocks. Cultivation was restricted to small patches of rice, sweet-potatoes, and buckwheat. The abundance of fern gave it in places an appearance of verdure, but it was on the whole a treeless, rugged, barren block of granite. The gentlemen of Lord Amherst's suite in 1816, who have left this record, made another significant observation. The precipitous island, twelve miles long, with its deep-water inlets, formed one side of a land-locked harbour, which they called Hongkong Sound, capable of sheltering any number of ships of the largest size. Into this commodious haven the English fugitives, driven first from Canton and then from Macao, by the drastic decree of the Chinese authorities in 1839, found a refuge for their ships, and afterwards a footing on shore for themselves. Stern necessity and not their wills sent them thither. The same necessity ordained that the little band, once lodged there, should take root, and growth followed as the natural result of the inherent vitality of the organism. As Dr Eitel well points out, this small social body did not originate in Hongkong: it had had a long preparatory history in Macao, and in the Canton factories, and may be considered, therefore, in the light of a healthy swarm from the older hives.

During the first few years of the occupation the selection of the station was the subject of a good deal of cheap criticism in the press. A commercial disappointment and a political failure, it was suggested by some that the place should be abandoned. It was contrasted unfavourably with the island of Chusan, which had been receded to China under the same treaty which had ceded Hongkong to Great Britain; and even as late as 1858 Lord Elgin exclaimed, "How anybody in their senses could have preferred Hongkong to Chusan seems incredible."

But, in point of fact, there had been little or no conscious choice in the matter. The position may be said to have chosen itself, since no alternative was left to the first British settlers. As for Chusan, it had been occupied and abandoned several times. The East India Company had an establishment there in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and if that station was finally given up either on its merits or in favour of Hongkong, it was certainly not without experience of the value of the more northerly position. Whatever hypothetical advantages, commercial or otherwise, might have accrued from the retention of Chusan, the actual position attained by Hongkong as an emporium of trade, a centre of industry, and one of the great shipping ports in the world, furnishes an unanswerable defence both of the choice of the site and the political structure which has been erected on it. Canton being at once the centre of foreign trade and the focus of Chinese hostility, vicinity to that city was an indispensable condition of the location of the British entrepot, and the place of arms from which commerce could be defended. And it would be hard even now to point to any spot on the Chinese coast which fulfilled the conditions so well as Hongkong.

The course of its development did not run smooth. It was not to be expected. The experiment of planting a British station in contact with the most energetic as well as the most turbulent section of the population of China was not likely to be carried out without mistakes, and many have been committed. Indeed, from the day of its birth down to the present time domestic dissensions and recriminations respecting the management of its affairs have never ceased.

This was inevitable in a political microcosm having neither diversity of interest nor atmospheric space to soften the perspective. The entire interests of the colony were comprised within the focal distance of myopic vision. Molehills thus became mountains, and the mote in each brother's eye assumed the dimensions of animalcula seen through a microscope. The bitter feuds between the heads of the several departments of the lilliputian Government which prevailed during the first twenty years must have been fatal to any young colony if its progress had depended on the wisdom of its rulers. Happily a higher law governs all these things.

Freedom carried with it the necessary consequences, and for many years the new colony was a tempting Alsatia for Chinese malefactors, an asylum for pirates, who put on and off that character with wonderful facility, and could hatch their plots there fearless of surveillance. When the Taiping rebellion was at its height, piracy became so mixed with insurrection that the two were not distinguishable, and it required both firmness and vigilance on the part of the authorities to prevent the harbour of Hongkong becoming the scene of naval engagements between the belligerents. During the hostilities of 1857-58 a species of dacoity was practised with impunity by Chinese, who were tempted by rewards for the heads of Englishmen offered by the authorities of Canton.

It cannot, therefore, be denied that the immigrants from the mainland in the first and even the second decade of its existence were leavened with an undesirable element, causing anxiety to the responsible rulers.

The Chinese authorities, as was natural, waged relentless war on the colony from its birth. Though compelled formally to admit that the island and its dependencies were a British possession, they still maintained a secret authority over the Chinese who settled there, and even attempted to levy taxes. As they could not lay hands on its trade, except the valuable portion of it which was carried on by native craft, they left no stone unturned to destroy that. By skilful diplomacy, for which they are entitled to the highest credit, they obtained control over the merchant junks trading to Hongkong, and imposed restrictions on them calculated to render their traffic impossible. By the same treaty they obtained the appointment of a British officer as Chinese revenue agent in Hongkong--a concession, however, disallowed by the good sense of the British Government. But the Chinese were very tenacious of the idea of making Hongkong a customs station, never relaxing their efforts for forty years, until the convention of 1886 at last rewarded their perseverance by a partial fulfilment of their hopes.

