But no small manoeuvre such as this, however successful, could arrange the larger matter. The fleet had been an utter failure. Osborne himself was disgusted; the Chinese were dissatisfied. They therefore made the best of a bad bargain, and sent the ships back to be sold in England in order to prevent their falling into the hands of the independent and quarrelsome Daimios of Japan, or, as Mr. Burlingame, the United States Minister, greatly feared, into the hands of the Confederates.
Thus ended a very curious incident which, by closing as it did, undoubtedly set back the clock of reform in China. It may be that from the political point of view this was as well; that, had the venture been an unqualified success, the Chinese might have thrown themselves too much into the arms of foreign Powers and tried to reform too fast by slavish imitation instead of slowly working out their own salvation.
As far as he was personally concerned the disastrous and expensive failure long preyed upon Robert Hart's mind. He reproached himself bitterly for the mistake. But the Chinese never attached the least blame to him; they showed him no diminution of respect, rather an increase. It was on the Inspector-General H.N. Lay that their wrath fell. They considered that he had treated the whole matter too high-handedly, and within three months they had dismissed him and offered the post to Robert Hart. Of course the change gave rise to much discussion, and Sherard Osborne went frankly to Hart and told him how ill-natured people were hinting that he had intrigued against Lay. The malignity of idle gossip, however, could not turn him back. Knowing that he had worked as loyally for his chief as for himself, he simply replied that if the public looked at it in that way, instead of refusing he would certainly accept the post. I wonder if any instinct told him that the great day of his life was when he _did_ accept it, or if he had any premonition of the useful and romantic career before him?
The characters of the two Inspector-Generals, the one outgoing, the other incoming, contrasted very strangely. Lay was inclined to be dictatorial and rather impatient of Chinese methods; an excellent and clever man, but with one point of view and one only. Hart, on the other hand, was tactful, patient, and, above all else, tolerant of other people's prejudices. "To grow a little catholic," says Stevenson, "is the compensation of years." But Robert Hart was catholic in this broad sense even when he was young. He would sometimes say that the habit of toleration he acquired at college, and through the most simple incident.