an audience of his majesty to pay their respects and present to him their credentials.
Thus was raised again the question of audience, which had been so much discussed during the past two centuries and a half, whenever the representatives of the Western nations had sought to appear in the presence of the ruler of the Middle Kingdom. The Tsung-li Yamen assumed the same position as that maintained by the court when the American minister, Mr. Ward, came to Peking in 1859,—that it would be necessary for the foreign ministers to kneel at the audience. The discussion on this point continued through four weary months, with frequent conferences and many exchanges of notes and memoranda. The foreign governments were firm in sustaining their representatives in the position that they would do nothing at the audience which would imply inferiority on the part of their countries, and that, as prostration or kneeling was an act of abasement, they could not permit their ministers to perform it. The Secretary of State in his instructions to Mr. Low, the American minister, stated that while questions of ceremony were not usually seriously considered in the United States, in the case of China it involved the official equality of nations and became a question, not of form merely, but of substance, requiring grave consideration. He was directed "to proceed carefully and with due regard for the inveterate prejudices and the grotesque conceit of the Chinese courtiers," but if he should fail to bring about a correct decision of the question, he was authorized to go to the extreme of suspending official intercourse.
