In 1816 Lord Amherst's embassy reached Peking. Its object was to secure some sort of arrangement under which British merchants might carry on trade after a more satisfactory manner than had been the case hitherto. The old Co-hong, a system first established in 1720, under which certain Chinese merchants at Canton became responsible to the local authorities for the behaviour of the English merchants, and to the latter for all debts due to them, had been so complicated by various oppressive laws, that at one time the East India Company had threatened to stop all business. Lord Amherst, however, accomplished nothing in the direction of reform. From the date of his landing at Tientsin, he was persistently told that unless he agreed to perform the _kotow_, he could not possibly be admitted to an audience. It was probably his equally persistent refusal to do so--a ceremonial which had been excused by Ch'ien Lung in the case of Lord Macartney--that caused the Ministers to change their tactics, and to declare, on Lord Amherst's arrival at the Summer Palace, tired and wayworn, that the Emperor wished to see him immediately. Not only had the presents, of which he was the bearer, not arrived at the palace, but he and his suite, among whom were Sir George Stanton, Dr Morrison, and Sir John Davis, had not received the trunks containing their uniforms. It was therefore impossible for the ambassador to present himself before the Emperor, and he flatly refused to do so; whereupon he received orders to proceed at once to the sea-coast, and take himself off to his own country. A curious comment on this fiasco was made by Napoleon, who thought that the English Government had acted wrongly in not having ordered Lord Amherst to comply with the custom of the place he was sent to; otherwise, he should not have been sent at all. "It is my opinion that whatever is the custom of a nation, and is practised by the first characters of that nation towards their chief, cannot degrade strangers who perform the same." In 1820 Chia Ch'ing died, after a reign of twenty-five years, notable, if for nothing else, as marking the beginning of Manchu decadence, evidence of which is to be found in the unusually restless temper of the people, and even in such apparent trifles as the abandonment of the annual hunting excursions, always before carried out on an extensive scale, and presenting, as it were, a surviving indication of former Manchu hardihood and personal courage. He was succeeded by his second son, who was already forty years of age, and whose hitherto secluded life had ill-prepared him for the difficult problems he was shortly called upon to face. CHAPTER VII TAO KUANG