Maxwell resumed his communications with the Chinese officials with the utmost good nature, and the Chinese Government, likewise ignoring what had happened, allowed him to do just as he pleased until he took his ship away. But no direct official intercourse was accorded to Captain Maxwell in spite of his bravery.
The several Embassies that were sent with autograph letters from King George III, accompanied by costly presents and much pomp of showy retinue, had even less effect upon the attitude which the Tatsing Dynasty assumed towards foreign commerce, than the servile bribes and presents of the East India Company's Supercargoes or the periodical demonstrations of British pluck by His Majesty's naval officers. Lord Macartney's Embassy (A.D. 1792), sent forth by George III, with strong complaints and sanguine expectations, was treated by the Chinese Government as a deputation of tribute-bearers, like those that periodically came from the Loochoo Islands. Lord Amherst's Embassy (A.D. 1815), vainly expected to result in the establishment of diplomatic intercourse with Peking, was treated politely but strictly as a tribute-bearing commission. When Lord Amherst lingered, hoping to be allowed to remain near the Court, he was quietly told that it was high time for him to petition for the issue of his passport and be off. Henceforth the chroniclers of the Tatsing Dynasty complacently recorded the fact of Great Britain having been formally admitted to a place in the list of the nations tributary to China by voluntary submission.
Nevertheless both the bold appearance of British frigates in Chinese waters and the humble presentation at Court of British Ambassadors had a certain amount of effect in impressing the Chinese people with the conviction that Europeans after all were considerably above the ordinary class of barbarians known to them.
Special instances of the steadily increasing importance of the British navy were not wanting. In the years 1802 and 1808 British marines occupied Macao to protect the Portuguese settlement against a threatened attack by the French. In the
