coöperate with those of Great Britain in obtaining prompt satisfaction
for an attack made by the Chinese troops on the British at the Peilo,
the due ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, and payment of an
indemnity to the allies for the expenses of their military operations.

The punishment which the Chinese received for their bad faith and
treachery was very complete. Yuen-ming-yuen, the emperor's summer
palace, one of the glories of the empire, was levelled to the ground
as a just retribution for treacherous and criminal acts committed by
the creatures of the emperor at the very moment it was believed that
the negotiations were peacefully terminated. Five days after the
burning of the palace, the treaty was fully ratified between the
emperor's brother and Lord Elgin, and full satisfaction obtained from
the imperial authorities at Pekin for their shameless disregard of
their solemn engagements. The manner in which the British ambassador
discharged the onerous duties of his mission, met with the warm
approval of Her Majesty's government and when he was once more in
England he was offered by the prime minister the governor-generalship
of India.

He accepted this great office with a full sense of the arduous
responsibilities which it entailed upon him, and said good-bye to his
friends with words which showed that he had a foreboding that he might
never see them again--words which proved unhappily to be too true. He
went to the discharge of his duties in India in that spirit of modesty
which was always characteristic of him. "I succeeded," he said, "to a
great man (Lord Canning) and a great war, with a humble task to be
humbly discharged." His task was indeed humble compared with that
which had to be performed by his eminent predecessors, notably by Earl
Canning, who had established important reforms in the land tenure, won