Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/351



HE early history of the Press in the Far East is somewhat shrouded in mystery. So far as can be ascertained no data exists as to whether the printer and the ubiquitous reporter followed hot on the heels of the Honourable East India Company or not. Between 1613 — when the daring pioneers of the China trade first sent their white-winged clippers round the Cape to gather in the silks and teas from far Cathay and Japan — and 1830, there is no trace of a newspaper having been established. Though a foreign settlement was in process of growth in Canton as early as 1702, and though it gradually developed, despite Chinese opposition, until 1834, the men of that time lived without what is now regarded as a sine qua non of civilisation — the newspaper. But the printer was not to be denied. He appeared, it is certain, in 1834 in Canton, and the Canton Register burst upon the people of the city of Rams at a period when history was in rapid process of formation; when the days were pregnant with big happenings. One John Slade was the editor of this pioneer of the Press in the Far East, and his paper shows him to have been a man with the bump of combativeness largely developed, though the circulation of his lucubrations may have been limited. He lived in an age of keen dissension and at a time when food for the Press was of a hair-raising character such as few modern journals have the fortune to obtain. In the columns of his little paper history was writ large, and therein is to be discovered records of the agitation — ultimately forcibly assisted by warlike anti-foreign Chinese — which eventually led to the founding of a British Colony in Far Eastern seas.

In the early days of this agitation, Hongkong — where now lives and has its being the whole of the foreign Press of Southern China — was scarcely thought of as a possible Colony. It was a mass of rock — a nest of pirates — though in 1836 a correspondent in the Canton Register prophetically suggested that "if the lion's paw is to be put down on any part of the south side of China, let it be Hongkong ; let the lion declare it under his guarantee a free port, and in ten years it will be the most considerable mart East of the Cape." The prophet was right. About this period the Register found opposition, and the papers thrived while the British merchants were allowed asylum in Canton, fighting vigorouisly the while for a strong and forceful British policy in China. And the good fight initiated so long ago has been carried on down the corridors of time by every other paper that has since been founded.

What is erroneously described as the opium war in 1839, brought about the temporary suspension of Canton papers. Driven from Canton to Macao, and moved on from that settlement, the two thousand British subjects ultimately settled in Hongkong in 1841, and brought their predilections for a Press with them. On January 26, 1841, possession was formally taken of the island, and on May 1st, of the same year, the first press was established. A Government Gazette was published. It was a four-page paper issued at half-monthly periods, but even this frequency was too much for its publishers, and gladly it was handed over in 1842 to the first proprietor of a newspaper on British soil in the Far East.

On March 17, 1842, the Friend of China was established, and gave the news of the period in weekly doses. It was of four small pages, but, on taking over the Gazette on March 23rd, the issue of the journal on March 24th was enlarged in size though not in pages, and the title was altered to the Friend of China and Hongkong Gazette. The editors were then the Rev. J. L. Schuck and Mr. James White (later M.P. for Brighton, England) and, though the publisher's name was not disclosed in the early years, in 1845 it was given out as John Carr, and later a Portuguese was the printer. In the issues of this paper are naturally to be found the impress of the first steps taken to make Hongkong the important port it is to-day, the editor remarking in the issue of September 22, 1842, upon the "magnificence of the prosperous career now before us. . . . Already we hear the teeming projects fraught with good for our Island." The Friend of China did not have the journalistic field to itself, however. The Canton Register was in circulation, and on January I, 1843, the Eastern Globe made its appearance, though it did not prove of lusty growth, despite the political warmth of the time. The officials were in the bad graces of the populace, and the Press strongly criticised their actions, not even sparing the then Governor, Sir H. Pottinger. Though an ordinance to regulate the starting of newspapers was passed in 1844 (the second act), apparently the widest freedom was given, for no clauses to safeguard against libel were inserted, and the expressions of opinion of Press writers were couched in what would nowadays be counted criminally libellous language. Sir H. Pottinger was described in one issue of the Friend of China as a man who "appears either to have been utterly devoid of the sense of the moral obligations imposed upon him, his heart being perfectly seared to the impression of suffering humanity, or deliberately living in seclusion among a few adoring parasites whose limited intellects were devoted to pander to the great man's vanity;" and the lesser officials were mercilessly dealt with.

The lines of the early guardians of the constitution were by no means cast in pleasant places. They had managed to incur the displeasure of both the Press and the entire commercial body, but despite the manifest antagonism, the Colony progressed, and in 1845, which year the historian describes as having centred in it the principal social and general progress of the Colony, the China Mail was established, with the notification that it was to be the official paper for Government announcements. All other papers published before it subsequently died, and to-day it stands as the oldest living link connecting the affairs of the present with those of the dim and distant past. On February 20, 1845, it appeared as a four-page weekly, edited by Mr. Shortrede, and became, like its predecessors, a fearless exponent of the public's views, despite that it was the official organ of the Government. About this time there also flourished a paper known as the Hongkong Register, edited by one Mr. Cairns, and it seems that he is