The National Register. — London, England, 1817-05-26 00:00:00

j) tp No. 485.—V0i.. X. LORD AMHERST'S EMBASSY TO CHINA. fir-CFNT me :minds from the embassy state, that on the arri val of the ship* in the.gulph of Pe-teltedee, Ihe 2Stla July, two inibtary officers came ..tr from the shore, alld expressed some surprise at tlfi it haying reached that all rht.rage in so short a time after notice had been tiast received oldie embassy ; and it was evident that no lit e variations had been made for its reception. T.,) days ,ino.ards, however, the same officers loomed with intelligence that three mandarins of rank had li.om appointed to attend the ambassador to the capital; the first of the name of Quoag, the imperial legate, awl a Tartar; the second, Chang, a civilian; the third, Via, a military offi cer; being the exact counterparts of the three Ta jive, or great non, appointed to wait on Lord MaCertney ; and, to make the parallel complete, the Tartar legate announced his intention of receiving the ambassador on shine, %slide the other tern paid their respects to him on board the Alceste. They brought with them a fleet of junks, as on the former ()erasion, containing the itnpeiiil present of refreshments for the ships' crews, iut ended also, a hen unloaded, to convey back the pie sent: and haggage of the ambassador and Lis suite. The present dad out contain such a vast pram:ion of hogs, fowls, puinkins, and pears, as on the former °cm- ion, front the want most probably, of a longer notice to provide 111(.111 t butt it was ample; and the friendly attentions of these two men, a s well as the concili:iting manners of the legate, held out the promise of a favourable and honourable reception in Pekin. Two clammed:knees, however, were casually mentioned, that in some degree east a damp over this agreeable prospect. In the first 'fare, it was rumoured among the Chinese on shore that the Emperor would set .ast for Gehol, in Tartary, on the 9th September, previously to which, he would receive the ambassador in Pekin, amid give him his final audience of leave: secondly, the two mandarins Chang and I insinuated pretty 'dainty that the usual ceremony of prostration %%maid be expire:W(ll'a oun the ambassador; it the filmier point was not got over, it was (ine evident that no time would be al. lowed fee the transaction of any kind of business, and the question of the ceremmay was considered as a point of s i•al importance-- as, 011 the refusal or compliance with this de grading and humiliating demand, England must continue to maintain, in the eves of this haughty government, that high. rank amiindependent spit it for which she had hitherto been known to them, or set the seal of vassalage to her submission, and be registered among the eeeee fiber of their petty tea manta- Howe% er, as these men seemed not to have any posi tive instructions on that head, and as every thing Intim( rto had b , .en conducted on the same plan and principles as hereto fore, it was hoped thatno such concession would be persisted in, or any material deviation be demanded, inconsistent with the precedent established by Lord Macartney. Some little objection was at first made to the number of Perseus attached to the embassy, a hich, with the guard, band of music, and servants, am 11111 l led to seventy •five ; the orders I'r Pekin limiting the number to fifty. The olijeetiost, however, was immediately removed, and a firet (Waltore Ili uu thirty commodious barges appointed to carry thin up the river to Tong-shoo., within twelve miles of the capital; and so studious were they to follow the former precedent, that e vessel was pi spared to receive two cows, to supply the English yt ith milk for their tea. Here ends our direct information from the embassy ; the rest is from Chinese authority, which is, in tact, no authority at all ; the most andacions falsehoods were daily published when the former embassy was in the country, and Lord l'ulacartney had constant occasion to observe, that their ideas of the obligations of truth were very lax; besides, whatever appears in the Pekin Gazette is prepared solely and exclusively for the Chinese. No foreigner is supposed to know any thing of what passes in China. It would seem, then, from this gazette, that the emperor had not seen the ambassador, nor received the Regent's letter and presents ; and that the reason ❑ssigned for this unfriendly proceeding v as the refusal, on the pat t of Lord Amherst, to go through the degrading ceremony required from all the petty king it:olns nominally under the protection of the empire; a cere mony which, as we have stated, is the sign and seal of their vassalage. This ceremony requires the person to Atli down at the word of common! on both knees, and, on another word being given by a kind of herald, to bow the head nine distinct times to the ground. It has been conjectured, that our quarrel with the Nepanlese had some share in the untow. turd eiremustances of the embassy; but this is not likely ; much less is it so that the emperor should have been first in formed at that quarrel by Lord Amherst. He had in fact appointed a general, and marched an army through