The Emperor Chia Ch`ing, a worthless and dissolute ruler, never commanded the confidence of his people as his great predecessors had done, nor had he the same confidence in them.  This want of mutual trust was not confined to his Chinese subjects only.  In 1799, Ho-shen, a high Manchu official who had been raised by Ch`ien Lung from an obscure position to be a Minister of State and Grand Secretary, was suspected, probably without a shadow of evidence, of harbouring designs upon the throne.  He was seized and tried, nominally for corruption and undue familiarity, and was condemned to death, being allowed as an act of grace to commit suicide.

In 1803 the Emperor was attacked in the streets of Peking; and ten years later there was a serious outbreak organised by a secret society in Honan, known as the Society of Divine Justice, and alternatively as the White Feather Society, from the badge worn by those members who took part in the actual movement, which happened as follows.  An attack upon the palace during the Emperor’s absence on a visit to the Imperial tombs was arranged by the leaders, who represented a considerable body of malcontents, roused by the wrongs which their countrymen were suffering all over the empire at the hands of their Manchu rulers.  By promises of large rewards and appointments to lucrative offices when the Manchus should be got rid of, the collusion of a number of the eunuchs was secured; and on a given day some four hundred rebels, disguised as villagers carrying baskets of fruit in which arms were concealed, collected about the gates of the palace.  Some say that one of the leaders was betrayed, others that the eunuchs made a mistake in the date; at any rate there was a sudden rush on the part of the conspirators, the guards at the gates were overpowered, every one who was not wearing a white feather was cut down, and the palace seemed to be at the mercy of the rebels.  The latter, however, were met by a desperate resistance from the young princes, who shot down several of them, and thus alarmed the soldiers.  Assistance was promptly at hand, and the rebels were all killed or captured.  Immediate measures were taken to suppress the Society, of which it is said that over twenty thousand members were executed, and as many more sent in exile to Ili.

Not one, however, of the numerous secret societies, which from time to time have flourished in China, can compare for a moment either in numbers or organization with the formidable association known as the Heaven and Earth Society, and also as the Triad Society, or Hung League, which dates from the reign of Yung Cheng, and from first to last has had one definite aim,—­the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty.