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excited by the reports received from Canton. But in the end they were honestly desirous of obeying the Emperor's commands, for they rightly foresaw that the consequences of failure would fall on their own heads. That is precisely what happened. The Emperor severely punished his brother-in-law, who had been chiefly responsible for the bungling, but at the same time he evinced his resentment at Lord Amherst's attitude by suggesting in a letter to the King of England that the further sending of envoys would be unnecessary.

Lord Amherst's stay in China lasted five months, and was supposed to have cost the Government of that country as much as had been expended on Lord Macartney's reception. When his lordship reached Canton on his return journey, he found that the British frigate Alceste, which was to carry him home, had been occupied firing on the Chinese flotilla and bombarding the Chinese forts during his absence in the interior. The Alceste having been assigned by the local officials to a berth so far down the river as to suggest an intentional insult, moved up "very leisurely," and when this open defiance of lawfully constituted authority drew upon her some futile fire from the Chinese war-junks and the forts, she "silenced the former with a shot," and "sent the garrison of the latter scampering" with a broadside. The custom of the foreigner in those days was to do the thing that was right in his own eyes, and to