THE NATIONAL LIFE OF CHINA.
If it becomes one to know something of those with whom he is about to be brought into contact, it is high time the rest of the world were acquainting itself with that portion of the vast human family that has so long segregated itself upon the plains of China. The world seems to have entered again upon a migratory era of mankind, in which no longer solitary individuals are seen groping their way over land or over sea, in search of the excitement of adventure or the pleasure of acquiring strange knowledge; but whole nations are seen feverous with the passion for emigration, and throwing off their surplus swarms to settle in the more favoured places of the earth. Ireland is emptying itself upon America,—England and Scotland are peopling Australia; a restless host, 150,000 strong, yearly takes its march from the Continent, mostly for the New World;—while in America itself a similar movement is ever afoot, pressing peacefully from east to west, but not seldom dashing covetously against the crumbling States that line the coveted shores of the Mexican sea. We do not know if the Old World likewise, within its own bosom, is not on the eve of exhibiting a similar movement of nations—a heave and roll of people upon people, of north upon south—an overflowing of the long-pent-up barbaric energies of Muscovy over the crumbling States which fringe alike its European and Asiatic borders. But how different the impelling motive here, and how significant of the undeveloped state of the Russian compared with the Western world! It is the barbaric lust of territorial extension, the rude fervour of fanaticism, the sensual dream of luxury to be captured in the South;—in one word, it is the same spirit that animated the hordes of an Attila or Gengis Khan that now spreads its contagion among the Russians. They move, too, like an inert mass. There is noindividual lifein them, that culminating phase of civilisation,—no spontaneous and self-reliant action in the units of the mass. They move, not by virtue of an innate and self-directing force, but are swayed to and fro by the will of their Czar, as vastly and unresistingly as the slumbrous mass of ocean beneath the influence of the moon. They press southwards from their northern homes as the vast torpid mass of the glacier gravitates from its cradle in the snows, crushing its slow way down to the plain, and spreading a cold blight around in valleys that once bore the vine. The glacier soon melts when it overpasses the zone of cultivation; so, we trust, will the power of Russia when it strives to take hold of the seats of civilisation.
It is a fanatic but unholy crusade that now enlists the sympathies of the Slavonic millions; but it is peace and wisdom that elsewhere foster the spirit and guide the course of emigration. It is the effort of individuals to better themselves. The units of society are learning to think for themselves; and the spread of peace and tolerance, and the triumphs of mechanical invention, are laying “the world all before them where to choose.” It is a great thing to see this power of reflection and self-reliance spreading among mankind; for assuredly, wherever it is met with, it argues a stage of national development which only long centuries of civilisation suffice to produce. Such a faculty it is, fostered by the external circumstances which we have named above, which is now drawing those hermits of the world, the Chinese, from their long seclusion, and bringing them into yearly and fast-increasing contact with Europeans. Alike in California and Australia, in our West India colonies and in the islands of the Pacific, the Chinaman may be seen side by side with the European, the Negro, and the Malay; and as he immeasurably transcends the other coloured races in industry and intelligence, so not unfrequently he may compare with the European even in point of that business-like cast of intellect which we self-managing Anglo-Saxons so highly prize.
The Chinese are coming out into foreign lands to meet us, and we in turn are posting ourselves on their shores to become better acquainted with them. In fact, of late, China has been such a centre of interest, that almost every Power that has a navy, has a detachment of war-vessels cruising off its shores. Great Britain, America, France, Russia (not to speak of stray vessels from other Powers), are regularly represented by naval squadrons in its waters; so that China, the oldest and not least notable of existing empires, is actually revolutionising and reforming herself under the eyes of the leading representatives of the world’s civilisation. It is high time, then, we repeat, that Europe should know as much as possible of this vast Power that is now for the first time being linked into the community of nations. Every information respecting their character and customs has now a practical and more than ordinary value; and it is all the more wanted, inasmuch as no people appears hitherto to have been more imperfectly comprehended by the rest of the world. Twelve centuries before our era, we find them, by indisputable proof, in a condition of advanced civilisation. Not to speak of the larger items of civilisation, which we have discussed on former occasions, they were then in possession of gold and silver—had money, and kept accounts—had silks, dyed in many colours—leather, hemp, wine, jewels, ivory, carriages, horses, umbrellas, earthenware, &c.;—they had a literature, and a Board of History; and, moreover, a very complete ceremonial of observances, the empire being regulated with all the minute formality of a household, in conformity with its household origin. Arrived at that condition thirty centuries ago, the Chinese are commonly supposed to have remained nearly stationary ever since, and to offer at this day a living picture of the condition of their nation three thousand years ago. We recently showed, from the history of this curious people, how fallacious was this opinion, alike in regard to their religion and their government, and filled in with broad touch the more salient features which have characterised the material and intellectual career of the nation throughout its forty centuries of vicissitude. Now, dispensing with abstract disquisitions, we desire to present to our readers a rapidcoup-d’œilof the national life of China, especially in its more practical and social aspects.
