Five Weeks
After His Fall, However, Prince Kung Was Reinstated, On May 8, In All His
Offices, With The Exception Of That Of President Of The Council.
This
episode, which might have produced grave complications, closed with a
return to almost the precise state of things previously existing.
There
was one important difference. The two empresses had asserted their
predominance. Prince Kung had hoped to be supreme, and to rule
uncontrolled. From this time forth he was content to be their minister and
adviser, on terms similar to those that would have applied to any other
official.
The year 1865, which witnessed this very interesting event in the history
of the Chinese government, beheld before its close the departure of Sir
Frederick Bruce from Pekin, and the appointment of Sir Rutherford Alcock,
who had been the first British minister to Japan during the critical
period of the introduction of foreign intercourse with that country, to
fill the post of Resident Minister at Pekin. Sir Rutherford Alcock then
found the opportunity to put in practice some of the honorable sentiments
to which he had given expression twenty years before at Shanghai. When Sir
Rutherford left Yeddo for Pekin, the post of Minister in Japan was
conferred on Sir Harry Parkes, who had been acting as consul at Shanghai
since the conclusion of the war. The relations between the countries were
gradually settling down on a satisfactory basis, and the appointment of a
Supreme Court for China and Japan at Shanghai, with Sir Edmund Hornby as
Chief Judge, promised to enforce obedience to the law among even the
unsettled adventurers of different, nationalities left by the conclusion
of the Taeping Rebellion and the cessation of piracy without a profitable
pursuit.
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