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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 485: EMBASSY TO CHINA, ETC.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

EMBASSY TO CHINA, ETC.

Government had some time ago despatched Lord, Macartney on an embassy to China, and about this time the result of his mission became known. The embassy had been fitted out without any reasonable ground of success; but it was still expected that it might be the means of establishing a communication with that great empire. But the event did not answer these expectations. His lordship was received with suspicion, and ordered to depart as soon as he had made some costly presents, and received some trifling ones in return, being refused even a few days’ delay. As one of the ambassador’s suite observed, “They entered Pekin like paupers, remained in it like prisoners, and quitted it like vagrants.”