In length of years the Chinese Empire has no rival; nor is it easy to find, in the rest of the world’s history, any States which may profitably be paralleled with it. In point of extent and populousness, the only ancient empire that can at all compare with it is the Roman; yet, in almost every other respect, they differ as widely as it is possible for any two States to do. Rome founded its empire wholly by the sword, China mainly by the ploughshare; the former by daring soldiers, the latter by plodding peasants. The conquests of Rome were those of a city that came to cast its chains over a world; the triumphs of China were those of a prolific nation, that absorbed its very conquerors. The splendid talents of the Roman generals, the ardour of the citizens to extend the republic, the thirst for glory, and the matchless skill and self-devotion of the legionaries, may find nothing equal among the sons of Han; but these latter produced heroes of peace, who instructed the people in industry and the useful arts, and increased by their skill the riches and population of the country. The former were masters in the art of destroying, the latter in that of preserving and multiplying human life. In China we must not (at least nowadays) look for the noble sentiments and grand actions which immortalised Greece and Rome. We find there an industrious but common-minded race, which strives stoutly to maintain its existence, however its numbers may multiply, and which finds no heart to sacrifice life for glory, no time to postpone business for politics. The rice-bearing plains are the fields of their glory, the centre of their hopes; and as they trudge forth to their never-ceasing labours, thus they sing:—
“The sun comes forth, and we work;The sun goes down, and we rest.We dig wells, and we drink;We sow fields, and we eat.The Emperor’s power, what is it to us?”[35]
“The sun comes forth, and we work;The sun goes down, and we rest.We dig wells, and we drink;We sow fields, and we eat.The Emperor’s power, what is it to us?”[35]
“The sun comes forth, and we work;The sun goes down, and we rest.We dig wells, and we drink;We sow fields, and we eat.The Emperor’s power, what is it to us?”[35]
“The sun comes forth, and we work;
The sun goes down, and we rest.
We dig wells, and we drink;
We sow fields, and we eat.
The Emperor’s power, what is it to us?”[35]
The art of agriculture is coeval with the first establishment of the empire; and to this useful employment China mainly owes its grandeur and populousness. The enormous numbers of the people has caused the utmost attention to be paid to the art, and the cultivation of much of the country approaches as near as possible to garden-farming. Some parts of the country are mountainous and infertile, but the greater proportion of it is fruitful, and densely studded with houses. The hills and mountain-sides are terraced; the rocky fragments are gathered off the slopes, and formed into retaining-walls; and the wonders of Chinese irrigation have never been rivalled. Upon the decease of the parents, lands are divided among the male children, and, like all Orientals, the people cleave with great fondness to their patrimonial acres. Any one, by simply applying to Government, may obtain permission to reclaim waste land; and a wise exemption from all taxes, until it becomes productive, allows the cultivator to reap a proper reward for his industry and enterprise. The agricultural knowledge of China cannot vie with ours in point of science; but it is far more widely diffused. A uniform system of cultivation, the result of centuries of experience, is known to, and practised by, every cottar in the empire; and that system is indubitably unequalled by that of any other nation, unless it be our own. The steeping of seeds, and drilling in sowing, are practised, and have been so for ages; they never fail to seize promptly the proper season and weather for their farming operations; they take every advantage of their summer time by the system of double-cropping; and in the vitally important matters of manuring and irrigation, as well as in making the most of their land, they are unsurpassed, perhaps unrivalled, by any nation in the world.
