Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/21

 co-heiresses of the last Lord Archer. She and her sisters were very lovely women.

In 1797, as we have said, the first Lord Amherst died, and his nephew succeeded to the title. He succeeded also to Court favour, and he was Lord of the Bedchamber to George III from 1802 to 1804. His gifts seem to have marked him out very early for diplomatic employment, as in 1809 he was sent as Ambassador Extraordinary to Sicily. In 1815 he was made a Privy Councillor.

From the faithful discharge of these temporary and ceremonial duties Lord Amherst was soon to be called to a mission full of grave political moment and fraught with possibilities of romantic peril. In the early part of the present century the interior of China was still, to the European imagination, a region of mystery, and the Imperial Court was a labyrinth which Western diplomacy had not yet succeeded in exploring. The East India Company, which in India had been transformed from a trading association to a great governing organization, was still on the Chinese coast engaged in conducting and endeavouring to extend a profitable traffic. But the factory at Canton was unauthorized by any explicit warrant from Chinese officials. Nevertheless, in 1813, the Company, anxious to push their trade and influence after the model which had rendered them the leading political power in Hindustán, formally appointed a chief of the factory at Canton. It is a curious illustration of the complexities which the dual system