The Sun.
London, England, 1857-03-12 00:00:00

cow's feet.* Father Ripa mentions that of chat ilonti
clpHren the i•epti,,,ed in Pekin alone not !egg
than 3,000 yearly. I Lave wen ponds which are the
habitual receiyical of female infants, whose boles
lie floating ob-ut on their surface.

"It is- by no means unusual to carry persons in it
state of exhaustion a little distance from the cities, .to
give them a pot of rice, and to leave them to perish of
starvation when the little store is exhausted. Life and
death in China, beyond any other region, seem in a state
of perpetui 1 activity. The habits of the people, their
traditions, the teachings of the sages—all give a power-
ful impuiee to their procreative affections. A childless
person is deemed an un!iappy, not to say a degraded,
man. The Chinese moralists set it down as a law that
if a wife give no children to her husband she is bound by
every tie of duty to encourage and to patronise a concu-
bine, threigti whom his name may be preserved, and
provision made that when he leaves the world honours
wid be done to his manes. One of the most popular of
Chinese writers says, There are in the world wives whet
never having borne boys, or nourished girls, even when
the husband has reached the age of 40, prohibit his
bringing home a concubine or entertaining a handmaid
for the purpose of continuing his posterity—they look
upon such a person with jealous hatred and malig-
nant ill will. Alas ! do you know how fleet is time
Stretch as you may your months and your years, •
they fly like arrows ; and when your husband's animal
spirits and vigorous blood shall be exhausted,—then, in-
deed, he can never beget children, and you, his wife, will
have stepped the ancestral sacrifices, and you will have
cut off his generation—then repentance, though you may
exhibit it in a hundred ways, will indeed come too late.--
his mortal body wilt die—his property, which you, hus-
band arid wife, have sought to keep together, wig net
descend to his children, but be fought fur by multitudes
of kindred and relations ; and you will have injured not
one person—not your husband only—but even yourself ;
for who shall take charge of your coffin and your tomb
Who shall bury you or offer sacrifices / Alas your
orphaned spirit shall pass nights in tears. It is sorrow-
ful to think of. There are some wives who do control
their jealousies, and a:low their husbands to take concu-
bines to themselves ; but they do so (ungenerously) as if
they were drinking vinegar, and eating acids—they beat
Betty by way of scolding Belindat—there is no peace in
the inner house. But I beseech you to act as a prudent
and virtuous woman. If you have no children, provide
with openness and honesty a concubine: for your 1114-
band. If she bear him children, to you he will owe that
the arteries and veins of his ancestral line are continued ;
his children will honour you as yonr mother; and will
not this comfort you I Give not way to the malignant
jealousy cf a wicked woman Prepare not a bitterness
which you yourself must swallow.'§
" Generally, however, the wife willingly coincides with
the husband in introducing into the household any num-
ber of concubines whom he is able to maintain, since she
exercises over them an undoubted authority, and the
child of a concubine is hound to pay higher respect to
the first wife than to its own mother. The Chinese illus-
trate all the domestic relations by imagery, and are Wont
to say that, as the husband is the sun, and the wife the
moon, so the concubines are the planets and the stare of
the domestic firmament.

“ And it has been often truly observed that, though
the Chinese may be called sensualists, there is no deifi-
cation of the grosser sensualities such as is found in the
classical pantheons, and in many of the orientcl farms of
faith. Tales of the amours of their gods and heroes
seldom figure in their historical books or traditional 13'
gends. The dresses and external habits of the women
in China are invariably modest ; and on the whole the
social arrangements must be considered friendly to an
augmentation of the human race. The.domestin age'
tions are strong. Parents are generally fond and proud
of their children, and children obedient to their parents.
Order is, indeed, the first law of Confucius— authority,
and submission the apex and basis of the social pyramid..
"The sentiment of dishonour attached to the extinct on
of a race by the want of descendants through whom the •
whole 1 ne of reverential services (which some have called
religious worship) rendered to ancestors is to be perl3l” •
tual is by no means confined to the privileged classes in
China. One of our female servants—a nominal Chris-
tian—expressed her earnest desire that her husband,
should have another wife in her absence, and seemed
quite surprised that any one should suppose such an
arrangement to be in any respect improper. •
"The marriage of children is one of the great coll'
cerns of families. Scarcely is a child born in the higher
ranks of life ere the question of its future espousal be•
comes a frequent topic of discussion. There is a large
body of professional matchmakers, whose business it i 0
to put all the preliminary arrangements in train, to settle
questions of dowry, to accommodate differences, to
report on the pros and cons of projected alliances.
There being no hereditary honours in Chinas--
except those which reckon upwards from the die-
tinguiahed son to the father, the grandfather, and the
whole line of ancestry, which may be ennobled by the
literary or martial genius of a descendant—the distinns
tions of caste are unknown, and a successful student even
of the lowest origin would be deemed a fit match for the
most opulent and distinguishable female in the cominus
city. The severe laws which prohibit marriages within
certain degrees of affinity (they do not, however, interdia
it with a decea•ed wife's sister) tend to make marriages
more prolific, and to produce a healthier race of children
So strong is the • uection to the marriage of blood relss
anise that a max and woman of the same Sing or family
name cannot lawfully wed.
" Soldiers and sa9.ors are in no respect prevented from
matrying. I expect there is, from the number of male
emigrants—from the greater loss of men by the various
accidents of life, and their abstraction in many circunl•
stances from intercourse with women—a great die
proportion between the sexes, tending naturally enough
to the lower appreciation of womrn ; but correct stags:
tics are wanting in this, as indeed in every other part ot,
the field of inquiry.
" The proportion of unmarried to married people 111
(as would be deduced from the foregoing observations)
exceedingly small. To promote marriages seems every:
body's affair. Matches and betrothings naturally enough
occupy the attention of the young, but not less that of
the middle-aged and the old. A marriage is the gross
event in the life of man or woman, and in China is 54.3.
sociated with more of preliminary negotiations, cerezno- •
nials at different steps of the negotiations, written cor•
respondence, visitings, protocols, and conventions, than
in any other part of the world."

