merely for certain chests of opium, imported by British merchants into China, and seized by the Chinese government for having been imported contrary to law. This is a mere incident to the dispute, but no more the cause of war than the throwing overboard of the tea in Boston harbor was the cause of the North American Revolution. "The cause of the war is the pretension on the part of the Chinese that in all their intercourse with other nations, political or commercial, their superiority must be implicitly acknowledged, and manifested in humiliating forms. It is not creditable to the great, powerful, and enlightened nations of Europe, that for several centuries they have, for the sake of a profitable trade, submitted to these insolent and insulting pretensions, equally contrary to the first principles of the law of nature and of revealed religion--the natural equality of mankind-- "'_Auri sacra fames, quid non mortalia pectora cogis?_' "This submission to insult is the more extraordinary for being practised by Christian nations, which, in their intercourse with one another, push the principle of equality and reciprocity to the minutest punctilios of form." This lecture concludes with a sketch of the treatment of Lord Macartney by the Chinese emperor, in 1792, when sent to that court as ambassador from Great Britain, illustrating and supporting its general argument. The remarks of Mr. Adams upon the distinction with a very small difference between "the bended knee" and "entire prostration," as a token of homage,--admitted as to the first, denied as to the last, by the British ambassador,--are characteristic.