Page:China and the Manchus.djvu/82

66 mass of manuscripts containing the history of the Society, its ritual, oaths, and secret signs, together with an elaborate set of drawings of flags and other regalia, fell into the hands of the Dutch Government at Batavia. These documents, translated by Dr G. Schlegel, disclose an extraordinary similarity in many respects between the working of Chinese lodges and the working of those which are more familiar to us as temples of the Ancient Order of Free and Accepted Masons. Such points of contact, however, as may be discoverable, are most probably mere coincidences; if not, and if, as is generally understood, the ritual of the European craft was concocted by Cagliostro, then it follows that he must have borrowed from the Chinese, and not the Chinese from him. The use of the square and compasses as symbols of moral rectitude, which forms such a striking feature of European masonry, finds no place in the ceremonial of the Triad Society, although recognized as such in Chinese literature from the days of Confucius, and still so employed in the every-day colloquial of China.

In 1816 Lord Amherst's embassy reached Peking. Its object was to secure some sort of arrangement under which British merchants might carry on trade after a more satisfactory manner than had been the case hitherto. The old Co-hong, a system first established in 1720, under which certain Chinese