CHINA.

The conterminous empires of Russia and China occupy between them about one fifth part of the habitable globe, in pretty nearly equal portions; but the population of the latter is about four times greater than that of the former, even after including its recent annexation of Poland. We can easily trace the boundaries and mark the extreme limits of these two great empires, by parallels of latitude and meridional lines of longitude; but when we come to reduce them to square miles, or speak of their contents in acres, the mind is bewildered by the magnitude of the numbers required to express them, and forms but an indistinct idea of their superficial extent. For this reason we shall content ourselves by merely tracing the boundary lines.

The frontier of China on the side of Russia, including every part of Tartary under its immediate protection, and from which it derives a tribute, is as follows: Commencing at the north-eastern extremity, where the Uda falls into the sea of Otehotsk, in the 55th parallel of northern latitude, it stretches west and west-south-west along the limits of the Tungousi Tartars, the Duourian Mountains, and along the Kerlon, which divides it from the Russian province of Nertchinsk, till it meets the 50th parallel. It then continues along that parallel from 117° to 70° of east longitude, separated from Tobolsk and Irehutsk by the Sawansk, the Altaï, and the Bercha Mountains. On this line, and about the 106th meridian, on the river Selinga, are situated the two frontier trading towns of Kiackta and Mai-mai-tchin, the only two points in the long conterminous line of boundary where Russians and Chinese have any communication. From hence, descending south along the Kirghis Tartars, Western Toorkistaun, and Little Thibet, it is'terminated in this direction by the Hindu Coosh; and, turning to the south-east along the Himalaya Mountains, Bootan, Assam, the Burman empire, and Tunquin, it again skirts the sea in the parallel of 21°, as far to the eastward as 123°, or, including Corea, to 130°, and near the Uda, from whence we set out, to 143° of cast longitude. Yet in all this extent of frontier, which cannot be less than 10,000 geographical miles, the Chinese territory has hitherto preserved itself so invulnerable, and even inaccessible to foreigners, that not a Russian, a Turcoman, an Afghaun, a Hindu, Burman, or Tunquinese, by land, nor a European nor an American, among the numbers that annually proceed to Canton for the purposes of trade, have at any time been able to transgress any part of this most extensive boundary, without the knowledge and permission of its vigilant and jealous government; aided, however, by a moral barrier, of itself perhaps insuperable, namely, the impossibility of communication, owing to the total ignorance which prevails, from the highest to the lowest of the people, of every language but their own, and the unaccountable ignorance of other nations οi'dιeir language. A singular instance may here be mentioned of the inviolability of the frontier, notwithstanding the perseverance of the individual who attempted it, owing to tb.e unwearied vigilance of the government. Mr Manning, an English gentleman of property and education, went to Canton many years ago, with the view of proceeding into the interior of China, and of domesticating himself for some time among the people. On his arrival there, he adopted the Chinese dress, suffered his beard to grow, and sedulously applied himself to the study of the language, both written and spoken. When the time approached that his appearance, manners, and language were considered to be sufficiently Chinese to escape detection, it was communicated to him, by a sort of demi-official message, that his intentions were known, and that it would be in vain for him to make the attempt, as measures had been taken to make it impossible for him to enter the Chinese territories beyond the limits of the English factory. He alleged that his views were innocent, that he was simply an individual, urged solely by curiosity and a desire to mix among the people, and to witness the happy condition of this far-famed nation, and wholly unconnected with any political, commercial, or religious views; and he particularly urged that he was no missionary of any kind, as those of that character had of late given uneasiness to the government. But he urged his suit in vain. He next tried Cochin-China, but with no better success,—the same kind of political jealousy prevailing in that country as in China. Determined, however, not to be thwarted in his object, he proceeded to Calcutta, travelled to the northern frontier of Bengal, found means to penetrate through Bootan to Lassa in Thibet, and was on the point of realizing his long deferred hope by a journey along the Tartar frontier to the capital of China, when he was detected by the Chinese authorities, and ordered immediately to quit the country—so utterly impossible is it to deceive this watchful government. With regard to their own people, the laws are strict and remarkably severe against any one who shall secretly or fraudulently pass the barrier; and if any individual communicate with foreign nations beyond the boundaries, the penalty is death by strangulation.

This interdiction of intercourse with a people who have nothing in common with the rest of the world, will account for the total ignorance which so long prevailed, and the little knowledge we yet possess, respecting this singular and original people; for that they are an original and unmixed race we conceive no reasonable doubt can be entertained, though a different hypothesis has been held by learned and ingenious men. By De Guignes and Fréret, arguing from the communications of the Jesuits, they were supposed to be derived from a colony of Egyptians; by the earlier Jesuits they were set down as a tribe of the Jews; and by Sir William Jones as the descendants of the Cshantrya or Military Caste of Hindus, called Chinas, “who,” say the Pundits, “abandoned the ordinances of the Veda, and lived in a state of degradation.” With submission to such high authorities, we should as soon think of deriving the trunk of a tree from its branches, as the people of China from any of these. That they are not Egyptians, the ingenious Pauw has most clearly and satisfactorily demonstrated, by proving that, in no one iota, [7:6:549]does there, or ever did there, exist one single resemblance. As little similarity is there between them and the Hindus: no two people, indeed, could possibly differ more than they do in their physical and moral character, in their language, and in their political and religious institutions. The colour of the Hindu is ebon black or a deep bronze, that of a Chinese a sickly white, or pale yellow, like that of a faded leaf, or the root of rhubarb; the features of a Hindu are regular and placid, those of a Chinese wild, irregular, constant only in the oblique and elongated eye, and the broad root of the nose; the Hindus are slaves and martyrs to religious ordinances, the Chinese have superstitions enough, but, strictly speaking, no religious prejudices; the Hindus are divided into castes, the Chinese know of no such division; the historical records of China go far beyond the time that these supposed Chinas of Sir William Jones peopled the country, the Hindus have not a page of history; the language of Hindustan is alphabetic, that of China a transition from the hieroglyphic to the symbolic, and there is not the slightest analogy in the colloquial languages of the two countries. But Sir William Jones had a theory to support, which made him overlook many inconsistencies; and he had no knowledge of the Chinese language. The name of Chinas seems to have caught him; a name, however, utterly unknown to the Chinese themselves. The madman who, in the third century before Christ, is accused of burning all their books, but who conquered the revolted provinces, and re-united them to the empire, endeavoured to give to China the name of his own dynasty, Tsin, which might have been known to the Hindus, and through them to the Arabs, from whom Europeans had their Sina and China; but this dynasty, if we take Sir William Jones’s dates, reigned a full thousand years subsequently to the supposed emigration of the Chinas. The most ancient name for China, which is still in use, is Tien-sha, under heaven, or inferior only to heaven; but the most common appellation is Τehung-quo, the middle kingdom: and here it may be proper to observe, that this name is not given, as the French missionaries would lead us to suppose, from a notion among this people that China is placed on the middle of the earth’s square surface, but from the circumstance of the emperor Tching-whang having fixed his court at Loyang, in the province of Ho-nan, when he gave to this capital the name of Cliung-quο, the middle of the kingdom, which, in fact, is nearly the truth; and this name was afterwards transferred to the whole empire.

Dr Marshman has set the question, as to any similarity between the Sanscrit and Chinese languages, completely at rest. The priests of Buddh, who were permitted to enter China in the first century of the Christian era, endeavoured, with their religion, to introduce the Sanscrit alphabet, or series of sounds represented by the Devanagari character; and this series being placed at the head of Canghe’s Dictionary^ induced Dr Marshman to suppose that there might be some connection between the Chinese and the Sanscrit languages. Had he, however, read the preface to that dictionary, he would have seen that the compilers announce it as a system brought from the West, which the learned of China could never be prevailed on to adopt. This Hindu series of alphabetic sounds did not, however, mislead him; he was fully aware that a pure, unchangeable, monosyllabic language could not arise out of a polysyllabic one; that a language which admitted of no change from its original monosyllabic root, but retained it in its primitive form, whether employed as a noun, a verb, or a participle, could not have been derived from another language whose dhatoos or roots, by a complicated mechanism, assumed a hundred different shapes; nay, whose inflections, in some instances, are so numerous, as to produce more than a thousand modifications of an idea from one radical word. In addition to all this, when he reflected that there were in the Sanscrit alphabet four or five sounds which the organs of a Chinese could not by any possibility enumerate, he found it utterly incompatible to associate the two languages together, and was confirmed in his idea by the test of facts. He took the Ramayuna, which is supposed to be the most ancient poetry in the Sanscrit language, and the Shee-hing of the Chinese. In ten pages of the former, containing four hundred and fifty-nine words, he found only thirteen monosyllables, and of these thirteen, seven do not occur in the Slice, nor are any two of them used to express the same idea in both languages. He next took four pages of the Mahabharu, in the Bengalee dialect, containing two hundred and sixty-five words, in which he found only seven monosyllables, and of these, three only were Chinese.

Proceeding in the same manner, he proves, what was scarcely necessary, that there exists not the most distant resemblance between the Chinese and the Hebrew languages. In examining the speech of Judah to Joseph, in the 44th chapter of Genesis, he finds it to contain two hundred and six words, in which there occur sixteen monosyllables; but of these, seven only are Chinese words. In Abraham’s intercession for Sodom, out of two hundred and thirty words, ten only are monosyllables, and of these, four are Chinese. Again, in the maledictory prophecy of Noah, relative to his grandson Canaan, in twenty-six words there is but one monosyllable. ∙ It would be most absurd, therefore, to conclude that the Chinese derived their language from the Hebrew, when one word only occurs out of twenty-nine, as in the first example, one out of fifty, as in the second, or one in twenty-six, as in the third; and he thinks it more rational to infer, that as it is neither derived from the Sanscrit nor the Hebrew, it is an original language invented by themselves. Neither is there any resemblance to be found in the manners, customs, physical character, or religious creeds, of the two people. There arc, in fact, a colony of Jews in China, whose entrance can be traced beyond the Christian era; who use the Hebrew language; who abstain from swine’s flesh, the great article of Chinese food; use circumcision, and celebrate the passover, neither of which the Chinese know anything about; and it may, therefore, fairly be concluded that they are neither Jews, Hindus, nor Egyptians, but an original people, who have kept themselves more unmixed with other nations than any people existing on the face of the earth. (Barrow’s Travels in China ; Marshman’s Clavis Sinica.')

Pauw, and some other writers, are of opinion that they proceeded originally from the heights of Tartary. It is, in fact, obvious enough that the Tartars and Chinese are one and the same race; and the only question seems to be, whether the latter, guided by the mountain-streams, descended from the bleak and barren elevations of Tartary, which, bulging out of the general surface of the earth, have been compared with the boss of a shield, to the fertile plains and temperate climate of China; or, whether the former arc swarms sent off by an over-abundant population, and driven into the mountains. The former supposition will be regarded, perhaps, as the more probable of the two. In all the institutions which the change from a pastoral to an agricultural state would necessarily require, the ancient manners and customs of the Hyperborean Scythians, as described by Herodotus, are still discernible among the Chinese. A Chinese city is nothing more than a Tartar camp, surrounded by mounds of earth, to preserve themselves and cattle from the depredations of neighbouring tribes, and the nocturnal attacks of wolves and other wild beasts; and a Chinese habitation, the Tartar tent, with its sweeping roof supported by poles, excepting [7:6:550]that the Chinese have cased their walls with brick, and tiled the roofs of their houses. When the famous barbarian Gengis-khan made an irruption into the fertile plains of China, and took possession of a Chinese city, his soldiers immediately set about pulling down the four walls of the houses, leaving the overhanging roofs supported on the wooden columns, by which they were converted into excellent tents for themselves and horses. Yet such is the facility with which Chinese and Tartars amalgamate, that although this celebrated barbarian could neither read nor write any language, he listened to the advice of the conquered, became sensible of the change of situation in which he found himself, did every thing he could to repair the errors he had committed, and both he and his successors left good names behind them in the annals of the country. In like manner, the present Mantchoo Tartars, who lived in tents, and subsisted on their cattle and by hunting, immediately accommodated themselves to the manners, the customs, and the institutions of China, preserving nothing of their own, not even their religion, and scarcely a vestige of ancient superstitions, that does not coincide with those of the Chinese—one of the most singular of which is, their agreement in the birth of man and of the serpent-woman, and the universal use and estimation of the ancient Scythian emblem of the dragon. Next to the Chinese, the Turks seem to have preserved most of the character and customs of the ancient Scythians from whom they sprung; and the Turks are Tartars. Some German author has pointed out a similarity between the Turks and Chinese in seventeen different customs; he might have extended the parallel to more than twice that number. (Recherches sur les Chinois, par Μ. de Pauw.)

It has long been objected in Europe against the authenticity of the early part of Chinese history, that it abounds with absurd fictions and irreconcilable contradictions, and that it sets up a chronology and cosmogony at variance with the sacred writings, and the generally received opinions of mankind. This, however, is not the fact with regard to Chinese history in its pure and original state, divested of the reveries of Fo or Buddh, which the priests of this sect imported with their religion, and found means to propagate among the vulgar. The Hindu periods of the creation and destruction of the universe,— the miraculous conceptions, and all the absurd stories of gods, demi-gods, and heroes, are scouted by the learned of China. The period they assign for the commencement of their civilization is perfectly consistent with the time when, according to holy writ, the great catastrophe befel the earth; and though they are unable to establish the truth of the early part of it by any concurring contemporaneous histories of other countries, yet neither can any extraneous authority be produced to contradict theirs; the probability, therefore, of the truth or falsehood must rest on the internal evidence of their own history, and the manner in which that history has been compiled, preserved, and handed down to posterity.

We may take it for granted, that when the Emperor Kaung-hee summoned to Pekin the most learned men of the empire, for the purpose of translating into the Mantchoo language an abridged history of China, from the earliest times, those annals only were consulted which were considered as most authentic, namely, those which are compiled and published by the college of Han-liiu Père Mailla was one of those missionaries who viewed the Chinese less through the eye of prejudice than most of the Jesuits. He was employed by the emperor in making a survey of the empire, which cost him and his colleagues the labour of ten years; he passed forty-five years of his life in the country, and generally about the court, during which time he made himself perfectly acquainted with the Mantchoo and the Chinese languages. When, therefore, Kaung-hee undertook the laudable design of giving to his Mantchoo subjects an authenticated history of China in their own language, Père Mailla conceived the idea of proceeding pari passu with a translation of the same work into French; and having lived to complete this Herculean labour, it was published at Paris, after many difficulties and delays, by the Abbé Grozier, in fourteen large quarto volumes, under the title of Histoire Générale de la Chine.

The history of China commences, in fact, at a period not much more than 3000 years before the birth of Christ, by describing the little horde from which the Chinese had their origin, to be in as barbarous and savage a state as can well be imagined; roving among the forests of Shen-see, just at the foot of the Tartar Mountains, without houses, without any clothing but the skins of animals, without fire to dress their victuals, and subsisting on the spoils of the chase, on roots and insects. Their chief, of the name of Yoo-tsou-she, induced them to settle on this spot, and they made themselves huts of the boughs of trees. Under the next chief, Swee-gin-shee, the grand discovery of fire was effected by the accidental friction of two pieces of dry wood. He taught the people to look up to Tien, the great creating, preserving, and destroying power; and he invented a method of registering time and events, by making certain knots on thongs or cords twisted out of the bark of trees. Next to him followed ∕ ’ b- hee, who separated the people into classes or tribes, giving to each a particular name; discovered iron; appointed certain days to show their gratitude to heaven, by offering the first fruits of the earth; and invented the Ye-king or Koua, which superseded the knotted cords. Fo-hee reigned 115 years, and his tomb is shown at Tchin-choo, in the province of Shen-see, at this day. His successor, Chin-nong, invented the plough; and from that moment the civilization of China proceeds by rapid but progressive steps.

As the early history of every ancient people is more or less vitiated by fable, we ought not to be more fastidious or less indulgent towards the marvellous in that of China, than we are towards Egyptian, Greek, or Roman history. The main facts may be true, though the details are incorrect; and though the accidental discovery of fire may not have happened under Swee-gin-shee, yet it probably was first communicated by the friction of two sticks, which at this day is a common method among almost all savages of producing fire. Nor is it perhaps strictly correct that Fo-hee made the accidental discovery of iron, by having burnt a quantity of wood on a brown earth, anymore than that the Phoenicians discovered the mode of making glass by burning green wood on sand; yet there is nothing improbable, either in the one or the other, that these two processes first led to the discovery of both. And if it be objected against the history, that the rcign of a hundred and fifteen years exceeds the usual period of human existence, it should be recollected, at the same time, that such an instance is as nothing, when compared with those contemporaneous ones recorded in biblical history. Thus, also, considerable allowances are to be deducted from the scientific discoveries of Chin-nong in botany, when we read of his having in one day discovered no less than seventy different species of plants that were of a poisonous nature, and seventy others that were antidotes against their baneful effects.

The next sovereign, Hoang-tee, was an usurper; but during his reign the Chinese are stated to have made a very rapid progress in the arts and conveniences of civilized life; and to his lady, See-ling-shee, is ascribed the [7:6:551]honour of having first observed the silk produced by the worms, of unravelling their coccoons, and working the fine filaments into a web of cloth. The tomb of Hoang-tee is also kept up to this day in the province of Shen-see.

From these few recorded facts, out of a multitude stated by Chinese historians, we think it may be inferred that, at a very distant period, and at the earliest dawn of civilization, a small horde of Tartars, descending from their elevated regions, seated, them selves on the plains of Shen-see, at the foot of the mountains; and, under the guidance of a succession of intelligent chiefs, changed the pastoral and venatorial life for one more stationary, and at length became cultivators of the soil, and spread themselves over the fine fertile region now known by the name of China. ( Hist. Gen. de la Chine, par P. Mailla.)

Some doubts have been entertained with regard to the authenticity of that nart of Chinese history which relates to the reign of the first three sovereigns, Fo-hee, Chin-nong, and Hoang-tee, which is supposed to have been contained in a book called San-fen ; and of the five following reigns, ending with the joint government of Yαo and Chun, as detailed in another work named the Ou-tieìi. Of the first of these works the Chinese avow that nothing is known; and all that remained of the second was an imperfect fragment preserved by being inserted at the head of one of their most ancient and valued books, called the Shoo-king, of which we have a translation, or rather a bad paraphrase, by Père Gaubil. This fragment relates chiefly to the reign of Yao and Chun. The rest of the Shoo-hing contains an abridged history of the empire, from the joint reign of these two sovereigns down to the time of Confucius, being a compilation by this celebrated‘sage. The authenticity of the Shoo-hing must, however, depend on two circumstances; first, whether it is the same that was composed by Confucius; and, secondly, whether the materials which this sage possessed were authentic. If he really had copies of the San-fen and Ou-tien, the Shoo-hing may fairly be classed with the history of Herodotus, with whom Confucius was contemporary,—the Chinese historian having the additional advantage of previous written records. But, admitting this to have been the case, there is still an awkward and suspicious chasm in the history of China, the cause of which draws largely on our faith. The Emperor Che-whang-tee, of the dynasty of Tsin, after reducing, as we before observed, the refractory provinces, conceived the mad scheme of destroying all the writings of the empire, under the idea of commencing a new set of annals with his own reign, in order that posterity might consider him as the founder of the empire. Some sixty years after this barbarous decree had been carried into execution, his successor, desirous, as far as might be possible, to repair the injury, held out great rewards to those who could produce any part of the annals of the empire, more especially the hundred chapters of the Shoo-hing. After some time, a copy of the Shoo∙king was procured in this manner. All ancient writings, and those of Confucius in particular, were comprised in short sentences, forming a kind of poetry, not unlike the Proverbs of Solomon; and they were in the memory of most persons then, as they are now, who had any pretensions to literature; but sixty years having been suffered to elapse before any encouragement was held forth for the revival of letters, most of those who had known the Shoo-hing were either dead, or so old as to have lost the recollection of it. At length, however, a man named Foo-seng, of the age of ninety and upwards, was discovered, who, in earlier life, could repeat the whole of the Shoo-kirig by heart. To this man the historiographers of the empire were sent; but he was unable to write, and his articulation was so imperfect, that the parts of it which he recollected could only be obtained through the medium of his daughter, who, having received the words from her father, repeated them to the historians. In this way they proceeded until twenty-nine of the books or sections of the Shoo-hing had been committed to writing, which Foo-seng had comprehended in twenty-five; but here they were compelled to stop, the infirmities of Foo-seng not allowing him to proceed. A document thus obtained did not pass for genuine among the learned; yet all were eager to procure copies of it, in order to compare such passages as each might recollect to have heard their fathers repeat. The early annals of China, however, do not rest solely on this record. Half a century after this, a prince of Loo, in pulling down an old building (some say the house in which Confucius lived), to erect on its site a temple in honour of that philosopher, discovered in one of the walls an imperfect copy of the Shoo-hing, with two other works of Confucius. They were much devoured by the worms, and written in a character which had gone out of use. The learned men were assembled to collate this newly discovered copy with that taken from Foo-seng’s recollection, and it is said that they did not materially differ, except in the division into chapters. They therefore proceeded in deciphering the remaining part of the characters, and, after much time and labour, obtained twenty-nine complete articles, in addition to the twenty-nine recollected by Foo-seng, making the fifty-eight chapters of which the Shoo-king at the present day is composed.

The story is told by Chinese writers with some variations; but it is a common saying, that “both the ancient and modern Shoo-hing were taken from the wall of a house.” According to some, the old man Foo-seng hid a copy of the book within the wall of his house, and, to avoid the rigour of the persecution that was carried on against men of letters, put out his own eyes and affected idiotism. The whole story, however, is not very consistent, and it has been conjectured that it was invented as a salvo to the mortified vanity of the Chinese, who were unable to make out a connected series of annals from a high antiquity; and that, in fact, Confucius was the first regular historian of the empire, and probably the person who first led them on rapidly to a state of civilization. One thing at least is perfectly well ascertained; no writings of any description prior to those ascribed to Confucius exist in China. Where the Shoo-hing terminated, Confucius commenced his own annals, called the Tehun-iou, which carried down the history of the empire to his own time; and of this work a copy had been secreted by one of the historiographers. Many other manuscripts were from time to time brought in, from which were selected all that belonged to the history of the empire, by a commission, of which Tse-ma-tsin was placed at the head; after his death his son Tse∙ma-tsien completed this great work, which is still extant, about a century before the Christian era, and its author is considered and known by the name of the Ke-storer of History. From that period to the present time there seems to be no reason to doubt the authenticity of Chinese history, or to accuse it of undue partiality. The history of a dynasty is not made public from authority, until that dynasty has ceased to reign; and it does not appear that any injustice is done or attempted by the succeeding dynasty. Some of the atrocities of Gengis-khan are related on his first incursion into China, but ample justice is done to him and to his successors; and the present Tartar dynasty, in publishing the annals of that of ATing, whom they displaced, does not appear to have done it any violent injustice. This event occurred under the eye of several European missionaries then resident in the capital; and, by their concurring testimonies, the affairs of the empire were left, as the Chinese state, to priests, [7:6:552]and eunuchs, and jugglers; and it is favourable to the character of the college of Han-lin, that, for the sake of accuracy, the history of the dynasty of Ming was retarded for some time, by the Chinese members refusing to allow the Tartar race, then on the throne, the title of imperial, until the last remaining prince of the family of Ming should be extinct; but the Tartars insisted on dating the commencement of their own dynasty from the day they were in possession of Pekin, to which at length the Chinese members were reluctantly compelled to assent. In the instance of Gengis-khan they were most successful. The name of this marauder does not appear in the list of Chinese emperors, nor those of the two next in succession, Ogdai-khan and Menko-khan, though their exploits are amply detailed in Chinese history. The Mongoo dynasty commences only with Kublai-khan, who was not declared emperor till the death of the last remaining branch of the family of Song. Their account of these Tartars is probably very correct. They had neither treasure to pay their troops, nor magazines of provisions for their subsistence. They lived by the chase and by plunder, driving before them large herds of cattle, whose flesh served them for food when other supplies failed, and their skins for clothing. They put to death men, women, and children, without compunction, plundering the towns and villages through which they passed, and carrying off the young women; and when the Chinese took up a strong position in the passes of the mountains, it was the practice of Gengis-khan to seize all the old men, women, and children of the neighbouring country, and drive them forward at the head of his army, and thus, approaching the Chinese under cover of their own friends and relations, succeed in coming upon them without their being able to strike a single blow; and it is added, that, had it not been for the remonstrances of a Chinese who had united his fortunes to those of the invaders, Gengis-khan had determined to put to death all the agriculturists, for ploughing up the ground, and destroying the grass on which his numerous cavalry was to be subsisted.

As their history relates solely to the internal events and transactions of the empire, and as their policy has been to exclude all communication with foreign nations, we have no means of verifying the facts that arc related; but it is in favour of their accuracy to find a fact recorded in the progress of a revolution brought about by a change of dynasty, which is also related by an European traveller, who was himself a party in the transaction, and who is worthy of implicit credit in all that he states to have fallen under his own knowledge and observation. Marco Polo states, that Sian-foo was taken by the Mongoos after a siege of three years, chiefly by means of machines made by his father and uncle, which hurled stones of three hundred pounds in weight; and it is recorded in the history of China, that the city of Siang-yang held out against the troops of Kublai-khan for four years, but was at length reduced by means of certain machines for hurling stones of an extraordinary weight, constructed by one Alihaya, who had travelled to China from the western countries.

Another instance of the fidelity of the Chinese historians is affirmed by the faithful traveller Marco Polo. It is recorded that Kublai-khan-adopted the Chinese manners and customs, and gave encouragement to the artsand sciences, commerce and manufactures; that he opened the ports of China to all foreigners; that he sent embassies and expeditions to almost every part of the world, and received tribute from the sovereigns of Pung-kia-la (BengaD, Soo-ma-ta-la (Sumatra), and Mal-la-kia (Malacca); subdued Corea, but failed in his expedition against Japan, or, as they call it, Ge-pun-quo, the kingdom of the rising sun; all of which will be found related in Marco Polo, whose accuracy in relating what was told him appears in another Chinese book called Fo-quo-hee, a history of the kingdom of Fo, giving an account of the temples of India, visited by a Ho-chang or priest in the fourth century, in which, among other things, is noticed the yells and musical strains made by invisible spirits in the great desert of Sha-moo, to frighten and bewilder the traveller; a fable repeated by Marco Polo, in speaking of the same desert, nine hundred years afterwards. (Hist. Gen.·, Morrison’s Dictionary ; Marco Polo.)

But whether the ancient history of China be true on false—whether Yao or Chun were real or fictitious perso-ι nages, and Confucius the real author of the religious, moral, and political maxims ascribed to these sovereigns, the Chinese at least entertain no doubts on the subject; and on these maxims are all their institutions founded, as we find them existing at the present day. In all these institutions may be discovered the traces of a primeval state of society. The leading features of the government still wear the stamp of the first rude attempts to restrain savage man within the pale.of social life; paternal solicitude and protection on the part of the chief, obedience and service on that of the people. The same principles which their history states to have regulated the pastoral tribes of Fo-hee on the plains of Shen-see, four thousand years ago, actuate the measures of the Chinese government of the present day. A few modifications of the ancient patriarchal system have served to convert tribes of hunters and shepherds into a nation of agriculturists, and to keep them so; for of all governments which the history of the world has made known, none has had that permanency and stability which China has enjoyed. Like other governments, the machine may occasionally have been enlarged; a few wheels may have been added, its movements sometimes disturbed, its operations impeded, and a spring or a wheel injured or destroyed; but the damage has soon been repaired, and without altering or improving the principles of the construction. Rebellion, revolution, and foreign conquest, have occasionally removed old families from, and placed new ones on, the vacant throne, and for a moment disturbed the movements of the machine; but a little time has generally restored the usual harmony of its operations. It becomes, therefore, an object of interest to inquire, on what principles, and by what practice, the largest mass of population which in any age or country has been united under one government, has been kept together in one bond of union, for a period of time extending far beyond that at which the history of the earliest European nations may be said to commence. It has assuredly not been owing to the superior virtues of its princes, for China has had its Neros and Caligulas as well as Rome; nor to the superior virtues of the people, for Chinese morality consists more in profession than in practice; and yet the affectation of superior virtues in the one, and of moral sentiment in the other, has gone far in giving support to the system of government, and securing the permanency of the ancient institutions of the country.

