CO CHIN CHIN A. 347 
English nation, from which reasonable hopes of success 
might be entertained, a resolution was taken by the Court 
to send back to China one of its servants, who had re- 
tired from the factory at Canton, with instructions to pro- 
ceed from that port on a secret mission to the King of 
Cochinchina. This gentleman, on his arrival at Canton, 
finding the state of his health would not permit him to 
go through the fatigue of a voyage to Cochinchina, trans- 
ferred his instructions to one of the supracargoes in the 
Company^s employ at that factory, who lost no time in 
proceeding to the Court of Cochinchina. The King saw 
him, it is true, but received him in so cool and distant a 
manner as to point out very clearly that the shorter he made 
his visit the more aoreeable it would be to the Cochinchinese 
government. In fact, he found the Sovereign Caung-shung 
completely surrounded by Frenchmen ; and as he knew no- 
thing himself of the language of the country, nor had any 
one with him who did, every proposition he had to offer, 
and every explanation regarding his mission, were necessarily 
made through the French missionaiies. That these men are 
but little disposed to be friendly to the English nation might 
have been known without sending to Cochinchina for the in- 
formation, and the consequence of making overtures through 
them to the King easily foreseen. The very reserved, not to 
say contemptuous, conduct of every one about the Court to 
the Company's Ambassador makes it probable that the pro- 
posals he had to offer on the part of his employers were 
wholly misrepresented : they might indeed be interpreted by 
the French into insults. The conclusion drawn by the East 
India Company from the complete failure of this mission, is 
Y Y 2 
