Towards the end of the month of June, fortunately just after the crops were taken in, a swarm of locusts invaded the country. You could gallop through miles of them in this plain, as they whizzed and fluttered among the horses' legs; you could steam through acres of them as you traversed the river, and eat bushels of them fried, if so it pleased you, as they were hawked about in baskets by urchins in the streets. Locust-hunting was a favourite and profitable occupation among the juvenile part of the community. I had the curiosity to eat one, and thought it not unlike a periwinkle. CHAPTER XIX. ADVANTAGES GAINED BY RUSSIA AND AMERICA-A SERIOUS "HITCH" -THE TWO IMPORTANT DEMANDS-THE RIGHT OF A RESIDENT NEW PORTS-THE TRANSIT-DUES-CLIMATE OF TIENTSIN-ABSENCE MEANTIME the work of negotiation was progressing with the neutrals, whose task was less surrounded with difficulties than that of the quasi - belligerents, more rapidly than with ourselves. On the 14th of June, Count Poutiatine signed his treaty, in which the chief concessions gained were, the right of correspondence upon an equal footing between the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister or First Minister of the Council of State at Pekin; permission to send diplomatic agents to that city upon special occasions; liberty of circulation throughout the Empire of missionaries only, under a system of passports; and the right to trade at ports at present open, and, in addition, at VOL. I. 2 A 410 ADVANTAGES GAINED BY RUSSIA AND AMERICA. Swatow, at a port in Formosa, and another in Hainan. Four days afterwards, the American treaty was signed by Mr Reed, in which the same privilege of special missions to Pekin was accorded to the Government of the United States, and the same additional ports opened to its trade. These were by no means trifling concessions, and, eked out by "the most favoured nation clause," were a great advance on the privileges formerly enjoyed by Russia and the United States in China. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that they were willingly granted by the Chinese Government. Much more moderate demands, when preferred the year before by the Ministers of Russia and the United States respectively, had been peremptorily refused. Indeed, both Count Poutiatine and Mr Reed, upon concluding these treaties, expressed, in the most frank and candid manner, the conviction they entertained, that the concessions they had gained had been due to the pressure exercised, at this juncture, upon the Imperial Cabinet by the allied Governments of France and England. By the end of the week, after several pretty stormy discussions between the Commissioners and Mr Bruce and Messrs Wade and Lay, who were acting on behalf of Lord Elgin, a general agreement had been arrived at as to the terms of the British Treaty. It had been resolved that the clauses should be drawn up forthwith in English and Chinese, and the evening of the 26th had been fixed for the signature. 66 A SERIOUS HITCH." 411 An incident, however, occurred on the evening of the 25th, which threatened to lead to very serious embarrassments. Among the clauses in the British treaty, which were not included in the other treaties, there were two which were most pertinaciously resisted by the Chinese Commissioners. The one proIvided that the British Minister in China should be entitled to reside permanently at Pekin, or to visit it occasionally at the option of the British Government; and the other, that British subjects should have the right of travelling to all parts of the Empire of China for trading purposes. Having failed in their endeavours to induce Lord Elgin to recede from these demands, the Commissioners had recourse to the Plenipotentiaries of the other powers then at Tientsin, and begged their intervention in conveying to Lord Elgin the important piece of intelligence, that on the previous day an Imperial decree had been received from Pekin, to the effect, that not merely degradation, but decapitation, would be inflicted upon Kweiliang and Hwashana if they conceded these two points. Whether or not any such decree had actually been received was problematical; but the appeal ad misericordiam was difficult to resist, more particularly as it was made just at the moment that the first rumours of Keying's death reached us. As the French Plenipotentiary had not included in his treaty the specific demands now objected to, it would have been unreasonable to suppose that he would consent to enforce them by hostile measures. The circum 412 THE TWO IMPORTANT DEMANDS. stances of the case were obviously in the highest degree critical. To give way was perhaps to imperil all that was most valuable in the proposed Treaty ; for the Commissioners, emboldened by success, would in all probability have proceeded to call in question other clauses, such as that for the settlement of the transit dues, which were peculiar to the English treaty, in the hope of indefinitely protracting negotiations. To persevere in the face of the representations which had been made, was to run the risk of isolation, perhaps of a hostile advance on Pekin, unaccompanied by allies. Nevertheless, Lord Elgin, after full consideration, resolved to adhere to his original demands; and upon the morning of the 26th he authorised Mr Bruce to communicate his determination to the Commissioners in peremptory terms, believing that language of a decided character would be the best protection to the Commissioners against the Imperial wrath, which, it was alleged, their acquiescence in his demands would provoke. It is scarcely necessary to enlarge upon the motives which induced the Ambassador to exhibit so much persistence, in so far as the second of these demands is concerned. The commercial advantages which England must derive from the vast extension of her import and export trade consequent upon the "exploitation" of the interior of the Empire by her merchants, are too manifest to require elucidation. With reference to the other point, however-viz. the power of appointing a resident Minister at Pekin-as opinions |