Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/25

 already begun to propagate injurious and unfavourable reports about the mission.'

Upon the fortunes of the Embassy after it had reached Chinese soil, and was subjected to the tender mercies of the functionaries of state, we must not dwell. Celestial diplomacy appears to have been in spirit then what it had been for centuries before and what it remains still. But the contest was waged in 1816 on far different terms from those which the modern Tsung-li-Yamen has to accept. Lord Amherst was necessarily ignorant of the conditions with which he had to deal, and had no means of gauging either the character or rank of the various officials who were successively sent to make experiments on his good nature or his fears. The object was to befool him if possible; if that failed, to terrify him; and if he refused to be coerced, to humiliate him. Throughout the period of cruel indignity and privation to which he was exposed on the very threshold of the palace, he bore himself with rare fortitude and discretion. It is possible that if celestial cunning had not overshot itself by resorting to sheer brutality, the ceremonial obeisance, to secure which all these artifices and outrages had been employed, would have been conceded. For Lord Amherst had it much on his mind to secure for the East India Company at Canton privileges which were dearer in the eyes of Leadenhall Street than the assertion of the dignity of the British crown. There is something at once ludicrous and pathetic in the extraordinary compromises gravely suggested and