118 
TUNG-CHOW. 
disability of body, followed us through the streets and into shops, 
not quitting us till they were relieved or driven back by the soldiers. 
On some occasions they prostrated themselves before us, exhibiting 
vile examples of human degradation, and knocking their heads to the 
earth, exemplified the nature of the kotow. 
My observation on the extent of mendicity in China is, I am 
aware, at variance with the remark of the learned author of “ Tra- 
vels in China,” that he “ did not observe a single beggar from 
one extremity of China to the other, except in the streets of Canton.” 
Our opportunities of visiting the cities of China being more frequent 
than those possessed by that gentleman, may perhaps explain the 
contrariety of experience ; or the opposite characters of Kien-Lung 
and Kea-king, the emperors who filled the Chinese throne at the re- 
spective periods of Lord Macartney’s and Lord Amherst’s embassies, 
may have occasioned a very different management of the internal 
affairs of their empire. Kien-Lung, of an active mind and enlarged 
policy, making frequent journeys through his empire, examining in 
his own person the state of his people, or employed in his palace in 
scrutinizing the reports and actions of his ministers, would be infinitely 
more competent to prevent the extremes of poverty among his sub- 
jects, than Kea-king, the victim of jealous fear, struggling against 
rebellion*, and unacquainted with the condition of his people, except 
* Kea-king, the present Emperor of China, a man of a timid and vacillating temper, suf- 
ficiently proved by Ins conduct to the British Embassy, was almost shaken from his throne 
by a conspiracy which broke out in his capital, and penetrated to his palace, in the year 
1813. It was subdued in a great measure by the personal bravery of his brother-in-law 
Ho-slie-ta, who slew several of the principal ringleaders with his own hand. Seven- 
teen persons were ordered for execution as rebels, at Pekin, in the following year, some 
to be cut into minute pieces, others beheaded. Thirty-five were by the tribunal sen- 
tenced to transportation ; but His Majesty changed their sentence to strangling, after a 
certain period of imprisonment. 
The year following the rebellion, an imperial edict was published in Pekin, a trans- 
lation of which, made at Macao, affords so excellent a specimen of the style of these royal 
compositions, for they are supposed to be written by the Emperor’s own hand, that 
I have given it, with others of a similar nature, in the Appendix. 