For reasons which, if not very lofty, are yet very human, the diplomatic and consular agents of Great Britain have never looked sympathetically on the colony--indeed have often sided with the Chinese in their attempts to curtail its rights.

Nor has the Home Government itself always treated the small colony with parental consideration. Before it was out of swaddling-clothes the Treasury ogre began to open his mouth and, like the East India Company, demand remittances. A military establishment was maintained on the island, not for the benefit of the residents, but for the security of a strategical position in the imperial system. The colonists were mulcted in a substantial share of the cost, which the governor was instructed to wring out of them. The defences themselves, however, were neglected, and allowed to grow obsolete and useless, and, if we mistake not, it was the civil community, and not the Government, that insisted on their being modernised. The compromise eventually arrived at was, that the colonists provided the guns and the imperial Government the forts. An interesting parallel to this was the case of Gibraltar, which possessed no dock until the civil community by sheer persistence, extending over many years, at length overcame the reluctance of the British Government to provide so essential an adjunct to its naval establishment. The colony had suffered much from the war with China, but the Home Government refused it any participation in the indemnity extorted from the Chinese.

But these and other drawbacks were counterbalanced, and eventually remedied, by the advantages offered by a free port and a safe harbour. Standing in the fair way of all Eastern commerce, which pays willing tribute to the colony, Hongkong attracted trade from all quarters in a steadily increasing volume, and became the pivot for the whole ocean traffic of the Far East.[35] The tide of prosperity could not be stayed--it invaded every section of the community. The character of the Chinese population was continuously raised. The best of them accumulated wealth: the poorest found remunerative employment for their labour. Crime, with which the colony had been tainted, diminished as much through the expulsive power of material prosperity as from the judicious measures of the executive Government, for the credit must not be denied to successive administrators for the improvement in the condition of the colony. Among those none was more deserving of praise than Sir Richard MacDonnell (1865-72), who on catching sight, as he entered the harbour, of an enormous building, which he was told was the jail, remarked, "I will not fill that, but stop the crime;" and he was nearly as good as his word,--a terror to evil-doers.

A Crown colony is the form of government which challenges the most pungent criticism. The elected members of its legislature, being a minority, can only in the last resort acquiesce in the decisions of the official majority who constitute the executive Government. Such a minority, however, is by no means wanting in influence, for it is, after all, publicity which is the safeguard of popular liberty. The freedom of speech enjoyed by an Opposition which has no fear of the responsibility of office before its eyes widens the scope of its criticisms, and imparts a refreshing vigour to the invective of those of its members who possess the courage of their convictions. It reaches the popular ear, and the apprehension of an adverse public opinion so stimulated can never fail to have its effect on the acts of the Administration. Under such a _régime_ it seems natural that, other things being equal, each governor in turn should be esteemed the worst who has borne rule in the colony, and in any case his merits are never likely to be fairly gauged by any local contemporary estimate. King Stork, though fair and far-seeing, may be more obnoxious to criticism than King Log, who makes things pleasant during his official term.

Hongkong being established as a free port, the functions of Government were practically limited to internal administration, and the question of greatest importance was the control of the Chinese population which poured in. This was a new problem. Chinese communities had, indeed, settled under foreign rule before, as in the Straits Settlements, in Java, and in Manila, but at such distances from their home as rendered the settlers amenable to any local regulations which might be imposed on them. Distance even acted as a strainer, keeping back the dregs. But Hongkong was nearer to China than the Isle of Wight is to Hampshire. Evil-doers could come and go at will. It could be overrun in the night and evacuated in the morning. Spies were as uncontrollable as house-flies, and whenever it suited the Chinese Government to be hostile, they proved their power to establish such a reign of terror in the colony that it was dangerous to stray beyond the beat of the armed policeman. Clearly it was of primary importance to come to terms with the native community, to reduce them to discipline, to encourage the good and discourage the bad among the Chinese settlers. As their numbers increased the public health demanded a yet stricter supervision of their habits. Sanitary science had scarcely dawned when the colony was founded, and its teachings had to be applied, as they came to light, to conditions of life which had been allowed to grow up in independence of its requirements. To tolerate native customs, domestic habits, and manner of living, while providing for the general wellbeing of a community in a climate which at its best is debilitating, taxed the resources of the British executive, and of course gave rise to perpetual recrimination. But the thing has been accomplished. Successive conflagrations have co-operated with the march of sanitary reform and the advance in their worldly circumstances in so improving the dwellings of the population, that their housing now compares not unfavourably with that of the native cities of India. The Southern Chinese are naturally cleanly, and appreciative of good order when it is judiciously introduced among them, even from a foreign source.

