THE TSU'NG-LI-YAMEN. (Spectator.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2363, 8 June 1899, Page 34

THE TSU'NG-LI-YAMEN. (Spectator.)

Nothing in China puzzles Englishmen more than the position of the Tsung-li-Yamen. They understand that the small body of councillors thus designated form a Cabinet, with a special obligation to advise on foreign affairs, and that it is an institution with which* they are quite familiar. But then they expect the Cabinet to be responsible, to be capable of giving a decision, and to adhere to those decisions when they are given, or at least to resign if it cannot adhere. Our countrymen do not comprehend that their viaw of the Tsung-li-Yamen is only corect when the Emperor is a nonentity, or when, as has occasionally happened, he is willing to follow his Cabinet's advice. At such times the members of that body are potent personages, must be dealt with as if they had genuine authority, and, but for their corruption, would form a tolerably fair governing body, intolerably slow, no doubt, and sometimes strangely ignorant, but dignified, intellectual in their own way, and firm with the firmness of as many mules. When, however, the Emperor is a man with a will, when he is suspicious, and when he is indifferent to human life, the members of the Tsung-li-Yamen collapse, and become as the members of the Divan tinder Abd-ul-Hamid. They have no constitutional position whatever, they have no ' powers except those derived from the Emperor, and they are very much afraid for themselves. He may by mere fiat deprive them of their rank, which is high; he may "squeeze" them of their wealth, which is often great ; he may banish them from the delights of Pekin to very unpleasant places ; or he may order them to be quietly decapitated or cutslowly into little pieces. At such times their preoccupation is neither their country nor their immediate business, nor even their own advancement, but to" avoid offending the irritable earthly deity who holds their lives and fortunes in his hands. Such a time it is just now. The EmpressDowager is Emperor in all but name, she has ideas and a will, and she is suspicious to the last degree. There is no possibility of opposing her, for she has drawn together 80,000 troops round Pekin, who, while she pays their generals, will execute anybody she pleases ; there is no possibility of appeal from her, for she represents a theocracy ; and tbere is no possibility of overpowering her mind, for she is that dreadful phenomenon four or five times repealed in history, an Asiatic woman possessed of absolute power, and determined to sweep away all who oppose or whom she suspects of opposition from her path. Under her regime the memhers of the Tsung-li-Yamen are powerless nonenties, trembling with fear lest, if they make a blunder, they may awaken the anger of their all-powerful and implacable sovemicrn, whose motives they themselves often fail to fathom. Under such circumstances even European Cabinet Minis- | ters would probably appear timid, vacillating, i and even ignorant ; and these are Chinamen j with no real knowledge, with no principle I except opportunism, and with a hazy perception that from causes they cannot fathom, and in a way which seems to them mysterious, the institutions around them, amid which they j have been brought up, and to which alone they are accustomed, are crumbling mtn ] ruins. They must feel as Roman consuls and , prefects felt when the barbarisms were swarm- j ing in, with these additional aggravations, j that they have no creed, that they have no | principles applicable to the situation, and that their own chief may be at any moment the fiercest of their enemies. The members of the Tbiing-li-Yamen would gladly execute all the European Ambassadors together, but they know that the absolute lady above them will not risk a declaration of war from a European Power, and they are, therefore, powerless, except to try how far the Power making requests is in earnest. When they dare they bluster, as in tho case of Italy; when they dare not they try to gain time — i for, as Marie Antoinette said, "an accident j may save us "—and if time- is refused, as it j was by Sir Claude MaeDonald, they yield everything demanded. They do not care if, as has repeatedly happened, the demands of the Powers are inconsistent ; i liey simply crant them all, delighted if the deceived Powers quarrel ; satisfied, if they do not, that they can lie themselves out of any scrape. .