Ancient usage, universally appealed to, is almost the only rule of conduct, and the only limitation or control prescribed to the executive authority vested in the monarch. The public voice is never heard, but the public opinion is sedulously courted by the sovereign, and conveyed to every part of the empire through the medium of the Pehin Gazette. This vehicle of imperial panegyric is published daily; it is sent forth into all the provinces, and read in all the public taverns and tea-houses. It is one of the most powerful engines of state; and a series of this paper would explain the nature of the government [7:6:553]better than all the moral maxims of antiquity on which it is supposed to be founded. Through it are all the measures of the government, or rather of the sovereign, communicated to the public. If he fasts or feasts, promotes or degrades, levies or remits taxes, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, rewards virtue or punishes vice, or, in short, whatever laudable action he may perform, it is announced in this state paper, with the motivesand the reasons that may have given rise to it. Every sentence of death, with an abstract of the charges and the trial, and every mitigation of punishment, are also published in this Gazette. There is now published in Canton an English Gazette or Register, which contains translations of all the most interesting and important notices extracted from the Pehin Gazette, and other matters connected with the commerce, the manufactures and products, of this most extensive empire,—a publication which, if it should go on as it commenced, will throw more light on this extraordinary people than has been afforded by any of the writings of foreigners.

The grand leading principle of this patriarchal government is to place the sovereign at as great a distance from the people, and as far removed from mortality, as human invention could suggest. They not only style him the “Son of Heaven,” but believe him to be of heavenly descent; and this superstitious notion appeared in a manner sufficiently remarkable, by the obstacles thrown in the way of the present Mantchoo dynasty, on account of their family not being able to trace their descent farther back than eight generations; a defect of ancient origin which was considered by the Chinese as a great reproach. Kaung-hee, aware of their prejudices, caused the genealogy of the Tartar family to be published in the Gazette. It stated that “the daughter of heaven, descending on the borders of the Lake Poulkouri, at the foot of the White Mountain, and eating some red fruit that grows there, conceived, and bore a son, partaking of her nature, and endowed with wisdom, strength, and beauty; that the people chose him for their sovereign; and that from him were descended the present Son of Heaven, who filled the throne of China.” And this explanation wiped away the reproach, and fully satisfied the subjects of the “celestial empire.”

In the capacity of sovereign, the Emperor of China is supposed to sustain two distinct characters. The first is that of a high priest, in which he, and he alone, mediates and intercedes with heaven for all the sins and misdeeds of his people. In this character he only can officiate at solemn feasts, when heaven is to be propitiated by suitable oblations. He alone has the merit of all the prosperity that the empire enjoys; but he also affects to consider public calamity as the consequence of some act committed, or some duty neglected by him. When, therefore, insurrections, famines, earthquakes, or inundations, afflict the people, he affects the deepest humility, appears in the meanest dress, strips the palace of its ornaments, and suspends all the court amusements; but even in this state of humiliation he is held up as the peculiar object of heaven’s attention, whether it be to punish or to bless.

His second character as sovereign of the empire is that of“the father and mother of his people.” In this character it is supposed that his subjects bear the same relation to him that he stands in towards Tien or heaven. His ministers or magistrates execute his will, and are supposed to be placed as agents between him and the people, in the same manner as heaven has its agents to regulate the divine decrees on earth; but all power, honour, offices, and emoluments, emanate from him alone, and are revocable at his pleasure. His prerogative is undefined and undivided, unrestrained by any written law, and checked only by ancient custom, stronger even than law. “Heaven,” says Confucius, “has not two sons, earth has not two kings, a family has not two masters, sovereign power has not two directors—one God, one emperor,” not for China alone, but for all the earth, the rest of the sovereigns being considered as his vassals. This doctrine was boldly avowed on the occasion of Lord Amherst’s embassy, when the ceremony of prostration was demanded, not as a mere ceremony, but as the sign and seal of vassalage, and on this ground was of course resisted.

This self-created universal autocrat is not only the fountain of all honour in his wide dominions, but of all mercy. He is held upon all occasions as the mediator for his people, stepping in between the sentence of the law and the execution of it, and with a fatherly tenderness remitting a certain portion of the punishment which the law awards, and which the magistrate has no power to dispense with. If a magistrate instructs the people, it is in the name of the emperor; if he flogs them for a misdemeanour, he remits a certain number of blows as the emperor’s grace; he orders his ministers to attend at all times to the complaints of the people; and, that none may be denied access to the chief magistrate of the district, a gong or drum is suspended at the outer gate of his dwelling,—but woe be to him who ventures to sound it without substantial reason; the emperor’s grace would not save him from at least a dozen strokes of the bamboo. Navarette says that the judge’s drum at Nankin is covered with the hide of an elephant, and the drum-stick, a huge piece of timber, is slung by strong ropes from the roof of the house. This poor Jesuit had a ready credulity to receive all for truth which the Chinese told him.

The name of the sovereign, however, rarely appears but in an amiable light; the people hear of him only as distributing rewards, punishing oppression, relieving the distresses of the poor, opening the public magazines in times of scarcity, and remitting all taxes where the state of the treasury will afford it. Thus it appears, that Kien-lung, having received a report from the board of revenue that a balance remained in the treasury of seventy millions of ounces of silver, issued an edict, by which he exempted all his people from one year’s taxes. This is all very good, and so is the whole theory of this arbitrary government, as delivered in the following rescript, which the minister of Timour-khan put into the hands of this sovereign; indeed, were the practice but conformable with it, we might call it truly Utopian. 1. Study with eager attention the will of heaven. 2. Bc careful to tread in the steps of your ancestors, and to imitate their virtues. 3. Cease not to show your respect and gratitude to the august parents who gave you birth. 4. Watch over your people with a fatherly fondness. 5. In the exercise of sovereign power preserve an upright heart and an elevated soul. 6. Be moderate in your pleasures. 7. Drink little wine. 8. Do not lavish your treasures. 9. Extend your benefits to men of merit. 10. Make your justice formidable to criminals. 11. Drive from your presence knaves and flatterers. 12. Cherish upright and sincere men, and receive with temper their wise remonstrances. 13. Study the character of those you employ, and proportion their employments to their talents. 14. Regulate your time to your occupations, so that they may suit each other. 15. Let not a day pass without studying the maxims of the ancients. And he concludes by observing, that by putting in practice these fifteen precepts, he would secure to himself a happy reign, and to his people prosperity and the blessings of peace.

In Kaung-hee’s declaration on the appointment of his successor, a short time previous to his death, he observes, that “the true way for a sovereign to perform his essential[7:6:554] duty towards heaven and the memory of his ancestors, is to procure for his people peace and plenty; to make his own happiness consist in the happiness of the people, and his own heart the heart of the whole state ;” and he adds, “although since I have occupied the throne, I cannot say that I have succeeded in changing the bad customs, and reforming the morals of my people; although I may not have been fortunate enough to give plenty to every family, or the necessaries of life to every individual; yet I may venture to assert, that during my long reign I have had no other view than to procure for the empire a solid peace, and to render all my people satisfied in their respectiveconditions. During my whole reign 1 have caused the death of no one without a sufficient reason. 1 have never ventured upon any useless expense to be defrayed from the public treasury; it is the blood of the people. I have drawn nothing from it that was not necessary for the subsistence of the army, and for relieving the calamities of famine,” &c.

The ancient and established maxims of filial piety, form, however, the grand basis of the Chinese government. Every son is supposed to hold the same relation to his father that the people do to the sovereign; and the same unnatural and unwarrantable power which is given to the father over his children could not consistently be withheld from the emperor. No wickedness or unnatural treatment can, on the part of the parent, relieve a son fropι his duties. The merit of every good action performed by the son is ascribed to the education given to him by the father, but the son bears his own disgrace. In like manner, the sovereign receives the whole merit of the country’s prosperity, but his ministers incur the disgrace of all its misfortunes. To be consistent in thus placing the young and vigorous at the mercy of the old and feeble, the emperor affects to pay the same homage and obedience to his mother that are due from children towards their parents. The effect of this state morality, destructive of all real sentiment, is that of rendering every man a slave to some other, and establishing a system of tyranny, which descends in an uninterrupted chain from the emperor down to the meanest peasant. But this is not the worst: every man distrusts his neighbour; because every man is known to assume a character that does not belong to him, and constantly to act the hypocrite in public.

The jealousy and suspicion which prevails, from the sovereign on the throne to the lowest of the magistrates, evince how little they trust to the fine maxims of morality, by which, it is pretended, the throne is supported and the happiness of the people secured. No magistrate, for instance, can hold an employment in a district where he has relations; he cannot marry in that district; he cannot purchase lands in it: if his father or his mother should die, he must immediately resign his employment, to fulfil the duties which a son owes to his parents, and which cease not with life; and, at all events, he is removed at the end of three years. No two relations within the fourth degree can sit together at the same board. In each of the six boards which sit in Pekin there is a censor, who has no deliberative voice, but listens to their discussions, makes his remarks, and, like our speaker in the House of Commons, keeps them in order, refers to precedents, and the like. He is supposed to be the confidential servant of the sovereign, whom he informs of what is going on, and what are the sentiments of the several members. These six censors may be considered as imperial spies, and they form an extraordinary board called Toodche-yuen i whose chief business is that of dispatching their visitors or sub-censors to all parts of the empire, to examine into and report upon tl∣e gonducf of the several officers, and to discover who-th^ţ+'ny and what abuses are alleged against them; and, to complete the system of espionage, persons are invited to send up informations against the officers of government, all of which are registered in this extraordinary tribunal.

In this precarious situation, a magistrate may consider himself fortunate if he escapes the shafts of private malice, or retires from office without having incurred disgrace, or some more serious punishment, for the commission of some fault, or the dereliction of some duty; for, where the offices of state are open to the lowest of the people, when possessed of the requisite qualificatioŋs, the candidates for employment become so numerous, that every trifling fault is laid hold of to create a vacancy; and these frequent removals and degradations fall in precisely with the system of the government, which is to break down all connection between the officers and the people, and to turn the respect and veneration of the latter exclusively to thesovereign. On the same principle, it is supposed that the extortions and malversations of officers high in the government are frequently winked at, until, at a proper season, the hand of power lays hold of the treasure corruptly obtained, and gets rid, in a legal manner, of the whole family of the delinquent. It is true, a magistrate in China is tried by his brother magistrates; but when the sovereign is the accuser, as is generally the case where an officer of state is the accused, the result is pretty certain. The favourite and principal adviser of the late Kien-lung was brought to trial by the present emperor, Kia-king, on charges of the most frivolous nature, as that of having walked through the middle gate, which is alone reserved for the emperor, having a pearl in his possession larger than any belonging to the imperial family, &c.; but the object was answered; he was condemned to death, his whole property, which was immense, confiscated, and all his relations dismissed from their employments, and banished into Tartary. We may form a tolerably correct opinion of the manner in which the criminal courts administer justice in cases wherein the emperor is personally concerned, from the trials that took place in consequence of the attempt that was not long ago made to assassinate Kia king. He announces to the public a revolt, takes blame to himself, abuses his ministers for their negligence, to which he ascribes his misfortune, and ends his proclamation in a strain of self-reproach and great hypocritical humility. As the greater part of the handful of rebels who attempted to storm the palace were killed in the act, and the rest that were taken put to death, some by beheading, others by a slow and lingering process, some hacked and mutilated in the public market-place, and others “cut into ten thousand pieces,” it might be supposed that here the business ended. No such thing. The emperor, in his proclamation, denounces a particular sect, which once caused a revolt in four provinces, that took eight years to subdue; hence the country magistrates, to make amends for the carelessness of the ministers, persecuted all sects, and, among others, the Christians. One of the magistrates had the courage to send to the capital a spirited remonstrance, in which he stated that many innocent persons had been brought to trial, tortured, and suffered death; that numbers were unjustly confined, or passed from court to court, after being put to the torture under pretence of preparation for trial; and that they were finally liberated, without trial, after their health was destroyed and their property wasted. The whole document exhibits a melancholy picture of abuses in the administration of the criminal jurisprudence of this supposed virtuous and humane nation.

The administration of the government is conducted by six departments, to each of which there is a president and a certain number of members, forming so many boards, similar to those of our admiralty and treasury boards; and the six presidents form a distinct board of themselves, [7:6:555]which, with certain princes of the blood, may be called the extraordinary council of the state. Each board sends out its appropriate officers to every part of the empire, with and from whom it has to correspond and receive reports; abstracts of which, and of all its proceedings, are daily laid before the emperor by one of the co-laos or presidents, whom he generally selects as his favourite and confidential minister and adviser. The respective duties of these boards arc so interwoven with the laws of the empire, that a brief view of the laws will best explain the nature of the executive governments. (Grozier and Du Halde’s Hist, of China; Hem. sur les Chinois; Macartney’s Journal ; Staunton’s Authentic Account of an Embassy, &c.; Barrow’s Travels in China.)

When Pauw observed that China was governed by the whip and the bamboo, he was not aware of the theoretical application of these instruments, especially the latter, to the whole code of civil and criminal law. The remark was not meant to extend beyond the practical application of these machines to the human body, which, it must be owned, are effectual aids towards the establishment of a strict police, and that they arc freely enough administered in keeping the peace among the lower orders; but their use in this way is by no means so extensive as is generally supposed, and as the letter of the law would seem to imply. This great empire may, notwithstanding, be aptly enough compared to a great school, of which the magistrates are the masters, and the people the scholars. The bamboo is the ferula, and care is taken that the child shall not be spoiled by sparing the rod. The bamboo, however, is not used merely for flogging the people. In the fundamental laws of the empire it forms the scale by which all punishments are supposed to be proportioned to the crimes committed, and which are carefully dealt out by weight and measure; and here also we recognize the work of an ancient people in a rude state of society. In a small family, or a community consisting of a certain number of families, it may just be possible to “adapt the penalties of the laws in a just proportion to the crimes against which they are denounced but the continuance of such a system in an overgrown commonwealth affords no proof of refined or extensive notions of jurisprudence. Punishment, as an example to deter others from the commission of crimes, would seem, indeed, to be less the object of Chinese legislation than that of satisfying the claims of rigid justice; to wipe off a certain degree of crime by the infliction of a proportionate degree of suffering.

The code of laws called the Leu-lee has undergone several changes by different dynastics, but the principle of the laws has remained the same. This book is to China what Burns’s Justice is in England, and is familiar to all who have any pretensions to literature. “The magistrates and the people,” says the Emperor Sun-chee, “look up with awe and submission to the justice of these institutions.” An European will regard them with different feelings. The frequency and the severity of corporal punishments, if literally inflicted, would be shocking and disgusting; but, as Sir G. Staunton has observed, “there are so many grounds of mitigation, so many exceptions in favour of particular classes, and in consideration of peculiar circumstances, that the penal system, in fact, almost entirely abandons that part of its outward and apparent character.” The same observation will apply to the penalty of death, which appears to be affixed to crimes whose enormity are not such as would be deemed worthy of this extreme of punishment in the most sanguinary code of Europe; for if we are to judge from the very small comparative number of criminals that are annually executed, one of two conclusions must necessarily be drawn; either that capital offences are very rare, or that the laws are very lenient.

Père Amiot says, that in 1784 the list of criminals under sentence of death, and ratified by the emperor, amounted to 1348 persons, which, he observes, was considered to be unusually great. It is about one in 108,000, at which rate not more than 160 would suffer annually in the whole population of Great Britain and Ireland.

The number of blows to be inflicted with the bamboo may not only be considered as the measure or scale of crimes, but as regulating also the mode or practice of punishment. The letter of the law, severe as it may appear to be in denunciation, is more lenient in execution. Thus, ten blows of nominal punishment are practically reduced to four, and 100 to 40; and, in many cases, these blows are redeemable by fine.

This bamboo, that makes so conspicuous a figure in the Chinese code, is limited by law to two sizes; the larger 5 feet 8 inches in length, inches broad, and 2 inches thick, weighing 2-⅛ pounds; the smaller the same length, 2 inches broad, and 1; thick, weight about l£ pound.

The cangue, or more properly the hia, is a wooden collar for the neck, 3 feet long, 2 feet 9 inches broad, weighing, in ordinary cases, 33 pounds.

The iron chain, by which all criminals are confined, is 7 feet long, weighing 6⅛ pounds; besides which they use wooden handcuffs and iron fetters.

Various kinds of torture of the hands, feet, ancles, &c. are made use of to extort evidence or confession; but it is not permitted to put the question by torture to those who belong to any of the eight privileged classes, in consideration of the respect due to their character; nor to those who have attained their seventieth year, in consideration of their advanced age; nor to those who have not exceeded their fifteenth year, out of indulgence to their tender youth; nor, lastly, to those who labour under any permanent disease or infirmity, out of commiseration for their situation and sufferings. The eight privileged orders spring out of, 1. imperial blood and connections; 2. long service; 3. illustrious actions; 4. extraordinary wisdom; 5. great abilities; 6. zeal and assiduity; 7. nobility of the first, second, and third rank; 8. birth; all of which, excepting the first, seventh, and eighth, have not, in fact, any existence. Their chief privilege consists in not being liable to be tried for any offence, without a specification of the crime being laid before the emperor, and his express commands issued for that purpose.

There are five degrees of punishment.

The first degree is a moderate correction inflicted with the lesser bamboo, “in order that the transgressor of the law may entertain a sense of shame for his past, and receive a salutary admonition with respect to his future conduct.” This correction extends from ten to fifty blows; the first, in practice, reduced to four by the emperor’s grace; the last never exceeds twenty blows.

The second class of punishments extends from sixty to a hundred blows, of which from twenty to forty are actually inflicted.

The third division is that of temporary banishment to any distance not exceeding 500 lee (about 150 miles), “with the view of affording opportunity of repentance and amendment ;” and it extends from one to three years’ banishment.

The fourth degree of punishment is that of perpetual banishment, which is reserved for the more considerable offences, and extends to the distance of 2000, and even 3000 lee, with 100 blows of the bamboo.

The fifth and ultimate punishment which the laws ordain is death, either by strangulation or decollation.

At the head of the code are placed ten offences of a treasonable nature ;— 1. Rebellion, defined an attempt to violate the divine order of things on earth; 2. Disloyalty, [7:6:556]an attempt to destroy the imperial palaces, temples, or tombs; 3. Desertion to a foreign power; 4. Parricide, or the murder of parents, uncle, aunt, grandfather, or grandmother; 5. Massacre, or the murder of three or more persons in one family; 6. Sacrilege, or stealing from the temples any sacred article, or any thing in the immediate use of the sovereign; 7. Impiety, or negligence and disrespect of parents; 8. Discord in families, or a breach of the legal or natural ties, founded on connections by blood or marriage; 9. Insurrection against the magistrates; 10. Incest, or cohabitation of persons related in any of the degrees to which marriage is prohibited. And these crimes are stated to be placed at the head of the code, from their being of so heinous a kind, that, when the offence is capital, it is exempted from the benefit of any act of general pardon, and that the people may learn to dread and avoid them.

Offences committed by officers of government, which, in ordinary cases, are punishable by the bamboo, are commutable for fine or degradation, according to the number of blows to which they are nominally liable. Thus, if publicly offending, instead of sixty blows, they forfeit a year’s salary; and instead of a hundred, lose four degrees of rank, and are removed from their situation. If the offence be of a private nature, the punishment is doubled. The only male descendant of parents or grand-parents, who are aged and infirm men. if his age exceeds seventy, and youths under sixteen, are entitled to the indulgence of commuting the punishment awarded by law. Women, too, may have the sentence of banishment remitted, on payment of a fine; and when convicted of offences punishable with the bamboo, “they are permitted to retain a single upper garment while the punishment is inflicted, except in cases of adultery, when they shall be allowed the lower garment only.”

The following table exhibits a scale of pecuniary redemption, in cases not legally excluded from the benefit of general acts of grace and pardon. They are not necessarily redeemable; but, by edict of Kien-lung, may be made so upon petition.
[table]

There is every reason to believe that these pecuniary commutations of banishments bring considerable sums into the treasury.

The Ta-tsing-leu-lee embraces an epitome of the whole system of government, and of civil and criminal jurisprudence. Besides the introductory part, which contains a general view of the laws, the code consists of six principal divisions, corresponding with the six supreme boards or departments by which the general administration of the empire is conducted. Thus, the first division of the code relates to that part of the civil law which falls under the cognizance of the Lee-pou, or the department which examines candidates for employment, and nominates to appointments, subject to the approbation of the emperor. This division consists of two chapters; the first defining the duties and regulating the offices of the several magistrates, the rule of hereditary succession, and the penalties attached to malversation. The second book relates chiefly to the conduct of the provincial magistrates. The capital offences classed under this division are, great officers of state presuming to confer appointments by their own authority, and without the sanction of the emperor; undue solicitation of hereditary honours; all cabals and state intrigues among the officers of government; collusion between the provincial magistrates and the officers of the court; addressing the emperor in favour of any great officer of state, which is construed into a treasonable combination, subversive of legitimate government; destroying edicts or seals of office; all of which, however, fall within the class of redeemable punishments, which are not excluded from any general act of grace or pardon.

Υ ∖∖ e second division of the code relates to the fiscal laws, which are placed under the cognizance of the Hoo-pοιι, or financial department. They are various, and relate, 1. To the enrolment of the people, personal service, levying of taxes, punishment of persons deserting their families, care of the aged and infirm. 2. The law of holding, mortgaging, selling, &c. lands and tenements. 3. Regulations respecting marriages and divorces. 4. Respecting public property, the coinage, the revenue, the public stores. 5. Duties and customs, smuggling, false manifests, &c. 6.

Private property, the law of usury, of trusts, &c. 7. The regulations concerning sales and markets; monopolizing and fraudulent traders; false weights, measures, and scales; manufactures not conformable to the fixed standard, &c. The section concerning marriages and divorces is brought under this division of the code for no other reason, it would seem, than to regulate the descent and distribution of property. The law allows seven justifiable causes of divorce: 1. Barrenness; 2. lasciviousness; 3. neglect of her husband’s parents; 4. talkativeness; 5. thievish propensities; 6. envious and jealous temper; 7. inveterate infirmity. But, in spite of any or all these causes, a wife cannot be divorced if she can plead any of the three cases: 1. having mourned three years for her husband’s parents; 2. her husband having become rich since the time of her marriage; 3. the wife having no parents living to receive her.

The Le-pou, or board of rites and ceremonies, takes cognizance of all offences committed under the third division of the code, which is subdivided into two sections, and relates, 1. To the sacred rites ; the administration of the prescribed ritual; the care of altars; sacred terraces, and the tombs; unlicensed forms of worship; magicians; leaders of sects; and teachers of false doctrines. 2. To miscellaneous observances respecting the palaces, the emperor, his equipage, and furniture; to the public festivals and days of ceremony; sumptuary laws relative to dress and habitations; celestial observations and appearances; regulations for funerals and country festivals.
[7:6:557]

The fourth division contains the laws by which the military are governed, the direction and superintendence of which are placed under the department of state called the Ping-pou. It consists of five sections. The first relates to the protection of the palace, and of course to the person of the emperor; the duties of the imperial guards; examination of passports, &c. The second is entitled the government of the army, and may be considered as the mutiny act, or articles of war, of China. Every neglect of duty, disobedience of orders, and want of discipline; fraud, embezzlement, desertion, are punished with extreme severity; and many of the offences herein specified are capital. The third section relates to the protection of the frontier, a most important consideration with this suspicious government; the fourth prescribes regulations respecting the horses and cattle belonging to the army; the fifth for the expresses and government posts, the post-horses, messengers, and horses employed in the conveyance of dispatches.

The fifth division contains the code of criminal law administered by the Hing-pou or criminal tribunal, which supplies the judges or assessors to all the other departments. It consists of eleven sections. The first, entitled robbery and theft, awards punishments for every species of robbery or theft that could well be devised; extorting property by threats; obtaining it under false pretences; kidnapping and selling free persons as slaves; disturbing graves, &c. The second relates to homicide, and may be considered as a most singular, if not successful, attempt to discriminate the exact proportion of guilt, for the same offence, in different persons, or different degrees of offence in the same person, according to the situation and circumstances of the offending parties. In every case of preconcerted homicide, the original contriver is condemned to die by decapitation, the accessaries by strangulation; accessaries to the intention, but not to the fact, are punishable with one hundred blows and perpetual banishment. Those who murder, with intent to rob, are beheaded, without distinction between principals and accessaries. Parricide subjects all parties to suffer death by a slow and painful execution; the attempt to commit parricide is death by decapitation. Slaves attempting to murder, or actually murdering their masters, are liable to the same punishment. A husband may kill his wife if caught in the act of adultery, and also her paramour; and a thief may be put to death if taken in the act of robbing a house; but, in either case, it would be murder if put to death after being seized. The preparing of poisons, and rearing of venomous animals, are capital offences. Practitioners of physic, or barbers (for they have no surgeons), who puncture with the needle, giving drugs, or performing operations contrary to the established rules and practice, and thereby killing the patient, are guilty of homicide; but, if proved to have been merely an error in judgment, the offence is redeemable by fine, but the doctor and the barber must quit their professions for ever; if the medicines, however, were given intentionally to kill or injure the patient, the practitioner must suffer death by decapitation. All persons guilty of killing in an affray, though without any express or implied design to kill, whether the blowbe given with the hand or the foot, with a metal weapon or instrument of any kind, shall suffer death by strangulation. There is a clause, however, by which any person killing another in play, by error, or purely by accident, may be permitted to redeem himself from the punishment of killing or wounding in an affray, by the payment of a fine to the family of the deceased person; but the case of pure accident is very carefully defined and exemplified. It must be one “of which no sufficient previous warning could be given, either directly, by the perception of sight and hearing, or indirectly, by the inferences drawn from judgment and reflection.”

In the third section, entitled “quarrelling and fighting,” there is a minute and circumstantial detail of blows given under every conceivable case and situation, and in every possible relation in which the parties could stand towards each other. It fixes the periods of responsibility for the consequences of a wound; it awards the penalty of death on a slave who shall strike his master; on a son who shall strike his father or mother; on a grandson who shall strike his paternal grandfather or grandmother; on a wife who shall strike her husband’s father, mother, paternal grandfather or grandmother; but if a father, mother, paternal grandfather, or grandmother, shall chastise a disobedient child or grandchild in a severe and uncustomary manner, so that he or she dies, the party so offending shall be punished only with one hundred blows, which, in reality, are no more than forty; and when any of the aforesaid relations are guilty of killing such disobedient child or grandchild designedly, the punishment shall be extended to sixty blows and one year’s banishment. A parent may, at any time, sell his children, with the exception only to strolling players and professors of the magic art. This distinction which the law makes between the parent and child, and the almost unlimited authority which is given to the former over the latter, would lead one to conclude, that, if the crime of infanticide be not sanctioned, it is at least connived at, by the government. There is every reason, however, to believe that the extent of it has been grossly exaggerated, and that the greater part of infants taken up in the streets of large cities by the police have died in the birth, and been laid out to avoid the expense of burial; or been exposed alive, with the view of their being taken care of as adopted children, or conveyed to hospitals for the reception of deserted children.

In the cases above stated, the child murdered is supposed to have been disobedient, which is a crime of the deepest dye, as affecting the principle on which the whole system of government is founded; but, from section 294, it is evident that killing a son, grandson, or slave, under any circumstances, with the aggravation of imputing his death to an innocent person, is not a capital offence. “Whoever is guilty of killing his son, his grandson, or his slave, and attributing the crime to another person, shall be punished with seventy blows, and one and a half year’s banishment.” But “a child or grandchild who is guilty of addressing abusive language to his or her father or mother, paternal grandfather or grandmother; a wife who is guilty of addressing abusive language to her husband’s father or mother, paternal grandfather or grandmother, shall, in every case, suffer death, by being strangled.” They must, however, themselves complain, and themselves have heard the abusive language. In like manner, a slave is liable to capital punishment for addressing abusive language to his master.

The fifth book relates to indictments and informations of all kinds; the sixth to cases of bribery and corruption, and seems to contain provisions against bribery in almost every shape which it can be supposed to assume. It is not easy, however, to reconcile these apparent appropriate provisions with that systematic corruption which, under the less odious name of presents, is prevalent in every department of the administration of public affairs and public justice in China. There is a scale of punishment for the value of the bribe received, from one ounce of silver to 120 and upwards; the first entailing sixty blows, the last death by strangulation, when the object is in itself lawful; but, if unlawful, an ounce of silver incurs seventy blows; and eighty ounces and upwards, death by strangulation. That they all take bribes is well known; yet it [7:6:558]appears by a note in the original (Leu-lee), that, in the thirty-third year of Kien-lung, a governor of a city in the province of the capital was tried, and sentenced to suffer death, for taking a bribe of 7000 ounces of silver to stop proceedings in a ease of disorderly conduct and contempt of court; though, finding himself unable to accomplish the object, he had returned the money. In like manner, there are so many provisions against extortions and corrupt practices on the part of great officers of state and their families, that it might be supposed no such practices could exist. The last section of this book is curious, as affording a proof of the care with which the imperial prerogative is fenced round. “All military officers of government, whether stationed at court or in the provinces, are prohibited from receiving presents of gold, silver, silk-stuff's, clothes, wages, or board-wages, from individuals in any of the three principal ranks of hereditary nobility” (mostly related to the royal family and other Tartar chieftains). Any breach of this law deprives them of their rank and employment, and renders them, moreover, liable to the punishment of one hundred blows, and remote perpetual banishment. The second offence of this kind is capital.