A more complex question was that of bringing an alien population such as the Chinese within the moral pale of English law, for law is vain unless it appeals to the public conscience. The imposition of foreign statutes on a race nursed on oral tradition and restrained from misdoing by bonds invisible to their masters was not an undertaking for which success could be safely foretold. The effect of a similar proceeding on the subtle natives of India has been described as "substituting for a recognised morality a mere game of skill, at which the natives can give us long odds and beat us." "The mercantile and money-lending classes in India," says Mr S. S. Thorburn, "delight in the intricacy and surprises of a good case in court." With the Chinese it has been otherwise. The population of Hongkong have so far assimilated the foreign law that, whether or not it satisfies their innate sense of right, it at least governs their external conduct, and crime has been reduced very low: as for litigation, it is comparatively rare; it is disreputable, and has no place in the Chinese commercial economy.

The best proofs of their acceptance of colonial rule is the constantly increasing numbers of the Chinese residents; the concentration of their trading capital there; their investments in real estate and in local industries; their identification with the general interests of the colony, and their adopting it as a home instead of a place of temporary exile. The means employed to conciliate the Chinese must be deemed on the whole to have been successful. There was first police supervision, then official protection under a succession of qualified officers, then representation in the Colonial Legislature and on the commission of the peace. The colonial executive has wisely left to the Chinese a large measure of a kind of self-government which is far more effective than anything that could find its expression in votes of the Legislature. The administration of purely Chinese affairs by native committees, with a firm ruling hand over their proceedings, seems to fulfil every purpose of government. The aim has been throughout to ascertain and to gratify, when practicable, the reasonable wants of the Chinese, who have responded to these advances by an exhibition of public spirit which no society could excel. It is doubtful whether in the wide dominion of the Queen there are 250,000 souls more appreciative of orderly government than the denizens of the whilom nest of pirates and cut-throats--Hongkong.

As an educational centre Hongkong fulfils a function whose value is difficult to estimate. From the foundation of the colony the subject engaged the attention of the executive Government, as well as of different sections of the civil community. The missionary bodies were naturally very early in the field, and there was for a good many years frank co-operation between them and the mercantile community in promoting schools both for natives and Europeans. In time, however, either their aims were found to diverge or else their estimate of achievement differed, and many of the missionary teaching establishments were left without support.

After an interval of languor, however, new life was infused into the educational schemes of the colony. The emulation of religious sects and the common desire to bring the lambs of the flock into their respective folds inspired the efforts of the propagandists, their zeal reacting on the colonial Government itself with the most gratifying results, so far at least as the extension of the field of their common efforts was concerned.

The Chinese had imported their own school systems, while taking full advantage of the educational facilities provided by the Government and the Christian bodies. Being an intellectual race, they are well able to assimilate the best that Christendom has to offer them. But the colonial system contents itself with a sound practical commercial education, which has equipped vast numbers of Chinese for the work of clerks, interpreters, and so forth, and has thus been the means of spreading the knowledge of the English language over the coast of China, and of providing a medium of communication between the native and European mind.

The material progress of Hongkong speaks volumes for the energy of its community. The precipitous character of the island left scarcely a foothold for business or residential settlement. The strip which formed the strand front of the city of Victoria afforded room for but one street, forcing extensions up the rugged face of the hill which soon was laid out in zig-zag terraces: foundations for the houses are scarped out of the rock, giving them the appearance of citadels. The locality being subject to torrential rains, streets and roads had to be made with a finished solidity which is perhaps unmatched. Bridges, culverts, and gutters all being constructed of hewn granite and fitted with impervious cement, the storm-waters are carried off as clean as from a ship's deck. These municipal works were not achieved without great expense and skilfully directed labour, of which an unlimited supply can always be depended on. And the credit of their achievement must be equally divided between the Government and the civil community.

The island is badly situated as regards its water-supply, which has necessitated the excavation of immense reservoirs on the side farthest from the town, the aqueduct being tunnelled for over a mile through a solid granite mass. These and other engineering works have rendered Hongkong the envy of the older colonies in the Far East. No less so the palatial architecture in which the one natural product of the island has been turned to the most effective account. The quarrying of granite blocks, in which the Chinese are as great adepts as they are in dressing the stones for building, has been so extensive as visibly to alter the profile of the island.

