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CHINA

my warning." One of the principal objects of the mission had been to obtain permission for carrying on trade at Ningpo, Chusan, Tientsin, and other places besides Canton. In that respect it failed signally. Chienlung doubtless thought that he possessed the right of discrimination within his own dominions. The Dutch had excluded his subjects from their East-Indian colonies, and the Spaniards in Manila had subjected them to discriminations which amounted almost to exclusion. But Chienlung had yet to learn that there was one law for Western peoples, another for Eastern, and Europe at the moment was too much engrossed with its own affairs to undertake the duty of instructing him.

Lord Macartney's mission had a consequence which, although removed from its cause by an interval of twenty-one years, should be remembered incidentally. A Chinese official named Sung having shown much civility to the mission, and having subsequently won many warm friends among the English during his tenure of the Canton viceroyalty, it was decided to send him from England a letter and some valuable presents, "as an acknowledgment of past good offices and an earnest of future ones." Sung, then a member of the Grand Council in Peking, accepted the presents, but when the fact became known to his Government, it degraded him and returned the gifts. If an English official in Sung's position had accepted presents from for-

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