Tartary to Thibet, long before the arrival of the embassy ; and that general reached Lassa about the S:1111e time that Lord Am• iu•rst arrived at Tien-Sing. The fist appearance of discon tent is manifested at the circumstance of the ships leaving the gulf of Pe-ts he-lee without orders; it insinuates that these ships went oft for sonic bad purpose, and with the design of examining the coast ; and circular orders were sent to the officers of the maritime provinces, directing them not to per mit the ships to anchor, or a single man to land, but to de sire them immediately to proceed to Macao, and there to wait the arri4al of the ambassador. This ignorant government could not conceive the dasher of a large ship of mar lying at anchor in the middle of au extensive anlph, in less than four fathoms water, and eleven mules from shore, at u time too when the change of the 111011‘11011 was momentarily expected, and when those bort ible hurrie-au•-s called ty idioms prevail, and in one of which, in tact, the Alceste was caught in her return to the southward :--deceitful in all its proceeding• ; its conduct at variance with all its 11101 al and OOlitiCal ; it could only impute bad motives to measures of neces sary precaution, though the same measures had also been adopted by Sir Erasmus Gower on the termer occasion. The danger, in fact, was slated to the legate and the two mandarins; and so well satisfied were they with the reasons aistgued for nut remaining iu that oiieu anchorage, that they ationall 14riviOttr. Our Iling,Conrintution anti MONDAY, MAY , 26, 1517. furnished Captain Alaaysel,l tVitil a letter, ordering the pro. sluciel authorities, 'wherever he might touch, to supply Ilie wants of the ships. If they neglected to inform his imperial majesty of lilts eiretinisteare, they alone were to blame. Hovrever they did not trouble r the coast of China; they stood ' across the gulp') of Leateng, saw the great wall, wisitlioe tip one side of steep mountains and descending the other down into the very guljolt ; and instead of meeting with the eastern coast of Corea, where it appears on oar charts, they fell in with an archipelago of a thousand islands, among which were the most commodious and 111.1gilifivelit harbours; the real coast of the Coreau peninsula being at least !aft miles further to the eastward. Frost hence they proceeded to the Leion-Kitott Islands, where they met with* harbour equal to that of Port ,',labor, and with the most fdendly reception from the poor boot kind hearted people of those islands. Fi natty, from hence they stood across direct for Canton. In the means time the embassy proceeded to Pekin and on their as rival at TienSiug, ,so it is stated in the Gazette be fore us, a grand entertaitintroit was given to Lord Amherst, agreeably with the estahtisited ceremonies of the empire ; for which, however, his lordship is said not to have toren sufficioally thankful. Another edit-f, bearing date the Volt of Augoost, announces the arrival of the Ambassador at Pekin, bearing a letter and tribute from 'the King of Ent; land: and smother edict, in the next day's Gazette, 'timeliness the con clusion of the mission, melees it to quit Pekin the same day, points out its toute throne') the provinces to Canton, coon• mends the great officers of the provinces and the criminal judos( s to attend the ambassador, together with a large mili• tery event t 1 and it is difficult to say whether snspicitin or pusillanimity most preponderates in the precautions Met:tied in these absurd milers; or %leaky! petulance or timidity is most apparent im them. It states that the letter and presents have not been received, because the ambassador could not present them ; and the reason for nut presenting them is thus announced : • This was the day which his Imperial Majesty had appointed t° receive Lord Amherst, the ambassador from Om King of England ; but when he came to the door of the interior palace, he was suddenly taken so ill that he could neither walk nor move. The second am baaeador (Sir G. &auto's) was also affected in the same manner; they could not therefore have the happiness of receiving the gradous tY• your and the presents of the celestial emperor.' Th e s i c k ness of t h e ambassador is a stale trick of the Chi nese ; the explanation of whir'), we conjecture to he this : Ou fueling that Lord Amherst oils inflexible, they endeavour ed to etisnure him by 411 appal coot relaxation of the demand, when moo arriving at the hell of andience lie detected their stra taceits, anti resisted the attempt to enforce the ceremony, winch they would have marls as scruple to 010. The autocrat of two hundred millions of people could not at once tell Isis sieves that a foreign ambassador would not, he therefore qua ' Idled the refusal with soiggestisog that be could not, through siekness, see his • heavenly face.' The ambassador 11111 not. however, leave Pekin on the 29th %togitst, in eonformity with the imperial inandeto : it was ge nerally believed in Gliat , ll that le• did not set mit oil the journey till the 7th September; mita liatened in the Intermediate time does toot appear, but Iso the litho