From 1865 to 1870 he was variously employed in different places, being under command now of one superior and now of another. Among the work that he did during this period, that of translation was prominent. He translated into Chinese Parson’s Law of Contracts, and a book of English Law. He also translated large portions of Colton’s Geography, deeming that geographical knowledge was as likely to prove beneficial to his countrymen as any.
But the thing that lay nearest his heart and that was continually before him, was the question of how to accomplish the plan he had so many years held in hope. He now had ample opportunity to expound and advocate it, and he did so with inexhaustible perseverance. The main argument he used was this: China, in her international relations, in her commercial and other intercourse with foreign peoples, suffers disadvantage and much detriment from want of men capable by education of acting as her representatives. She is forced to employ in many most important places, that ought to be occupied by her own citizens, foreigners by whom her interests are liable to be neglected or betrayed. Her forts, her ships of war, her military forces, her customs, are largely in charge of foreigners. How was it proper, he asked, that Anson Burlingame, an American, should be her chief agent in arranging a treaty with his own country and other western governments? This was his general line of reasoning.
The most to whom he brought the matter heard him with indifference, but there were three men upon whom he made an impression—all men of high rank and commanding influence. They were the Viceroy, Tsang Koh Fan, already named; Li Hung Chang, now Viceroy of the capital province of Chihli and the foremost Chinese statesman; and Ting Yi Tcheang, then Governor of the Province of Kiang Su. Yet these men, convinced as they were by Wing’s reasons and avowedly favorable to his project, with all their eminence of position and their influence, were not ready to venture the attempt to carry it through with the Imperial Government. All the forces of conservatism would be opposed to it; the time for it had not come.
In 1867, however, the Governor Ting, who was the most willing of the three, had made representations to an Imperial Minister named Wan Cheang, on the strength of which he was advised to address a memorial on the subject to the Imperial Council at Peking, Wan Cheang undertaking to commend it to the attention of the Council. The situation was at this juncture moderately hopeful, but before the memorial reached the Council, the mother of Wan Cheang died, by which event he was, under the law of Chinese high official etiquette, retired from public life three entire years, and the whole business was set back to where it had been. These were years of great trial to Yung Wing. He was prospering, indeed, in one point of view, but the hope to which he was devoted was so long deferred that his heart was often sick. Understand that he was leading there in China an essentially solitary life. He had, soon after his return in 1855, in accordance with his views of what was due to his purpose, resumed his native dress and identified himself not only thus externally, but also in large measure in every other respect with his own people. Especially from the time he became a Chinese Government official, he had dwelt in Chinese society, and had disappeared almost wholly from other society. He had his books and kept up diligently with what was going on in the world of learning and letters outside—it was his only resource—but he was exceedingly alone and lonely notwithstanding. The discouragements to his endeavor that faced him were so numerous and so solid that he was sometimes half disposed to give it all up; but only half disposed.
One of the things that held him to it was not of a nature of an encouragement exactly, but it did excellently well as an antidote to the effect upon his spirits of his discouragements. It began to come to his ears now and than that his American and English friends in China were whispering it among themselves that he was a failure, that he had had a noble chance and had not known how to improve it; that he was impracticable; and that this scheme of his was utterly visionary and could never be successful. Whenever Wing heard of this, he set his teeth and took a new hold. But altogether his faith and manhood were put to an extreme test.
The end came though, as it always does in such cases, and came in a manner almost dramatic. In the month of June, 1870, occurred the woeful tragedy at Tientsin called the Tientsin Massacre, in which a considerable number of French Roman Catholic missionaries, male and female, were murdered by a Chinese mob. It followed that a commission appointed by the foreign powers, diplomatically represented in China, met that same year at Tientsin to investigate the outrage and determine the satisfaction that was to be required for it, together with a like commission appointed by the Chinese Government authorized to bring the affair to a settlement. The Chinese Commission consisted of five, and three of these five were the three men of whom mention has been made—the viceroys Tsang Koh Fan and Li Hung Chang, and the Governor Ting Yi Tcheang.
An Opportunity Seized
Yung Wing was at this time under official control of the last named, who, on being summoned to Tientsin,
