another splendid embassy was despatched by the British government,
in the person of Lord Amherst, who was much more rudely dismissed,
without even being admitted to the presence of the emperor, or
passing a single hour at Pekin. A Dutch embassy instituted shortly
after the failure of that of Lord Macartney, fared no better,
although the ambassador submitted with a good grace to the
prostration of the Kotow. A philosophical republican may smile at
the distinction by which a British nobleman saw no objection to
delivering his credentials on the bended knee, but could not bring
his stomach to the attitude of entire prostration. In the discussion
which arose between Lord Amherst and the celestials on this
question, the Chinese, to a man, insisted inflexibly that Lord
Macartney had performed the Kotow; and Kiaking, the successor of
Kienlung, who had been present at the reception of Lord Macartney,
personally pledged himself that he had seen his lordship in that
attitude. Against the testimony to the fact of the imperial witness
in person, it may well be conjectured how impossible it was for the
British noble to maintain his position, which was, after all, of
small moment. The bended knee, no less than the full prostration to
the ground, is a symbol of homage from an inferior to a superior,
and if not equally humiliating to the performer, it is only because
he has been made familiar by practice with one, and not with the
other. In Europe, the bended knee is exclusively appropriated to the
relations of sovereign and subject; and no representative of any
sovereign in Christendom ever bends his knee in presenting his
credentials to another. But the personal prostration of the
ambassador before the emperor was, in the Chinese principle of
exaction, symbolical not only of the acknowledgment of subjection,
but of the fundamental law of the empire prohibiting all official
intercourse upon a footing of equality between the government of
China and the government of any other nation. All are included under
the general denomination of outside barbarians: and the commercial
intercourse with the maritime or navigating nations is maintained
through the exclusive monopoly of the Hong merchants."

At the opening of the session of Congress, on the 3d of December, 1841,
Mr. Adams thus wrote concerning his own cou