The Chinese Government has always fostered agriculture as peculiarly the national pursuit; and well has it repaid the imperial patronage. A country nearly as large as all Europe, and far more densely peopled—containing, in fact, more than a third of the whole human race—sustains them more comfortably than any similar number of men on the face of the globe. No emigration has until now issued from its shores, and each new myriad of the rapidly-augmenting population has gone to increase the strength and resources of the State; while the invidious extremes of poverty and riches (that prime bane of old States) are there unknown, wealth being more equally divided than in any civilised country. Undisturbed in their little farms, the people are contented and cheerful; and with comparatively little commerce, and no manufactures (viewed as a distinct employment), the empire has continued for centuries thriving and unshaken by intestine commotions. The home consumers have maintained in comfort the home producers,—the grand opening of new markets has been found in the increase of the population,—the only emigration has been to the hill-side and the marsh. The French historian and philosopher, Sismondi, maintains that the real bone and muscle of a nation is its agricultural population, and predicted the coming ruin of the older states of Europe from the evident decline of this class of their people; but whatever truth there may be in his opinion, no such state of matters is likely soon to sap the foundations of the Chinese empire. There, no millionaire manufacturers, with machinery costing £30,000 or £40,000, overwhelm all competition, and, by ruining the small traders who ply the shuttle as well as till the ground, draw starving thousands to Nanking or Shanghae, feeding the towns to plethora at the expense of the country, and accumulating from the labour of thousands gigantic fortunes for individuals. The small farmer rears his crop of rice, cotton, or tea, dresses it, and sends it to market, and turns it to his own use as food or clothing; and although he cannot succeed in laying by money, it is only in periods of famine or inundation that he experiences the pressure of want.
“There are few sights more pleasing,” says Mr Fortune, “than a Chinese family in the interior engaged in gathering the leaves of the tea-plant, or, indeed, in any of their agricultural pursuits. There is the old man—it may be the grandfather, or even the great-grandfather—patriarch-like directing his descendants, many of whom are in their youth and prime, while others are in their childhood, in the labours of the field. He stands in the midst of them, bowed down with age, but—to the honour of the Chinese as a nation—he is always looked up to by all with pride and affection, and his old age and grey hairs are honoured, revered, and loved.” In the tea-districts, every cottager or small farmer has his own little tea-garden, the produce of which supplies the wants of his family, and the surplus brings him in a few dollars, which procure for him the other necessaries of life. “When, after the labours of the day are over,” says Mr Fortune, “they return to their humble and happy homes, their fare consists chiefly of rice, fish [with which their rivers and lakes abound], and vegetables, which they enjoy with great zest, and are happy and contented. I really believe that there is no country in the world where the agricultural population are better off than they are in the north of China. Labour with them is pleasure, for its fruits are eaten by themselves, and the rod of the oppressor is unfelt and unknown.... For a fewcash(1000 or 1200 cash = 1 dollar) a Chinese can dine in a sumptuous manner upon his rice, fish, vegetables, and tea; and I fully believe that in no country in the world is there less real misery and want than in China. The very beggars seem a kind of jolly crew, and are kindly treated by the inhabitants.”