September another edict Was It begins by noticing the grand ballet iet given at Tienassing ; the refusal of the ambassador to comply with • the prostrutions there, with which his imperial majesty was not made acquainted, and for which neglect the new manda rins, queries and lie, were ordered to he degraded three de gree, : anti it proceeds to say, that the ambassador was lodged at a ceretin pl Ice, called ris yntn, near the capital, teat from thence he was conducted to the imperial palace, • Where (observes his Chinese Slajesty) I was about to ascend the throne to receive them, when the first and second were both taken ill, and could not appear bethre me. In consequence of which I ordered them instantly to return to their own country, fur it then occurred to me, that they had declined to comply with the ceremonies of tile ce lestial empire. With respect to dear king, who sent them on so keg a voyage across the vast ocean,- us present to me a letter and to offer tribute, it was undoubtedly Isis intention to pay us homage, and to obey our commaeds, which mark of submission we were unwilling entirely to reject, het we also should foal to observe one of the fun damental rules of the celestial eitioires that of aff h rdiug our protec tion to petty kingdoms. For the reason we hare thought tit to seled the most trifling and least valuable of his articles of tribute; namely, four maps, two portraits, and ninceystive prints, which we receive in enter to confer some marks of our grace and favour. We have also ordered presents to be given to die king in return, namely, a l'essae tiesr large and eight small silk purses, to be conveyed to the said king; sond this we do in contiornuty with the ancient and accustoned rul., of the celestial empire, of nooking rids gifts in return for things of hale value. The ambassadors on the receipt of these presents were much delighted, and showed evident signs of surprize and as tonishment.' t% ell, indeed, they might !.—This extraordinary state-paper then proceeds to order the Viceroy of Canton to prepare tin entertainment for the ambassador, and dictates the speech he is to stake on that occasion, a hick is nearly a repetition of a hat we have quoted; and it emit-hides by saying, ' steroid the am bassador again conceal that the rest of the presents may be received, you are merely to say, we have express orders to the color:11y from the celestial emperor, and we date not again offend his ears,—and aids these words you ail reject their supplications.' Preparations were accurslinelvuriking by the Viceroy tors arena entertainment when the last ships came away, 117111 he had sent Matte to the chief out the far-eery, that he haul received the emperor's letter to the King of Eng land, which would be deliseacil to the ambassador on his ar rival. These edicts contain all that' was known at Canton of the proceedings of the entinissy. It is clear e metal', however, from them that it had failed ; that is to that the einbassa dor had saved his own Matta:eta and the character of the nation he rep r esented, at the tAill'llre ut fOlcgoilig the grati fication of beholding the de/aline rays of the • celestial coun tenance,' and has ing the saleable presents sent out by the F:rst India Commons . retinues! upon their hands. Toil is the sum total of the failure ; our WA:11111st repeat, that not only ions the tuitional character barn upheld Isv the r. tinsel of Lord .Imltcrst to comply with a disgusting and degrading ceremony, Pit tot 93d. which a former Edgli•li and a it iliSi4D alnbAS,iitiOe also refused; but that, indiv i lually, he will have experiehee,l corsideratimi and attention from those very people tare !Lose failed in their attempts to degrade hitn, and, through him , the w:ml • parkin : for the less that iY coneed:.4l to this pos'llani mous and insolent people, the more will their fears for the cos segnelee begin o operate. What the isqw of the embassy would ham u been, provided Lord Amherst had was ell all per sonal considerations, and submitted to undergo the degrad ing ceremony, may In collected from the estreme conde scension of the two Dutch ambassadors, Titsingh and Van Bream. After Lord Macartoey'sfinture, as it was also called. these two men imagined that a line opening was afforded to the patch to obtain, by an itueondlitional submission, all that the English had lost by their obstinate refusal. They began at Canton to bow their heads nine times to the ground bribe , a yellow tikreen ; to thank the Emperor for having graciously condescended to permit them to appear Wore him w th a letter and tribute ; and, befit c their return, they were brought on filch knees and bowed their heads to the ground ninety nine times at least.