of elaborate dykes; they transport soil to great distances (according to Gutzlaff) for the purpose of covering rocks; and everything that can be used as manure, including even the barbers' shavings of their own polls, is carefully hoarded, and night-soil sold in cakes and weighed as nicely as the doves' dung in the time of Elisha the prophet of Israel. Pasture-lands are rare, and, in fact, as there are no enclosures, cattle can only be allowed to feed when tethered. Pleasure grounds are likewise rare, and where they exist are of small area; and as the roads are in general narrow paths-the Chinese being usually content to walk or carry each other about in sedansmuch unproductive surface is saved. Even in burying the dead this seeming necessity for economy of space maintains a struggle against the prejudices of the people which demand a new grave for each individual, or rather which respect the old graves too much to allow them to be disturbed in favour of new comers. Monuments are seen by the roadside, or in barren places where the dead cannot interfere with the sustenance of the living; sometimes the coffin is kept above ground in corners of fields till the bones may be collected in jars and placed at the cottage door; and occasionally, as in the island of Chusan, numerous coffins, with their occupants in all stages of decomposition, may be seen lying promiscuously under a precipice, denied the rite of sepulture from mere want of room. In the mean time, while the efforts of the government and the national habits unite in making agriculture the grand resource of the people, every plan is put in practice that ingenuity could devise or tyranny adopt for increasing their numbers, and confining the population within the circle of the empire. In China a rood of land has more than the poetical property ascribed to it in earlier England: it does much more than "maintain its man." An acre, if well cultivated, produces three thousand six hundred pounds of rice in two crops in the year, which at two pounds a day would be sufficient for five persons, or at one pound a day for ten persons. But an adult Chinese, to say nothing of young children, cannot reckon even on the latter quantity. He is fain to make up with pulse, sweet potatoes, pith, and the animal horrors that have been indicated as furnishing his table. But still the industrious, untiring, hard and foul feeding plodder has not enough. The people starve in multitudes, notwithstanding that the government every now and then distributes food and clothes among them; and in spite of the severity of the law against emigration,—in spite of the religious bonds which link them to the tombs of their ancestors,-in spite of the ties of nature and kindred, which are nowhere stronger than in China,and in spite of the national vanity which represents the Celestial Empire as the centre of civilization and paradise of the world, the famished population bursts its prescribed bounds, and overflows the neighbouring regions. - We are not sensible that we have exaggerated in this picture; but if it even approximates to correctness, it would seem to follow that nearly the whole of the more valuable part of the surface of China must be already occupied in the production of food; and that tea and silk, therefore, the former from the hardiness of the plant, and the latter from the comparatively small portion of the soil occupied by the food of the insects,—are the only articles of produce which can be expected to admit of any very important increase as the media of remittance for the commodities of foreign nations. The idea that the Chinese are able to buy what they want with money, because they spend four millions sterling on Those who an intoxicating drug, is probably erroneous. entertain it appear to forget that the sum mentioned is almost the whole that is bestowed on foreign luxuries by a population of between three and four hundred million souls; and yet is so large in comparison with the pecuniary resources of the country as to have occasioned a bloody and disastrous war between the buyers and sellers. In addition to opium, their extravagances are chiefly tripang, isinglass in various forms, such as birds' nests, &c., some sandal wood, and a few perfumes; but materials for clothing, metals, and, above all, rice, form the bulk of their foreign trade. The entreport fee at Canton on vessels laden with rice has long been discontinued, and the measurement charge was in like manner abandoned in 1825; an enormous bounty being thus offered on the importation of food. The resources of the Chinese in manufactures we shall have to examine presently, in a brief survey of the internal industry of the empire. CHAPTER II. INDUSTRY-TRADE-ARTS AND SCIENCES. THE Chinese regard agriculture as the noblest employment next to literature, and entertain a Roman contempt for commerce and manufacturing industry. Their numbers appear to have begun early to press upon the means of subsistence; and being surrounded by deserts and the sea, they had no resource but in home productions, which, in consequence, it was the policy of the government to stimulate to the utmost extent. The emperors discovered that the people were easily ruled only when they were well fed; and they not merely rendered honourable an occupation which furnished the sole means of subsistence, but offered as a bonus on the cultivation of waste lands exemption for a certain time from taxation. Agriculture is therefore well understood, and better practised; although practised with rude instruments, and with few of those inventions which the science of Europeans has called in to the aid of industry. It was never either necessary or desirable in China to dispense, even to the smallest extent, with manual labour, and for this reason the people are still unequalled in some departments of husbandry. The art of irrigation was different. No numbers of human beings could perform the work unaided, and the machinery used by the Chinese for raising water is accordingly the admiration of all travellers. Draining is in the same category. It was equally indispensable, and equally beyond mere manual labour; and it has therefore called forth to the same extent the resources of the national ingenuity. But while this clever and hardworking people have brought the cultivation of the soil to a degree of perfection by sheer dint of numbers, these very numbers have kept up the price of its produce to an extent which retains them on the brink of starvation. Where the labour-market is overstocked, wages of course cannot rise higher than the level of mere subsistence; and that this is the case in China is proved by the facility with which service can be obtained for nothing more than sufficiency of food. The wages of a day-labourer, we are told, are fourpence a day; those of a journeyman silversmith, painter, or engraver, one pound per month; and the earnings of a common schoolmaster about the same sum. After this we are almost afraid to take the price of rice from Gutzlaff, who is the only recent authority who mentions it, at two taëls per stone-or something less than a shilling a pound, or the price of pork at a hundred cash, or eightpence a pound! Rice, however, it must be recollected, is a luxury to the poor; and as for animal food (of what we think in Europe the legitimate kinds) they consider themselves well off if they taste it once in the month. Rice before being sown is steeped in liquid manure, |