Commerce is discouraged by the Chinese Government, chiefly on account of their jealousy of strangers; but it is a pursuit so congenial to the national spirit that no exertions could succeed in putting it down. Wherever money can be made, a Chinaman will brave dangers to gain it, and will fear neither the jungles and marshes of his southern frontier, nor the inhospitable deserts of the north and west. For a thousand years and more, they have trafficked with the isles of the Indian Archipelago, and for nearly twice that time their silks have found their way into Europe. Nevertheless, the geographical situation of the country on the one hand, and the unskilfulness of the Chinese in maritime enterprise on the other, oppose great obstacles to their prosecution of external commerce, so that the carrying-trade is almost entirely in the hands of foreigners. The journey across the inhospitable steppes of Mongolia to the nations of the west, or over the almost insurmountable Himalayas to those of the south, is attended by too much risk and expense, in the present state of the roads, to be prosecuted extensively; but the Chinese eagerly avail themselves of the marts opened in recent times by the Russian traders, and throng with their silks and tea to the grand fairs at Maimatschin. This overland commerce with Russia commenced in the reign of Peter the Great, by a treaty which stipulated for a reciprocal liberty of traffic, and by virtue of which caravans on the part of the Russian Government and individual traders used to visit Peking; but the Muscovites exhibited so much of their native habits of “drinking and roystering,” that, after trying the patience of the Celestials for three-and-thirty years, they were wholly excluded. After a temporary cessation of intercourse, however, a renewal of negotiations took place, by which it was agreed that only Government caravans should proceed to Peking, and Kiachta (distant four thousand miles from Moscow, one thousand from Peking, and close to the Chinese frontier town of Maimatschin) was built for the accommodation of private traders. This market, which has now risen to much importance, is most resorted to in winter. To the chief Russian merchants the trade is a species of monopoly, and a most thriving one,—some of them being millionaires, and living in the most sumptuous style, the “merchant princes” of the wilderness. “At the present day,” says theHamburg Borsenhalleof 20th July last, “the wholesale trade is in the hands of Russian merchants and commercial companies, while the retail trade is carried on by the Siberian tribe of Burglaetes. The wholesale trade takes place only twice a year, and is a complete interchange of goods, of which black tea forms the staple, and cannot be replaced by any other article. This tea is brought to Kiachta from the northern provinces of China, and is very superior to that exported by the English and Dutch from the southern provinces. The green tea which comes to the market is consumed by the Kalmucks, Tartars, and Siberians. The duty on tea yields a considerable annual revenue, which is the sole advantage the Chinese claim from this important article of commerce. The Chinese will take nothing but cloth in return; and thus the consumers of tea are the persons who are the cloth-manufacturers. The Russians themselves derive no pecuniary advantage from this trade. They might make some profits, and the consumers pay less for their teas, if the trade were not monopolised; and if the tea might be exported from St Petersburg to Odessa on payment of a moderate duty, the northern provinces of China would be obliged to lower the price of their tea, for which they have no other outlet.”
Although Fine Art has made little progress, and is little prized, great works, in which genius is joined to utility, are to be met with in China on a larger scale than anywhere else. Such a work is the Great Wall, raised by the first emperor to repel the inroads of the Nomades, and which guards the northern frontier for the space of fifteen hundred miles, from the shores of the Yellow Sea to Eastern Tartary. It is carried over the highest hills, descends into the deepest valleys, crosses upon arches over rivers, and at important passes is doubled;—being, in fact, by far the largest structure that human labour ever raised. A work more extraordinary still is the Imperial Canal. The Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, who fixed the seat of government at Peking, constructed (or rather completed) the canal, in order to remedy the sterility of the plain in which that city stands. From the vicinity of Peking, it extends southwards for a distance of six hundred geographical miles,—now tunnelled through heights, now carried through lakes and over marshes and low grounds by means of stupendous embankments,—and exhibiting not merely a gigantic effort of labour, but sound practical skill on the part of its constructors, in availing themselves of every advantage that could be derived from the nature of the ground. Rivers feed it, and ships of good size spread their sails on its bosom. It is along this watery highway that the chief supplies are brought for the immense population of the capital; and another great merit of the work is, that it acts at once as an irrigator and as a drain to the country through which it flows, from Tientsin to the Yang-tse-keang; for while at some parts fertilising the sterile soil by diffusing its waters, at others being carried along the lowest levels, and communicating with the neighbouring tracts by flood-gates, it renders available for agriculture much land that would otherwise be a useless swamp.
