seventy-four volumes), and 'some important blocks of letters,' compelled him to substitute a history for the historical biography thus planned. It is much to be doubted whether, even if the missing material had been available, he would have been wise to adhere to his original scheme. The main interest of political biography lies in the disclosure of the motives and methods of the framers of national policy; and Sir Robert Hart, though he acted as China's adviser on many international problems, had no direct responsibility for her policy, or share in the actual government of the country. As Mr Morse himself expresses it (III, 404), his position under the Chinese Government was one of great influence but not of power'; and even his influence, in Mr Morse's view, steadily declined after 1887, that is, during the last twenty years of his service.

Throughout the period the decadence of the ruling dynasty made itself increasingly manifest. Such decadence from the vigour of the founders of a line has in China, as its invariable symptom, misgovernment followed by revolt; and the devastating Taiping rebellion, in the suppression of which the Empire's resources were drained, was itself but a symptom of the general disease. It would probably have failed, even if no foreign aid had been given to the Government, for its leaders showed little power of attracting popular support; but in the normal course of Chinese affairs other leaders of other revolts would have arisen, until in the end the ablest of them had placed himself on the throne as the founder of a new dynasty. The adage, When treason prospers 'tis no longer treason,' embodied for China a constitutional maxim, a rebel's success being there accepted as proof that to him Heaven has transferred its high commission to bear rule over the Empire. But the process of deciding on which of many candidates Heaven's choice had fallen was one that always necessitated a long period of strife and disorder; and the Western Powers were not, in the middle of the 19th century, prepared to contemplate with equanimity the injury to their commercial interests that prolonged disorder involved. They gave their support, therefore, to the ruling dynasty, and thereby enabled it to extend its occupation of the throne far beyond its natural term.

With a decadent dynasty in power no internal reform was possible; and for a revival of China's military strength such a reform was an essential preliminary. While, therefore, chafing at the restrictions on her dealing with the foreigner which her own weakness imposed, she made but spasmodic efforts to save herself from the fate of helpless subservience to the will of others.

Down to 1894, with which year Mr Morse's third volume opens, the international relations of China had been in great measure free from the complexity that numerous conflicting currents of interest introduce. During the struggle preceding the settlement of 1860, England, as has been already observed, was the protagonist of the Western Powers. In diplomacy as in military pressure, at Tientsin in June 1858 as at Canton during the preceding twenty-five years, it fell to the English to stand the brunt of the battle' (1, 528). After 1860 there was in this respect but little change. In the protection of Roman Catholic Missions France had an interest which Great Britain hardly shared, no Protestant missions being as yet established in remote parts of the interior; but the main interests of the Maritime Powers remained identical, and England continued to bear the chief share of the burden of protecting them. The separateness of Russia's interests was emphasised in 1881, when her unwillingness to restore Ili to China brought the two Powers to the verge of war; and the conflict between France and China in 1884 had its rise in a frontier dispute with which other Powers had no immediate concern. But, Russia apart, there was, prior to the Japanese war, no manifest divergence of policy amongst the Western Powers, and except on the south-western frontier of China, where French and English claims were beginning to clash, little serious conflict of interest.

After that war national policies came into direct opposition; and the change seriously increases the difficulties of the historian, for the rivalries of the Powers led to the concealment of their operations from each other by a veil of secrecy which the occasional publication of official papers has only partially removed. The difficulty is clearly visible in some chapters of Mr Morse's third volume, in the preparation of which he

obviously had not access to all the material necessary for a full record. Much fresh light has since been thrown on part of the period it covers by the interesting account which Monsieur Gérard, French Minister at Peking from 1894 to 1897, has published of his mission; but it is unfortunate that M. Gérard, with more intimate knowledge than Mr Morse possesses of the inner history of events, does not bring to the exposition of them the same resolute impartiality. An actor in events is, moreover, in describing them, necessarily exposed to the temptation of magnifying his own achievements; and many passages in M. Gérard's work show inadequate powers of resistance to this temptation.

China's suzerain rights over Korea had been challenged by Japan, long before 1894; and the rivalry of the two Powers led in 1884 to an armed collision between their troops in the Korean capital. That crisis was terminated by a Convention which, like many diplomatic instruments of its kind, while nominally settling the dispute, in reality merely registered the willingness of both parties to postpone the decision. In 1894 one of the parties was resolved that the dispute should be decided, while the other, though preferring a continued postponement, could not bring itself to concede the point at issue. The first gathering of the clouds of war had what in retrospect seems the odd result of producing a close rapprochement between Great Britain and Russia. To neither of them was a disturbance of the peace of the Far East welcome; and they made united efforts to avert it by putting pressure on China to make such concessions as Japan would accept. But these efforts failed, and the two Powers drifted apart again.

By the terms of peace imposed on China in 1895 the Liaotung peninsula, possessing from its position both strategical and commercial importance, was ceded to Japan; but a joint demand was immediately presented to her by Russia, France and Germany that she should renounce this part of the spoils of her victory. To this demand Japan could not but yield; and to it is due, far more directly than to the war itself, the violent disturbance of international relations in the Far East that followed. The war had indeed conclusively demonstrated Japan's strength and China's military weakness,

and had thereby necessitated a revision of the estimates on which international calculations were based. But this did not involve an immediate change in the relations of the Western Powers either to China or to each other. In the earlier stages of China's political relations with the West, Japan counted for nothing, but, with the growth of her military strength, the regard paid to her had gradually increased; and the war, by supplying a definite measure of that strength, defined also the position that must thenceforth be accorded to her. But that position, even with the Liaotung peninsula in her hands, was not necessarily one of predominance; and it was open to other Powers to take precautions against its becoming so. Whatever, in short, might have been the ultimate consequences of the cession of the Liaotung peninsula in 1895, the evolution of them must have been a slow process. On the other hand, the effect of the retrocession of the peninsula was immediate, for it placed China under a special obligation to the Powers that had intervened on her behalf; and she could no longer, 'en bonne justice,' as M. Gérard puts it, maintain the 'tradition that till then had made her hold the balance equal between the different Powers' (p. 96). In another passage (p. 120) the new position is thus described.

...

'Tous les traités qu'elle avait été amenée à conclure avec les diverses puissances étaient conçus et rédigés de façon à n'attribuer à aucune d'elles des avantages exclusifs ou privilégiés, et à leur assurer à toutes un régime identique. Mais le danger qu'elle venait de courir, le service que lui avaient rendu, après le traité de Shimonoseki, les trois puissances intervenues pour lui en alléger le poids, la gratitude qu'elle devait à ces trois puissances, l'habileté supérieure avec laquelle la Russie et la France tirèrent des événements les conséquences qui y étaient contenues, plaçaient pour la première fois la Chine en face d'une politique, ou plutôt d'une méthode nouvelle: celle d'une inclinaison ou inclination vers telle puissance ou tel groupe de puissances qui, aux heures critiques, l'avait assistée et sauvée.'

Russia, as M. Gérard observes (p. 91), was to gather from the Liaotung intervention the most abundant fruit'; but the first Power to profit by it was France, owing to her being, at the moment, engaged in negotiations for the delimitation of the frontier of Indo-China

and the settlement of questions connected with it. The change in the diplomatic position could not be better illustrated than by the course of these negotiations. The French proposals on one point involved what the Chinese Ministers recognised to be an infringement of their engagements to Great Britain under the Burma Convention of 1894; and this was an obstacle so formidable that it could under normal conditions hardly have been surmounted except by an arrangement with the British Government. But, to quote M. Gérard (p. 61), 'after the signature of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and particularly after the intervention of the French and Russian Governments in China's favour,' the French Foreign Minister, conscious of the service rendered to the Central Empire,' instructed the French representative at Peking to press for the immediate conclusion of the negotiations. The Chinese yielded on the express ground of a desire to 'give at once to France, from a sense of gratitude, the satisfaction she desired.' The vigorous protests of the British representative, Sir N. R. O'Conor, though not ignored, were in the end disregarded.† M. Gérard is apparently of opinion that the British representative should have made no struggle against such heavy odds (p. 96); and he charges Sir N. R. O'Conor with adopting towards the Chinese Government une attitude de reproche et de plainte' (p. 97). In point of fact, no other course was possible.‡

This advantage had hardly been obtained by France when Russia, after securing the support of a syndicate of French banks, made her first move in the shape of an offer to China of a loan, for the partial discharge of her liabilities to Japan, at a rate of interest so low as to be made possible only by a guarantee of the loan by

*It will be remembered that the Franco-Russian alliance, which had just been made, gave France the special support of one of the three Powers. + Compensation was subsequently made to Great Britain by China for the admitted breach of her engagements.

Mr Morse appears from a foot-note (II, 53) to accept, on the authority of an earlier French writer, M. Cordier, the legend, for which there is no foundation in fact, that the transfer of Sir N. R. O'Conor in 1895 to the Embassy at St Petersburg was the result of a Chinese demand for his recall. M. Gérard does not repeat this legend, but his reference to Sir N. R. O'Conor's promotion suggests the equally erroneous conclusion that the British Government was dissatisfied with his conduct of affairs.