CHINA. lot 



twenty dynasties, or different tribes and families of succession, are 

 enumerated in their annals. 



Neither the great Zingis Khan, nor Timur, though they often de- 

 feated the Chinese, could subdue their empire ; and neither of them 

 could keep the conquests they made there. Their celebrated wall! 

 proved but a feeble barrier against the arms of those famous Tartars. 

 Alter their invasions were over, the Chinese went to war with the 

 Manchew Tartars ; while an indolent worthless emperor, Tsong- 

 tching, was upon the throne. In the mean while, a bold rebel, nam- 

 ed Li-cong-tse, in the province of Setchuen, dethroned the emperor 

 who hanged himself, as did most of his courtiers and women. Ou- 

 sanquey, the Chinese general, on the frontier of Tartary, refused to 

 recognise the usurper ; and made a peace with Tson-gate, or Chun- 

 tchi, the Manchew prince, who drove the usurper from the throne^ 

 and took possession of it himself, about the year 1644. The Tartar 

 maintained himself in his authority ; and, as has been already men- 

 tioned, wisely incorporated his hereditary subjects with the Chinesej 

 so that in effect Tartary became an acquisition to China. He was 

 succeeded by a prince of great natural and acquired abilities ; who 

 was the patron of the Jesuits, but knew how to check them when he 

 found them intermeddling with the affairs of his government. About 

 the year 1661, the Chinese, under this Tartar family, drove the Dutch 

 out of the island of Formosa, which the latter had taken from the Por- 

 tuguese. 



In the year 1771, all the Tartars who composed the nation of the 

 Tourgouths, left the settlements which they had under the Russian 

 government on the banks of the Volga, and the Iaick, at a small dis- 

 tance from the Caspian Sea, and in a vast body of fifty thousand fami- 

 lies, passed through the country of the Hasacks. After a march of 

 eight months, in which they surmounted innumerable difficulties and 

 dangers, they arrived in the plains that lie on the frontiers of Cara- 

 pen, not far from the banks of the river Ily ; and offered themselves 

 as subjects to Kien-Long, emperor of China, who was then in the 

 thirty-sixth year of his reign. He received them graciously ; furnish- 

 ed them with provisions, clothes, and money, and allotted to each 

 family a portion of land for agriculture and pasturage. The year 

 following, there was a second emigration of about thirty thousand 

 other Tartar families; who also quitted the settlements which they 

 enjoyed under the Russian government, and submitted to the Chinese 

 sceptre. The emperor caused the history of these emigrations to be 

 engraven upon stone in four different languages. 



The hopes which were lately indulged of the great and manifold 

 advantages to be derived from the embassy of lord Macartney to the 

 court of Peking, ended in disappointment. Never, perhaps, was there 

 a character better qualified for the management of an embassy of 

 such delicacy and importance than lord Macartney : but, notwith- 

 standing his lordship's adroitness, he found it utterly impossible to 

 obtain permission for the residence of an Englishman at the capital 

 of China, as ambassador, consul, or in any other character ; or any 

 exclusive settlement for the English within the Chinese dominions, 

 even on a temporary grant, and solely for the purposes of trade. 

 According to a fundamental principle in Chinese politics, innovation, 

 of whatever kind, is held to be inevitably pregnant with ruin ; and, 

 on this principle, the emperor declined to admit a foreign resident 

 at the court of Peking, or to expand the principles on which our com- 



