LORD MACARTNEY. 723 speech addressed to the great Empress, he said that her extraordinary accomplishments and heroic virtues made her the delight of that half of the globe over which she reigned, and rendered her the admiration of the other. His next diplomatic appointment was that of British ambassador to China in 1792, a difficult post, in which he conducted himself with great dignity and address. He declined to perform the degrading ceremony of the Kowtow, which until then, and for long afterwards, had been exacted as the price of audience of the Emperor from all European ambassadors to the Court of Peking, and he did this without giving offence to Keen Lung, the great Emperor who then occupied the throne. But he was less successful with the Emperor's ministers, for the Board of Rites, on hearing that Lord Macartney had been admitted to audience without performing the abject ceremony of the three genuflections and the nine prostrations, exclaimed that in dispensing with the ceremony His Majesty had sullied the lustre of his long and glorious reign, at the same time declaring that nought but humiliation was to be expected in the future at the hands of the proud and unbending nation to which the ambassador belonged. The unyielding but yet courteous conduct of the ambassador would seem to have raised him in the estimation of the Emperor, for in a banquet which he gave to the ambassador, and at which he himself was present, though not at the same table, His Majesty rose from his seat and with his own hand poured out a glass of wine for Lord Macartney. This is somewhat different from the scant courtesy which once a year the Emperor of China shows to the foreign representatives at Peking, when, like so many schoolboys in a class, ranged in a row, they are allowed to make their salutations and retire to some other apartment in the palace to be entertained by the members of the Tsungli Yamên. Though the embassy was considered to have been a failure as regards the objects which the British Government had in view in sending it, it was otherwise a great success; and it would be difficult to say how different might have been the state of China to-day, had Lord Amherst, our next ambassador to China, been equally successful, and the then reigning Emperor been a man as liberal in his views and as independent of his surroundings as Keen Lung. The friendly relations between the two courts established by Lord Macartney might have gone on increasing, the wars with England in the time of Taokwang and Hienfung might never have come to pass, and China might have been opened to foreign intercourse a hundred years sooner. Though this is not the place to pass in review the different high appointments held by Lord Macartney at home and in the colonies, yet I cannot close this short resumé of his career without alluding to his disinterestedness and high principle. When Governor of Madras he set an example of honesty and uncorruptibility-not common in India at the time when the custom was for officials to shake the pagoda tree and get rich. The well-disguised bribes which it was the custom of the native princes to present to Europeans of position, and which they always retained for their personal benefit, were by Lord Macartney placed in the public treasury to be sold for the public advantage. His conduct in this respect excited the surprise of Hyder Ali, and extorted from him the exclamation, so honourable to Lord Macartney, "I cannot understand this new governor; money seems to have no attractions for him." The reception that awaited it afforded every reason for gratification, and much cause to hope that the ends for which the embassy had been despatched would be successfully attained. After Lord Macartney left the man-of war, he and his party were conveyed with all attention and ceremony up the Peiho to the capital. Visits of ceremony were paid and returned with the Viceroy of Pechihli, and some of the other principal mandarins. At Tientsin they were even accorded the unusual honour of a military salute. A missionary wrote from Pekin to Lord Macartney to say that the Emperor had shown "marks of great satisfaction" at the news of his approach, and the instructions sent by Keen Lung to facilitate the movements of the British mission were too clear and emphatic to be disregarded. The embassy was detained some time in Pekin, and for a moment it seemed as if a period of vexatious delay would herald the discomfiture of RIVAL POLICIES. 725 the mission. Fortunately, when affairs appeared to be most unsatisfactory, a message arrived from Jehol, whither Keen. Lung had retired, to inquire after the health of the ambassador, and to invite him to pay him a visit at his hunting-place beyond the Wall. Lord Macartney, with his retinue and the guard allotted to his person, proceeded there in compliance with the invitation, and travelling in an English carriage, he reached Jehol in due course. Although the Emperor and his principal minister were in favour of conceding the English some, if not all, of the privileges they demanded, a very strong party, headed by the victorious general Sund Fo, who had been appointed Viceroy of Kwantung, were not only unfriendly to all foreign intercourse, but inimical to any with England in particular. However, notwithstanding their efforts to render the mission abortive, the Emperor resolved to receive the British envoy in audience, and the interview duly took place in a tent specially erected for the ceremony in the gardens of the palace. A second interview was held, and then the embassy returned to Pekin, whence it made its way overland to Canton. The dislike of the mandarins, which had been only partially concealed during the residence at Jehol, broke out more unequivocally after its departure, and during their return to Canton the English ambassador and his suite suffered considerable inconvenience at the hands of officials, who took their cue from the general Sund Fo, whose Nepaulese laurels had been won at the cost of an irrevocable enmity to the English. Beyond receiving from the lips of the Emperor an assurance that he reciprocated "the friendly sentiments of His Britannic Majesty," no practical results followed from Lord Macartney's embassy, successful though it was in so far as its reception was concerned. Keen Lung's advanced age left him neither the inclination nor the power to go very closely into the question of the policy or impolicy of cultivating closer relations with the foreign race which asserted the supremacy of the seas, and which had already subjected one Asiatic empire to its sway. That question had to be left for his successors; but at the least it may be said that Keen Lung did nothing to retard the establishment of cordial and |
