asonably be asked
with Sir John Bowring, "whether the greater proportionate number of native
professing Christians is not to be found in those districts where opium is
most consumed, and how the undoubted fact is to be explained that in
Siam, where the Siamese do not smoke the drug, there is scarcely a
solitary instance of conversion among the native population, while among
the Chinese and other foreign settlers in Siam who habitually employ it,
conversions are many." What, then, are the causes of our failure? Dr.
Hobson, himself a medical missionary, and by no means an apologist for the
traffic, says, "Our chief obstacle at Canton is the unfriendly character
of the people." And there can be no doubt that this inveterate hostility
exists all over China against foreigners in general and missionaries in
particular, and has repeatedly shown itself in outbreaks of brutal
violence against foreign residents, culminating in the murder of M.
Chapdelaine in 1856, and the massacre of the French Mission together with
the Consul and several Russian residents at Tientsin in 1870. Later still,
we have had the murder of Mr. Margary in Yuennan. This hatred is
intensified in the case of missionaries by their civil[116] and political
action, and by the fact of Roman Catholic Governments exterritorializing
all their converts, _i.e._ making them for all intents and purposes their
own subjects, and releasing them from all subjection to Chinese authority.
This establishment of an "_imperium in imperio_" cannot fail to be
intolerable to an independent State, even if it be consistent with the
idea of a State at all. Moreover, the admission of missionaries no less
than of opium is a permanent badge of their defeat in several wars, and
the sense of humiliation aggravates their dislike for the "outer
barbarians." So that we can believe Prince Kung's wish, expressed to Sir
Rutherford Alcock, to have been a heart-felt one: "Take away," he said,
"your opium and your missionaries, and we need have no more trouble in
China." Of the two, indeed, they hate missionaries most, for did not their
most powerful mandarins, Li Hung Chang[117] and Tso Tsung Taang, say to
Sir Thomas Wade, "_Of the two evils we would prefer to have your opium, if
you will take away all your missionaries_." Sir Rutherford Alcock gave
similar evidence before the Commission in 1871: "The Chinese," he said,
"if at liberty to do so, would exterminate every missionary and their
converts.