The seventh book awards punishment for frauds and forgeries, falsification of the imperial seal or imperial almanac, counterfeiting the current coin of the realm, seducing persons to transgress the laws, &c. The eighth is entitled incest and adultery. Criminal intercourse with an unmarried woman, though by mutual consent, is punishable with seventy blows; with a married woman eighty blows; deliberate intrigue with either, with one hundred blows; a rape with death by strangulation; and criminal intercourse with a girl under twelve years of age is punishable as a rape. Adultery with the wife of any civil or military officer is death; but civil or military officers committing adultery with the wife of a private individual is degradation, one hundred blows, and wearing the cangue for a month. In all ordinary cases of adultery among the people, the punishment is one hundred blows, and the cangue for a month. An unnatural crime forcibly committed, or committed on boys, is punishable as a rape; but by mutual consent the parties are punishable only with one hundred blows, and the cangue for a month, In all cases of criminal intercourse, the law is more severe towards the woman than the man, and towards slaves than freemen. “All civil or military officers of government, and the sons of those who possess hereditary rank, who shall frequent the company of prostitutes and actresses, shall be punished with sixty blows which is, in fact, no punishment at all, as the blows, in reality, are reduced to twenty, and redeemable for a mere nominal sum, not exceeding two or three shillings.

The ninth book is entitled miscellaneous offences, among which is that of gaming·, any person convicted of which is punishable with eighty blows. Yet in every street and corner, and in the very temples, the lowest of the people may be seen daily, and every hour of the day, playing at cards, dice, or a sort of game resembling chess. Accidental incendiaries are flogged and fined, according to the consequences of the fire they have occasioned; and wilful incendiaries are punished with death, provided it be proved that the fire was occasioned with a view of plunder. Stage-players and musicians are prohibited from representing emperors, empresses, famous princes, ministers, and generals of former ages, on pain of receiving one hundred blows for every breach of this law. Yet, as these are the favourite and most usual exhibitions, it may be presumed that this law is obsolete. There is, indeed, a saving clause, which says that, “by this law, it is not intended to prohibit the exhibition on the stage of fictitious characters of just and upright men, of chaste wives, and pious and obedient children; all which may tend to dispose the minds of the spectators to the practice of virtue.”

The tenth and eleventh sections contain regulations with regard to arrests and escapes, imprisonment, judgment, and execution.

The sixth and last division contains the laws and regulations respecting the public works, which are placed under the superintendence of the department of state called the Cong-poo, or board of public works. It has only two sections; the first relating to public buildings, and the second to the public roads. From the first it appears, that this board has also the superintendence of the public manufactures of the state, such as military weapons, silks, stuffs, porcelain, &c.; and that if any private individual be convicted of manufacturing for sale, silks, satins, gauzes, or other stuffs of this nature, according to the prohibited pattern of the lung (dragon), or the fung-whang (phoenix), he shall incur the penalty of one hundred blows, and the goods so manufactured be forfeited to the state. This book, and the next, concerning the keeping in repair of the public roads, embankments, and bridges, contain a number of regulations and petty penalties for neglect and malversation, that are beneath the dignity of legislation, and fitted rather for the subjects of deliberation in a parish vestry. Indeed, the whole body of Chinese law, civil and criminal, consists of such minute meddling with all the common concerns of life as to be utterly unfit for any practical application, except to such mere machines as the Chinese are, for whom it seems to be admirably suited to answer the intended purpose. Nothing can more clearly exhibit this great multitude of human beings as an inert and sluggish mass, without a heart, and without one single idea of the liberty and independence of the human mind, than the minute and paltry regulations under which it has voluntarily submitted to be bound and shackled for so many thousand years.

After all, there is reason to suspect that this minute measuring out of punishments by a scale, in order to adapt them to their respective degrees of criminality, is pregnant with the most gross injustice; and that, where so much pains are ostentatiously displayed to deal out justice by weight and measure, there is so much less of it in the execution. Many examples might be cited in confirmation of this opinion, but a few will suffice. In the eleventh volume of the Chinese Memoirs, Père Amiot gives a curious account of a master mason that died by an accidental blow of the bamboo, while under a flogging by order of an officer of the household of a prince of the blood, whose house he was rebuilding in Pekin. As culpable homicide is death by the law of China, the officer bribed one of the mason’s labourers, for ten ounces of silver, and the promise of a respite, to take the blame on himself, as the consequence of a quarrel; and, for three ounces of silver, two or three of the labourers were to give evidence to that effect. The man was tried, and condemned to suffer death on the day of general execution in autumn. On the morning of that day, or the evening preceding, it is the custom, it seems, to bring up all the prisoners under sentence of death to be interrogated by the co-laos, or principal ministers of the crown; and, on this occasion, the heart of the bricklayer’s labourer failing him, he discovered the whole transaction. The offending officer was immediately tried; and, coupling his original offence with the aggravated one of exposing an innocent person to suffer death, was sentenced to die by a slow and painful execution. Nor was this all; the judges and assessors of the court, who had originally tried the offence, were each degraded one rank, and mulcted of their salary and emoluments. This is given by Père Amiot as an instance of Chinese justice; [7:6:559] but it tells as strongly the other way; for, if such gross iniquity, committed in open day, and in the presence of a multitude, was thus connived at at the very fountain-head, what may not be expected at a distance, where the stream is still more muddy? That government can have no high notions of justice or morality which winks at, and sometimes encourages a criminal to find a substitute, even when the punishment is death. Many of the servants of the East India Company can testify, from their own personal knowledge, to the truth of the severe remark of Pauw— “Le juge veut faire one execution, et il lui faut un patient; or il prend celui qui se présente.” In the case of an English seaman, tried for the murder of a Chinese, when they failed in their endeavours to procure a black slave, or a criminal of Macao, or a sick person on the point of death, to execute,—not to satisfy justice, for it was an accidental death in a scuffle, but to satisfy the criminal court of Pekin, to which they had unluckily for themselves appealed; they had recourse to one of the meanest and most paltry expedients that ever disgraced a civilized government. “All the proceedings,” says Sir G. Staunton, “were founded on a story fabricated for the purpose; a story in which the Europeans did not concur, though asserted to have done so; which, in fact, the Chinese magistrates themselves, or the merchants under their influence, invented; which the Chinese witnesses, knowing to be false, adopted; and which, lastly, the sovereign himself appears to have acquiesced in without examination.” Under such a government, the laws are either a dead letter, or may be so perverted that, under their sanction, the innocent may be made to suffer, and the guilty escape punishment.

In addition to all this, that horrible system of visiting the crimes of the guilty upon the heads of the innocent, which pervades all the despotic governments of the East, is also practised in China, in all cases of rebellion and treason; though it is not carried so far as among the Hindus, who, not content with cutting off a whole family, swept away whole towns and villages in which treason had appeared, as a terrible example to prevent other villages from harbouring traitors. Such are the dreadful effects of despotism, and the miseries inflicted on innocent families, where the people have no voice in the government; such a government is always more ready to punish than to protect. ( Ta-tsing-leu-lee i translated by Sir G. Staunton.)

The condemned criminals for ordinary offences are kept in prison till autumn, when they are all executed in every part of the empire on a particular day. In general, the prisons are described as spacious, neat, and clean. Navarette, who was himself confined in one of them, says that they have large airy courts for the prisoners in the daytime; that overseers are always present to quell any noise or disturbance; and that they contain temples for the priests to resort to. The priests, he says, make a harvest in the prisons, as those whose trials were pending were constantly consulting the priests as to the issue, and they became the more religious, the nearer the day of trial approached. Criminals are kept in chains, and always apart; so are the women kept separate from the men; and the missionary observed so little gallantry on the part of the men, that though there were gratings in the doors of the women’s cells, the Chinese never once visited them. A very different picture, however, is given of the state of the prisons, and the prostitution of the females confined in them, in the province of Canton, from better authority than Navarette,—an official report to the emperor on the state of the prisons. The scenes of depravity therein exhibited are horrible beyond description. ’ (MS. Report.')

The durability of a system so arbitrary, and an administration so corrupt, is not a little owing to the incessant and indefatigable vigilance of the police; to the absence of all political meetings or societies, and of all discussions respecting public measures; to the gradation of obedience throughout every class of society, inculcated by preeept, by example, and by the bamboo; and certainly not a little to that spirit of national industry, which is the grand preserver of national tranquillity.

It is utterly impossible, from any document that has appeared of an authentic nature, to form any estimation of the amount and value of the revenue. From an extract of the Y-tung-tche (Encyclopaedia), translated by Dr Morrison, it appears that the annual value of the imports amounts to about 36,000,000 leang (of 6s. 8d. each), or L.12,000,000 sterling; but whether this is exclusive of the taxes paid in kind to the public granaries and magazines, or whether these are included in that sum, it is not stated; but as the value of money is only about one fourth part of its value in England, fifty millions of money, in an economical government like this, where the officers and magistrates are so shamefully paid that they could not live without robbing the people, may be considered as an ample revenue for all the necessities of the state. The largest sum arises from an impost of about one tenth on the estimated produce of the land; a duty on salt yields about one fourth of the land-tax; and the customs and minor taxes make up a sum altogether about equal to that of the salt-tax. Besides, grain, silks, cottons, and various manufactutes, are paid in kind into the imperial magazines, and are distributed as clothing to the troops, and in part payment to the magistrates, and also as presents to those distinguished by imperial favour, and to foreign ambassadors. A forced loan, never to be rcpaid, and a capitation-tax, the most unjust of all taxes, because the most unequal, are the odious resources to which the Chinese government is occasionally compelled to have recourse. The immense treasures supposed to have been amassed in Tartary by the reigning dynasty exist only in the imagination of the Chinese.

Religion, as a system of divine worship, as piety towards God, and as holding forth future rewards and punishments, can hardly be said to exist among the people. It is here, at least, neither a bond of union nor a source of dissension. They have no sabbatical institution, no congregational worship; no external forms of devotion, of petition, or thanksgiving, to the Supreme Being; the emperor,— and he alone, being high priest, and the only individual who stands between Heaven and the people, having the same relation to the former that the latter are supposed to bear to him,—performs the sacred duties, according to the ancient ritual, and at certain fixed periods; but the people have no concern with them. The emperor alone officiates at all the solemn ceremonies, for propitiating Heaven, or expressing a grateful sense of its benefits; and as “sacrifices and oblations can only be acceptable to Heaven when offered up with humble reverence, and a pure and upright heart,” he prepares himself for such occasions by fasting and abstinence, and acts of benevolence and mercy to his subjects.

The equinoxes are the periods when the grand sacrifices in the temple dedicated to Heaven, within the precincts of the palace, are offered up; when every kind of business in the capital, all feasts, amusements, marriages, funerals, must be suspended during the ceremony, the moment of which is announced to the people by the tolling of the great bell in Pekin.

A ridiculous dispute was carried on with great vehemence between the Jesuits and other sectaries of the Catholic religion, whether the emperor did not offer his sacrifices and oblations to Tien as the visible and material [7:6:560]heaven, and whether the Chinese were not atheists, at the head of whom he was the officiating high priest. There is not an expression in their ancient book of rites that warrants such a supposition. The Lex-leee describes the Tien as having neither voice, nor smell, nor figure, substance, nor dimensions; it gives him the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and ubiquity, and considers him as rewarding the good and punishing the bad; that public calamities are the instruments he employs to excite in the sovereign, and through him in the people, a reformation of morals. The names by which the sovereign power is known in their writings are, Whang-tien, the illustrious heaven; Chang-tee, the Supreme Ruler; Tien-tee, heaven and earth; Che∙chung, the first and the last (Alpha and Omega); Ken-puen, root and branch. When the Jesuits asked the Emperor Kaung-hee, whether the sacrifices were made to the Sovereign Lord of heaven, the author and preserver of all things; whether the ceremonies in the hall dedicated to Confucius were in honour of his memory as a benefactor to his country; and whether the rites observed towards ancestors in the hall dedicated to them, were merely to show respect and gratitude ?— Kaung-hee replied, that they comprehended very well the Chinese religion; but the prayer of Kaung-hee, before going into battle, and published in the Pekin Gazette, might have satisfied the most scrupulous. “Sovereign Lord of heaven, the Supreme Ruler, receive my homage, and grant protection to the humblest of thy subjects. With respectful confidence, I invoke thy aid in a war which I am compelled to wage. Thou has heaped on me thy favours, and hast distinguished me by thy special protection. A people without number acknowledges my power. I adore in silent devotion thy manifold kindnesses, but know not how to manifest the gratitude which I feel. The desire of my heart is to give to my people, and to let strangers enjoy, the blessings of peace; but the enemy has put an end to this my most cherished hope. Prostrate before thee, I implore thy succour, and, in making this humble oblation, I am animated with the hope of obtaining thy signal favour. My only wish is to procure a lasting peace throughout the immense region over which thou hast set me.” (Hist. Gen. de la Chine, tom. ii.) The inscription over the doors of the Jesuits’ church in Pekin, “To the only true God,” &c. written with Kaung-hees own hand, affords further proof of his sentiments respecting the Deity.

All ranks, however, from the emperor downwards, are full of absurd superstitions. The imagination of untutored man, not easily comprehending a power so almighty and universal, created a number of inferior spiritual beings as the harbingers and agents of his will; and these spiritual agents, which the Chinese call Quei-shin, are invisible attenuated beings, some white and good, the advocates of men, others black and wicked, the punishers of sin; and these “illustrious subjects of the Great Ruler” are supposed to preside over the five seasons of the year, over mountains and rivers, over the hearth and the door of the house, and influence all the concerns of men. To these spirits certain duties are prescribed, and certain oblations offered; the men usually bring wine, the women tea; but these are private ceremonies and heartless duties; the devotion of religion was totally wanting; and in such a state it was not surprising that the doctrines and the practices of the sects of Tao-tse and of Fo should captivate the vulgar, and seduce them to a religion that spoke more strongly to the senses. It would seem, indeed, that the establishment of some popular religion is unavoidable, and that of Fo may, on this ground, be encouraged by the government, though it derives little or no support from it. The ancient religion of China entertained the idea of spiritual beings; but they never clothed them in a corporeal form. In the time of Confucius their temples were without images; their guardian gods and their evil genii were mere imaginary beings, to which they neither gave form nor substance; but when the priests of Fo found their entrance into China, they brought with them all the follies and absurdities of the doctrine of Buddh, and grafted them on the superstitions of the Chinese. They filled their temples with all manner of images, each having its peculiar virtues and peculiar influences, and levied for each a tax on the credulity of the people. In some of these temples are not fewer than three hundred sainted personages,—monstrous figures, as large as, and frequently many times larger than, human beings. Their bells and their beads, and burning of incense and tapers,—their images and their altars,—their singing and processions, were well calculated to seduce the populace, who had no outward forms of any religion. So strong was the resemblance of the interior of a temple of Fo, the dress of the priests, and the ceremonies of devotion, to those of the church of Rome, that one of the Catholic missionaries says, it seemed as if the devil had run a race with the Jesuits to China, and having got the start of them, had contrived these things for their mortification.

The Tao-tse are of Chinese origin, and sprung up under the very nose of Confucius, 1500 years nearly before Christ. Their tenets resemble those of Epicurus; they pretend to magic and alchemy, to consult oracles, and to deal with demons; and they keep old women, who are regarded as a kind of witches. The priests of Fo came from Upper India into China, by invitation from a weak emperor, between the 60th and 70th year of the Christian era. Their tenets resemble the Pythagorean. They kill no living animal, and cat no animal food, lest they might partake of a relation or friend, whose soul had taken up its abode in the animal; and they believe that the human soul, in its transmigration through an infinity of corporeal existences, becomes purified and perfect, and at length is reunited to the Deity, from whom it originally emanated. They consider the consummation of felicity to consist in the annihilation or total suspension of every faculty of the soul, leaving a void for that of Fo to occupy. Arrived at this stage, the devotee soon dies from exhaustion and want of food; his body is burnt, the ashes·put into eight urns, upon which a tower of nine roofs and eight apartments is built, and an urn placed in each apartment; and this is said to have been the origin of the numerous tall pagodas that appear in every part of China. It is pure Shamanism, which may be traced from the Caspian Sea to Japan; from the Saghalien Oula to the Persian Gulf. The priests profess the most sublime notions of virtue, and many of them are said to practise the most refined piety; prayers, fastings, austere and rigorous punishments for the sins of others; chastity, abstinence, penitence, contempt of bodily suffering, to secure for the indestructible soul a better abode in the circle of its transmigrations.

Some of the Catholic missionaries, however, have represented the priests of Fo as living in all manner of vice and luxury; but the testimony of unprejudiced travellers is against them, and even several of the Jesuits speak highly in their favour, saying that, in their moral doctrines, there is little to reprehend; that they inculcate benevolence, humility, reciprocal kindness, command over the passions, and tenderness towards the brute part of the creation. But it may be questioned whether the priests of Fo or Tao-tse act upon any fixed principles. Some of them, for instance, refuse to drink wine, others to eat garlic and onions; some practise celibacy, and profess perpetual continence; others have several wives and concubines. It is quite certain that neither of them are much [7:6:561]respected by the government. Their protection or persecution depends on the caprice or feeling of the ruling sovereign. At one time we find their temples demolished, the materials employed for the public buildings, the bells and brazen statues melted down into money, and the priest, by an imperial edict, reduced to the rank of the people. One emperor persecutes the Ho-chang of Fo, and encourages the Tao-tse. He drinks the beverage of immortality, and dies soon after; his successor eradicates the Tao-tse for poisoning the sovereign, and sanctions the worship of Fo. At present the number of temples dedicated to Fo, and of the priests attached to them, is incalculable. They not only occur in every city, town, and village, but are erected on a small scale in private houses, in which priests are employed, though not generally, to instruct the children of the family. One emperor observed that there were not fewer than 100,000 priests of Fo, and as many priestesses; and that the wisest policy would be to make them marry and get children for the good of the state; that a religion which imposed restraint on the natural passions given to man was undeserving of any regard. No temple can be built without special permission; and they are always used for state purposes by the officers of government, for foreign ambassadors, &c. in their journeying through the country.

The Christian missionaries are exposed to the same capricious conduct; caressed at one time, persecuted at another. One emperor gives them money towards building churches, and the same emperor converts these into public granaries and public schools. In the year 1747 five missionaries were beheaded in Fokien, and two Jesuits strangled in the same year in Kiang-nan, all of which was done according to the law, which says that the chief of any sect who seduces the people from their duties, under religious pretences, shall be strangled.

The people are ready enough to embrace any of these religions; but the emperor and his court, and all the officers and magistrates, adhere to the ancient religion, as laid down by Confucius, though there is an obvious leaning of the present Tartar dynasty towards that of Fo or Buddh, which is that of the Lamas of Thibet. The great temple at Gehol, the summer residence of the Tartar sovereigns now on the throne, is named Poo-ta-la (Buddh-laya), the residence of Buddh; but ostensibly he professes and performs the rites of the ancient religion of China; and, at the appointed times, in the capacity of high priest, testifies his gratitude to heaven by offering up the fruits of the earth, and the flesh of certain animals considered as the most useful, as the horse, the ox, the sheep, the hog, the dog, and the domestic fowl. At such times all labour is suspended, the public offices and courts of justice are shut up, and a general festival prevails throughout the whole empire. The vernal ceremony of the emperor holding the plough, is rarely had recourse to in modern times.

The magistrates perform their devotions in the temple or hall dedicated to Confucius; and the usual oblation to his memory is that of a hog, as being the most useful animal known. The ceremonies are performed before a tablet placed on a pedestal, on which is written the name of the philosopher; and at the foot of the pedestal a grave is dug to receive the hair and offals of the animal, in order that no part of it may fall to unworthy purposes. To this temple every magistrate, on entering upon his office, goes with his official brethren, and, in their presence, after the usual homage to the emperor, professes himself a grateful adherent of the doctrines of the illustrious master, which ceremony amounts to the taking of the oaths of fidelity and allegiance to the sovereign. Père Intorcetta, in his treatise Du Cultu Sinensi, has translated the whole ceremony from a Chinese author. It is very curious, and bears a marked resemblance to the Catholic ceremony of high mass. They burn incense, pour out libations of wine, chant solemn hymns, accompanied with instruments, read aloud a panegyric on his memory, prostrate themselves before the tablet; and then proceed to feast on the oblations, and to drink each of the “cup of felicity.” (Intorcetta de Cultu Sinensi.)

The common festival of all savage nations is the time of full moon; and the common people of China are still barbarous enough to hold this festival, by keeping up a noise and riot the whole night. But the grand festival in which all China partakes is that of the new year, when families visit each other, exchange mutual compliments and presents, and abstain from all labour for several days. Every Chinese, however poor, contrives at this time to treat himself and his family with new dresses. His house is newly painted; and tablets of paper, variously shaped, adorn the walls of his apartments. On new-year’s day every Chinese strictly watches his own conduct, and every thing that befals him, being persuaded that whatever be does on that day will influence his conduct during the whole year. An universal holiday prevails; all labour is suspended; and nothing but feasting, rejoicing, music, and firing of crackers, prevail, from the midnight preceding the first day of their new year to the ninth day following. During this period all is joy and festivity; yet, in this general scene of mirth and conviviality, to the credit of the Chinese it ought to be noticed, that instances of intemperance or inebriety rarely occur.

The festival of the new year is followed by another of a similar kind, which is called the festival of the lanterns. It commences two days before, and continues two days after, the first full moon of the new year. All China is then in a blaze. Every house and every village, all the shipping on the canals and rivers, every Chinese, however poor, contrives to light up his painted lantern on these days. Transparencies in the shapes of birds, beasts, fishes, and all kinds of animals, are seen darting through the air, and contending with each other; some with squibs in their mouths, breathing fire, and others with crackers in their tails; some sending out sky-rockets, and others rising into pyramids of party-coloured fire; and others again bursting like a mine with violent explosions. A Chinese knows not why, nor makes any inquiries wherefore these things are; it is an ancient custom, and that is enough for him. The inscriptions on these lanterns would seem to point out its religious origin. The most common runs thus, Tien-tee, San-Sheai, Vandin, Chin-tsai, “Oh, heaven, earth, the three limits, and thousand intelligences, hail!” (Barrow’s Travels in China; Macartney’s Journal; Du Halde and Grozier.)

The basis, however, of the ancient Chinese religion, and which forms as it were the link that connects, it with the government, is the obedience which children owe to their parents, and the respect which is due from the young to the aged, and from the living to the dead, in the strict observance of which all other virtues are concentrated; for these are not to be considered as moral duties only, but as political and religious ordinances. Every family of condition endeavours to build a temple to the memory of its ancestors; and all persons not lost to every sense of duty and devotion visit the tombs of their parents on a certain day in the spring of the year. Never were institutions more innocent in their intention, more blameless in practice, more amiable in their object, or better calculated to produce beneficial results, by recalling pleasing recollections, subduing the passions, and bringing the mind to that calm and tranquil state to which the memory of departed parents usually disposes it. The love and tenderness of departed parents are among the [7:6:562]best impressions of the human mind; “Bind them,” says Solomon, “continually about thine heart yet the bigoted Dominicans quarrelled with the Jesuits for allowing their Neophytes to honour the memory of departed relations. They represented it as a crime to pluck away the grass and weeds that might have grown around a parent’s tomb, and to scatter flowers on a relation’s grave; to meet together, and regale themselves with those dainties of which the deceased would have been partaker if alive; fulfilling thus the precept of Confucius, which inculcates the same respect to the dead as if they were living. To support his parents while alive, to bury them decently when dead, to visit their graves at the appointed time, are three indispensable duties of a pious son, by which he proves his gratitude, his sorrow, and his veneration.

There are few families of which some member, in a series of years, has not risen to rank and fortune. Such a one is particularly careful, in obedience to the precept in the ancient book of rites (Z-ee-Äee), before he builds a palace, to erect a temple to the memory of his ancestors. To this temple, at particular seasons, all the branches of the family repair together, old and young, rich and poor, high and low, the first officer in the state and the day-labourer. Here all distinction for the time is laid aside, save that of age, which is always reverenced; and he over whose head has passed the greatest number of years takes the precedence in making the oblations, and at the subsequent entertainment given at the expense of the more wealthy members of the family. From five to ten thousand persons sometimes meet together on such occasions.

Whether it be the effect of superstition or of real feeling, or be considered as a religious duty, no people observe so much external attention to the memory of the dead as the Chinese. They even move their coffins from the place in which they have been interred, if the situation be gloomy or the ground swampy. Everywhere in China may coffins be seen exposed on the surface of the ground, because the surviving relation has not been able to fix upon a propitious spot to raise the tomb for its reception. These coffins are generally made of wood sufficiently thick to plank a first-rate man of war. A Chinese usually keeps his coffin by him in the house as a piece of furniture. He contemplates with pleasure the angusta domus which is to receive his last remains, and he tries it on just as he would try on a new coat. They believe in a future state of rewards and punishments; but their notions on this head are so vague, and mixed up with those of the Buddhists and Brahmins, that it is difficult to say what were the precise tenets of the ancient sages respecting a future state of existence.

Among the religious superstitions of the Chinese, partly native and partly exotic, may be ranked the almost universal’observance of lucky and unlucky days, which are duly registered in the imperial calendar. No marriages, no funerals, no contracts, in short, nothing of importance, must be undertaken on an unlucky day. Even his imperial majesty must be governed in his movements by the Board of Astronomers. Another universal superstition is the fung-shui, wind and water, which relates to the exact line in which the roof of a house must be placed, in order to preserve its own security and its owner’s prosperity. The Chinese conceive that a peculiar virtue resides in the odd numbers: thus they reckon three powers—heaven, earth, and man; three lights—the sun, moon, and stars; the three relations—a prince and his ministers, a father and son, a husband and wife. Fo has his three precious ones, and the Tao-tse their three pure ones, in which the Jesuits discovered the Holy Trinity. The temples of these sectaries have three quadrangular courts, the buildings around which contain the three classes of spirits, celestial, terrestrial, and infernal. They reckon seven ruling powers—the sun, moon, and five planets; nine is as efficient and mysterious a number as among the Hindus; but Jive appears to be the number which is supposed to exert the most extensive influence. The five great virtues frequently spoken of in the ancient classical books are, charity, justice, good manners, prudence, and fidelity. They reckon five domestic spirits; five elements; five primitive colours; five seasons of the year, over which are five presiding spirits; five planets; five points of the compass; five sorts of earth; five precious stones; five degrees of punishment; five kinds of dress, &c. (Hist. Gen. de lα Chine ; Mem. Chili, ς lnlorceltSL de Cultu Sinensi ; Morrison’s Diet. &c.)

It is perhaps impossible for the Chinese themselves to determine what portion of their present mixed religion and superstitious belongs to their ancient institutions, and what has been borrowed from other people. This, however, is not the case with their language. Their speech, and the character in which it is written, have maintained their primitive purity, and may be considered as exclusively their own. This language, more than any thing besides, stamps them as an original people. It has no resemblance whatsoever to any other language, living or dead, ancient or modern. It has neither borrowed nor lent any thing to any other nation or people, now in existence, excepting to those who are unquestionably of Chinese origin. The written character is just now as distinct from any alphabetical arrangement, as it was some thousands of years ago; and the spoken language has not proceeded a single step beyond the original meagre and inflexible monosyllable. Our countrymen have at length fathomed this hitherto mysterious, and, as it was supposed, unattainable language, the acquirement of which had long set at defiance all the talents and industry of foreigners, and was said to employ the whole life-time of the natives: to them it is owing that we are now able to give some intelligible account of it. In fact, those insurmountable difficulties turn out to be altogether visionary. The laudable industry of Dr Marshman and Dr Morrison has supplied us with grammars and dictionaries of this singular language. They have not only placed the treasures within our reach, but given us the key to unlock them, though in an uncouth and unsystematic manner; a defect, however, which has been, in a great measure, remedied by the labours of others. As the subject is almost new in this country, we shall endeavour to give as concise and comprehensive a view of it as our limits will admit, and such as may not only convey a correct notion of the singular nature and construction of the written character, but maybe of some use to those who shall engage in the study of it.

The philologists of China speak of knotted cords, twisted from the inner bark of trees, being made use of originally to register events; but as this period is carried back to the fabulous part of their history, it only deserves notice from the remarkable coincidence of a nation having been discovered many thousand years afterwards on a different continent, and the antipodes almost of China, who wcrc actually in the practice of using the same means for the same purpose. The second step towards the formation of a written character, by the invention of the quoa or diagrams of Fo-he, is perhaps entitled to as little consideration as the knotted cords. As a language they must have been too complicated, and the supposed use of them too refined, for a people in so rude a state as the Chinese represented themselves to have been in the time of that chief. It is generally thought that the written character was first suggested in the reign of Hoang-tee, the third from Fo-he, and that the figures on a tortoise’s back first gave the idea. Dr Morrison says that a person named [7:6:563] Paou-she, who lived about the year of the world 2900, is considered as the father of letters, and that nine tenths of his characters were hieroglyphic; he means to say, rude representations of the thing signified, which, in point of fact, may be considered as the first attempt of all uncivilized people to express their ideas to the eye. At a later period we find several accounts of alterations and new suggestions in the characters, one making them to imitate the lines of the dragon, another the flowing lines of worms and snakes, a third the prints of birds’ feet, a fourth of leaves, branches, roots, &c.; all of which would appear to be nothing more than so many attempts to reduce the rude figures of objects to a more convenient and systematic form for general utility. Enough still remains on ancient seals, and vases for sacred purposes, to show the original state, or nearly sq, of the Chinese characters, and to trace the changes that have taken place from the picture to the present symbol. These ancient characters are to be met with in numerous Chinese books; and a collection of them is contained in Père Amiot’s Lettre de Pekin, from which the following are extracted. They are called the Kou-wen, and are the most ancient characters that are known.

a dragon.
a lion.
an ox.
an elephant.
a tortoise.
a fish.
a house.
a branch of a tree.
a window.
a bow.
to shoot. A multitude of similar description is to be found in books of philology, being obviously the rude representations of the several objects they are meant to express.

From these rude imitations of objects Chinese writers trace the progressive steps to a more abbreviated and convenient form: Thus,
the sun, is now
.
the moon, now
.
a mountain, now
.
a mouth, now
.
a field, now
.
a horse, now
.
the eye, now
.
the ear, now
.
a chariot, now
.
a boat, now
.
a sheep, now
.
a bow, now
. The dragon is still a complicated character, and the tortoise

The qualities of objects could only be marked down by arbitrary signs or symbols, which, however, when once settled by convention, were equally expressive with the pictorial resemblances of those objects. Many modifications, however, such, for example, as crooked, straight, above, below, great, little, &c. were capable of being expressed to the eye by particular characters, appropriate to their modifications.

one,
two,
three,
hooked,
covered, sheltered, protected, &c.; but symbolical representations of this kind could not be sufficiently numerous to embrace all the qualities and modifications of objects.

The first attempt at a regular system of classification of the characters which the Chinese had invented for expressing their ideas, is stated to have been that of dividing them into nine classes, called the Lee-shoo, and afterwards into six, called the Lieou-ye. 1st Class contained all those which had been reduced from the rude picture of the object to a more simple form; as the sun, moon, a man, a horse.

2d , Those which pointed out some property belonging to the object; as great, small, above, below.

3d, The combination of two or more simple objects or ideas to produce a third, resulting from their union.

4Z∕z, Those whose names, when sounded, were supposed to imitate the sound of the objects expressed by them.

5th, Those which give an inversion of the meaning by inverting the character; and all those used in a metaphorical sense.

6/7/, This class seems to include all those characters that are merely arbitrary, and which cannot be brought under any of the preceding divisions. We shall explain these classes by examples.

This ill-digested and obscure arrangement was soon abandoned for another not much better, namely, that of classing the characters according to their sounds or names. As these names were all monosyllables, and as each monosyllable began with a consonant, with very few exceptions, and ended with a vowel or liquid consonant, the number of such monosyllables was necessarily very limited; by our alphabet, the whole of them might be expressed in about 330 syllables; but as necessity taught the Chinese to employ in early life the organs of speech and hearing, in acquiring a greater nicety than most nations have any occasion for, they were able to swell the number of their monosyllables, by means of intonations and accentuations, to about 1200 or 1300. As soon, therefore, as the number of characters exceeded the number of words, it is evident that any verbal arrangement must be attended with uncertainty and confusion; if, for instance, they had 10,000 characters and only 1250 words, the same word must be applied to eight different characters; and as the latter now, in Kaung-hee’s Dictionary, exceeds 40,000, each syllable in the Chinese language must, on an average, represent thirty-two different characters; and, in point of fact, there are syllables that give the same name to sixty or eighty different characters.

It is difficult to conceive, therefore, without the assistance of an alphabet, how they could possibly contrive to class the characters in a dictionary according to their names, and by what means they could ascertain the name of a character which speaks only to the eye. To discover this, they seem to have had recourse to three different methods. The first was to place at the head of a list of characters, [7:6:564]having the same sounds, some common well-known character, and to mark them severally with their respective intonations. The second method was that which is still used in all their dictionaries. It consists in writing after the character whose sound is sought for, two common characters, of which the initial sound of the first, added to the final sound of the latter, produces a third; as from the m of moo and the in g of tsing, is compounded the third or new monosyllable ming ; and, in the same way, from ting and he would be formed tc, &c. The two characters, so employed, are called tse-moo, or “mother characters,” and the third produced from them tse, or “the child.” The third method was, by means of a modified Sanscrit alphabet, or series of sounds, which was introduced into China since the Christian era, by some priests of Buddh, “to give currency,” says one writer, “to the books of Fo.” This system is described in the introduction to Kaung-hee’s Dictionary, though it is never used, and but very little understood. The Chinese, indeed, reprobate the idea of changing their beautiful characters for foreign systems, unknown to their forefathers. “It appears to me,” says one of their writers, “that the people of Tsan (Thibet, from whence they derived the system of initials and finals) distinguish sounds; and with them the stress is laid on the sounds, not on the letters. Chinese distinguish the characters, and lay the stress on the characters, not on the sounds; hence in the language of Tsan there is an endless variety of sound, with the Chinese there is an endless variety of the character. In Tsan, the principles of sound excite an admiration, but the letters are destitute of beauty; in China, the characters are capable of ever-varying intelligible modifications, but the sounds arc not possessed of nice and minute distinctions. The people of Tsan prefer the sounds, and what they obtain enters the car; the Chinese prefer the beautiful character, and what they obtain enters the eye.” And the Chinese arc right; for, unless with their character they gave up their monosyllables, they might almost as well have no written language at all; as, if written alphabetically, it would be wholly unintelligible. The written character assists their meagre monosyllables, an alphabet would completely destroy them. The written character, however, has probably been the means of fixing the spoken language in its primitive monosyllabic form, as the least change or inflexion of the spoken language must at once and for ever destroy the connection between it and the written character; and this connection, by the way, is no mean proof of the antiquity of the present symbols. (Pref, to Morrison’s Dictionary ; Barrow’s Travels in China.}

These symbols are now reduced to a regular and complete system, which renders the study of the language comparatively easy. A certain number of characters have been selected, which the Chinese call Tse-poo, “superintending or directing characters,” and sometimes Shoo-moo, or the “eyes of the book,” which, considering them as composing an index to the book, is no bad name. The Jesuits have given them the name of keys, and sometimes elements or radicals, there being no character in the whole language, into the composition of which some one or other of them does not enter. This number, according to the classification now in general use, consists of two hundred and fourteen, and they are divided into seventeen chapters or classes; beginning with those keys or elements that are composed or formed of one stroke of the pencil, and ending with those (of which there is only one) composed of seventeen strokes. Plates CLVIII. CLIX. CLX., comprehend the whole of these keys or elements, with their several names and significations. When these two hundred and fourteen keys or elements have once become familiar to the eye, there is no great difficulty in detecting them in any of the characters into which they may enter, and without some one or more of which no character can be formed. They will be found to stand more frequently on the left side than on any other part of the character, though they also take their stations sometimes on the right, sometimes in the middle, frequently at the top, and occasionally at the bottom; but a little practice and a ready knowledge of these keys will point them out at once. Thus, in

1.

peen, “convenient,” the key, jin, “man,” is on the left.

2.

tsoo, “ to assist,” has the key, lee, on the right.

3.

tseun, “ the whole,” has the key, jοο, at the top.

4.

ping, “a soldier,” has the key, pa, at the bottom.

5.

gai, “to love,” has its key, sin, in the middle of the compound.

The dictionaries are divided into seventeen sections, headed respectively by the seventeen classes or keys, commencing with that class which has its keys of one stroke, and ending with that which is composed of seventeen strokes. The characters which each key governs, or to which it serves as the index, are also divided into classes, according to the number of strokes they contain, beginning at one, and proceeding regularly to the greatest number that any one is found to contain, exclusive of the hey ; and this number, together with the key character, being marked at the top of every page in the dictionary, affords a clue by which any character in the language may be turned to immediately, having first ascertained the hey, and the number of strokes in the remaining part of that character. Thus, in the above examples, the character peen will be found under the key jin, and in the seventh section, there being seven strokes exclusive of the key; in the second, under the fifth section of the index lee ; the third under the fourth section of the index jοο ; the fourth under the fifth section of the key pa; and the fifth under the ninth section of the index sin.

This classification of the characters is extremely simple and easy; the chief object of it would appear indeed to be, like the Linnaean system, that of giving facility to the finding in the dictionary the character that may be wanted. The nature of Chinese symbols admitted, however, of a more beautiful, perfect, and philosophical arrangement, and might, indeed, have been made the most rational and complete system of pasigraphy or universal character that has yet been attempted. It would seem, indeed, that the Chinese had this idea once in view; but, either through ignorance, pride, or caprice, they have entirely marred the plan, and nearly lost sight of it altogether. In the original adoption of the shoo-moo, or “book’s eyes,” namely, the poo or keys, they selected no less than 479 to serve as indices to the characters, the whole of which were marshalled under nine divisions. The first had a few only, consisting of a single line. The second embraced celestial objects, as the sky or firmament, the sun, moon, stars, clouds, rain, thunder. The third, terrestrial objects, as [7:6:565]earth, water, metals, hills, rivers; the fourth, man, and all the animal functions; the fifth, moving things, including all the rest of the animal creation; the sixth, the vegetable world; the seventh, productions of art and human industry; the eighth, miscellaneous; and the ninth, characters of a double genus, whose classification could not well be ascertained. Though this was a complicated, and in some degree an arbitrary classification, yet it comprehended a principle which, if it had been adhered to in simplifying the arrangement of the characters, the Chinese might have challenged the world to produce so beautiful and so philosophical a language as their own. This system, called the Leu-shoo, is that stated by Dr Morrison to have been invented by Paou-she.

After this the 479 keys or elementary characters were reduced to 214, and the characters themselves arranged under six divisions, as before mentioned, the nature of which will be best explained by a few examples to each; and they will tend to show how much more might have been accomplished in this practical approach to an universal character.

lst Class. The rude representation of the object may now be considered as no longer existing; but this class consists generally of simple characters, and almost all the great objects of nature are found among the keys or elements which enter into their composition: this may be called the Imitative Class.

2d Class. Under this class are comprehended those characters which point out the quality or property of an ob ject, as shang, above.

shea, below.

Thus also ye, one, is used to represent unity, con cord, and the like; kuan, straight, upright; quay, hooked; and generally characters whose meaning can be extended, in a metaphorical sense, as far as the object represented would admit of being so applied; as, for instance, a line drawn through a square thus,

, signifies middle, or any thing divided into two parts; while the same character, in a figurative sense, expresses moral rectitude, good dispositions, and so forth. This class may therefore be called the figurative.

3d Class. Under this class might have been ranked all those compound characters which, if the numbers were properly selected, would have given that peculiar beauty and expression to the language which, even in its clumsy and imperfect state, the Chinese still pretend to feel, by employing significant characters, each of which should be connected with the idea to be conveyed by their union. One half of the language, at least, might have been thus composed, and might have presented a series of symbols, every one of which would have been intelligible to the eye; whereas not one sixth part at the most, some say not one tenth, of the compounds, have any relation to their component parts. A few examples will serve to show how much might have been done by attending to a philosophical composition of the compounded characters. Thus, jin, man, and yen, word, forms the compound sin, sincere:

je, the sun, and yue, the moon, ming, splendour:

tchung, middle, and sin, heart, fidelity:

jin, man, and tien, a field, tien, a farmer:

tien, a field, and lee, strength, nan, male kind:

cul, the ear, and tchei, to stop, chee, shame:

koo, mouth, and kin, gold, kin, volubili ty of speech:

yen, word, and skee, temple, shee, verses, poetry:

fen, to divide, and pci, riches, pin, poverty:

yu, an enclo sure, and man, cheu, a prisoner:

ho, rice, and koo, mouth, comfort:

ye, one, and ta, great, tien, heaven or God:

teheou, a bamboo, and a slap, chee, to govern:

keu, high, and ma, horse, klιeu, proud.

4th Class. The characters arranged under this class are such as embrace both the meaning of the object and the sound it is supposed to utter; and it includes objects animate and inanimate. The characters are all compounded of one of the elements to express the genus, added to one imitative of the sound uttered by the object. Thus, shuee, water, added to koonq, forms the character kyang, which denotes a rapid stream, expressive, as they say, of water rushing with violence; and ho, a river, with shuee, water, makes the compound ho, a river, the name of which is said to imitate the sound. To this class may also be added those objects in the animal kingdom whose generic character [7:6:566]can be expressed by one of the elements, and the spccics by some other character that shall convey its name merely by the sound of the latter character. If, for instance, to the generic character, bird, be added another character whose name and sound is go, the new compound will also be named go, and will signify a goose; if to the same character bird be added another named ya, the compound will be also ya, and will signify a duck ; if to the generic character tree, be added the appellative pe, the compound will be named pe, and signify a cypress; with tao, it will be called tao, and signify a walnut tree; and with Reou it will retain the name of Reou, and signify a willow. In this class may also be comprehended all foreign names written in the Chinese characters, to which, in order to mark them as destitute of meaning, they usually annex on the left side the character signifying mouth. Thus the English word strong would require three characters, se-te-lung, and, with the mouth prefixed, would be written thus, se te lung ; but these charac ters, if the mouth was taken away, would be read by a Chinese, the magistrate procured a dragon.

5th Class. Consists of an inversion of the sense by an inversion of the whole or some part of the character; or it alters the meaning by giving a different name to the same character; or, lastly, the characters which compose it are used in a figurative or metaphorical sense. An European cannot readily comprehend the illusions or allegories that are frequently contained in a single character, though probably they are not more numerous than those which are found in any of the languages of Europe, rendered easy, and indeed not perceived, by early habit. The combined characters of the sun and moon, which, in a physical sense, expressed brightness, brilliancy 7 , splendour, are also, in a moral or metaphorical sense, noble, illustrious, famous. The characters heart and dead form a third, which signifies forgetfulness ; fickleness or levity is represented by a girl and thought ; attention, by the heart and totality; antiquity, by mouth and the numeral ten ; to flatter, is compounded of word and to lick ; to boast, of a mountain and to speak. The wife of a magistrate is used metaphorically for an accomplislιed lady, a wild boar for courage, a tiger for ferocity : and so of others. It may be observed, however, that these compounds are disregarded by the Chinese in general, just as many words in the European languages are in common use, without any reference to their etymology.

6th Class. These characters are either arbitrary, or formed out of some distant or local allusion, most of which are inexplicable to the Chinese themselves. Thus, a bamboo and heaven form a compound, which signifies to laugh ; water and to go, compose a character signifying law ; wood and the sun form the word east; the character woman three times repeated may signify adultery, or communicating with an enemy. These may or may not be arbitrary combinations. We can explain why the compound of wine and seal should signify marriage, from the circumstance of wine being presented by the bridegroom to the bride as the seal to the contract; and why that of girl and upright should signify concubine, or inferior wife, because such a one must stand in the presence of her lord and master; also why that of woman and sickness should signify death, because when the sovereign was sick, and given over by the physicians, he was left to die in the hands of women ; but by far the greater part are utterly inexplicable.

Such, by the Chinese account, is the philosophy of their language; not very clear, it must be confessed, nor exact ly calculated for practical facility; but, at the same time, approximating to a very beautiful system. That system has, to a l certain degree, been preserved in the modern classification under the 214 elements. Thus, under the element or key which signifies heart, we shall find all the characters arranged expressive of the sentiments, passions, and affections of the mind, as grief, joy, love, hatred, anger, and the like. The element water enters into all the compounds which relate to the sea, rivers, lakes, swamps,depth, transparency, and so forth. The key or element plant takes in the whole vegetable kingdom. Yen, a word, enters into the composition of those characters which relate to reading, speaking, studying, debating, consulting, trusting, and the like. The handicraft trades, laborious employments, and a great number of verbs of action, have the element handior their governing character. All this is perfectly intelligible; but, on casting a glance over the elementary characters, it will be seen that fully one half of them are utterly incapable of being formed into any generic arrangement; and one is surprised and puzzled to conjecture by what accident they could possibly have been included among the elementary characters, or even as indices to characters. The fact is, that, of the 214 characters thus employed, not more than 150 can be considered as effective; the rest being very rarely employed in the combination of characters. Of the 40,000 characters, or thereabouts, contained in the standard dictionary of the language, sixty of the elements govern no less than 25,000. The most prolific is the element grass or plants (No. 140), which presides over 1423 characters; the next water (No. 85), which has 1333; then the hand (No. 64), which has 1012. After these follow, in succession, the mouth, heart, and insect, each having about 900; then a word, a man, and metal, each exceeding 700; next a reed or bamboo, a woman, silk, a bird, flesh, mountain, and so on, each governing from 500 to 600. In the modern classification, therefore, of the characters, though probably intended as a more convenient instrument for reference in the dictionaries, so much of the natural arrangement has been preserved as will serve to convey to the eye at once the general meaning of a character; at least of such characters as are governed or fall under any of the principal elements. They have even gone beyond this. Feeling how much more capable of nice discrimination the eye is than the car, the written character has been employed to mark distinctions, which, in an alphabetic language, would be impossible. Instead of the modifications of time, place, age, colour, and the like, by which sensible objects are affected, being expressed by so many epithets or additional characters, in the several stages of their existence, or the lights in which they may be viewed, the Chinese employ only one single character for each several modification of which an object or idea may be susceptible, whether in the physical or intellectual world. Thus they have the key or elementary character for water simply, another under that key for salt water, a third for fresh water, a fourth for muddy water, a fifth for clear water, and so on for running, standing, deep, shallow, and every other qualification that water is capable of receiving; and the same of love, anger, jealousy, ambition, &c. all of which are expressed by their respective symbols, combined with the element heart.

The colloquial language is not less singular than the symbolical characters, being, like the latter, exclusively their own, and having borrowed nothing from, nor lent anything to, the rest of the world. The 330 monosyllables, each beginning generally with a consonant, and ending with a vowel, or liquid, or the double consonant ng, which, as we have observed, complete the catalogue of words in their language, are, by means of four modifications of [7:6:567] sound, or intonation to each syllable, extended to about 1300; beyond which, not one of them is capable of the least degree of inflexion, or change of termination; and the same unchangeable monosyllable acts the part of a noun substantive and adjective, a verb and a participle, according to its collocation in a sentence, or the monosyllables with which it is connected. It is neither affected by number, case, nor gender; mood, tense, nor person; all of which, in speaking, are designated by certain affixes or prefixes to mark the sense. Thus the genitive of love, gai, is expressed by the particle tie set after it, as gai-tié, of love; the dative by eu-gai, to love; and the ablative by tung-gai, by or from love. The plural is expressed sometimes by the repetition of the noun, as yin, a man; gin-yin men; to-yin, many men; to-to-yin, all men. Certain particles of number are also employed before nouns, which vary according to the nature of the noun. Thus man has ho, as san∙ho∙ym, three men; most other animals tehee, as hang-tchee-ma, two horses; bodies with extended surfaces tchiang, as ge-tchiang-telioa, one table. The number of particles so employed amount to about thirty. The final expletive tse is added to nouns, not only to distinguish them from adjectives, but for the sake of euphony; aspie-tse, a pipe; faug-tsé, a house; ga-tse, a chair; the particle tié, the same which designates the genitive of the substantive, is set after the adjective or pronoun; as ta, he, with tie after it, becomes a possessive, ta-tie, his, &c. The gender of nouns is seldom necessary to be expressed in conversation, unless for the sake of removing ambiguity. When this is the case, nan and neu distinguish male from female, as nan-gin, a man; neu-ym, a woman. Adjectives admit of comparison in various ways. Commonly ye-yang is used to express the positive, as ge-yaug-hoa, as good as, or equally good; the preposition heng forms the comparative, as heng-hao, better; and, with the addition of toa following it, the superlative, as hao-toa-heng, the best. A repetition of the positive also marks the superlative, as hao-hαο, very good.

The personal pronouns go, ne, ta, I, thou, he, are made plurals by the addition of mun, as go-mun, ne-mun, tu-nrnn, we, ye, they. Che-ho, this, and no-ho, that, are the demonstratives.

The only tenses of the verb necessary to be distinguished are the present, past, and future. The past is formed by the particle lean set after it, and the future by gau, will or determination, or tchong lai, time to come. Thus, go gαi, I love; gìgai leau, I have loved, or did love; go yαu gai, or go tchang lai gai, I shall hereafter love. The negatives generally in use are mo and poo ; as yeu, to have; mο yeu, not to have; hao, good; poo hao, bad.

Such is the simple and inartificial language spoken by a mass of people equal in number to that of the whole of Europe. Its imperfection must be obvious when it is considered that 40,000 distinct characters are represented by about 1300 monosyllabic sounds; but, as a good composition is intended only to be seen, the particles and expletives necessary in familiar conversation are all omitted. If such writing were read aloud it would scarcely be intelligible, and, at any rate, full of ambiguity. Indeed, it frequently happens, that, in reading a paper, the auditors are assisted by the reader making, with a motion of his hand in the air, or with his fan, the shape of the character, or, at least, the key of it, to remove any ambiguity. This, in conversation, is obviated by the use of certain expletives. For instance, when a man is speaking of his father, which ∖ s>foo, a monosyllable that has seventy or eighty other meanings besides that of father, a Chinese will say fοο-ehin ; and, instead of moo for mother, moo-chin. The syllable clírn, signifying hindred, removes at once all doubt as to the meaning of the speaker; but the chin, in writing, is wholly unnecessary, and would be left out, the character signifyingyhíÄer being totally different from any other ' character that may have the name of foo. A foreigner, not always aware of this, is liable to many equivoques in speaking the language. Thus a missionary, requesting to be allowed to pass the night at a peasant’s house, asked for a young girl to sleep with, when he meant only to ask for a mat ; and another told the emperor he served three wives, when he meant to say so many churches. (Barrow’s Travels in China; Morrison’s Dictionary ; Marshman’s Clams Sinica ; Fourmont’s Aleditationes Sinicae, &c.)

One of the most remarkable features of Chinese policy, is the encouragement given to the cultivation of letters, which are professedly the sole channel of introduction to political advancement in the state, and to the acquirement of office, rank, and honours, of almost every description. The pursuits of literature throw open the highest offices in the state to the lowest of the people; and with a few exceptions of particular favourites, or of Tartars connected by blood with the imperial family, it would appear that honours and offices are generally bestowed according to merit. With the prospect of such rewards, the number of competitors is very great, and a taste for letters is almost universally diffused among all ranks and denominations. Schools abound in every town and village, and the best education that China affords is to be had on the most moderate terms. In every part of the empire certain magistrates are appointed by the government to call before them all candidates for employment, to direct them in their studies, and twice a year to hold public examinations, when small presents are distributed to the most deserving. As a further encouragement to literature, the press is left free to all, and any one may print what he pleases, taking his chance for the consequences. That this unrestrained liberty of the press should exist in one of the most arbitrary governments that is known, is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of nations. No previous license is required, no restrictions are imposed, though the publication of books is made amenable to certain regulations established by law. In general, crimes, and their corresponding punishments, are clearly and minutely defined in the Laws of Cliina ; but the law which regards the press is left, perhaps intentionally, vague and uncertain. According to the Leu-tee, “whoever is guilty of editing wicked and corrupt books, with the view of misleading the people, and whoever attempts to excite sedition by letters or handbills, shall suffer death by being beheaded; the principals shall be executed immediately after conviction, but the accessaries shall be reserved for execution at the usual season.” And further, “all persons who are convicted of printing, distributing, or singing in the streets, such disorderly and seditious compositions, shall be punishable as accessaries.”

These severe laws are by no means a dead letter; numbers have been executed in virtue of them. Three unfortunate authors were punished with death, and their families banished, by that great patron of literature, Kien-lung, in three consecutive years, for publishing books that no European government would have deigned to notice; but political discussions are least of all palatable to despotic governments, and are easily brought under the charge of constructive treason, a crime that in China is never pardoned.

The instances, however, that occur of severity of punishment seem to have little effect in diminishing the number of publications, and are not more hostile to the liberty of the press in China, than the occasional punishment of a jail, for libel, is destructive of that liberty in England. A writer in a popular periodical journal says, that thousands of novels and moral tales, amusing stories, laughable comedies, [7:6:568]moral precepts from ancient sages, and exhortations from living sovereigns; popular songs, fables, and romances; books of receipts to heal the sick and to pamper the appetite; predictions of the weather, and of good or bad luck; manuals of devotion, of religious rites, and rules of good-breeding; almanacs and court calendars, are the lighter sort of publications which issue daily from the press in Pekin, and other great cities of the empire. All ranks in China read, and find it a cheap luxury; the more bulky and expensive works, as those on history, philology, jurisprudence, are sometimes published by subscription, but are supplied to the libraries of the magistrates by the government. Libraries are seldom formed to any great extent by individuals. The grand collections of history, philosophy, and other standard national works, published by the direction of the sovereign, under the superintendence of the Han-lin, are distributed to the princes of the blood, the viceroys of provinces, presidents of departments, and to the learned of the empire, but arc rarely met with in the libraries of private individuals.

We can form no estimate of the state of literature in China, from the paraphrastic translations of ill-chosen books, and the commentaries on them, made by the Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries; the trite morality of Cong-foo-tse and Men-tse; the wise sayings of this emperor, and the wicked doings of that, which are contained in the Ou-hing and the Se-choo, their ancient canonical books, convey no better idea of the state of China or of its literature, than the Domesday Book does of that of England. The Tong-kien-kang-moo, or General History of China, by Père Mailla, may be considered as the most important of missionary translations. Some of the odes of the Shee-hing, by Père Premare, are curious, as exhibiting specimens of their poetry 4000 years ago. The Eloge de Moukden, a poem of the emperor Kien-lung, by Père Amiot, is no bad specimen of modern poetry; for such it is, though, like Ossian, it is unmeasured poetry. Of the merits of his Conquest of the Miao-tsé, by Mr S. Weston, through the medium of a French translation, we are unable to form any just idea. Works on philology, and commentaries on the characters of the languages, are endless; and, on this subject, many curious observations will be found in Père Amiot’s Lettre de Pehirι, and in various parts of the Mem. concernant les Chinois. The little novel of Hao-liiau tchuan, edited by Dr Percy, from the papers of an English supercargo, is so charming a specimen of that kind of writing, as to make us regret that we have not more. The orphan of the house of Tchao was not unworthy of the tragic muse of Voltaire, and yet it was the only specimen of this kind of composition that had appeared in an European dress till a comparatively very recent period. We have now another drama, more closely and more faithfully translated by Mr Davis, taken from the same collection of one hundred dramas in which the Orphan is found. The Mémoire sur l ’ Art Militaires although collected from the works of the greatest generals, was unworthy the trouble bestowed upon it by Pèrc Amiot; the military movements, as there represented, are more suitable for mountebanks, tumblers, and posture-makers, than for soldiers; the Chinese are, in fact, the worst soldiers in the world. The same thing may be observed with regard to his treatise on Chinese music, a farrago of trash, not one word of which either he or his Chinese author understood. We have some curious matter on the rites and ceremonies of the several religious sects in China, by Père 1ntorcetta and La Favre, and on various subjects in the Hist, de l' Académie des Inscript, ct de Belles Lettres, by MM. Ferret and de Guignes; and especially of books translated into Chinese from the Sanscrit, which are to be found in the temples of Fo. These volumes would, no doubt, throw much light on the state of Hindustan before the Mahommedan irruption, which created such havoc and devastation of Hindu literature. It was chiefly with the view of examining these documents, for the better illustration of the history, religion, and literature of India, that Sir William Jones set about learning the Chinese language. De Guignes ascertained that the priests of Fo were in possession of 5400 volumes on the religion of India in the sixth century of the Christian era. Five centuries before this another priest translated twenty-three different books on religion into Chinese, which were lodged in the library of the temple of Sei-gan-foo; and, about the same time, one of a party of pilgrims, who travelled from this city to Benares, from thence to Ceylon, and returned by sea to Canton, published a relation of his travels under the title of Fo-quο∙ kee, a history of the kingdom of Fo, of which there is a copy in the king’s library at Paris. Frequent mention is made in the Tong-hien-hang-moo, and other histories of China, of priests being dispatched into India, in the early periods of the Christian era, for the express purpose of procuring Hindu writings, chiefly those on religion and astronomy; from which it may be concluded, that, if the Hindus really had any thing valuable which perished by Mahommedan bigotry, it may still have survived in China.

Among the works of which a translation would be most desirable, may be mentioned the Tai-tsing-ye-tung-tse, a complete Encyclopaedia of Arts and Sciences, in 200 volumes, published under the sanction, and by the authority, of Kien-lung; for, although we have nothing to expect from the state of science in China, they far surpass all Europe in many arts, and are in possession of others of which Europe is entirely ignorant. The Ta-tsing-hoeidien, another work, containing the whole institutes of this vast empire, with all the regulations of the several departments of government, the whole system of jurisprudence, of revenue and finance, taxation, &c. would afford an interesting picture of this extraordinary nation. Of this curious work, also published by the authority of Kien-lung, there is a very general abstract by M. Cibot, in the fourth volume of Mem. sur les Chinois. This abstract, and the translation of the Ta-tsing-leu-lee, by Sir George Staunton, enable us to form a tolerably correct notion of the machinery by which the multitudinous population of the largest empire on the face of the earth has been uniformly kept in motion, and performed its several functions, for the last four thousand years.

The desiderata of Chinese literature in Europe are some of their lighter productions, which our increasing knowledge of the Chinese language will no doubt soon supply. The dictionary of De Guignes, compiled by the Jesuits; the more important dictionary of Kaung-hee, called the Tse-tien, published in the English language by Dr Morrison; a Chinese Grammar by the same gentleman; and the Clavis Sinica, ponderous as it is, by Dr Marshman, with various translations of these missionaries, have rendered the study of that language so easy, as to leave no excuse for the continuance of that total ignorance which has for nearly two centuries prevailed among the East India Company’s servants stationed in China. If any proof were wanting of the possibility of a speedy acquirement of the Chinese language by a foreigner, the circumstance of Mr Davis having translated several Chinese works, both in poetry and prose, may be adduced as an example in point Before he had been two years in Canton, this gentleman had acquired a sufficient knowledge of the language to enable him, with the occasional assistance of a native, to translate several pieces of poetry, two or three novels, and, which is probably most difficult of all, a Chinese drama, which has since been published in London. Many years ago Sir George Staunton was able to carry on a [7:6:569]correspondence with the officers of government at Canton, translate the Ta-tsing-leu-lce, the journal of a Chinese officer through the vast regions of Tartary, by the Baikal Lake, as far as the Kerghis hordes, near the borders of the Caspian. It corroborates, we understand, in an extraordinary manner, the observations of Bell, which, indeed, were never called in question; and is the more curious, as they both travelled in the same year, and must have crossed each other on the way. Sir George, besides, translated a Chinese drama, and two or three short tales, from a collection called Tsing-tsu, or, “Histories descriptive of the Passions.” Mr Manning also made himself perfect master of the Chinese language in a comparatively short period. We mention these to show that there is neither any difficulty in acquiring a knowledge of the Chinese language, nor want of inducement to prosecute the study of it. Sir George Staunton alone possessed from 3000 to 4000 volumes.

Europeans have been deceived as to the vast number of characters in this language, which was supposed to create its difficulty. In the great dictionary of Kaung-hee there are not more than 40,000 characters, of which about 36,000 only are in use. The lexico of Scapula contains about 44,000 words, Ainsworth’s Dictionary 45,000, and Johnson’s about the same number. The whole works of Confucius contain only about 3000 different characters. The Leu-lee may have, in the whole, about 100,000 characters, but not more than 1860 different ones throughout the whole work. Where, then, can there possibly be any difficulty?

The origin of Chinese poetry is indicated by the component parts of the character employed to express it,— words of the temple, — short-measured sentences, delivered as instructions to the people such are those in the ancient writings, and such chiefly are the moral maxims of Confucius. It is so far from being true, as Grozier flippantly asserts, “that a learned man writing good verses would be considered in the same light as a dragoon officer playing well on the fiddle,” that there are few men having any pretensions to learning who do not write verses. The several odes and didactic poems of Kien-lung were quite sufficient to make poetry fashionable, if there were no taste for it among the people; but all are fond of poetry. We have before us the translation of part of an Ode on England and London, written by a common Chinese servant, brought over by a gentleman from Canton, in which are many just observations, with accurate and concise descriptions. The climate, he says, is cold, and people live close to fires; and the houses are so lofty, that you may pluck the stars. Kaung-hee made the same observation to the Jesuits, and supposed that Europeans lived, like birds, in the air, for want of space to build upon. Our Chinese proceeds to say, that the virtuous read their sacred book, and (ρe lee to Got) pray to God; that they hate the French, and are always fighting with them; that the little girls have red cheeks, and the ladies are fair as the white gem; that husbands and wives love each other; that the playhouses are shut in the day and open at night; that the players are handsome, and their performance delightful. The nature of the character is well adapted to that expressive kind of poetry which pleases the eye of a Chinese, by selecting such as are most comprehensive, or such as allude to some ancient custom, or such as can be used in a metaphorical sense: for instance, “the rushing of water down a precipice roars like thunder,” is expressed by a single character; and that which signifies “happiness,” reminds him, by its component parts, of his guardian angel, of the benefits of union and concord, and of plenty, signified by a mouth over a cultivated field. The intercalary moon is expressed by the character king placed in that of gate, because on such an occasion it was the ancient custom for the king to stand in the door. Thus, also, a man and word express fidelity ; fire and water, calamity ; eye and water, tears ; heart, truth, and words, sincerity ; word and nail, a bargain; beauty and goodness are signified by a character composed of a young virgin and an infant; a flatterer, oi word and to lick ; a kingdom is expressed by a square or space, within which is a mouth and weapons, alluding, perhaps, to arms and counsel, being the best protection of a state. But though the sense of seeing seems to be that which is rather addressed in Chinese poetry than the sense of hearing, yet they have their rules both of rhyme, and measure, and quantity, the last of which is given by the tones or accentuations, which are entirely modern. Mr Davies has recently published a very curious work, in which he enters into a critical examination of the rules, and the merits, and the defects of Chinese poetry. Among the specimens of ancient poetry from the Shoo-hing, the following is an address of the emperor Chun to his ministers :—
Koo, koong khée tsaiz,
Yuen shyeu kliée tsai
Puh koong hee tsai.
When the chief ministers delight in their duty,
The sovereign rises to successful exertion,
A multitude of inferior officers ardently co-operating.

To which the ministers responded in the same strain :—
Yuen shyeu ming tsai
Koo koong lyang tsai
Sbyu tsé khang tsai.
When the sovereign is wise,
The ministers are faithful to their trust,
And all things happily succeed.

The Shee-king, or collection of odes, upwards of three hundred in number, is of a higher strain, one of which, on marriage, has been beautifully versified by Sir William Jones. The lines consist of no definite number of syllables, some containing three, some seven, but the greater part are limited to four. The rhyme is equally irregular, some having none, in others every line terminating with the same word; sometimes six lines rhyme in a stanza of eight, occasionally four, three, and sometimes only the first and last. Four lines in the stanza, and four characters in each line, seem to be the most common measure in ancient poetry; but many odes of the Shee-king extend the stanza to eight, ten, or twelve lines. At present, five and seven characters are the most common number in the line; the former having the stanza of sixteen, the latter generally of eight; the rhyme seems to be entirely arbitrary. There is not much sublimity of mind or depth of thought in these odes; but they abound with many touches of nature, and are exceedingly interesting and curious, as showing how little change time has effected in the manners and sentiments of this singular people. A number of rules with regard to the tones have recently been introduced, which would require more space to describe than they seem to deserve. As a didactic poem, the Eloge de Mouhden of Kien-lung appears by no means to be destitute of merit; it is considered, in the Chinese, to be highly poetical, though not written in measured lines; and it contains much beautiful description. His Ode on Tea is of a humbler cast; and some lines on Tea-cups, generally ascribed to him, are, in an English dress we have seen, absolute nonsense. The translator has, in fact, mistaken the whole meaning.

We give the following from Grozier’s collection, as no unfavourable specimen of modern poetry. It maybe called the Contented Philosopher.
[7:6:570]

“My palace is a little chamber, thrice my own length; finery never entered it, and neatness never left it. My bed is a mat, and the coverlid a piece of felt; on these I sit by day, and sleep by night. A lamp is on one side, and on the other a pot of perfume. The singing of birds, the rustling of the breeze, the murmuring of a brook, are the only sounds that I hear. My window will shut, and my door open,—but to wise men only; the wicked shun it. I shave not, like a priest of Fo; I fast not, like the Tao-tsé. Truth dwells in my heart, innocence guides my actions. Without a master, and without a scholar, I waste not my life in dreaming of nothings, and in writing characters, still less in whetting the edge of satire, or in trimming words of praise. I have no views, no projects. Glory has no more charms for me than wealth, and all the pleasures of the world cost me not a single wish. The enjoyment of ease and solitude is my chief concern. Leisure surrounds me, and bustle shuns me. I contemplate the heavens, and am fortified. I look on the earth, and am comforted. I remain in the world without being in it. One day leads on another, and one year is followed by another; the last will conduct me safe to port, and I shall have lived for myself.”

Dramatic entertainments are in China, as in Europe, closely connected with poetry. The songs and recitative, in the lighter pieces, abound with characters of double meaning and equivocal expression; but are generally so contrived that, while the written characters shall bear one sense, the sound shall convey to the ear another; and these subterfuges are resorted to in order to avoid that punishment which the magistrates would be compelled to inflict for a breach of the law respecting public decorum, in the publication or exhibition of any thing directly and unequivocally obscene; and yet real life is represented on the stage, without any of its polish or embellishments. All acts, however infamous or horrible, are exhibited on the stage,—a murder or an execution. Whether the culprit be condemned to die by the cord, by decollation, by being cut into ten thousand pieces, or by being flayed alive, the spectators must be indulged with a sight of the operation. Nor do they stop here. Those functions of animal life over which decency requires a veil to be thrown, are exhibited in full display; many of them so gross and indelicate, so coarse in the dialogue, and so indecent in the scenic representation, that foreigners who have witnessed them have retired from the theatre in disgust.

It is no excuse that these obscene exhibitions were performed for the amusement of foreigners, whom they are pleased to consider as barbarians. The representation of real life, in its ugliest dress and most hateful deformities, could only be conceived by a people of depraved habits and a vicious taste. Of the court exhibitions we have amusing descriptions in the journals of Lord Macartney, Van Braam, and De Guignes. Lord Macartney describes the theatrical entertainments to consist of great variety, tragical as well as comical; some historical, and others of pure fancy, “partly in recitative, partly in singing, and partly in plain speaking, without any accompaniment of instrumental music, but abounding in battles, murders, and most of the usual incidents of the drama.” The grand pantomime followed, the subject of which his lordship conceived to be “The Marriage of the Ocean and the Earth. The latter exhibited her various riches and productions, dragons, and elephants, and tigers, and eagles, and ostriches, oaks and pines, and other trees of different kinds. The ocean was not behind hand, but poured forth on the stage the wealth of his dominions, under the figures of whales and dolphins, porpoises, and leviathans, and other sea monsters, besides ships, rocks, shells, sponges, and corals, all performed by concealed actors, who were quite perfect in their parts, and performed their characters to admiration.” These marine and land productions paraded about for a while, when the whale, waddling forward to the front of the stage, took his station opposite to the emperor’s box, and spouted out of his mouth into the pit several tons of water. “This ejaculation,” says his lordship, “was received with the highest applause; and two or three of the great men at my elbow desired me to take particular notice of it, repeating at the same time, Hac, hung hao! charming, delightful !" After this, they were entertained with tumbling, wire-dancing, and posture-making; and the amusements of the morning concluded with various fire-works, which were much admired for their novelty, neatness, and ingenious contrivance.

The Dutch ambassadors were chiefly entertained by the feats of jugglers and posture-makers; after which there was a kind of pantomimic performance, the principal characters of which were men dressed in skins, and going on all fours, intended to represent wild beasts. After them were a parcel of boys habited like mandarins, who were to hunt these animals. “This extraordinary chase, and the music and the rope-dancing, put the emperor into such good humour, that he rewarded the performers very liberally; and the ladies behind some Venetian blinds appeared, from their tittering, to be equally well entertained.”

An eclipse happened, which kept the emperor and his mandarins the whole day devoutly praying the gods that the moon might not be eaten up by the great dragon that was hovering about her; and the next day a pantomime was performed, exhibiting the battle of the dragon and the moon, and in which two or three hundred priests, bearing lanterns at the end of long sticks, dancing and capering about, sometimes over the plain, and then over chairs and tables, bore no mean part.

The dramatic representation of the eclipse of the moon is thus described by De Guignes: “ A number of Chinese, placed at the distance of six feet from one another, now entered, bearing two long dragons of silk or paper painted blue, with white scales, and stuffed with lighted lamps. These two dragons, after saluting the emperor with due respect, moved up and down with great composure, when the moon suddenly made her appearance, upon which they began to run after her. The moon, however, fearlessly placed herself between them; and the two dragons, after surveying her for some time, and concluding apparently that she was too large a morsel for them to swallow, judged it prudent to retire, which they did with the same ceremony as they entered. The moon, elated with her triumph, then withdrew with prodigious gravity, a little flushed, however, with the chase which she had sustained.”

It is not easy to reconcile the admission of these puerile absurdities and gross indelicacies on the stage, where regular dramas of a higher order exist, and comedians are trained up to perform them, unless it be that their thorough contempt for foreigners induces them to think any thing good enough for their entertainment. The dialogue in the regular drama is uttered in a kind of whining recitative, full of querulous cadences, which are drowned generally in a crash of trumpets, cymbals, gongs, and the kettle-drum. The passions, as in the Italian opera, are mostly expressed in song. If a fight ensues, each of the combatants sings a stanza, and then falls to, and during the combat the instruments of music keep up a most tremendous noise.

Comedians are not much esteemed, if we may judge from the statute against actresses; and yet it is said that [7:6:571]Kien-lung’s mother was on the stage; since which, the parts of females are performed by eunuchs and boys, the latter of whom are regularly bound apprentices to the trade. Pekin is said to have about a hundred different companies, and each company to consist of fifty persons and upwards, composed of speakers, musicians, tumblers, and jugglers, so as to suit all tastes. They live in passage boats, in which they are conveyed from place to place. There are no regular theatres, but players are hired by the wealthy at so much by the day. They are said to be ready at any moment to perform any play that may be fixed upon, out of a list seldom short of 100. These are the sorts of plays performed before their countrymen, and not the trash which they exhibit before foreigners at the court and at the sea-port town of Canton. The translation of An Heir in his Old Age, by Mr Davis, is calculated to give rather a favourable opinion of the Chinese drama. It consists of five regular acts; it has plot and character; the action is simply one, and never stands still. It is deficient in wit, but not in sentiment, and the several characters are well preserved. It is, in short, a story that may commonly occur in a family, thrown into action instead of being merely told, and the catastrophe is quietly and naturally brought about.

Many of their dramas, however, are full of bustle and business, and abound with incident. They are generally representations of real life, and contain sometimes the whole life and adventures of an individual, some great sovereign, or celebrated general; a history, in fact, thrown into action, not unlike that “Lamentable tragedy, mixed full of pleasant mirth, conteyning the life of Cambyses king of Percia, from the beginning of his kingdom unto his death.” The argument of a drama of this kind was found among Mr Wilkinson’s papers. An aged matron and her son (the hero of the piece) being reduced to poverty, are driven to the necessity of asking alms for their support. An officer’s daughter, finding them of good parentage and education, gives money to the son, and engages the mother to attend on her. The son hires himself to serve in a tea-house kept by an old woman and her daughter. A rakish young officer, liking the daughter, gains the consent of the old woman to take her into his house, but the girl rejects the offer. He then sends his servants to carry her off by force, but the new servant rescues her. The officer lays an accusation against him; he is carried before a magistrate, who orders him a flogging, and to wear the cangue or wooden collar. Not satisfied with this, the young officer sends out his people with cudgels to beat him to death. Unable, on account of the collar, to reach his mouth, they find the young girl giving him food. His hands, however, being at liberty, he lays about him on all sides, and, by a sudden whirl of his wooden ruff, the corner of it strikes the young officer on the head and kills him on the spot. The head man of the street takes him and the young woman into custody, carries them before a magistrate, who releases the young man, but takes the girl of the tea-shop into his own house, from which she is suffered to escape by his wife. The superior magistrate of the district being informed of the death of the young officer, and that the girl of the teahouse was the chief cause of it, sends an order to the inferior magistrate, who had taken her into his house, to deliver her up; but she is nowhere to be found; and, in the greatest dismay, this inferior magistrate orders his .servants to go out and seize any woman they meet with and carry her before the superior magistrate. They find, in a temple, the officer’s daughter first mentioned, with the old woman, who had fled from home on her father being disgraced, and all his goods and family seized. She is hurried away before the magistrate, and, in the supposition of her being the tea-house girl, sentenced to lose her head. Being carried to the place of execution at midnight, she is recognized by the old matron’s son, who was among the spectators, and who, by seizing the officer’s sword, attacks the executioner, and rescues the young lady; but they are speedily taken, and both ordered for execution; the truth, however, is discovered, and the magistrate who played off the trick suffers in their stead. This superior magistrate, however, falls in love with the lady, and proposes to take her for his βrst or legitimate wife, and hires the young man for his servant. The lady peremptorily refuses, upon which she is ordered to be beaten by the servants till she lies for dead, and the young man is directed to carry the body and throw it into the river. He lays her on the bank, covers her with his cloak, and goes to buy a coffin, as his last act of gratitude for one who had relieved his mother and himself in their distress. A boat approaching, and finding a woman thus bestowed, carries her off to serve the Tartar queen in her wars against the Chinese; this same people, it seems, having already carried off the old matron and the young girl of the tea-shop. Our hero returning and missing the body, falls in great distress. However, he tells his master he has obeyed his commands, who by this time has learned whose daughter he had thus cruelly treated; and, to prevent further mischief, he engages his new servant (the hero of the piece) to put to death her father, instead of which he reveals the whole to the father, and they concert together and put to death his master. The hero then flies to the wars against the Tartars; and it being the custom (or the Chinese thinking so) for the women to fight, he encounters his-own mother, the young lady who relieved her, and the girl of the tea-shop, on which discovery he suffers himself to be taken prisoner by the Tartars, is brought before the queen, who, on hearing the story, sets the three Chinese women at liberty, and commits them to his care. They all return to China; they find the father of the young lady restored to his rank and honours, who bestows his daughter on the hero of the piece; and the other young woman of the tea-shop is provided for by his taking her for a second wife. By the emperor’s patent he is created a great mandarin for the service he has performed, receives the suitable habit for himself and his two wives, and the congratulations of all their friends. (Macartney; Staunton; Barrow; De Guignes; Missionary Communications in Du Halde; Grozier, Mem. sur le Chinois, &c.)

As connected with the drama, the state of Chinese music may next be considered. Detestable as Europeans must find the very best of this music, such is the force of habit or prejudice, that the Chinese are as fond of their own as a Highlander is of the bagpipe. Their ancient writers ascribe to it all those extraordinary and extravagant effects of softening the manners and promoting civilization, taming wild beasts, moving rocks and stones, and, in short, performing all the wonders which have been related of the strains of Orpheus and the lyre of Amphion. The Şhoo-king says, that the emperor Chun considered music as one of the most efficient engines of government, and a test for proving the national character. Confucius was so astounded with one of the old airs, that he could neither eat nor drink, and for three months could think of nothing else. In the book of Odes it is remarked, that, while the Institutes of the empire continue to be observed, and music to be cultivated, China will remain a mighty and invincible nation. And one of the early emperors has this remark: “would you conquer your enemies without bloodshed, diffuse among them songs set to tender and voluptuous melodies, to soften their minds and enervate their bodies, and then, by sending among them plenty of women, your conquest will be complete.” [7:6:572]Dr Burney has well observed, that the more barbarous the age and the music, the more powerful its effects:

For still the less they understand,

The more they admire the slight of hand.

In China the music is still barbarous enough, whatever the people may be who can admire it. It has neither science nor system; but from a strange confused account given by Pcre Amiot, of the generation and true dimensions of the tones (not one word of which, as he afterwards acknowledges, he could understand), the Abbé Roussier concludes, that, like the music of the Greeks, it appears to be the remaining fragments of a complete system, belonging to a people more ancient than either of them. It will, perhaps, be safer to follow Dr Burney’s conclusion, “that, from all the specimens he had seen of Chinese music (and he quotes Dr Lind, who resided some time in China, in support of bis opinion), all the melodies of this nation have a very strong analogy to the old Scottish tunes that “the Chinese scale is very Scottish that “both resemble in their melodies the songs of ancient Greece and that, “the music of all three ought to be considered as natural music.”

The Chinese airs are almost invariably sung in slow movements, generally plaintive, and mostly of a querulous or complaining cast; and they are always accompanied by some stringed instrument in the shape of a guitar. They make use, in singing, of so many shakes, their airs abound with so many half and quarter tones, that they are dull, drawling, and drowsy.

Their gamut consists of five natural tones, which they distinguish by five characters of the language, and two semitones; but they use neither lines nor spaces to note down their music. They however, write flown in succession the characters or notes in a column, as they arc played, though it does not appear that they pay any attention in marking the time, the key, the mode of expression, or the like, but acquire their airs by dint of labour and imitation. Their gamut for instrumental music is so imperfect, and the keys so inconsistent, wandering from flats to sharps, and the contrary, that they are under the necessity of being steadied and directed by a bell or cymbal. They always play, or endeavour to play, in unison, having no idea of counterpoint and parts in music. The band of Lord Macartney, on this account, afforded them no pleasure, except when it played some simple air, such as “Malbrook,” or the national song of“God save the King.” Some of their instruments, however, do occasionally rise to the octave in the accompaniment. The wind instruments are in general shrill, harsh, and discordant; the drums, bells, cymbals, and other pulsatory instruments, loud and jarring; and the stringed instruments meagre and jingling. The sweetest instrument is a small organ, made of unequal reeds stuck into the upper surface of a hollow cup of wood, of which there are numbers in this country, but for which Dr Burney tried in vain to adapt a scale. This we believe to be the same tibia which that literary coxcomb Isaac Vossius maintained to be superior to all the instruments of modern Europe.

As a favourable specimen of Chinese music, the following national song of Moo-lee-wha is here inserted:

This air was played by Lord Amherst’s band, and delighted the Chinese more than any other.

It may be added, that the affected gravity of Chinese manners, and their unsocial life, are unfavourable to the cultivation of music, which cannot be expected to arrive even at a state of mediocrity, among a people who rarely assemble together, who take no enjoyment in the amusement of dancing, and whom the loves and the graces have not as yet condescended to visit.

In a country where every kind of luxury is discouraged, and some of them constitute a crime, where property is so precarious as rarely to descend to three generations, and where the useful only is affected to be considered as valuable, no great progress can be looked for in the fine arts. For the same reason that their poetry is deficient in invention, imagination, and dignity of sentiment, and thcir music of harmony, the sister art of painting is wanting in all the requisites that are considered to be necessary to form a good picture. Indeed it could not well be otherwise, as, independently of their contracted ideas, they offend against every principle of perspective, which, with the effects produced by a proper disposition of light and shade, they affect to consider as unnatural. That it is not from want of talent that their drawings and paintings are so extravagantly outré, is sufficiently proved by the facility and accuracy with which the painters of Canton copy any picture put into their hands, whether on paper, glass, or canvass; and, so far from the Abbé Grozier’s Parisian idea being true, that their best works are executed in Pekin, the very reverse is the case; all the arts, manufactures, even down to common printing, being worse executed in the capital than in any other city of the empire: and the reason is obvious enough; for the moment that a man acquires a superior reputation, he is summoned to the palace, where, within its spacious precincts, his talents must be exercised for the emperor alone. Here their arts and manufactures remain stationary, while the artists of Canton, being in the habit of copying from better models, are superior to any that the imperial palace can boast. It is all very well for a Chinese to pretend that the ancients greatly excelled the moderns in the art of painting, and to produce examples in their books of one painter having drawn on the palace walls some hawks so very natural that the little birds, afraid to approach, flew screaming away; and of another having painted a door oh a wall, the deception of which was so complete, that people endeavoured to go through it: but why 7 should the Jesuits repeat these idle stories as if they were facts? or why should we be told that the Chinese would be good sculptors if the art was not prohibited by the government? which is so far from being true, that in every temple, bridge, and burying-ground, may be seen all manner of grotesque figures of men, women, quadrupeds, and other creatures, that never existed but in the sculptor’s imagination; and these we have abundantly in all manner of materials, wood, stone, metals, and baked clay. Individual objects they can paint with great accuracy; and in a composition each individual object is represented as close to the eye. Thus the leaves of trees, however distant, are distinctly represented; and objects in the back-ground are painted of the [7:6:573]same size with those of the same kind in the fore-ground, which they absurdly contend to be proper, because they arc so in nature. It may be doubted whether the most skilful European artist can excel a Chinese in painting a bird or a reptile, an insect, a fish, or a flower; so correct is he to nature, that not one plumula of a feather, nor a single scale of a fish, escapes him, and every shade and tint of colour is minutely imitated. It is strange that a man of Pauw’s sagacity should suffer his judgment to be so warped as to assign the “singular disposition of their optical organs” as the cause which prevented the Chinese from becoming good painters. As little truth is there in his assertion, that they are unable to copy from good models, without falling into their own style, and converting European cyes, ears, and noses, into those of a Chinese; they are the most servile imitators on earth. A Chinese will imitate the likeness of any object in shape, colour, and proportion. Though when left to himself he has no mind to convey the idea of distance, solidity, expression, and magnitude of objects, by fore-shortening, .perspective, and a due distribution of light and shade, yet he will copy them all in a picture with scrupulous accuracy.

Sculpture has been thought by some to date its improvements, if not its origin, from monumental edifices. No country can boast a greater number or variety of objects of this nature than China; but, like the rest of its edifices, they are totally destitute of the character of solidity and duration. A few monsters, or distorted forms of men and domestic animals, generally moulded in clay, are sometimes placed among the tombs, but they are wholly undeserving of notice. In cutting wood, in forming the root of a plant into the shape of human beings, quadrupeds, or monsters, they suceeed better, and communicate to the features or to the action a high degree of expression; the same things occur in metal and in porcelain; but the human figure is always clothed, and a naked statue never seen. Some of the gigantic clay figures in the temples are by no means void of character and expression, and the images cut in stone, which sometimes adorn the avenues to the palaces, the gates of cities, and the parapets of bridges, monstrous as they generally are, show that, by proper encouragement and instruction, they are capable of producing something better; but they seem to be deficient in taste and feeling, and to possess no general ideas of the beauties of nature. Content with the representation of individuality, the imagination is never called into play; they servilely imitate what appears before them, with all its beauties and all its blemishes. They are deficient neither in ingenuity nor in dexterity. They engrave with a tool on copper, on silver, or on wood, as well, generally speaking, as the same kind of work can be executed in any part of Europe; and they are expert enough as lapidaries, in cutting all sorts of precious stones. They use spectacles made of cryal.

It is somewhat remarkable that a government so long and so firmly established, and a population so numerous and civilized, should at no period of its history have constructed a building, public or private, that could deserve the least attention or admiration for its form, solidity, or magnitude, or that could possibly resist the action of two or three centuries; such is the obstinate and inveterate adherence of this people to ancient usage, which has narrowed and confined their ideas in the construction of their dwellings to the primitive tent. Perhaps, however, the want o permanent security to private property may have operated against the construction of solid and expensive edifices, and confined them to the less durable materials of half-burnt brieks, mud, clay, and wood. This is more likely to be the ease than the absurd and ridiculous reason assigned by Grozier, that the heat and moisture of the southern provinces, and the rigorous cold of the northern ones, would render buildings of marble *and other stone unhealthy and scarcely habitable; and that the same reasons equally operate against a number of stories, as the second and third would not be habitable. If the Abbé Grozier had passed but a single summer’s day under the roof of one of the magnificent stone buildings of Calcutta, and another under a Chinese tent, he would not have committed such nonsense to paper. From the want of windows in their houses to the street, and from the small courts behind being barricadoed by high walls, which overtop the roofs, and conceal the dwellings from adjoining courts, it may perhaps be concluded that privacy, and jealousy of their women, have been the causes that prevent the Chinese from building second and third stories to their dwelling-houses. The missionaries, however, have assigned the frequent earthquakes in the northern provinces as the cause of the lowness of the houses and slightness of the materials; as if men would speculate, over a whole empire of unparalleled extent, on a contingency which might never happen, and which, when it had happened, was confined to certain limits. The eruptions of Vesuvius have not prevented the inhabitants of Naples from building palaces, much less the Russians from rebuilding Moscow; though the distance between these two cities is not greater than that of Pekin, where earthquakes are frequent, from that of Canton, where they never happen.

One can scarcely givecredit to the disastrous effects produced by these earthquakes. The lives that have been lost are reckoned in Chinese history by hundreds of thousands, especially under the Mongoos dynasty. This might lead to a suspicion of exaggeration, as famines, earthquakes, and inundations, are considered by the Chinese as the scourges inflicted by heaven on the people, to show its dislike to a sovereign whom it disapproves, did not the accounts of more recent earthquakes, given by the missionaries, who were eye-witnesses of their tremendous effects, correspond with those recorded in Chinese history. It is stated by Père Mailla, that, in 1679, in the reign of Kaung-hee, more than 300,000 inhabitants of Pekin were buried under the ruins of the houses thrown down by an earthquake; that at the same time above 30,000 persons perished in the city of Tong-tchoo. The statements, however, of the missionaries, are vague and discordant. Père Couplet says, Sub decimam horam matutinam, regiam urbem et loca vicina tam horribilis terree motus concussit, ut innumera palatia, deorum fana, turres et urbis maenia corruerint; et sub rumis sepulta quadraginta homimim millia. Again, in 1730, in the reign of Yong-tehin, a violent earthquake shook the capital to its foundations, and 100,000 of its inhabitants were crushed to death. The earth opened in various places, black volumes of smoke issued forth, and left behind large pools of water. The city of Pekin is represented as affording a horrible spectacle; its walls, its palaces, the public buildings, two of the Jesuits’ churches, and a multitude of dwelling-houses, were wholly or in part thrown down. The palace of the emperor, more solid than any other cdifice, was greatly injured; that of Yuen-min-yuen was scarcely reparable. Of the 100,000 inhabitants contained in the adjoining village of Haitien, 20,000 arc stated to have perished. The imperial family betook themselves to their barges in the canals within the precincts of the palace. The emperor distributed many millions of money to the sufferers, and gave the Jesuits one thousand ounces of silver towards the expense of repairing their churches.

If earthquakes were to throw down the tall and ill-built brick pagodas of seven and nine stories in height, there would be nothing surprising; yet these appear to stand [7:6:574]the shocks, and many of them are evidently among the oldest buildings-in China. These, and the temples of Fo and Tao-tse, are among the most striking buildings of the country. The want of a national or state religion will best explain the want of those magnificent edifices in China, that almost every other civilized nation has reared to the objects of divine worship. Some of their bridges are light, and sufficiently pretty in their appearance; but they are generally slight and faulty in their construction. They consist of every possible variety of form. Their monuments to the memory of the dead are still more various than their bridges, but they are poor in design and bad in execution. Wooden pillars forming a triple gateway, roofed over, and painted, gilt, and varnished, are among the most striking objects that catch the eye of a stranger. They are monuments erected at the public expense, in streets or by the sides of highways, to commemorate some celebrated warrior, some ancient mandarin, or some antiquated virgin who had withstood temptation, and never swerved from the strict rules of decorum. To such a one will probably be inscribed, in letters of gold, “Honour granted by the emperor—to icy coldness, hard frost.” But these pei-loos have little permanency. The mandarin to whom the emperor’s order is addressed for erecting it, employs a carpenter, contracts for building the edifice as cheaply as he can, and pockets the rest of the money. The emperor’s object is answered by publishing the edict in the National Gazette. It is handed down to posterity in the great history of the empire, whilst the monument itself in a few years is consumed by the dry-rot, and is seen no more.

Superior as the temples and palaces of the Hindus and Mahommedans in India and Persia, and indeed throughout Asia, are to those of the Chinese, the dwellings of the latter are infinitely more comfortable in every respect than those of the former. Their stoves for warming the apartments and for cooking, their beds and furniture, bespeak a degree of refinement and comfort unknown to other oriental nations; but the great characteristic difference is, that the Chinese sit on chairs, eat off tables, burn wax candles, and cover the whole body with clothing.

Their naval architecture wears the stamp of great antiquity, and is exceedingly grotesque. They have, in fact, made little progress in maritime navigation, from the inveterate dislike of the government to all foreign intercourse, and to all innovation. The very same kind of vessels as those described by Marco Polo at the port nearest to Pekin, in the thirteenth century, were found without variation by Lord Macartney, five hundred years afterwards, and accurate to the Italian’s description, even to the number of compartments into which the hold of each vessel was divided. They had anchors of wood, and ropes and sails of bamboo. The boats and barges for internal commerce and communication are very varied, generally commodious, especially the passage-boats on the grand canal, and all of them suited to the depth and velocity of the stream, and the width of the locks and floodgates of the respective canals and rivers which they are intended to navigate. These vessels are so numerous as almost to supersede the necessity of land-carriage; and the most common and convenient mode of travelling in China is in barges, which are generally provided with cabins for sleeping, and a kitchen and utensils for cooking victuals. Their military navy is unworthy of the name. It consists of a flotilla, whose principal occupation is that of conveying soldiers where they may be wanted, and looking after pirates and smugglers. An English frigate would beat the whole naval force of China. (Grozier, Du Halde, Barrow, De Guignes, &c.)

The state of their military architecture and military science is equally rude and imperfect. There is nothing, in fact, from the celebrated wall on the side of Northern and Western Tartary, to the mouth of the Bocca Tigris near Canton, that merits the name of a fortress. They are all of the same construction, being mounds of earth hcaped into the shape of a wall, and cased on each side with bricks, and flanked with square towers at bowshot distance; and with walls of this description all their cities are surrounded.

The best defences of China are its great distance from any civilized country; its rugged mountains and sandy deserts on one side, and a stormy sea, whose navigation is but little known, on the other. In its military strength it can place little or no confidence; a fact which has frequently been proved by the successful incursions of the Tartars, who have twice since the Christian era conquered the whole country, and changed the ruling dynasty. There is little doubt, indeed, that a well-appointed army of 15,000 or 20,000 men, led by an experienced general, would easily make its way from Canton to Pekin. It has been supposed, from their skill in fire-works, and from the frequent mention of them in ancient books, that the deflagrating power of nitre, sulphur, and other ingredients, was well known to them; but it is pretty evident that they had but an imperfect, if any knowledge of cannon or muskets, before the arrival of European missionaries in the capital. We may form some notion of the mode of fighting of the Tartars and the Chinese about the Christian era, from the memoir of a general officer, presented to the sovereign when about to make war on the Tartars.

“The manner,” this general says, “in which the Tartars carry on war is very different from ours. To mount up and descend the steepest mountains with astonishing rapidity; to swim deep and rapid rivers; to brave storms of wind and rain, hunger and thirst; to make forced marches, and overleap all impediments, training their horses to tread in the narrowest paths; expert in the use of the bow and arrow, they are always sure of their aim— such are the Tartars. They attack, retreat, rally, with a promptitude and facility peculiar to themselves. In the gorges of the mountains, and in the ravines and deep defiles, they will always have the advantage over us; but on the plains, where our chariots can perform their evolutions, our cavalry will always beat theirs. Their bows have not the strength of ours, their spears are not so long, and their arms and arrows are inferior in quality to ours. To stand firm, to come to close quarters, to handle the pike, to present a front, to cut their way when surrounded, are the proper manoeuvres of our troops, of which the Tartars are ignorant, and against which they can oppose no successful resistance. In such situations, with equal numbers, our forces are as five, when the Tartars are but as three.” (Hist. Gén. de la Chines

The first mention of anything like fire-arms, and that is but an equivocal one, is in the year 1219, when Gengis-khan was penetrating the provinces of China. It is stated that the Chinese, from the turrets of the walls of Tsao-yong, played their machines called pao, the present name of guns, by which they killed great numbers at every stroke. Again, when Ogdai-khan laid siege to Lo-yang, the Chinese commandant Kiang-chin invented a kind of pao, which hurled large stones to the distance of one hundred paces, with such accuracy as to strike any point that might be desired. But another passage is more to the purpose. The Tartars are said to have breached an angle of the wall, by employing more than a hundred machines', consisting of tubes, each made of thirteen laths of bamboo; that the Chinese repaired these breaches with wood, straw mixed with horse-dung, &c., which the Tartars set on fire with their ho-pao, or fire-tubes; and immediately [7:6:575] afterwards we find these ho-pao called Tchen-tien-ley, or heaven-shaking thunder; and it is further stated that a certain substance put into them, when set on fire, explodes like a thunder-clap, loud enough to be heard at the distance of a hundred ley, or thirty miles. This description, and that of the effects produced, leave no doubt of these bamboo staves, hooped together, being the first attempt in China at the use of cannon, to which succeeded probably those of plates of malleable iron, also hooped together, several of which kind have been found in India, and also seen by Bell, lying in heaps, within the walls of a city near the great wall.

In 1453 we find mention made of chariots of war, carrying cannon in their fronts; but it is probable they knew very little of the use of them; for when Chin-tsing, in 1608, made war upon the Tartars on the northern frontier, and was defeated, the Portuguese at Macao, availing themselves of the panic into which the Chinese were thrown, made an offer of assistance with a party of artillery. A Jesuit was dispatched from the capital to hasten the new auxiliaries. The party consisted of two hundred Portuguese, and as many Chinese trained and exercised in the European manner, and they were commanded by two Portuguese captains, Pierre Cordier and Antoine Rodriguez del Capo. They were feasted and treated with distinguished honours on their passage to the capital, where they were well received and generally admired, except in the cut of their jackets, which, according to Chinese notions, were too scanty to be elegant. This admiration, however, soon ceased, and in a few days they were sent back to Macao. It is stated by one of the missionaries, that this was owing to a Portuguese and four Chinese being killed in firing the guns. That the Jesuit Verbiest taught them how to cast cannon there can be no doubt, for the president of the tribunal of rites thanks the missionaries for this signal service; and the matchlocks now in use by the Chinese troops are nothing more than the old Portuguese matchlock.

The Tartars are soldiers by profession, mostly cavalry, and their arms the bow and a broad simitar, which they wear on the left side, with the point forwards, and which they draw by carrying the right hand behind them, in order, they say, that their adversary may not cut the arm when in the act of drawing. They are arranged under eight banners, distinguished by different colours. The Chinese soldiers are for the most part a sort of militia, enrolled for the defence of the extended frontier, guards to the city gates, and the military posts placed at certain distances along the roads, rivers, and canals. All expresses are forwarded from post to post by the soldiers. Vast multitudes are employed to assist the civil magistracy, and act in the cities as police-officers. Their dress and appearance are most unmilitary, better suited for the stage than the field of battle; their paper helmets, wadded gowns, quilted petticots, and clumsy satin boots, are but ill adapted for the purpose of war. Indeed, unless it be to quell an insurrection, or to pursue bands of robbers, the Chinese military are rarely called away from their pacific employments. There was some anxiety, on the return of Lord Amherst through the country, that the military should put on an imposing appearance. “Through the whole route,” says-the emperor, “take care that the soldiers have their armour fresh and shining, and their weapons disposed in a commanding style, and that an attitude be maintained at once formidable and dignified.”

The people are all enrolled for service, when called upon, from a certain age. A father of a family, having a certain number of children, is exempt from service; an only son, and a son who supports his parents, are both exempt. Great distinctions are shown to those who fall in battle.

The body of an officer is burnt, and his ashes, with his armour and a suitable eulogium, sent to his friends; the bow and sabre of a common soldier slain in fight are sent to his family; rewards are distributed, and honourable mention made of the deceased in the Pekin Gazette.

Since the conquest of Western Tartary, completed by Kicn-lung, they are not likely to be engaged in any foreign wars. If the neighbouring states, which pay a nominal vassalage, contribute nothing to their wealth or strength, neither are they likely to give them trouble or uneasiness. They have nothing to apprehend on the side of Tartary but an irruption of the Russians, an event which has been supposed not altogether foreign to the plans of the rulers of that overgrown empire. A revolt, however, of a very alarming nature, took place in the western provinces, and extended itself to the very heart of the empire, in which the rebels were stated to be everywhere victorious; but the only result would be, if successful, to set up a new sovereign, perhaps a new dynasty. Every thing else will go on just as it has done from time immemorial. (Hist. Gen. de la Chine concernant les Chinois; Canton Gazette.')

Nothing has yet appeared in Europe from an authentic source, to warrant any other conclusion than that of the utter ignorance of the Chinese in the pure, speculative, and abstract science of mathematics. Their knowledge of arithmetic and geometry is bounded by mere practical rules. Their numerical notation is marked down by symbols of the language, as that of the Greeks and the Romans was, by letters of the alphabet; and, like them, the Chinese symbols want that value in position which the Arabic numbers possess. The common operations of arithmetic are generally performed by a few balls strung on wires, somewhat resembling the Roman abacus, and sometimes by the joints of the fingers. The measure of quantity is usually determined, by reducing all surfaces and sides to the dimensions of squares or cubes; and with those few practical operations they contrive to manage all the common purposes of life.

Yet the Chinese have been represented by some of the French missionaries as profound astronomers at a time when all Europe was in a state of barbarism; as being able to calculate the recurrence of eclipses; to adjust the irregular motions of the sun and moon; to measure the distances of the planets, and so forth. The ridiculous ceremonies observed by the great officers of state when eclipses happen, furnish, it is true, no proof against the knowledge of their causes. A government established on ancient customs cannot afford to lop off any of its props; and the foretelling of eclipses, the frightening away of the dragon that would devour the sun or moon, the favourable or unfavourable omens of the heavenly appearances, are so many engines for keeping the ignorant in awe. The Imperial Calendar is an admirable coadjutor of the Imperial Gazette. But when we find, from their own annals, and from the report of the earliest travellers, that foreigners have had the superintendence of the astronomical part of this almanac; and that, from the defective knowledge of these foreign astronomers, and the occasional want of them altogether, the national calendar, as declared by one of their emperors, had undergone no less than seventy-two revisions, it may safely be concluded that the Chinese know very little of the matter. M. Fréret says he had in his possession the copy of a celestial chart, constructed in China about the sixth century of the Christian era, on which were inserted 1460 stars in their proper positions, at least sufficiently near to be recognised; but this may have been made mechanically, and perhaps by a foreigner. It is recorded in their annals, that in 718 of the Christian era, an Indian astronomer of the name of Koo-tαn, having brought from the west a treatise on astronomy, was employed at court [7:6:576]to translate it into the Chinese language; and they also mention that Kublai-khan encouraged learned men to remain in China, and that under his reign an Arab astronomer was employed in rectifying the calendar, and constructing astronomical instruments. Since that time, Armenians, Bucharians, Hindus, Arabs, and Christians, have presided over the board charged with the construction of the National Almanac, in which the native Chinese took no other part than that of assigning the lucky and unlucky days, what was to be done and what abstained from on those days. When Lord Macartney was in Pekin, a Portuguese, who called himself Bishop of Pekin, a person of no great skill in mathematical knowledge, presided over this board. Indeed, the state in which their calendar was found when Adam Schaal, one of the earliest Jesuits, made his way to Pekin, sufficiently proves their ignorance of astronomical calculations, an intercalary month having been introduced into the wrong year. On making them acquainted with this blunder, all the departments of the state, ordinary and extraordinary, were summoned to sit in judgment on the good father’s'report, which they voted to be erroneous, and that the ancient system should be continued. They kept, however, the learned Jesuit at court, and quietly allowed him to set them right. The emperor Kaung-hee, who seems to have entertained no high opinion of his Chinese subjects, brought the Chinese president of the board of astronomy to trial because he could not calculate the length of shadow which a gnomon would throw, but which was immediately done by Father Verbiest. This intelligent Tartar put himself under the tuition of the Jesuits, who made for him a quadrant, translated into the Chinese language a set of logarithm tables, which were printed, and a copy of which is now in the library of the Royal Society of London; a very beautiful specimen of Chinese typography. Kaung-hec carried these tables and his quadrant suspended from his girdle, and, when in Tartary, is said to have constantly amused himself in taking angles, and measuring the height of mountains.

The Chinese system, if system it can be called, of astronomy, resembles so closely that which remains of the Hindus, that both must have been derived from the same source. The period or cycle of sixty years, by which their chronology is regulated—the period of 10,800 years, observed by the Tao-tse, which is the sum of the first three Hindu ages, with their intermediate periods—the division of the zodiac into twelve signs, and also into twenty-eight constellations, or habitations of the moon, corresponding with the twenty-eight Hindu nacshatras—are so many proofs of a common origin; and both may perhaps have derived the remains of this science from some third nation, more ancient than either; as the little which both nations do possess appears to be the remains rather than the elements of the science.

The system of policy which discouraged all intercourse with strangers, which set no value on foreign commerce and navigation, and which cultivated no language but that of the country, which was unintelligible to other nations, must necessarily have kept the people of China in ignorance of all the rest of the world. China was to them, in fact, the whole world. It appears, however, that at a very remote period they had intercourse with Pegu, Siam, Malacca, Hindustan, and several of the Asiatic islands. Two centuries before the Christian era, they bad a knowledge of the upper regions of Tartary; and one of their travellers gives an account of an inland sea, into which the rivers running to the westward were received, which could be no other than the Caspian. The great islands of Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Ceylon, are names easily recognized in their annals, on which great numbers of Chinese are still found, retaining their original language, manners, and government. Captain Sayer, of his Majesty’s ship Leda, on ascending a river of the western coast of Borneo, came unexpectedly on a colony of Chinese in the interior, consisting of not less than 200,000 or 300,000 persons, all united under one chief or captain; and Sir Thomas Raffles says, that near the same place, it has been calculated that the number of Chinese employed in the gold mines alone amounts to 32,000 working men.

Their knowledge, however, of their immediate neighbours was very limited and imperfect. By the aid of practical geometry, they had a tolerable notion of their own country. Père Mailla asserts, that on comparing an ancient chart of China, said to be copied out of the Shocking, with the actual survey made by his brother Jesuits and himself, and which took them ten years to complete, they found the limits and the positions of the provinces, the courses of the rivers, and the direction of the mountains, pretty nearly to accord; but the proportions of the objects to each other, and to the whole, were not in the least observed. He further observes, that they saw and gazed with astonishment and admiration at the chasms which the emperor Yu caused to be cut through solid mountains, to open new channels for the waters of the Yellow River. Some, however, will be apt to conclude that it was the water itself, and not the emperor Yu, which opened these channels.

Of natural and experimental philosophy, they know only what the Jesuits taught them, and that appears not to be much. Of clock-making, dialling, optics, and electricity, they know nothing; of hydrostatics and hydraulics, very little. They raised water by a machine resembling the Persian wheel, and by a large wheel, with bamboo tubes fixed obliquely on its rim; but they were ignorant even of the principle of the common pump. The use of most of the mechanical powers is known to savages; but the most commodious and effective application of them was not known to the Chinese. In most cases manual strength supplied the place of mechanical power. When Mr Barrow, in delivering the presents to the emperor Kien-lung, failed in making him comprehend the use of the mechanical powers from a complete set of models, the old man observed, that they might serve as playthings for his grandchildren.

The nature of their own language, their universal ignorance of any other, and their pertinacious resistance to all intercourse with foreigners, may explain the low ebb of the sciences and liberal professions in China. The maxims of the sovereignsand sages of antiquity, the ritesand ceremonies and duties required by the civil and religious institutions of the empire, the laws and customs, are the points of knowledge which lead to wealth, pow er, and distinction in the state. As there is no established religion, so none is paid or preferred by the government for instructing the people. As there is no pleading in criminal or civil suits, so there are none who act as attorneys or advocates; and the practice of physic is attended with too little either of honour or emolument to excite emulation in men of rank and ability in the pursuit of it, and is generally in the hands of the sectarian priests of Fo and Tao-tsé, or of low vulgar quacks. Without the least knowledge of anatomy or surgery, they can know little of the animal economy. The seat of the disease they pretend to discover by the quackery of the pulse, by the eye, the nose, the tongue, the ears, and the voice. When this is ascertained, they prescribe their vomits, purges, febrifuges, &c.. extracted from the three kingdoms of nature, of which mercury, antimony, rhubarb, and ginseng, constitute no inconsiderable part. Of ginseng alone they profess to have no less than seventy-seven preparations. Their surgery[7:6:577] consists chiefly in acupunctuation and shampooing, and it is practised chiefly by the barbers. There are certain persons whose occupation is to discover whether those who may be found dead have died a natural death or by violence, whether by their own means or that of others; and the verdict of the criminal court is often grounded on the decision of these quacks.

The emperor Kaung-hee soon convinced himself that several of the Jesuits were better skilled in medicine than his own physician. At first, however, he had some scruples, upon being attacked by a fever, of following their advice. Three of the first physicians to the court dissuaded him from taking a medicine of whose qualities they professed themselves ignorant, and advised him to let the disease go on, that they might discover its true character. The emperor, however, at last took the Peruvian bark which the Jesuits had prescribed, and soon recovered; but it is said in the General History, that several officers who had similar fevers were first ordered to take the bark, and finding it at least harmless, he then ventured upon it himself. As ignorance is a crime in the eyes of the ignorant, it is more especially so at the court of China, and made capital in those to whom the life of the sovereign is intrusted. The three physicians were, therefore, delivered over to the criminal court, who condemned them to death; but Kaung-hee mitigated the punishment to that of exile, and rewarded the Jesuits with a house in Pekin, and contributed largely towards the building of a church.

Kaung-hee was a man of great humour, and used frequently to joke with the missionaries respecting their religion and the customs of their country. One day he asked Mezzabarba, the pope’s legate, if it was the custom in Europe to condemn a man to death without sufficient proof of his guilt; and being answered in the negative,—“One cannot,” says the emperor, “attach too great a value to the life of man and turning to his body physician, and ordering him to approach, “Here,” continues he, “is a much more formidable person than myself. I can only put a man to death on legal proof of guilt; but this fellow can dispatch whomsoever he plcases without the form of trial.”

Whoever may be curious to see the quackery of the pulse detailed, without a complete knowledge of which a physician would gain no reputation in China, may find a translation of the doctrine in the collection of Du Halde.

The Chinese are subject to a species of contagious leprosy, which their physicians cannot cure, and which the law ordains to be a legitimate cause of divorce, as the only means to stop its progress. The itch is most prevalent, and cutaneous disorders of various kinds are very common; but they have escaped the plague, more, as Pauw thinks, by constant ventilation, by burning sandal-wood dust, and other odoriferous woods, by the abundant use of musk and various strong scented drugs, than by any attention to cleanliness. Perhaps, also, the universal smoking of tobacco may have contributed to save them from the horrors of the plague. {Hist. Gén. de la Chine, par Du Halde.) c Though little progress has been made in any of the liberal arts or abstract sciences, and little as they are likely to advance under a system of government which interdicts all intercourse with foreign nations, the arts which necessity demands, which add to the conveniences and increase the comforts of a civilized state of society, seem to have flourished at a very early period of their history; and many of them have been brought to a degree of perfection which is still unequalled by the most polished nations of Europe. Whatever depends on mere imitation and manual dexterity, can be executed as well and as neatly by a Chinese as by the most skilful artists of the western world; and some of them in a style of very superior excellence. No people, for example, have carried the art of dyeing, or of extracting dyeing materials from so great a variety of animal, mineral, and vegetable substances, as the Chinese have done; and this merely from a practical knowledge of chemical affinities, without troubling themselves with theories derived from scientific principles. In like manner practice has taught them how to detect the exact proportion of alloy that may be mixed with gold and silver, and how to separate it. We import from China their native cinnabar; but our vermilion, extracted from it, is not to be compared with theirs for brilliancy and deepness of colour, which is supposed to be given to it by long and patient trituration under water. Again, the beautiful blues on their porcelain are more transparent, deep, and vivid, than the same blues applied to our pottery-ware; yet we supply the Chinese with the same cobalt frits from which our own colours are extracted. It has been supposed that the greater or less brilliancy of the colours used for painting porcelain depends more on the nature of the glaze on which they are laid, than on their own intrinsic merits. Here then we have something still to learn from the Chinese. The biscuit of their porcelain, too, is much superior in whiteness, hardness, and transparency, to any which has been made in Europe. The Swansea porcelain comes the nearest to it in these respects, which is supposed to be owing in some degree to a proportion of magnesian earth being mixed with the aluminous and silicious ingredients. In form and decoration, which depend on a taste and feeling which the Chinese are strangers to, we far surpass them.

In the cutting of ivory into fans, baskets, pagodas, nests of nine or more hollow movable balls, one within the other, beautifully carved, the artists of Europe cannot pretend to vie with the Chinese; yet it does not appear that they practise any other means than that of working in water with small saws. As little can Europeans pretend to rival their large horn lanterns, of several feet ih diameter, perfectly transparent in every part, without a flaw or opaque spot, and without a seam; yet a small portable stove or furnace, an iron boiler, and a pair of common pincers, are all the tools that are required for the manufacture of those extraordinary machines. In silver fillagree they are at least equal to the Hindus, and their lacquered cabinets and other articles are excelled only in Japan. They are not less expert in cutting tortoise-shell and mother of pearl, and all kinds of gems and stones. They have a method of ornamenting their cabinet wares, tea-chests, and other articles, with spangles laid on with the black varnish in the shape of plants, birds, insects, &c. exhibiting varied iridescent colours, appearing like metallic scales that have undergone the process of heat; but they are nothing more than the thin lamina of a particular species of shell (Helix), which they have a method of separating by boiling, as they pretend, for the space of half a moon. In all the metals they work with neatness; and if they make not a lock or a hinge that an English artist would look at, it is only because a Chinese would not pay the price of a good one. Their white copper is a metal, or a mixture of metals, unknown in Europe; and though we think that we have ascertained the component parts of the famous gong to be copper, tin, and bismuth, we are yet unable to make a Chinese gong. In works of the loom, and especially in the manufacture of silk and satin cloths, we cannot pretend to cope with them; and their silken twisted eords, tassels, and all kinds of embroidery, in general the labour of females, are extremely beautiful. In the variety of gums, spices, and perfumes, they excel the rest of the world. Our artists can attest the excellence of their ink, and their paper and printing may challenge those of Europe. Many other branches of the mechanical[7:6:578] arts might be enumerated, in which the Chinese may consider themselves as second to none; but those already mentioned are sufficient to exemplify their skill in this respect. There are no manufactorics carried on by machinery, or upon a great scale. Generally speaking, each individual in the country spins, weaves, and dyes his own web. It would appear, however, from some regulations laid down in the Leu-lee, that of porcelain, silks, satins, and certain other articles, government is its own manufacturer. The manufactories of porcelain and the coarser kinds of pottery, for the sake of the coal, are mostly in Kiang-see; and the village of Kin-te-chin, it is said, contains nearly a million of people, all of them engaged in the potteries.

. There is no subject on which the accounts of the missionaries are so vague and contradictory as that of the population; yet they all affect to refer to official documents. They agree, however, in stating it to be something immense, though the highest number is not equal to two thirds of the enormous mass of 333,000,000, which the mandarins attendant on Lord Macartney’s embassy gave to that nobleman as the amount of the population. The inaccuracy, however, not to say impossibility, of that account, is obvious from mere inspection. The numbers in each province are given in round millions, and in two provinces the number of millions is precisely the same. In the General History of China, the population is frequently stated at different periods, but in a way so loose and vague as to deserve little attention. There can be no doubt, however, that from time to time a census is ordered to be taken, and the result of it made public; that the number of mouths is always included; but that a separate list of the taxable inhabitants only is taken at the same time, and is all perhaps that the government cares about. Thus it is stated, that under Yang-tee, in the 609th year of the Christian era, the empire contained 8,900,000 families, which, at six to each family, would give a population of 53,400,000; but, to show how very little numbers are to be depended on, it is also stated that China at that time was from north to south 14,815 lee, and from east to west 9300 lee, or 4444 miles by 2790, which is about three times its actual dimensions, or nine times its magnitude.

Again, it is stated that, in the year 1222, under the reign of Hoei-tsong, before the Tartar conquest, the Board of Taxes ordered a census to be taken, which amounted to 20,882,358families, and46,734,784 persons, or about2 τ 3 θths to each family, which is absurd. In 1290, after the Tartar conquest, Kublai-khan directed a census to be taken of the taxable population. It amounted to 13,196,206 families, comprehending 58,834,711 persons; but it is admitted that the state of the country prevented the whole being taken. In 1502, Shiao-tsong caused a census to be taken, the result of which is stated to have been 53,280,000 mouths. There is a strange difference between these numbers and those which are published by Grozier, purporting to be a census of all the people in China, taken in the years 1760 and 1761, in the former of which the list amounts to 196,837,977 mouths, in the latter to 198,214,553, making an increase in one year of 1,376,576 mouths.

If we are to givecredit to these accounts, we must suppose that the population of China must have attained its prodigious magnitude within the last two or three centuries, and that it must be greatly on the increasc; but we are immediately stopped short from drawing this conclusion, by the translation^ of some statistical accounts of China by Dr Morrison, taken by order of the emperor Kia-king in order to be compared with a similar statement made at the commencement of the reigning dynasty. According to this census, the total population, including the twelve Tartar banners, and all ranks and conditions, great and small, amounts to between 145,000,000 and 146,000,000 of mouths; and this account agrees very exactly with that census taken by Kien-lung in the year 1743, and contained in the Yedung-tche, or All matters concerning China, a curious work we have before mentioned. By this census the number of heads of families paying taxes is stated, at 28,514,488; which, by reckoning five persons to each family, would give 142,582,440. The number of the literati, the military, and others exempt from taxation, will amply make up the deficiency. Grozier, indeed, by the omissions of Père Amiot, and the exempts as above mentioned, swells the total to 157,301,755.

