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were told that, in accordance with the rules of Chinese etiquette, they would be expected to prostrate themselves during the reading. Doubtless they regarded the issue of the edict as a turning-point in their career. Yet they utterly refused to hear the edict on condition of making such an obeisance, and they persisted in their refusal. "Suspecting that the Chinese merchants endeavoured to make us believe this (the necessity of kneeling with the head on the ground), in order that by our compliance we might be brought down to the same servile level with themselves; considering also that the posture insisted on is such a mark of abject submission as we never pay to our own sovereigns in Europe, we unanimously agreed that we should dishonour ourselves and our countries in complying with it. Being apprehensive that the Chinese merchants might succeed in their design of weakening us by creating in us mutual suspicions and jealousies, we met in a body, and by unanimous agreement, gave our solemn words of honour that none of us would submit to the slavish posture required, nor make any concession or proposal of accommodation separately, without first acquainting all the rest." There were ten trading-vessels in the river when this occurred—four English, two French, two Dutch, one Danish, and one Swedish—but all these different nationalities clung firmly to their compact. It is a fine story, still capable of producing a thrill of exultation in the reader's