A Secret Agent in Port Arthur by Wirt Gerrare

Every British subject who attempts any business in China is handicapped by the apathy of British consuls to individual interests. Owing to their training they seem to live in a different atmosphere to that inhabited by the ordinary residents in the treaty ports, are shut off from the ideals of the people of the settlement in which they live, have aspirations of quite a dissimilar character, and are absolutely out of touch with the more enterprising of their own nationals.

For them, the individual, unless he be an offender, does not exist. They serve some abstract creation of their own imagination, to which they give the name of Crown, or British empire; their objects in life appear to be the possession of a mastery over the Chinese language, and some practice in diplomatic pursuits. They are always gentlemen, usually men of brains, and occasionally men possessing some force of character. But they belong to a well-defined high social caste; they are sinologues, and so full of Chinese, that not only their sympathies, but their proclivities even, are tinged with the tone pervading the Celestial empire.