Chinese Secret Socieities.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR, - Judging from your article in the Spectator of August 29th, the writer in Harper's Magazine on Chinese Secret Societies has given a very melodramatic tinge to his subject. Five thousand Chinese carbonari "occupying" an English Colony for a week ; some of their leaders accumulating two millions sterling, and one of them, after being sentenced to death, boldly proclaiming that the English Government dared not execute the sentence, - these are tolerably startling facts, throwing into insignificance the secret oath against appealing to the Colonial Courts, taken though it be by beheading a cock and drinking its blood, to boot.
My own impressions about these Societies differ from the official and popular European view ; and as I lived surrounded by them in the Straits Settlements for some fifteen years, you may be willing to give in your columns my side of the shield.
Your remark that the policy at first pursued by us was one of tolerance, is worthy of serious attention. Is it not remarkable that from 1786, when the East India Company first established a settlement in the Straits of Malacca, down to 1867, when the administration of the Colony passed from Calcutta to the Colonial Office, the Government of India persistently abstained from interfering with these terrible Chinese Societies ; not requiring even registration, as you have been led to suppose, but leaving its Chinese subjects as free to form their clubs as we are in England to form lodges of Freemasons, Oddfellows, and other similarly mysterious bodies? Yet that Government was a despotism, and so might naturally be expected to have the same horror of Secret Societies as Roman Emperors and Roman Popes. But our Indian administrators knew what they were about. They knew that the Societies in question had not political object whatever, in our possessions ; theat they never dreams of insurrection, or claimed political rights, or plotted attacks on the rights of property ; or, in short, ever entertained towards the Government and the institutions under which they lived any sentiment but respect and thankfulness for the protection and freedom accorded to them. They knew also another thing, - that the Chinaman belonged from his birth to another society not easily subjected to abolition or suppression or regulation, his tribe or clan. The Chinese are as clannish as Highlanders are or were ; and the most trivial dispute, blow, or insult in the market-place between two men of different tribes, swells at once into a riot, every tribesman within hail joining in the fray. The Socieities which they join on arriving in the Colony are formed by the wealthier colonists of their race, mainly to protect their poor and ignorant tibesmen in case of sickness or while out of employment, and for burial in the event of death. That those heads or chiefs have great influence over the rank and file, cannot be doubted, any more than that they frequently interpose in disputes and quarrels, and so prevent lawsuits in the public Courts ; just as the early Christians, had their disputes settled by the heads of their communities on the dies dominicus, which became proverbially their dies juridicus. A lawyer may well doubt whether such domestic tribunals are the best in the world whether, among other things, they may not abuse their powers much more readily than those which are public ; bit it is not unlikely that a Chinaman, ignorant of every language but his own, and of the institutions of the strange country in which he found himself, is often willing to take his chance of this, and prefers a Chinese to an English Judge, without any preliminary forswearing of the jurisdiction of the latter. I never heard of any such unnecessary oath, and as I had a fair share of Chinese cases in my Court, the oath, if taken, must have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
There can be no question that the Chinese population was occasionally turbulent and quarrelsome ; but they broke no heads than those of their fellow countrymen. Even when the "40,000" spoken of in Harper's Magazine were "occupying" Penang, the police and military and others engaged in putting down their occupation were, as well as I recollect, unmolested and uninjured. It is likely enough that the organisation provided by the Societies facilitated the spread of such disturbances ; but, on the other hand, as their heads were merchants and traders and men of substance, as little in love with rows and riots (which suspend all trade) as whiter men of similar pursuits, they were often valuable allies to the authorities by pressing peaceful counsels on the troublesome and restless, and also by giving timely information of brewing trouble to the heads of the police. Unless I am strangely in error, in the days of Indian rule our Executive and police officials often received valuable aid in this way.
But as soon as the administration of the Colony was transferred to the Colonial Office, the policy of the Indian Government was reversed.The transfer took place in April, 1867 ; the chief Indian officials were replaced by new and inexperienced men ; and a riot which broke out among the Chinese in Penang in the following August was not as happily dealt with as it might have been, and resulted in much loss of life and destruction of property to the two different factions. The new Governor - backed, I think, and I am bound to add, by the general feeling of the European mercantile community - reversed the policy of a dozen Governors-General of India, and declared war against the Societies ; his successors followed in his footsteps and ultimately, as you say, the Societies appear to have been, in 1888, altogether forbidden in the Colony. "It is said in Singapore," you add, "that the policy has been quite successful, and that the dangerous Societies have been blotted out." I hope so ; but I fear that this is a premature crow. I share your suspicion that they are only lying low. They have, no doubt, lost their best members, and they will fall into bad hands. I am afraid that the Colonial ordinances have "blotted them out" in no other sense than the penal code has blotted out treason and murder. Will Chinese tribesmen be really prevented from forming Associations among themselves? If not, their Associations will be only more secret, because contrary to law ; and their members will be less well-disposed to the Government, since the latter makes war on them. The authorities will be left more in the dark about them than they use to be, - a darkness of their own creation, since their legislation has driven out of the Societies those pacific and wealthy sons of prosperous commerce who were so often their useful allies. The new heads, of a rougher order, will perhaps manage to remain unknown until the row breaks out.
I must not conclude without a word of explanation respecting the theatrical attitude attributed to the Chinese chieftain who defied the English Governor to hang him. Khu Tian Pek, the head of the Toh Peh Kong Society of Penang, was tried, with two or three others, for a murder said to have been committed in the riots of 1867, and all were found guilty. If he ever made the speech attributed to him, he relied, not on the valour of his warriors, but on the opinion of the Judges (and, I think, of all or most of the Executive Council) that never had there been a clearer case of concocted charge, perjured evidence, and perverse verdict.
I am, Sir, &c.,
P. B. MAXWELL.
Lucerne, September 15th.[Straits Times Weekly Issue, 27 October 1891, Page 4]
