A special or confidential agent being necessary to carry into effect the new measures of government, I had the honour to be selected for that duty, at the particular recommendation of the secretary of the Navy. The summary chastisement of the inhabitants of Qualah Battu, and the complete success of Com. Downes, in the performance of the duties assigned by government, rendered a visit from the Peacock to that place unnecessary, and thus left the objects of the mission more fully open to a complete and minute investigation. How far they have been faithfully accomplished, I leave to the candid and impartial judgment of those who peruse the details of the Embassy, in the following pages. At the period of my visit to the courts of Siam and Muscat, American commerce was placed on a most precarious footing, subject to every species of imposition which avarice might think proper to inflict, as the price of an uncertain protection. Nor was it to pecuniary extortions alone that the uncontrolled hand of power extended. The _person_ of the American citizen, in common with that of other foreigners, was subject to the penalties of a law which gave the creditor an absolute power over the _life_, equally with the property, of the debtor, at the court of Siam. As an American, I could not fail to be deeply impressed with the barbarity of this legal enactment, and its abrogation, in relation to my own countrymen, detailed in the Embassy, I consider as not the least among the benefits resulting from the mission. With the courts of Siam and Muscat, it will be seen, I was enabled to effect the most friendly relation, and to place our commerce on a basis in which the excessive export and import duties, previously demanded, were reduced fifteen per cent. If in the attainment of these benefits some sacrifice of personal feeling was at times made for the advantage of American commerce, the dignity of my country was never lost sight of, nor her honour jeoparded by humiliating and degrading concessions to eastern etiquette. The insulting formalities required as preliminaries to the treaty, by the ministers from the capital of Cochin-China, left me no alternative, save that of terminating a protracted correspondence, singularly marked from its commencement to its termination by duplicity and prevarication in the official servants of the emperor. The detail of the various conversations, admissions and denials, on the part of these eastern ministers, in the pages of the Embassy, exhibits their diplomatic character in true, but not favourable colours.