During the reign of Keen-lung the relations of the East India Company with his Government had been the reverse of satisfactory. All kinds of unjust exactions were demanded from the merchants, and many acts of gross injustice were committed on the persons of Englishmen. So notorious, at length, did these matters become that the British Government determined to send an embassy to the court of Peking, and Lord Macartney was chosen to represent George III. on the occasion. On arriving at Jehol, where the court then was, Lord Macartney was received most graciously by the emperor, and subsequently at Yuen-ming-yuen he was admitted into the imperial presence and was treated with every courtesy. But the concessions he sought for his countrymen were not accorded to him, and in this sense, but in this sense only, his mission was a failure.
Kea-king's reign, which extended over a period of five-and-twenty years, was disturbed and disastrous. In the northern and western provinces, rebellion after rebellion broke out, due in a great measure to the carelessness and incompetency of the emperor, who was as obstinately self-opinionated as he was unfit to rule, and the coasts were infested with bands of pirates, whose number and organization enabled them for a long time to hold the imperial fleet in check. But, fortunately for the Government, dissensions broke out among the pirate chiefs, and, weakened by internal fighting, they finally made their peace with the mandarins and accepted posts under the emperor. Meanwhile the condition of the foreign merchants at Canton had in no wise improved. The mandarins were as exacting and as unjust as ever, and in order to set matters on a better footing the British Government despatched a second ambassador in the person of Lord Amherst to Peking in 1816. On arriving at the mouth of the Peiho he was received by imperial commissioners who conducted him to Yuen-ming yuen, taking every advantage on the way of pointing out to him the necessity of his performing the kowtow before the emperor if he wished to be allowed to enter the imperial presence. This he declined to do, and he was consequently dismissed from the palace on the same day on which he arrived, and thus a new impetus was given to mandarinic insolence.
Destitute of all royal qualities, a slave to his passions, and the servant of caprice, the emperor Kea-king died in the year 1820, after a reign of twenty-five years, leaving a disturbed country and a disaffected people as a legacy to his successor Taou-kwang.
Though possessed in his early years of considerable energy Taou-kwang no sooner ascended the throne than he turned his powers, which should have been directed to the pacification of the empire, to the pursuit of pleasure and amusement. The reforms which his subjects had been led by his first manifestoes to believe would be introduced never seriously occupied his attention, and the discontent which had been lulled by hope soon became intensified by despair. In Formosa, Kwang-se, Ho-nan, and other parts of the empire insurrections broke out, which the imperial generals were quite unequal to suppress by force, and the Triad Society, which had originated during the reign of Kang-he, again showed a formidable front under his degenerate successor. Meanwhile the hardships inflicted on the English merchants at Canton became so unbearable, that when, in 1834, the monopoly of the East India Company ceased, the English Government determined to send out a minister to superintend the foreign trade at that port. Lord Napier was selected for the office; but so vexatious was the conduct of the Chinese authorities, and so inadequately was he supported, that the anxieties of his position brought on an attack of fever, from which he died at Macao after but a few months residence in China. The chief cause of complaint adduced by the mandarins was the introduction of opium by the merchants, and for years they attempted by every means in their power, by stopping all foreign trade, by demands for the prohibition of the traffic in the drug, and by vigilant preventive measures, to put a stop to its importation. At length Captain Elliot, the superintendent of trade, in 1839 agreed that all the opium in the hands of Englishmen should be given up to the native authorities, and he exacted a pledge from the merchants that they would no longer deal in the drug. On the 3d April, 20,283 chests of opium were handed over to the mandarins and were by them destroyed—a sufficient proof that they were in earnest in their endeavours to suppress the traffic. This demand of commissioner Lin was considered by the English Government to amount to a casus belli, and in 1840 war was declared. In the same year the fleet captured Chusan, and in the following year the Bogue Forts fell, in consequence of which operations the Chinese agreed to cede Hong-Kong to the victors and to pay them an indemnity of 6,000,000 dollars. As soon as this news reached Peking, Ke Shen, who had succeeded commissioner Lin, was dismissed from his post and degraded, and Yih Shan, another Tatar, was appointed in his room. But before the new commissioner reached his post, Canton had fallen into the hands of Sir Hugh Gough, and shortly afterwards Amoy, Ningpo, Tinghai in Chusan, Chapoo, Shanghai, and Chin-keang Foo shared the same fate, and a like evil would have happened to Nanking had not the Imperial Government, dreading the loss of the “Southern Capital,” proposed terms of peace. After much discussion, Sir Henry Pottinger, who had succeeded Captain Elliot, concluded, in 1842, a treaty with the imperial commissioners, by which the four additional ports of Amoy, Fuh-chow-Foo, Ningpo, and Shanghai were declared open to foreign trade, and an indemnity of 21,000,000 dollars was to be paid to the English. Nor was the remainder of the reign of Taou-kwang more fortunate than its beginning; the empire was completely disorganized, rebellious outbreaks were of frequent occurrence, and the imperial armies were powerless to oppose them. So complete was the demoralization of the troops, that on one occasion the Meaou-tsze or hill tribes of Kwang-se defeated an army of 30,000 men sent against them by the viceroy of the two Kwangs. In 1850, while these clouds were hanging gloomily over the land, Taou-kwang “ascended on high,” and Heen-fung, his son, reigned in his stead.
