in Commodore Perry's negotiations in Japan, and became secretary of legation upon the promotion of Dr. Parker; and also by Dr. W. A. P. Martin, a Presbyterian missionary, who was familiar with the Mandarin dialect, and who filled an important rôle in later Chinese affairs. Dr. Martin's early acquaintance with the dialect and his frank manners soon won the confidence of the Chinese. In one of the treaty interviews he presented to one of the commissioners an almanac in Chinese compiled by the missionaries, containing a variety of matter. At the next conference the commissioner pointed in the publication to the tenth commandment forbidding to covet, and begged him to circulate such tracts freely among the English, to lead them to observe it in their intercourse with the Chinese.
When the negotiations were about to be entered upon, there appeared upon the scene Kiying, the Chinese plenipotentiary in the negotiation of the British treaty of 1842, that with Mr. Cushing and with the French of 1844, and who was for several years the best known statesman of the empire. He had fallen into disgrace for agreeing to these treaties and for his supposed friendliness to foreigners. The decree of the emperor by which he was degraded in 1850 is a curious exhibition of the spirit of the government: "As for Kiying, his unpatriotic and pusillanimous conduct is to us a matter of unmixed astonishment. When he was at Canton he seemed only anxious to make our people serve the interests of foreigners. Recently, during a private audience, he spoke to us of the English, how
