But It May At Least Be Said That He Did Nothing To Make The Ultimate Solution Of The Question More Difficult, And His Flattering Reception Of Lord Macartney's Embassy Was An Important And Encouraging A Precedent For English Diplomacy With China.

The events of internal interest in the history of the country during the last twenty years of this reign call for some, brief notice, although they relate to comparatively few matters that can be disentangled from the court chronicles and official gazettes of the period.

The great floods of the Hoangho and the destruction caused thereby had been a national calamity from the earliest period. Keen Lung, filled with the desire to crown his reign by overcoming it, intrusted the task of dealing with this difficulty to Count Akoui, whose laurels over the Miaotze had raised him to the highest position in public popularity and his sovereign's confidence. Keen Lung issued his personal instructions on the subject in unequivocal language. He said in his edict, "My intention is that this work should be unceasingly carried on, in order to secure for the people a solid advantage both for the present and in the time to come. Share my views, and in order to accomplish them, forget nothing in the carrying out of your project, which I regard as my own, since I entirely approve of it, and the idea which originated it was mine. For the rest, it is at my own charge, and not at the cost of the province, that I wish all this to be done.

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