--- 4 pour faire le saint d'honnedir,' as Van lii aam, with true llatavian cumposure, calls this humiliating ceremony ; but, after all this compliance on the part of the Dutch, when they (wind themselves, in the capital, thrust into a stable where some cart horses were standing, poor Van's phlegm began to move a little, and he ventures to exclaim; Nous serious .notts attendus d nue pareille aventure!' This was not all ; tbr they were passed through the country literally like so many vagrants; 'Audi in wretched hovels neither wind nor water tight ; left sometimes by their bearers perched in chairs in the midst of heaths, or on the summits of moun tains ; frequently without any provisions for whole days ; and in short, went through so many hardships, that Van Braam. who was a large man, says that lie had lost on his return a full foot in circumference! whereas, in the case of Lord Macart ney, far from manifesting any petulance or ill-humour, which might have been expected from mortified pride, the Chinese .chewed every attention to the ambassador aml his suite during the whole of their progress through the country. But why object, we have heard it asked, to a cerentosy which is the established usage of the country? Lord Ma. cartney, we thick, has satisfactorily answered that question . in urging 4 the propriety of distinguishing between the ho- Magi: of tributary princes, and the ceremony used on the part of a great and independent sovereign ; and ' that it could not be exp;eted that an ambassador of an independent sovereign should pay a greater homage to a foreign prince than to his °on master, unless the compliment should be made reciprocal.' It is not ti tie that the Chinese think little or nothing of du it humiliating ceremony ; had that been the CAW, the court of ceremonies would not have objected to Lord Maeartney's proposal of a person of equal rank to his own performing the same teremony before the King's por trait that he should be required to pet form before the Ens. perot. We know not, of course, whether Lord Amherst w as prepared to propose this rieiprueity of compliment; Ind Wire dill, and it tV.I3 nut aceeptol, he seas perfectly right in 1..- fusing as Lott! Mac:it-they had done. We cannot conceive a case allure the representative of the sovereign of Great fltaititin should sobinit to a degradation which the represen tative of the Emperor Alexander had peremptorily resisted. The disappointment in not succeeding could not be more mortifying, nor the refusal less excusable, tbr Lord Am herst than for Count Golotikiii ; the latter, after a long and fitiguing journey across the woods and deserts of Siberia, was stopped short just as lie Caine in view of the promised land, and turned back, because lie would neither how the knee to the Yellow skreen, nor promise to do so to the Baal himself, on his presentation at Pekin. We have heard it asserted, that the Chinese protested against the case of Lord Macartney brim; drawn into a pre- . c c deut, and that Lord Amherst was instructed to comply with the customary ceremonies : the tirst we know to be false; and the other we have every reason to helkvv to be an ; it is not likely he should be instructed either to comp" or to refuse, bat to act according to his owu discretion and to cir cumstances. If it be *sled, Why Bead an embassy at till the Direetors of the East India Company call best answer such a question. -They only, and their servants, know the comparative situation of their affairs at Canton, before and after the mission of Lord Macartney : since that mission, II new generation has sprung up • old gi ievances were revived; 01 manlier of vexatious impediments and insulting conduct were daily directed against our trade, and those who con ducted it ; the native set.% alit% Mtre forbidden to engage thenise.s es to Europeans ; and the latter were proliiinted from addressing the local authorities in the ellilleW 1411gilil re, which is the only tango:tee they understand; supplies of pro- visions were stopped to his Alajesty's ships, and cargoes with held from those of the Company ; the magistrates entered the factory without permission or previous notice; and 'nasty other offensive proceedings were instituted, which seemed too plainly to indicate a disposition to retnru to a system of oppression and insult, which, though it inig.ht have Items submitted to in the early stage of our hitercourse, could %rarely now be endured. In this state of things, the gentle. meat of the factory. two years ago, came to the spirited reso lution of withdrawing the whole of the ships of the season ya ith their eat goes vet unloaded) trout Co: river, and of .ppealing at once to the Court of Pekin : and Sir George St minim, who conducted the diffietilt and delicate discus sions, WoOi miler the nicessity of actually 1 . 1 . 11!0% , lug the Bri tish thig Irmo the factory, and preceeilieg ti,Wil the river to carry their inteotions into ' , fleet, wlici, tae natural timi dity (lithe Chinese gut the better of their iiiso:ence ; and a deputation was sent after lam to etareat his return and con tinue the negociat ... So It 1111.4111, 111( . 11401e, g.llll plubably was, deemed advisable to ft - 111111d those coin it pinvineial anthorities, by another embassy, that the ge..thniesi if the English factory at Canton were out a set Of imp. utected ad yenta. ers, as they wire ineitiled to consider them. Beyond the wish of olituthing .justice and pioteet.en tar our tootle. tne Jia'ist India Cowpaity could have nothing to ask; and when we cutundes Ulu nutpitude awl impui tauci a that trade ,: r . 0 -- t• 'Cr~