* Doubt has been sometimes expressed as to the practice
of infanticide in China on any great scale ; but abundance °f
evidence of the extent of the usage may be found in Chines°
books. The following is a translation of a decree of the
Emperor Kanghi, entitled,—
" Edict prohibiting the drowning of Children..—When °'
mother mercilessly plunges beneath the water the tender off-
spring to which she has given birth, can it be said that .
owes its life to her who thus takes away what it has jet
begun to enjoy. The poverty of the parents is the
cause of this wrongdoing ; they have difficulty in earn'
ing subsistence for themselves, still less can they pay unrBe" *
and uncle, take all the necessary expenses for their children;
Thus driven to despair, and unwilling to cause the death of
two persons to preserve the life of one, it comes to pass that
a mother to save her husband's life consents to destroy her
i
children. Their natural tenderness suffers ; but they at
length determine to take this part, thinking themselves ow,.
liberty to dispose of the life of their children, in order to pro-
long their own. If they exposed these children in some nn'
frequented spot their cries would move the hearts of the PI"
rents. What, then, do they ? They cast the unfortunate
babe into the current of a riser that they may at once lose
sight of it and in au instant deprive it of life, You have given
me the name of father of the people. Though I cannot feel
for these infants the tenderness of the parents to whom they
owe their being, I cannot refrain from declaring to you with
the most painful feelings, that I absolutely forbid such homi-
cides. The tiger, says one of our books, though it be a tiger,
does not rend its own young; towards them it has a feeling
breast, and continually cares for them. Poor as you 1:01
be, is it possible tht?astolfytpoiuisetsyeh.,os,lbledLwebtyeteeroaemsrseEel the murderers of
than
hr
tohwenvcehryildbreeasn
i
pp. 101-2.
± Chang for Lee, i.e.—they punish thleieflasc
vants to be revenged on the concubine.
.1: Genesis xxx , 1-13.
From the Perfect Collection of Household Gems.
more
, buvi
12no .en:fixt x

IRELAND.

DUBLIN, WEDNESDAY MORNING.
CONFIDENCE IN LORD PALMERSTON.

At two o'clock on Monday a special meeting of the
committee of merchants of the city of Cork was held at
their rooms in the Commercial-buildings, under the pre-
siiency of Mr. Thomas S. Reeves, for the purpose Of
addressing LArd Palmerston on the decision come to bY
the House of Commons on Mr. Cobden's motion. After
some conversation the following address. was drawn VP
and unanimously agreed to :
. "TO THE BIGHT HON. LORD VISCOUNT PALMERSTON.
"Cork, March 9.
"My LOrd,—The committee of merchants of the city g
Cork beg leave to address your lordship on the extraordi*
nary event which has just taken place in the adrninistra•
tion of the country, and to assure your lordship of our sin-
cere regret that anything should occur to endanger the lose '
of your valuable services to the Government; because the
nation is indebted to you -for the decision and ability with
which you brought, under Providence, a mighty and fear'
ful war to a successful issue; because we believe the late
decision of the House of Commons on Mr. Cobden's motion
was based on combination, factious and unpatriotic ; and
because we 'have the 'utmost reliance on the. honour and
high-mindedness of your lordship, which we believe to be
superior to personal considerations,and only concerned for
THE MURDER 0 ‘
the honour and welfare of the united kingdom.
" Signed, on behalf of the Committee of Merchants:
"TF
HOS. S.
SARAHR Ev EK SE, Chairman.
The memory of this almost forgotten butchery wee re'
vived at the close of the Westmeath Assizes yesterday,
when application was made to Chief Justice Morates
on behalf of Mr. George Strevens to discharge him from
his recognisance,
into which he entered last assizes, te,
attend at the present assizes to answer the charge cf
having been concerned in the murder of Mrs. Sarah
Lily on the 6th of April, 1856. No bill had bees
found, and under the Habeas Corpus Act Mr. Stre.
rens vas entitled to his discharge after two assizes,
al lass good reason were shown upon affidavit. The
motion was oosed on the ground that the Ifabeaa
Corpus Act didp not apply to a case of bail ; and the
ChiefJu tine said he was a opinion that he ought nct
to interfere in this case. He would therefore leave
Mr. S revens to apply to the Court of Queen's Bend',
if he thought fit so to do. He abstained advisedly.
from stating his reason, but, knowing the nature of
the case and the difficulty on the part of the CroV:
.of obtaining information, he was of opinion that h.
should not interfere. It might be different if the party
were in custody, but the gentleman was not is cue
todyt and he could only say that he would not ado:
nim to surrender and go to prison, as possibly,' .if _
did, he might fell it to be hie duty to keep ban
there