jealousy of the European commercial communities in the Far East, which deliberately preferred to continue the old haphazard methods of conducting their business with China rather than to further its adjustment in the interests of the Chinese nation. The attention given in this work to this untoward factor in the career of the Mission must be justified by the fact that it was a very vital obstacle to Mr. Burlingame's purpose and dogged him with objurgations at every step. The course of this opposition has, it is true, been discredited by the events of the past thirty years; but no real understanding of the history of that Mission can be obtained without some analysis of the voluminous literature which embodies the aberrations and apprehensions against which this leader of a novel and unpopular policy had to contend.1 Again must be reckoned the wave of anti-Chinese feeling that overwhelmed America from the year 1870 onward, and included the negotiator of the treaty of 1868 in the odium attending every phase

1 Captain Sherard Osborn's "Past and Future of British Relations in China," published immediately after the discomfiture of the British at Taku, in 1859, may be cited as a fair exposition of the attitude of the English commercial bodies in China at the time of Mr. Burlingame's arrival there. James MacDonald's "China Question" (London, 1870) and W. H. Medhurst's "Foreigner in Far Cathay" (London, 1872) represent their point of view at the conclusion of this period. These are all written by honest men, who strove to be impartial and were themselves influenced by no antipathy against the Chinese.

of this deplorable exhibition of race prejudice. And finally, the massacre at Tientsin, by a Chinese mob, of a score of Europeans a few months after Mr. Burlingame's death, shook the confidence of China's best friends in the sincerity of her protestations, while fear of reprisals drove her most progressive statesmen for a time into the arms of the native reactionary party.

Yet, though the importance of the Mission was exaggerated at the time, the fact remains that its success was quite equal to the anticipations of its promoters, and its effect upon the few Chinese who could appreciate its purport was both wholesome and permanent. "It would be a mistake to say," declares one of the fairest of the historians of modern China, "that it failed to produce all the beneficial effect which had been expected. It was something for the outer world to learn, in those days when the Chinese presented to the mind of foreigners ideas only of weakness and falseness, that they had better characteristics and that they contained the elements of great power. Mr. Burlingame was sanguine, and the expectations of his audiences both in America and in Europe overleaped all difficulties, and spanned at a step the growth of years; but only the most shallowminded observers will deny that Mr. Burlin

game's widest stretches of fancy were supported by an amount of truth which events are making clearer every year." Perhaps the happiest result of the Mission was its educational influence upon foreign opinion. This suffered, indeed, in the reaction following its leader's hopeful speeches, but in the minds of thoughtful men, especially in America, it survived this initial disappointment, and they began from that time to understand more fully than in the preceding generation the fatuity of treating China as a nation of barbarians. The assertion that the Chinese of that period desired "progress," as Western promotors interpret the word, was premature and needed to be disproved; but it was necessary for Western peoples to realise why they were apprehensive of the changes in their material and social life which were thrust upon them from abroad. They could see in the extension of such an idea only the intrusion of a domineering and eccentric race with customs and a religion that defied their authorities and bade fair to subvert their established notions of conduct and propriety. Their officials apprehended in it the termination of their ancient and prescriptive privileges. Their farmers, labourers, and carriers feared with reason the destruction of their accustomed

1 Demetrius C. Bulger, "History of China," III, p. 690 (London, 1884).

means of livelihood. But the cardinal thesis maintained by Mr. Burlingame obscured though it was by the ignorance and prejudices of his hearers that China had already begun her education and was capable of accepting great and progressive changes undertaken in her own way, is being abundantly justified by time.

APPENDICES

I. THE SO-CALLED BURLINGAME TREATY OF JULY 28, 1868.

II. Two DISPATCHES OF J. Ross BROWNE TO SECRETARY FISH, JUNE, 1869.

III. HART'S NOTE ON CHINESE MATTERS AND BROWNE'S STRICTURES, JUNE, 1869.

IV. SECRETARY FISH TO GEORGE BANCROFT ON AMERICAN POLICY IN CHINA, AUGUST 31,

1869.

V. CONSUL SEWARD TO SECRETARY FISH ON THE SITUATION IN CHINA, APRIL 22, 1870.