This enormous population is fed and subsisted, and alii its wants entirely supplied, from China alone. Except a few English broad cloths and metals, a few furs from Russia, and a little cotton from Bombay, it receives but little external supplies. The extent and fertility of the soil are amply sufficient for its demands. China consists of at least one million and a half of square miles, and has about ninety-seven persons to a square mile. Deduct a third for waste lands, lakes, and mountains, and 640,000,000 acres still remain, which give near four and a half acres of land to each individual. The land is subject to an arbitrary tax, generally about one tenth; and, in order to ascertain the revenue, a report was made to Kien-lung in the year 1745, of the amount of land under cultivation. It was as follows:
[table]

each king being a hundred moo, and a moo equal to a superficies whose length is 2400 tehee, and breadth ten tehee. The tehee is about 14 - 55 English inches; so that the Chinese moo is to the English acre as 10,890 to 8821, by which it will be found that, agreeably to the above statement, the land under cultivation was about 600 millions of acres.

The constituent parts of the population of China were anciently considered to consist of four classes; the tse, or learned, who governed and instructed the rest; thenwn^, or agriculturists, who provided food and materials for clothing the rest; the kung, artizan or manufacturer, who clothed, and built, and furnished houses for the rest; and the shang, who distributed and exchanged the productions of the other two among all the classes of society. But nothing like a division into castes ever appeared in China. On the contrary, every encouragement is held out for the children of the three inferior classes to aspire to the first.

The numbers of the tse, or officers and literary men, consisting of the members of the several boards, governors of provinces and cities, judges, treasurers, collectors, commissaries, inspectors, and the like, with an enormous list of subaltern officers, according to Grozier, amount to 98,615; and of the literati, who every year take their degrees and qualify for office, there are 24,701; the whole of whom living at any one time cannot, he says, be estimated at less than 494,000. The military officers are also reckoned among the learned; and the number of those who have actual commands amount to 7411, each of whom, on an average, employs nine subaltern officers under him; the whole, therefore, of these would amount to 74,110; and the total of the military, or militia, is estimated at 822,621. But one of the officers of government told Père Amiot that the military[7:6:579] exceeded two millions; and this agrees pretty nearly with the information given to Lord Macartney.

A court calendar and an army list are published in Pekin four times a year, each consisting of several volumes; a tolerable proof of the frequent changes that take place in the subordinate movements of this vast machine.

Tlíe great mass of the people, however, are employed in productive labour; perhaps, on a rough estimate, full two thirds in agriculture and the fisheries; the remaining third, after deducting the military, the civil officers, the students, and candidates for office, amounting, perhaps, on a rough guess, to about ten millions, are manufacturers, tradesmen, shopkeepers, and the multitudes that are employed in the numerous vessels and barges on the rivers and canals, to carry on the internal commerce of the kingdom. Agriculture is the productive labour that has always received the highest encouragement from the government; and occasionally the emperor himself has turned out into the field with great pomp and solemnity, to hold the plough, as an example to the peasantry. Perhaps, however, as Pauw observes, if they would remove all the trammels from agriculture, it would have a better effect than the continuance of this ancient ceremony. These trammels are, however, fewer and lighter than in most countries. One tenth of the estimated produce is all that is required for the state; and they have neither priesthood nor poor to maintain, each family being compelled by law and custom to take care of its poor relations, and the sovereign taking care of the spiritual concerns of his subjects. The monarch may be considered as the universal and exclusive proprietor of the soil. There is no such thing as freeholds; but undisturbed possession is kept, as long as the holder complies with the conditions on which the land was granted. As there are no public funds, and capital vested in trade is not very secure, nor the profession highly esteemed, the purchase of land is the most eligible mode of rendering capital productive. Still there are very few great landed proprietors. Two reasons may be assigned for this; first, the rate of legal interest being as high as three per cent, for a month, it would be ruinous to borrow money on mortgage; and, secondly, it appears by the penal code, that the proprietorship of the landholder is of a very qualified nature, and subject to a degree of interference and control on the part of government, not known under any of the European governments. It can only be disposed of by will, under certain restrictions; the inheritors must share it under certain proportions. If a proprietor should neglect to register his land in the public records, and to acknowledge himself as responsible for the payment of the taxes, such land would become forfeited. If land capable of cultivation be suffered to lie waste, through the inability of the proprietor to till it, another may obtain permission to cultivate it; and the mortgagee becomes responsible for the payment of the taxes, until the land be redeemed by the proprietor. All these restrictions operate against large landed proprietorships.

Much has been said in praise of Chinese agriculture— much more, in faet, than it deserves. In Europe it would be despised. There are no great farms in China; few families cultivate more than is necessary for their own use, and for payment of the imperial taxes; and without teams of any kind—without any knowledge or practice of a succession of crops—without any grazing farms, for feeding cattle or for the dairy, of which they are totally ignorant— making no use of milk, butter, or cheese—they can have little manure, nor can the land be kept in good condition. In fact, the old fallowing system is followed, and in many parts the spade and the hoe are the great implements of cultivation, their miserable plough scarcely deserving the name. The command of water is the principal substitute for manure. Every substance, however, that can be converted into manure, is most carefully collected; and numbers of old people and children of both sexes find employment in scraping together, with wooden rakes, into their little baskets, whatever may have fallen in the streets or roads, where these

Lean pensioners upon the traveller’s tract

Pick up their nauseous dole.

Leaves, roots, or stems of plants, mud from the sides of canals, and every sort of offal that presents itself, of which human hair, shaven from the scalps of a hundred millions weekly, forms no inconsiderable ingredient, are carefully scraped together. Large earthen vessels are sunk in the ground, to which, it is said, their cattle are taught to retire; and on the outskirts of many towns and villages are small buildings, invitingly placed for the accommodation of passengers who may have occasion to use them. All these resources, however, are very limited, and the utmost supply thus afforded can only serve for horticultural purposes.

The whole of the land in China under cultivation may be said to be employed exclusively for the subsistence and clothing of man. The staff of life is rice; and it is the chief article of produce in the middle and southern provinces. This grain requires little or no manure; age after age the same piece of ground yields its annual crop, and some of them two crops a year. In the culture of rice, water answers every purpose; and nature has supplied this extensive country most abundantly with that valuable element. It is here that Chinese agricultural skill is most displayed; the contrivances for raising it out of rivers where the banks are high, by means of wheels, long levers, swinging buckets, and the like; or of leading it down from mountain springs, and along terraces levelled on the sides of hills, or in little channels across the plains, are all admirable; but when, from long drought, the rivers run low in their channels, and the springs fail, a scarcity of the crop is the inevitable consequence, and the effects or famine are most dreadful; for though the government has not been wanting in storing up a year’s supply of grain in the public magazines (the produce of the taxes being mostly paid in kind), yet, before the beneficent intentions of the sovereign can be carried into effect, there are so many previous memorials and references necessary, and so many forms of office to pass through, that the mischief has worked its effects before the remedy is applied; and though in this vast empire the scarcity of grain may be local and partial, they have no relief to look to from without, and the system of external commerce is too slow in its operations to throw in a timely supply where it may be most wanted. In the northern provinces, where water is less abundant and less to be depended upon, wheat, barley, buck-wheat, and a great variety of millets, supply the place of rice. Everywhere are met with leguminous plants of different kinds, pumpkins, melons, sweet potatoes, and whole fields of a luxuriant vegetable coX ∖ eApei-tsai, the white herb, apparently a species of brassica, which is salted for winter consumption. In Kiang-nan and Tche-kiang, vast tracts of land are planted with the white mulberry tree, as food for the silk worms. They appear like a young orchard of cherry trees, being kept low by constant pruning, to make them throw out young shoots and fresh supplies of leaves. In all the middle provinces are large fields of cotton, which article supplies the usual clothing of the great mass of the population; in addition to which, immense quantities are imported annually from Bombay. That peculiar species of a yellowish tinge, which we call Nankin, is not worn by the Chinese, at least in its natural colour; blue, brown, and black, are the prevailing colours. Patches of indigo are generally found in the vicinity of the cotton plantations.
[7:6:580]

The tea plant, which forms so important an article for the common beverage of the country, and also for exportation, is cultivated only in particular provinces, and in certain situations; but it is found in gardens and small enclosures in every part of the empire, being very much of the habit and appearance of the broad-leafed myrtle. We scarcely yet know whether the different kinds of tea are from the same plant, or different species of the same genus. The leaf of the sou-chong is broader than that of the hyson; but this seems to constitute the only difference. Both sorts undergo the process of roasting in their iron pans; the black in a higher degree of heat than the green, which is sufficient to give a different character to the extractive matter from the two sorts; and the nervous quality usually ascribed to green tea may be owing to the little alteration which the juices of the leaf undergo from the small degree of heat that is used in the process. To procure the fine flavour, the Chinese usually press the green teas into the chests and cannisters while hot. They have a practice also of giving a finer bloom to dull-green teas, by sprinkling a little indigo, mixed with powder of gypsum, while stirring the leaf about in the pan. The different sorts of black and green are not merely from soil, situation, and age of the leaf; but, after winnowing the tea, they are taken up in succession as the leaves fall: those nearest the machine, being the heaviest, form the gunpowder tea; the light dust the worst, being chiefly used by the lower classes. That which is brought down to Canton undergoes there a second roasting, winnowing, packing, &c.; and many hundred women are employed for these purposes, the rate of pay being about fifty of their small copper coins, or fourpence per day. The Chinese say that the best tea is that which is gathered in the morning while the dew is on. The gathering in the hyson countries, Kiang-nan and Fokien, commences about the middle of April, and continues till about the middle of May. The collecting, the rolling, the twisting, and roasting, give employment to a multitude of people. From the berry of the tcha-wha, or flower of tea (Camélia sesanqua), a fine edible oil is extracted. The almond and the Palma Christi also afford them an oil for culinary purposes. The white wax is the produce of a tree, or rather of a small insect which frequents the tree; and the Croton sebifcrum yields an excellent vegetable tallow; both of these articles serving them to make candles. In the southern provinces sugar is a common article of cultivation, but it is rather a luxury than an article of common consumption. It is used mostly in a coarse granulated form; but for exportation, and for the upper classes, it is reduced to its crystallized state. Tobacco is universally cultivated, and in universal use by all ages and both sexes. Fruits of every kind abound, but are mostly bad, except the orange and the lee-tchee, both of which are probably indigenous. The art of grafting is well known; but they do not appear to have taken advantage of this knowledge to the improvement of their fruits? They have also an art, which enables them to take off bearing branches of fruit, particularly of the orange and peach, and transfer them, in a growing state, to pots, for their artificial rocks, and grottoes, and summer-houses. It is simply by removing a ring of the bark, plastering round it a ball of earth, and suspending a vessel of water to drop upon it, until it has thrown out roots into the earth. It would require too much space to describe the various vegetable productions used for food and for clothing, for medicine and for the arts. The climate and the soil are well adapted for producing almost all that the rest of the world affords, except, perhaps, those parts which lie within a few degrees of the equator; and the Chinese have obtained their full share even of them.

They are exceedingly sparing in the use of animal food. Those important articles of milk, butter, and cheese, are wholly unknown to them. The broad-tailed sheep are kept in the hilly parts of the country, and brought down to the plains; but the two animals most esteemed, because they contribute most to their own subsistence, and are kept at the cheapest rate, are the hog and the duck. Whole swarms of the latter are bred in large barges, surrounded with projecting stages, covered with coops, for the reception of these birds, which are taught, by the sound of a whistle, to jump into the rivers and canals in search of food, and by another call to return to their lodgings. They are usually hatched by placing their eggs, as the ancient Egyptians were wont to do, in small ovens, or sand-baths, in order that the same female may continue to lay eggs throughout the year, which would not be the case if she had a young brood to attend. The ducks, when killed, are usually split open, salted, and dried in the sun, in which state they afford an excellent relish to rice or other vegetables.

The fisheries are free to all; there are no restrictions on any of the great lakes, the rivers, or canals. The subject is not once mentioned in the Leu-lee ; but the heavy duties on salt render the use of salt fish in China almost unknown. Besides the net, the line, and the spear, the Chinese have several ingenious methods of catching fish. In the middle parts of the empire, the fishing corvorant, the Pelicanus piscator, is almost universally in use; in other parts, they catch them by torch-light; and a very common practice is, to place a board painted white along the edge of the boat, which, reflecting the moon’s rays into the water, induces the fish to spring towards it, supposing it to be a moving sheet of water, when they fall into the boat.

When animal food fails them, the Chinese make no scruple in eating lizards, toads, grubs, cats, rats, mice, and many other nauseous creatures. The naked Egyptian dog is commonly exposed for sale in the market. But rice, the hog, and the duck, may be considered as the staple articles of human subsistence for the great mass of the population. Those who can afford it indulge in every species of luxury, and more especially in gelatinous soups, which, while they pamper the appetite, are supposed to excite the passions, and to increase their corpulency, which, in their ideas, confers a degree of respectability and dignity to which a small meagre figure can never arrive.

No country in the world is better adapted, from situa-, tion, climate, and products, for extensive commerce, than China; yet no civilized country has profited less by these advantages. «The happy distribution of its numerous rivers, aided by artificial canals, affords an almost uninterrupted water communication from the northern to the southern, and from the western to the eastern extremities of this grand empire; and thus a facility is given for the interchange of the products of one province with those of another, unknown in any other country, and unequalled even in Great Britain. But the commerce that exists is principally that of barter; no system of credit is established between the merchants of distant provinces; no bills of exchange; no circulating medium of any kind, as a common measure of value, excepting a small copper coin, of the value of the thousandth part of 6s. 8d., or about one third of a farthing. The multitudes of barges of different sorts and sizes, which vary in their construction on almost every river, are incredible. The Chinese are rarely to be trusted where numbers are concerned; but they are probably not far amiss in stating that the number of imperial barges employed in the grand canal and its lateral branches, for the purpose of collecting and distributing among the public granaries the rice and grain paid in kind as taxes, amounts to 10,000, or, as they express it, where they mean [7:6:581]to be correct, to 9999. A vast number of vessels are also employed in conveying the copper currency from place to place, wherever it may be wanted; others in collecting the silks, cottons, and various articles of taxes, paid in kind, and depositing them in the public magazines; and the salt barges alone are probably not less numerous than those which carry grain. It was calculated that the depot of salt accumulated at Tien-sing for the use of the capital and the northern provinces, was sufficient for a year’s consumption for thirty millions of people. This was all brought up, in the course of the summer, from the seacoast of Tche-kiang and Fokien, in seagoing vessels. Cakes of coal-dust and turf, for fuel, and cakes made up of various ingredients for garden manure, employ a multitude of barges; and when to these are added the various kinds of vessels employed in general commerce, in the conveyance of passengers and baggage, in breeding ducks, and in the fisheries of the interior, we may be sure that the number of persons who constantly reside upon the water amounts to many millions, and are probably equal to the whole population of Great Britain. It may be doubted if these are included in any census.

All foreign commerce is systematically discouraged. The extent, fertility, and variety of their soil and climate, happily situated between the extremes of heat and cold, partaking of the advantages of both, without experiencing the inconveniences of either, supply the Chinese with the productions of almost all the world besides, whether to minister to the necessities, the comforts, or the luxuries of their numerous population; and leave this great empire, as a nation, completely independent of foreign supplies through the medium of commerce. Satisfied, or affecting to be satisfied, with the prodigal bounty of nature, jealous of strangers, and governed by a gradation of arbitrary despots, the Chinese consider it as a favour bestowed on foreigners to open one of their ports for the interchange of commodities. The revenue derived from this limited intercourse is of little or no importance at the chief seat of government. The largest estimate that can be made of the value of the whole of their foreign commerce, and the largest computation of revenue flowing from it into the imperial treasury, is but as a drop in the ocean. Individual and local interests might and would most materially be affected by any prohibition of an intercourse which has now subsisted for a century and a half; but the government pays little regard to the prosperity or misery of a particular province. The interested views of individuals may, for a time, keep up a trade which is at variance with the general rule of policy prescribed by the laws; and the frequent discussions with the English, whose power they are aware of and dread, will most probably determine them ultimately to close Canton against all foreigners. The English they will not venture particularly to exclude, though they know that other nations would take their articles of produce without forcing upon them European broad cloths, which they affect not to want, but would give them specie, which is, of all other things, what they most desire. The English, however, by their highly improper conduct, not long ago endangered the privilege of foreigners resorting to Canton. Fortunately, by the removal of the aggressor, and a reference to Pekin, which produced a permission to continue the trade, on conditions sufficiently humiliating, a recurrence to naval and military force, threatened on our part, was avoided, and the impolicy and injustice of such a measure rendered unnecessary.

The luxuries, however, which wealth requires, have forced a foreign trade by their own subjects with the nations of the East, as well as with Europe. A very extensive intercourse is carried on by them with Japan, the Philippine Islands, Java, Sumatra, Timor, Gelolo, and the great island of Borneo, in all of which are found multi tudesof Chinese, living in habits of peaceful industry, in th« midst of the more idle and less civilized natives, conduct ing the concerns of trade, cultivating the ground, and ex ercising all the various branches of the mechanical arts in no place, however, varying in the smallest degree thei original character. But though the Chinese spread them selves over every part of the Asiatic, and into many of th« Polynesian islands, there seems to be no reciprocity o commerce by the vessels of those countries visiting th« ports of China, excepting some ten or twelve junks tha annually visit the southern ports of Fokien from Japan, am perhaps as many from Cochin-China. “From Canton,’ says Lord Macartney, “to Ten-chou-foo, at the entrance of the Gulf of Pe-tche-lee (to say nothing of the country within the gulf itself), is an extent of coast of near twe thousand miles, indented with innumerable harbours, many of them capable of admitting the largest European ships, and all of them safe and sufficiently deep for the vessels of the country. Every creek or haven has a town or city upon it; the inhabitants, who abound beyond credibility, are mostly of a trafficking mercantile cast, and a great pari of them, from their necessary employment in the fishery, which supplies them with a principal article of their subsistence, are accustomed to the sea, and the management of shipping.” Yet with all these advantages, all foreign commerce in foreign bottoms is interdicted to these people; whatever they wish to import must be fetched by themselves; and the articles thus brought in are numerous and of considerable value. Thus from Java alone they import birds’ nests to the value of half a million dollars annually: the sea slug or biche-de-mer (holothuria), from the coast of New Holland, Timor, and adjoining islands, to a still greater extent; sharks’ fins from the same quarter; copper from Japan, and tin from Bantam; pepper, areca nut, spices of different kinds, ebony, sandal wood, red wood for dyeing, tortoise-shell, pearl-shell, coral, camphor, wax, and a variety of articles, generally produced or collected by their own countrymen resident in the islands of the East.

When Lange, who accompanied Ismaeloff, the Russian ambassador, asked permission for his nation to establish factories in all the provinces, the reply of the emperor was, “I allow you to remain here (Pekin), and other foreigners at Canton, so long as you and they give me no cause of complaint; but if this should ever be the case, I will suffer neither you to remain here, nor them at Canton ;” so very indifferent does the court affect to be about foreign commerce. In the whole of this extensive empire there are but two places where the natives have any intercourse with Europeans, at Canton with the crews of the several maritime powers, and at Kiackta with the Russians; and this intercourse is chiefly confined at the former to a select number of men, appointed or licensed by the government; at the latter it takes place only under special directions of the government itself, through merchants appointed under the seal of the emperor. Of the instructions given to these merchants the Russians procured a copy some years ago, though the punishment for betraying them is condemnation to track the imperial barges for life; and a more singular document was never issued by any government. It confirms all that has been said of the meanness arid knavery of this proud and insolent people; and as it has not appeared in print, a summary of it may prove amusing, and may serve to show, at the same time, the notions entertained by the Chinese with regard to the conduct of foreign commerce.

It sets out by stating that the aim of every nation, trading with other countries, is to prevent the advantage being on the side of the foreign nation; to do this the more effectually', and to establish harmony and frankness, “all [7:6:582] the letters received by any one of the licensed merchants from their partners are to be opened in a public assembly, that they may act in concert against the Russians.” 2. That as the general principles of commerce require that prices and demands should be foreseen, means must be taken to ascertain what articles the Russians are in want of, and what prices they fetch in Russia; what supplies they may have or expect in the market, and what value they bear in Russia. Every one is therefore to strive with all his might to get at this information, and lay it before a general meeting, when the president will give to each merchant a note of the quantities of each article, and of the prices he is to buy at, and of those articles which he is to withhold from the Russians. 3. That the Chinese market is to be kept scantily supplied, and Russian goods not eagerly sought, that the trade may be of importance to them, and the commerce advantageous to China. 4. That care be taken that the quantity of Chinese goods should appear always less than that of the Russians; and that no fresh goods be brought into the market before all the old stock be sold off. 6. That no eagerness be shown in the purchase of Russian goods, how much soever any individual of the merchants may be in want of them, “for the interest of the whole company is not to be sacrificed to that of an individual.” 7. That when the Russians have a scanty supply of any article that may be likely to meet with a considerable demand in China, a great eagerness is to be shown to buy up the whole; the Russians are to be told that China is very much in want of the said article, and one merchant is to outbid the other, and, when bought, they are to divide the quantity among themselves. 8. That the Russians, thus tempted by the high prices, and the assurance given them of the great demand, will cause large supplies to be brought to market, when they arc to be told that the article is no longer in request in China, &c., and thus the goods will be obtained at a cheap rate from the foreigners, to the great advantage of the whole nation. 9. Whenever the Russian merchants shall attempt to raise the prices of any commodity in consequence of its scarcity, every obstacle must be thrown in their way for the space of a month; and if they will not lower the prices, the whole trade must be suspended; and if, on complaint of the merchants, the Russian government should interfere, it will not be attended to, and the answer will be, that the commerce between the two nations shall cease. The 10th article contains an impudent falsehood: it instructs them not only to tell the Russians that the quantities of the several articles on hand are much less than they really are, but that “China does not produce silk and cotton.” The 11 th article directs them to carry on all their intereourse in the Russian language, which every one engaged in the trade must learn, in order to prevent the Russians from feeling the necessity of learning the Chinese language, and by that means “of discovering the secrets of the trade, or those of the government,” by overhearing conversations, &c. The 12th directs them to treat the Russians politely; permits reciprocal visits; but forbids a Chinese to pass a night in a Russian house; directs, that in these visits each should endeavour to learn something about the affairs of the Russian government, and according to the importance of the information obtained will be the value of the reward. The 13th directs, that a new merchant arriving at Mai-mai-chin is not to do any business for a whole year, but merely to look on and learn the nature of the trade, “for fear he should, by some mistake, break the thread of the whole.” The 14th and 15th prohibit gold and silver, manûfaetured copper and iron, from being exchanged, and the introduction of all articles of luxury, of goods manufactured in China, and of wine and spirituous liquors. 16th, “The secrets of our trade in the interior, as well as of that on the spot, must not be revealed, that this indiscretion may not occasion a rise in their prices, and a fall in ours, and therehy injure our empire and the trade of our subjects.” The eight remaining articles prescribe the various punishments for disobedience of the foregoing instructions, from a reprimand to that of death. The 22d runs thus: “Whoever betrays to the Russ⅛ns the secrets of our commerce in the interior, or the prices of Russian products in the interior, or the demand for them, the quantity he holds himself, or that others hold at Kiackta, or that may be on the road thither, shall be banished from Kiackta for ever, and be sent to the galleys for three years; but whosoever betrays to them these instructions verbally, or in effect, or by deed, shall be sent to the galleys for life.” And by the 23d, “Whoever betrays the secrets of the government which are not to be known by the Russians, shall be beheaded, not, however, without the sanction of the emperor." We know very little of the value of the trade carried on at this place in this extraordinary manner. It consists chiefly in exchange, on the part of Russia, of fur and various kinds of peltry, horses, drugs, &c., for tea, silks, nankeens, porcelain, lacquered ware, and other small articles similar to those imported by England. (Prom a Russian MS.}

The principal mart for foreign commerce is that of Canton, the only port, in fact, which is open for foreigners. For the last twenty years the foreign commerce of this port was almost exclusively in the hands of the English and the Americans. The English commerce consisted of two distinct branches; the one direct from England, and a complete monopoly of the East India Company; the other indirectly carried on by individuals from the several presidencies of India, chiefly from Bombay. The Chinese system of conducting their foreign trade at Canton is somewhat different from that of Kiackta. It is a monopoly confided to a certain number of persons, known by the name of Hong merchants; hong being the name of the large factories or masses of buildings surrounding square courts similar to our old inns, or the caravanserais of the East. Each nation has its separate hong, and the whole being arranged along the bank of a fine river, with abroad quay in their front, their appearance has a grand effect from the opposite side. The river is at least as broad as the Thames åt London, and for the distance of four or five miles it is crowded by Chinese vessels of all descriptions, which, from the multitude of people constantly residing in them, may be considered as a floating city. Foreign vessels are not allowed to approach nearer to Canton than Whampoo, which is about fifteen miles down the river.

The Chinese levy no specific duties on the articles imported, nor ad valorem duties on the eargoes; the only impost is on the ship itself, and is estimated by a rule as absurd as it is partial and unequal. They measure the length from the centre of the fore-mast to the centre of the mizen-mast, and the breadth is taken close abaft the mainmast. The length is then multiplied by the breadth, and the product, divided by ten, gives the measurement of the ship. All ships, according to this measurement, are classed under first, second, or third rates; all other vessels, however small, are classed as third rates. By this rule a ship of a hundred tons would pay from 4000 to 5000 dollars, and a ship of a thousand not above double that sum.

When a ship arrives at Canton she is immediately consigned to one of the hong merchants, who is responsible to the government for the good conduct of her commander anderew during her stay in the river. Through his hands all her cargo must pass, and by him the return cargo must be supplied. By long experience of the honourable manner in which the servants of the East India Company conduct[7:6:583] their concerns, a degree of mutual confidence has been established, which is unknown even in Europe. Not a bale of cloth, nor a package of any kind, is ever opened to be examined, but is received and passed from hand to hand, the Company’s mark being a suflicient guarantee of its answering the description in the invoice; the same confidence prevails on our part; and though the Chinese attach no dishonour to roguery in trade, few packages of teas, silks, nankeens, or other articles, are received in England which are not conformable with the samples. This, however, was not the case originally, nor is it so yet in purchases made by individuals; but as the hong merchants take back any article not answering to the description given of it, anci return it to the person who supplied the same, the inducement to cheat the Company is taken away. Some of the hong merchants accumulate fortunes which, for their magnitude, are unknown in Europe; others become bankrupt, in which case, as they are all appointed by government, the rest find it expedient to compound with their creditors, and, by such arrangements as may mutually be agreed upon, undertake to liquidate by instalments the whole debt. At the close of every season there is generally a balance in the hands of the hong merchants due to the East India Company, from half a million to a million sterling, and as much more due to individuals trading on their own bottoms. The hong merchants plead the necessity of retaining this balance, in order to enable them to make advances to the teagrowers, silk and cotton manufacturers, &c. who, as in lndia, are persons of small capitals, and require these advances to raise their respective products.

The articles exported to China by the East India Company consist of broad cloth, long cloths, camblets, furs, lead, tin, copper, &c. but the chief article is broad cloth. The commanders and officers of the Company’s ships have the privilege of taking out certain articles, such as peltry, glass, clocks, watches, cutlery, coral, prints, and paintings, &c. The principal article of import from China is tea. The rest of the cargo consists of nankeens and raw silk. The minor articles of porcelain, lacquered and ivory goods, tutenague, mother of pearl, drugs, cinnabar, &c. are chiefly confined to the private trade.

The Chinese appear to have no regular established system of credit among themselves, and the only circulating medium in the shape of coin, is a small piece of base metal (copper, tin, or lead mixed), of the value of the one-thousandth part of six shillings and eightpence, of little more intrinsic value, in fact, than a cowrie shell, which the Chinese, as well as the Hindoos, would seem once to have used; as the same character in their language which signifies a shell signifies also money and wealth, and it enters into the composition of characters which represent buying, selling, paying, &c. Silver in small ingots is used in commerce, but they have no determinate value, the price fluctuating with the demand, as in other articles of commerce. The high rate of interest operates as a discouragement to mercantile speculations, and the rigour of corporal punishment is added with the view, as it would appear, of deterring the must hardy speculator. The law says, “whoever shall lend either money or goods, shall only receive three parts in the hundred per month,” and that “how much soever may be suffered to accumulate, the capital shall remain the same.” It is lent from month to month, anti if the lender should complain of the interest not being punctually paid, the borrower is subject to the punishment of ten stripes of the bamboo the first month, twenty the second, and so on. While this exhor-bitant rate of interest, and the penalties attached to the law of usury, operate against all speculation among the Chinese, the Europeans resident at Canton have availed themselves of the opportunity of increasing their fortunes at the expense of the hong merchants, and at the risk of losing both capital and interest. (Prom various Manuscript Papers.')