A great deficiency of the island as a commercial site being the absence of level ground, the enterprise of the colonists has been incessantly directed towards supplying the want. Successive reclamations on the sea-front, costing of course large sums of money, have so enlarged the building area that the great thoroughfare called Queen's Road now runs along the back instead of the front of a new city, the finest buildings of all being the most recent, standing upon the newly reclaimed land. It is characteristic of such improvements, that, while in course of execution, they should be deemed senseless extravagance, due to the ambition of some speculator or the caprice of some idealist, thus perpetually illustrating the truth of the Scottish saying, "Fules and bairns should never see a thing half done." Hongkong has been no exception to so universal a rule.

The industrial enterprise of the colony has fully kept pace with its progress in other respects. The Chinese quarter resembles nothing so much as a colony of busy ants, where every kind of handicraft is plied with such diligence, day in and day out, as the Chinese alone seem capable of. The more imposing works conducted by foreigners occupy a prominent place in the whole economy of the Far East. Engineering and shipbuilding have always been carried on in the colony. Graving-docks capable of accommodating modern battleships, and of executing any repairs or renewals required by them as efficiently as could be done in any part of the world, constitute Hongkong a rendezvous for the navies of all nations. Manufactures of various kinds flourish on the island. Besides cotton-mills, some of the largest sugar-refineries in the world, fitted with the most modern improvements, work up the raw material from Southern China, Formosa, the Philippines, and other sugar-growing countries in the Eastern Archipelago, thus furnishing a substantial item of export to the Australian colonies and other parts of the world. The colony has thereby created for itself a commerce of its own, while its strategical situation has enabled it to retain the character of a pivot on which all Far Eastern commerce turns.

This pivotal position alone, and not the local resources of the place, enabled the colony to found one of the most successful financial organisations of the modern world. The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank has had a history not dissimilar from that of the colony as a whole, one of success followed by periods of alternate depression and elation. Now in the trough of the wave and now on its crest, the bank has worked its way by inherent vitality through all vicissitudes of good or bad fortune, until it has gone near to monopolising the exchange business of the Far East, and has become the recognised medium between the money-market of London and the financial needs of the Imperial Chinese administration.

It should not be overlooked as a condition of its success that the great Hongkong Bank, like all other successful joint-stock enterprises, whether in Hongkong or in China, has from its origin borne a broad international character. Though legally domiciled in a British possession, representative men of all nationalities sit on its board and take their turn in the chairmanship as it comes round. The international character, indeed, may be cited as one of the elements of the success of the colony itself. No disability of any kind attaches to alien settlers, not even exclusion from the jury panel. They are free to acquire property, to carry on business, to indulge their whims, and to avail themselves of all the resources of the colony, and enjoy the full protection of person and property which natural-born British subjects possess. They come and go at their pleasure, no questions asked, no luggage examined, no permits required for any purpose whatever coming within the scope of ordinary life. Nor are they even asked whether they appreciate these advantages or not; in fact they are as free to criticise the institutions under which they live as if they had borne their part in creating them, which, in fact, they have done, and this it is which marks the vitality of the British system, whether in the mother country or in its distant dependencies.

The exceedingly cramped conditions of life on the island having proved such an obstacle to its development, the acquisition of a portion of the mainland forming one side of the harbour was at an early period spoken of as a desideratum for the colony. The idea took no practical shape, however, until the occupation of Canton by the Allied forces under the administration of Consul Parkes; and it is one of the most noteworthy achievements of that indefatigable man that, during the time when Great Britain was in fact at war with the Government of China, he should have succeeded, on his own initiative, in obtaining from the governor of the city a lease of a portion of land at Kowloon, which was subsequently confirmed by the convention of Peking in 1860. The improvement of artillery and other means of attack on sea-forts left the island very vulnerable, and the measures taken by the various European Powers to establish naval stations on the Chinese coast, together with the efforts which the country itself was making to become a modern military Power, rendered it a matter of absolute necessity, for the preservation of the island, that a sufficient area of the adjacent territory should be included within its defences. Following the example set by Germany and Russia, the British Government concluded an arrangement with the Government of China by which the needed extension was secured to Great Britain under a ninety-nine years lease. A convention embodying this agreement was signed at Peking in June 1898.

FOOTNOTE:

[35] The tonnage entered and cleared for the year 1898 amounted to 17,265,780, of which one-half was under the British flag.