When a European first sets his foot in China, he will < find the appearance of the country, the buildings, and the! people, so totally different from any thing he had before’ seen, that he might fancy himself to be transported into a new world. In the long line of internal navigation between the capital and Canton, of 1200 miles, with but one short interruption, he will observe every variety of surface, but disposed in a very remarkable manner in great masses. For many days he will see nothing but one uniform extended plain, without the smallest variety; again, for as many days, he will be hemmed in between precipitous mountains of the same naked character, and as unvaried in their appearance as the plains; and, lastly, ten or twelve days sail among lakes, swamps, and morasses, will complete the catalogue of monotonous uniformity. But whether he crosses the dry plains of Petcheli and Shantung, abounding with cotton and all the varieties of grain and pulse,—the more varied surface of Kiang-nan, fertile in silk, in yellow cotton, in fruits, in the staple commodity of grain, and in every thing that constitutes the luxuries, the comforts, and the necessities of the people,—the dreary swamps, morasses, and extensive lakes of the northern part of Kiang-see, where men subsist by fishing,—or its naked and picturesque mountains to the southward, famous for its porcelain manufactories ;—or whether he descend to the fertile plains of Quang-tung, on which almost all the vegetable products of the East may be said to be concentrated, —the grand characteristic feature is still the same, namely, a redundant population. Everywhere he meets with large masses of people, but mostly of one sex; thousands of men in a single group, without a single woman mixing among them—men whose long gowns and petticots give them the appearance of the softer sex; whilst these are sparingly seen at a distance in the background, peeping over the mud-walls, or partially hid behind trees or bushes; and their short jackets and trowsers would make them pass for men among strangers, if their braided hair, stuck full of flowers, and their little cramped and bandaged feet, did not betray their sex. He will be pleased with the unequivocal marks of good humour which prevail in every crowd, uninterrupted and unconcerned by the bawling of some unhappy victim suffering under the lash of magisterial correction; and he will be amused at the awkward exertions of the softer sex to hobble out of sight when taken by surprise; but his slumbers will be interrupted on the nights of the full moon by the nocturnal orgies of squibs and crackers, gongs and trumpets, and other accompaniments of boisterous mirth.

A constant succession of large villages, towns, and cities, with high walls, lofty gates, and more lofty pagodas,—large navigable rivers, communicating by artificial canals, both crowded with barges for passengers and barks for burden, as different from each other, in every river and every canal, as they are all different from any thing of the kind in the rest of the world,—will present to the traveller an animated picture of activity, industry, and commerce. He will behold, in the lakes and morasses, every little islet crowned with villages and mud hovels. He will observe birds (the leu-tse, or cormorant) catching fish; and men in the water, with jars on their head, fishing for birds. He will see shoals of ducks issuing from floating habitations, obedient to the sound of a whistle; carts on the land, driven by the wind; and barges on the water, moving by wheels, like those of late years invented in Europe for propelling the steam-boats. Among other strange objects, he will observe, at every ten or twelve [7:6:584]miles, small military guard-houses, with a few soldiers fantastically dressed in paper helmets and quilted petticots, making use of the fan, if the weather be warm, and falling on their knees if an officer of rank should pass them. He will observe that the meanest hut, with walls of clay, and a roof of thatch, is built on the same plan, and of the same shape, with the palace of the viceroy, constructed of blue bricks, and its tiled roof supported on pillars. He will notice that the luxury of glass is wanting in the windows of both; and that, whilst one admits a free passage to the air, the other but imperfectly resists the weather, and as imperfectly admits the light, whether through oiled paper, silk gauze, pearl shell, or horn.

Nothing, perhaps, will more forcibly arrest the attention of the traveller than the general nakedness of the country as to trees and hedge-rows, the latter of which have no existence, and the former exist only in clumps near the dwellings of the public officers, or the temples of Fo, or Tao-tse. No green meadows will meet his eye; no cattle enliven the scene; the only herbage is on the narrow ridges which divide the plots of grain or the brown fallow, as in the common fields of England. The terraced hills he will probably observe to be terminated with a clump of trees, or a pagoda, the only objects in the distance that catch the eye. But the bridges on the canals, •of every variety of shape, circular, elliptical, horse-shoe, Gothic, slight and unstable as they are, are objects that, by their novelty and variety, must attract notice; and the monumental architecture, which adorns the cemeteries under every form, from the lowly tent-shaped dwelling to the loftiest column—the elevated terraces, supported by semicircular walls—and the round hillocks, which, in their graduated size, point out that of the father, the mother, and the children, according to seniority—are among the most interesting objects that China affords.

If by chance he should be admitted within the gates of one of their great cities, as Pekin, Nankin, Sau-tcheou-foo, Hong-tcheou-foo, or Canton, he may fancy himself, from the lowhouses with curved overhanging roofs, uninterrupted by a single chimney, the pillars, poles, flags, and streamers, to have got into the midst of a large encampment. The glitter arising from the gilding, the varnishing, and the painting, in vivid colours, that adorn the fronts of the shops, and, in particular, the gaily painted lanterns of horn, muslin, silk, and paper; the busy multitude all in motion, and all of one sex; the painted and gilded inscriptions, that, in announcing the articles dealt in, assure the passengers that “they don’t cheat here ;” the confused noise of tinkers, cobblers, and blacksmiths, in their little portable workshops; the buying, selling, bartering, and bawling, of different wares; the processions of men carrying home their new-married wives, with a long train of presents, and squalling and noisy music, or carrying to the grave some deceased relation, with most lamentable howlings; the mirth and bursts of laughter occasioned by jugglers, conjurors, mountebanks, quack-doctors, musicians, and comedians—in the midst of all which is constantly heard a strange twanging noise from the barbers’ tweezers, like the jarring sound of a cracked Jew’s harp; the magistrates and officers, attended by their lictors, and a numerous retinue bearing flags, umbrellas, painted lanterns, and other strange insignia of their rank and office;—all these present to the eyes and ears of a stranger a novel and interesting spectacle. The noise and bustle of this busy multitude commence with day-light, and cease only with the setting of the sun; after which scarcely a whisper is heard, and the streets are entirely deserted.

Towards the central parts of China, near to the places where the two great rivers, the Whang-ho and the Yang-tse-kiang, intersect the grand canal, a scene, magnificent beyond description, will arrest the attention of the traveller. Here he will find himself in the midst of bustle and business. The multitudes of ships of war, of commerce, of convenience, and of pleasure, some gliding down the stream towards the sea, others working against it by sails, oars, or wheels, and others lying at anchor; the banks on either side, as well as those of the canals, covered with towns as far as the eye can reach; the continuance along the canals of cities, towns,· and villages, almost without interruption; the vast number of light stone bridges, of one, two, and three arches; the temples occurring in frequent succession, with their double and triple tiers of roofs; the Pei-los, or triple gateways, in commemoration of some honest man or chaste virgin; the face of the surrounding country, beautifully diversified with hill and dale, and every part of it in the highest state of cultivation; the apparently happy condition of the numerous inhabitants, indicated by their cheerful looks and substantial clothing, chiefly in silk ;—such are the scenes which presented themselves to our countrymen who composed the embassy of the Earl of Macartney, and were afterwards repeated to those who accompanied Lord Amherst.

He would probably be mistaken, however, in inferring the general happy state of the people, or beautiful appearance of the country, from what might occur along this great line of communication between the northern and southern extremities of the empire. The Dutch embassy setting out in winter, when the canals were frozen, proceeded by a different route, and the inconveniences they suffered, as. described by Van Braam, are such as can scarcely be credited to have occurred in any nation removed but a few degrees from the savage state. The face of the country was dreary, without a visible trace of cultivation, or a hovel of any kind, for the space of eight or ten miles together. In many parts the surface was covered with water, and the mud hovels completely melted down. Very few cities, towns, or villages, occurred in their route, and those were almost universally in a ruinous condition. Near to the capital they passed a city exhibiting only a mass of ruins. It was not before they had crossed the Yellow River that the prints of wheel carriages marked out the road. The people everywhere appeared indigent and oppressed, equally destitute of the feelings of humanity and hospitality. The Dutch were carried in small bamboo chairs, each having four bearers, so weak and tottering that they could seldom go through the day’s journey; and it frequently happened that they halted in the middle of a cold night, in an open uninhabited part of the country, exposed to all the inclemency of the weather, without a hovel of any kind to afford them shelter; and when they reached the end of the day’s journey, the lodgings appropriated for their reception were so miserable, admitting on all sides the wind, rain, or snow, that they generally preferred taking a little rest in their bamboo chairs. They observed on the road old men and young women travelling in wheelbarrows, sometimes in litters or chairs carried by a couple of asses, one being fixed between the poles before and one behind. The rivers were without bridges, and crossed, when not fordable, by rafts of bamboo. All this is corroborated in the Voyage a Peking, by M. de Guignes; and hence it may be concluded that China, like other countries, has its fertile and its desolate districts, and that much information is yet required to form a competent notion' of the real state and condition of this mighty empire. (Staunton’s Authentic Account ; Lord Macartney’s Journal ; Barrow’s Travels ; Voyage a Peking ; Van Braam’s Journal; MS. Journal.')

One thing at least is quite certain, that a traveller in the best and most frequented parts would look in vain for [7:6:585]the least trace of these enchanting gardens, of which Sir William Chambers and his friend Lepqua, the painter of Canton, aided by another brother of the brush, Frère Attiret, Jesuit and painter to the emperor of China, have put together so fanciful a description. Sir William saw, what Europeans generally see in Canton, the shops in China-street, the quay, on which the foreign factories are situated, and perhaps a small mean garden, at the head of the first reach of the river, to which strangers are permitted, as a great favour, to go and buy parcels of lettuce and turnip seeds, neatly packed up, and sold as rare and curious flowers; and the French Jesuit’s taste and accuracy may be estimated from his own statement, that “the face of the country from Canton to Pekin is very indifferent; and though six or seven hundred leagues (it is four hundred) nothing occurs worthy of attention.” He tells us, it is true, that he was shut up in a kind of close cage, which they laboured to persuade him was a litter, and that he arrived in Pekin without having seen any thing at all on the journey.

With the exception of the imperial gardens of Gehol and Yuen-min-yuen, there is not, perhaps, in all China a piece of ornamental ground of the extent of three acres’; and a traveller may pass the whole distance in the open air, which Frère Attiret did in his eage, without seeing a single one of any extent. If he should chance to get a peep within the inclosing walls of those lodges set apart for the residence of the emperor when he travels, or of the habitation of some magistrate or wealthy merchant, he will probably find a square court of a rood or two of ground behind the women’s apartments, concealed completely from public view, in which two or three little fishponds have their margins fantastically broken by shapeless masses of rock, or cut so as to resemble rugged mountains in miniature; among which, planted in concealed earthen vessels, are dwarfish trees, proportioned in size to the pigmy mountains, and bearing all the marks of venerable age; causing new roots to strike in old branches, twisting and bending them into particular forms and directions, wounding the stem, and smearing it with sugar, to attract the ant and other insects. Among these rocks are narrow paths almost impassable, with holes anderevices here and there to peep through, just to catch a glimpse of some piece of stagnant water, on the shore of which is a wooden temple, a bridge, a pavilion,—or perhaps to view a remarkable piece of rock. Within the water, if large enough, an island with its pagoda will probably be placed; or, as occupying less space, the imitation of a passageboat stuck upon piles, and fitted up with appropriate apartments, kitehen, &c. In the recesses of the rocks are seats or small summer-houses, opposite to which are parterres of various flowers growing in sunken pots, which can thus be replaced by others in bloom, according to the season of the year; and where there is space, the peach, the orange, the lee-tchce, and other fruit trees, are introduced. From the boundary wall a roof is generally projected, supported on wooden pillars, which forms a covered gallery to walk in; gravel walks are out of the question, and would be wholly inconsistent with the feelings and usage of a nation, the women of which, for whose recreation these gardens are chiefly designed, cannot walk, and whose male population of the upper ranks are too indolent to walk. In short, where seerecy is so desirable, where enjoyments are stolen, and walking is considered as drudgery, seats and concealed recesses are best suited to the comfort and convenience of the people. If a Chinese acts on any principle, it is that of producing the greatest possible variety in the least possible space. He is indebted to nature for many of the most beautiful shrubs and flowers which she has bestowed on man for the gratification of the sense of sight or smell. Various species of camélia, poeonia, chrysanthemum, asters, roses, and a numerous list of the choicest flowers, gratify the eye; while the Pergularia odoratissima, the Olea fragrans, the Petrospo-rum Chinense, and v the Arabian jessamine, spread their fragrance around. The sacred Nelumbium breaks the surface of the water with its peltate leaves and showy flowers, and the elegant bamboo and the water eyprus (Cupressus pendula), like the weeping willow, give concealment to their seats of retirement, whether for ease or sensuality.

Throughout this extensive empire, embracing so great a variety of climate, the physical and moral characters of the people remain as fixed and unchangeable as the laws and customs, from which, in fact, they receive their colour. Such is the force of ancient usage, and the dread of innovation, that a Chinese never stops to inquire what he ought to do on any pressing emergency, but what Yao and Chun did in a similar case four thousand years ago. Time, in fact, may be said to stand still in China. Here not only the system of morals, of social intercourse, of jurisprudence, of government, is the same now as it was three thousand years ago, but the cut of their robes, their houses and furniture, are precisely the same; so that if custom has exercised its dominion over this singular people, they have at least been freed from the tyranny of fashion. Here a young lady may safely wear the head-dress of her great-grandmother, without the imputation of being singular or old fashioned. One of the missionaries observes, Parcourez l’empire de la Chine, tout vous semblera fondée dans le même creuset, et façonne par le même moule. No fault can be found with the metal or the mould in which it is cast. The general stature of the Chinese is about that which in Europe we call the middle size; few tall men are to be found among them, and fewer dwarfs or deformed persons; but they are distinguished by many physical peculiarities, as the narrow, elongated, half-closed eye, the linear and highly arched eye-brow; the broad root of the nose; the projection of the upper jaw a little beyond the lower; the thin straggling beard, and the body generally free from hair; a high conical head and triangular face; and these are the peculiar characteristics which obtained for them, in the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus, a place among the varieties of the species distinguished by the name of homines monstrosi.

Every individual, without exception, plaits his strong black hair into a long tail, something like the lash of a whip, extending below the waist, sometimes to the calf of the leg. This tail grows from the crown of the head, the rest of the scalp being closely shaven. The hair of the beard is pulled out till nearly the age of forty, when its growth is encouraged, and, being an indication of age, is considered as a mark of respect. The great mass of the people is decently and substantially clothed; the upper and middle classes in rich silks, satins, and fine cottons, the lower orders generally in cottons; but they are not cleanly in their persons, having, apparently, a particular aversion to cold water, which they never use in its pure state as a beverage, and always warm it for washing the hands and face, even in the middle of the dog-days; yet they use ice in the northern provinces for cooling their fruits.

The countenance of a Chinese man has something in it peculiarly pleasing and good humoured, which is just the reverse of that of the women, at least of those in the common rank of life, the only women who are seen in public. A Chinese is never out of humour except when disturbed at his meal; necessity only, not even his own self-interest, will prevail on him to leave his rice unfinished.

The common people seldom sit down to table, or, in fine weather, take their meals within doors; but each with [7:6:586]his bowl in his hand, squatting himself down on his haunches round the boiler, eats his frugal repast of rice or other vegetables, seasoned with a little pork or fish; or salted duck, with oil, fat, or a little soy, washing it down with weak tea, or warm rice beer, or seau-tcheou, a villanous ardent spirit. Rice is the staff of life in China, of which they eat largely, but in drinking they are extremely moderate. They are not nice in their choice of food,—dogs, cats, rats, and almost every animal, being eagerly sought after by the poorer clas⅛. In such a mass of population, many families must necessarily struggle with all the ills of extreme poverty; fewer, however, it would appear, in proportion to the population, than in most other countries; the small imposts on agricultural produce, the easy terms on which land is procured, the small divisions into which it is partitioned out, the multitude of large rivers, lakes, and canals abounding with fish, the freedom of the fisheries, and the extremely moderate rate at which the agricultural and labouring poor are taxed, are so many spurs to industry; and when a man through age or infirmity becomes incapable of labour, his relations are compelled to contribute to his support; a refusal would be an offence against parental affection, which is not in China a mere moral maxim, but carries with it the force of a positive law; poor-houses are consequently scarcely known, and beggars exist only in the persons of the priests of Fo and Tao-tse and other impostors, in the shape of astrologers and fortune-tellers. Old age is here highly respected, and the imperial family takes every occasion to set the example. On Yung-chin’s marriage with a Tartar princess, she distributed a piece of cotton cloth and two measures of rice to every woman throughout the empire whose age exceeded 70 years. In the province of Shang-tung alone, whose population may amount to 20,000,000, the list consisted of 98,222 above seventy, 40,893 above eighty, and 3453 above ninety years of age.

In all ranks of life, but more especially among the magistrates and officers of government, vivacity and activity are less esteemed than sedateness and deliberation; gravity is considered as the test of wisdom, and silence of discretion. A magistrate should never attempt to joke, and should forbear to talk; he should resemble great bells, which seldom strike, and full vessels, which give little sound. He should never show his anger, as this would put the person who had offended him on his guard. A Chinese of education is a complete machine; he must act and speak, and walk abroad, dress, receive and return visits, according to rule, founded on ancient usage; the observance of which is a most important part of his duty. If two persons meet, they know from the button on the bonnet their respective ranks; and that alone determines what each has to do and to say. If two officers of equal rank pass each other, they fold their hands and salute each other till out of sight; if of different ranks, the chair or carriage of the inferior must stop, while that of the superior passes; and where the difference is very great, the inferior must alight. It is not, as in Europe, that one person may pass another with indifference, may take off his hat or keep it on, may give or refuse his hand, according to the humour in which he may happen to be; if one of the people should fail to pay the respect that is due to their superiors, a few strokes of the bamboo will bring him back to a sense of his duty. Where there is so much ceremony, there must be much hypocrisy and little cordiality.

When one officer pays a visit to another, a sheet of red paper, folded in a particular manner, bearing the name and quality of the visitor, is dispatched before him, that the person visited may know where to receive him, at the gate, in the first court, or in the inner apartment. The card is accompanied by a list of presents meant to be offered. If part be received, a letter of thanks, and a list of those returned, are sent back, with this observation in two characters, “They are pearls, I dare not touch them ;” in allusion to the prohibition of pearls being worn by any except the imperial family, or those who have special leave. The visits of an inferior must always be made before the first meal, that the fumes of meat or wine may not offend the person visited. If he means to decline the visit, the bearer of the card is desired to say to his master, that he will not give him the trouble to alight from his chair; but if he does not return the visit in person, he sends his card within three 'days, and there the visiting acquaintance ends. Where a visitor is received, a prodigious deal of bowing and ceremony takes place. When once seated, to lounge on the chair, to lean back, to sit cross-legged, or to throw about the arms, or to look round, would be a gross breach of good manners. A cup of tea, sipped simultaneously, according to rule, finishes the formal visit.

These restraints of ceremony, imposed more or less on all conditions of men, are incompatible with frankness and sincerity, and beget that want of confidence between colleagues in office which is particularly observable in this jealous government, by the constant plotting against and undermining each other. The habitual gravity which a magistrate must put on in public stamps an air of importance on matters of the most trifling nature; though it is said they sometimes relax in private, where they indulge in all manner of excesses; and the stiff formality which strongly characterizes this people is said to give way, on such occasions, to conviviality; not, however, unless they are well acquainted with their guests. At such feasts women never appear, but are usually left to be amused by a set of players. To convince the guests how ar t xious the entertainer is to see them, the invitation is repeated three several times; the first on the preceding evening, the second on the morning of the day, and the third when dinner is ready for serving up, which is the latter of the two meals, and generally from four to six o’clock, according to the season of the year. The guests do not sit down at one table, but generally in pairs, at small square tables, every one of which is served precisely with the same kind of dishes, which are very numerous. Besides the ordinary quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, used as food, several gelatinous articles, as bears’ paws, the hoofs of various animals, stags’ sinews, sharks’ fins, birds’ nests, biche-de-mer, fucus or sea-weed, enrich their soups. With these and other substances, mixed with spices, and soys, and various herbs, they have an endless preparation of dishes, served up in small porcelain bowls, eaten with porcelain spoons, and two little ivory or ebony sticks, with which they take the pieces of meat or dry rice, and throw them into the mouth. Pastry and sweetmeats are served up at intervals; tea follows the dinner, after which comes the dessert. Those who, from illness or accident, send an excuse, have their portion of the dinner sent to their homes. Each guest, the next morning, sends a billet of thanks for the good fare he enjoyed the preceding evening.

Though there are tea-houses and cook-shops, to which tradesmen, artizans, and the peasantry, with the inferior officers of state and clerks of the departments, occasionally resort, to refresh themselves and to read the Pekin Gazette, there are no promiscuous assemblies or fixed meetings, as fairs for the lower classes, or routes, balls, or music parties for the higher ranks. Dancing is utterly unknown. The clumsy boots of one sex, and the crippled feet of the other, would be ill adapted for the amusement of dancing, even were the sexes permitted to mix together; but “tripping on the light fantastic toe” would not become that gravity which is so essential in the exterior [7:6:587]of Chinese good breeding. In the former Tartar dynasty, some Lamas from Thibet brought with them to court a set of dancing girls, whose lascivious movements gave great offence to the grave and virtuous Chinese, whose general conduct towards the women is nearly as bad as that which prevails among savage tribes. One may discover in their proverbs the feeling toward the sex. “A family,” it is said, “in which there are five women, has nothing to fear from robbers; its poverty will protect it.” Again, “When the hen crows in the morning, domestic affairs are not going on as they should be ;” and, “What the women have lost in their feet, .they have added to their tongues.”

It is remarkable enough, that the accurate Marco Polo is wholly silent on the subject of-the crippled feet of the Chinese women, which there, can be no doubt were as common in his time as they are now. Of the origin of this unnatural custom the Chinese relate twenty different accounts, all equally absurd. Europeans suppose it to have originated in the jealousy of the men, determined, says Pauw, in his severe manner, to keep them “si étroit qu’on ne peut comparer l’exactitude avec laquelle on les gouverne.” Whatever may have been the cause, the continuance may more easily be explained: as long as the men will marry none but such as have crippled feet, crippled feet must for ever remain in fashion among Chinese ladies. It is kept up by the pride of superiority and the dread of degradation, like the custom of widows burning themselves in India.

The little value set upon females leads but too frequently to that unnatural crime, female infanticide and exposure. There can be no question as to its existence; the extent of it, however, may have been exaggerated. In the Pekin Gazette of 1.815 is a representation from a humane magistrate of Kiang-nan to the tribunal of justice in the capital, praying that the horrible practice of selling and putting away wives and drowning female infants may be prohibited: on which the emperor Kia-king sagaciously observes, that “the existence of male and female is essential to the continuance of the human species that “husband and wife form one of the five relationships in which human beings stand to each other ;” that “divorce is not allowable except for one of the seven causes and concludes, “if it be true that it is a common practice among poor families to drown their female infants, and the husband and wife separate for every trifle, these are indeed wicked practices, which should be put a stop to by admonitory and prohibitory edicts.” The magistrates of a district of Fokien sent a case to court on another occasion, to know how they should act. It was this: A man had made a vow that, if his wife recovered from a fit of sickness, he would make a sacrifice of his son, who was three years of age. The wife recovered, and he performed his vow. The supreme court decreed that, having violated the laws of nature, he had incurred the penalty of death; but, on a mistaken notion that, by the unnatural sacrifice, he had savea the life of his mother, the emperor mitigated the punishment to a hundred blows of the bamboo, and perpetual banishment.

This is but a miserable picture of the state of society in China. It is rendered still worse by the common practice of all oriental nations, which admits of a man taking as many wives as he can maintain. In China a second or inferior wife is taken without any ceremony, and generally purchased. The children by her are considered as the children of the first wife, and strictly legitimate; but the mother is without consideration in the eye of law, and may be disposed of in the same way as she was procured.

The athletic exercises of wrestling, boxing, fencing, the active amusements, such as cricket, golf, bowls, tennis, are wholly unknown; and the sports of the field, as hunting, shooting, angling, as pursuits of pleasure, cannot be conceived by them. The Tartars, however, are fond of hunting, of the pleasures of which the Chinese had so little idea, that Kien-lung, in his Eloge de Mouhden, seems to think it necessary to acquaint them with the benefits arising from this diversion. Having described the pleasures and the dangers of the chase, “Thus,” says he, “ends this delightful and highly useful exercise, which is at once propitious to heaven, to the earth, and to the army; to heaven by the offerings it affords in its honour; to the earth, which it relieves from the cruel and pernicious guests that prey upon it; and to the army, by accustoming them to the dangers and fatigues of war.”

To appear with the head uncovered, and without boots, would be an act of rudeness not to be tolerated. To receive a present with one hand would be equally rude and disrespectful. To mention the word death would be an insufferable rudeness. When a person dies he is said to be gone to his ancestors. Many other peculiarities might be mentioned in which they differ from the rest of the world, and many in which they resemble the Turks in a very marked manner; but this is the less surprising, as the Turks are from the same Scythian stock.

Suicide is no crime with the Chinese. It is a favour to a condemned criminal to allow him to be his own executioner. Women and officers of the government are most addicted to the practice of suicide; the former perhaps from a sense of degradation, or in the gloom of solitude; the latter possibly to escape torture or disgrace when suspected of criminal conduct.

There are two favourable traits in the Chinese character which should not be overlooked,—the respect and veneration of children for their parents, and the almost universal sobriety that prevails in all ranks and conditions of men. A curious story is told by Le Gentil, which he had from Père Laureati, respecting the emperor Kaung-hee, who one day determined to experience the unknown pleasure of getting drunk. He chose his favourite minister as his bottle companion, who contrived to keep sober while his master was unable to stand. The minister apprized the chief eunuch of the emperor’s situation, and hinted that, if they did not contrive to cure him of the practice, none of their lives would be safe for a moment. “You must therefore,” he continues, “load me with chains, and throw me into a dungeon.” Kaung-hee on waking inquired for his companion; the eunuch said that he was in confinement by his orders, for having incurred his displeasure. The emperor doubted his senses; but having ordered the minister to be brought before him, he was so shocked and provoked that he never afterwards ventured to repeat the experiment.

Like other nations, therefore, the Chinese character has its bright as well as its dark side; and if we find the latter to be the most prominent, it should be remembered that it is drawn chiefly by foreigners, and principally by those whose communication is rare and restricted, or by those who have only visited one of their out-ports, distant many hundred leagues from the seat of government. Here by all .accounts they are so much given to knavery and cheating, that it is held to be no crime in the seller to cheat where the buyer is stupid enough to be cheated. Pauw observes that the shopkeepers would never’ have thought of writing upon their signs, “here nobody will be cheated,” if they had not predetermined to cheat all the world; yet our own shopkeepers are not backward in announcing their “genuine” articles. It is to be feared, however, that the boasted morality of the Chinese is built on no principle of feeling or propriety of action between man and man; and that where public decorum is not offended there is no breach of moral duty. Great crimes [7:6:588]are not common, but little vices pervade all ranks of society. A Chinese is cold, cunning, and distrustful; always ready to take advantage of those he has to deal with; extremely covetous and deceitful; quarrelsome, vindictive, but timid and dastardly. A Chinese in office is a strange compound of insolence and meanness. All ranks and conditions have a total disregard for truth; from the emperor downwards the most palpable falsehoods are proclaimed with unblushing effrontery, to answer a political, an interested, or an exculpatory purpose. The emperor asserted, and several great officers of state repeated the assertion to Lord Amherst, that they saw Lord Macartney go through the whole of their odious ceremony, and that he performed it to admiration.

These arc among the dark shades of the Chinese character; opposed to which maybe set his sober and industrious habits, submissive disposition, a mild and affable manner, an exactness and punctuality in all which he undertakes to perform, and if he has not been taught a general philanthropy, or if sentiments of love for the whole species havtì not been instilled into his mind, he haè at least the merit of believing in the God of his fathers, in obeying the commands of his superior, and in honouring his father and mother. Under a better government the Chinese could not fail to become a better people; as it is, some favourable traits may be found, both in the habits of the people and the principles of the government. “Some very considerable and positive moral and political advantages,” as Sir George Staunton observes, “are attributable to the system of early and universal marriage; to the sacred regard that is habitually paid to the ties of kindred; to the sobriety, industry, and even intelligence of the lower classes; to the almost total absence of feudal rights and privileges; to the equable distribution of landed property; to the natural incapacity and indisposition of the government and people to an indulgence in ambitious projects and foreign conquests; and, lastly, to a system of penal laws, if not the most just and equitable, at least the most comprehensive, uniform, and suited to the genius of the people for whom it is designed, perhaps of any that ever existed and with this qualified character we dismiss the subject. (μ.)