Education in China, as we have seen, is directed almost exclusively to the inculcation of moral and constitutional principles; and with such good effect, that nowhere in the East are the social relations so well understood and preserved. Class has never risen against class, and the religious apathy of the people has prevented any war of creeds. This social harmony has had the best effects upon the welfare of the people, by rendering an iron rule unnecessary on the part of the Government. However absolute the administration may be, the great mass of the people live quietly and happily, enjoying the fruits of their industry. The legislation is disfigured by an excessively minute attention to trifles,—an unavoidable result of the system of regulating the mind of the people through the agency of external observances; but the code is, on the whole, a clear and concise series of enactments, savouring throughout of practical judgment and European good sense; and if not always conformable to our liberal notions of legislation, in general approaching them more nearly than the codes of most other nations. The laws are more generally known and equally administered than in the other States of Asia,—wealth, comfort, and cheerful industry more equally diffused; and Mr Ellis pronounces the Celestial Empire superior to them all in the arts of government and the general aspect of society. Sir George Staunton says that the condition of the people is “wholly inconsistent with the hypothesis of a very bad government or a very vicious state of society,” and conceived that he could trace almost everywhere the unequivocal signs of an industrious, thriving, and contented people. But we may go further than this, and fully concur with Mr Davis that “there is a business-like character about the Chinese, which assimilates them in a striking degree to the most intelligent nations of the West; and there is less difference [in this respect?] between them and the British, French, and Americans, than between these and the inhabitants of Spain and Portugal, whose proneness to stolid bigotry and Oriental laziness was perhaps in part imbibed from the Arabs.”
In regard to slaves, the code metes out less equal justice; but a like one-sidedness has defaced the legislation of every country—and slavery, as it exists in China, is infinitely milder than anywhere else either in the East or West. It is not superior humanity and generosity which occasions this difference: it results from the social condition of the nation. Slavery is the apprenticeship which, in one shape or another, uncivilised man has had to undergo in all countries before becoming capable of sustained industry and self-government. In this state he falls under the power of his more civilised fellows, and obtains food and protection in exchange for freedom; and it is only when he has raised himself above the indolence and improvidence of savage life that liberty becomes beneficial even for himself. Resembling the western half of Europe, the whole Chinese nation is industrious, and has acquired that relish for the artificial wants of civilised life which tends so greatly to man’s elevation, and which is so little felt elsewhere (save in some of the highest classes) in the regions of the East and South. No political or social distinctions of rank or caste exist in China, and education is provided by the State for all classes. On these accounts there isno servile class; and those who have lost or bartered their freedom resemble their masters in everything but wealth, and are treated rather as menials than as serfs. Slavery exists in China not as a relic of barbarism, nor from the prevalence of caste or the absence of industry, but simply, it would appear, as the effect of a redundant population: it is a man’s last shift for employment.
We can give a most pleasing anecdote in connection with this point, which recently appeared in theJava Bodenewspaper, published at Batavia, where there is a large Chinese population—which shows at once the good feeling of the Chinese in regard to the unfortunate objects of slavery, and the remarkable industry and self-relying spirit of the slaves themselves. In giving an account of a sale of slaves at the Chinese camp, it says:—The slaves, who were twelve in number, having been placed upon the table of exposition, arranged in four lots, rattled some money in their hands, and addressed a few words, timidly and in low tones, to the assembly. A person who acted as their agent here stepped forward, and stated that his clients, having accumulated by long and painful labours some small savings, solicited the favour of being allowed to make a bidding for the purchase of their own persons. No opposition was offered; and the first lot of three, being put up to auction, made an offer, through their agent, of forty francs. No advance being made on this sum, the slaves were knocked down to themselves. The next lot, encouraged by their predecessors’ success, offered only twenty-four francs for themselves. The public preserved the same silence, and they likewise became their own purchasers. The third lot took the hint, and were even more fortunate, picking themselves up, a decided bargain, for the modest sum of ten francs! TheJava Boderightly sees in these facts signs of a great advance in civilisation among the Chinese, who constituted the great majority of the persons present.
Superficial writers on China judge of the whole nation by what they see of the population at Canton; and are profuse in their charges of lying, treachery, and inhumanity,—as if it were even possible for three hundred and sixty millions of human beings to be nothing but one black mass of moral deformity! The monstrousness of the idea ought to have been its own refutation. Such writers might as well conclude that the whole abyss of ocean is a turbid mass, because its fringing waves are “gross with sand.” In truth, their conclusions are as unjust as if one were to judge of our own nation solely by the doings of the wreckers of Cornwall or the mob of London. For the inhabitants of Canton are termed the “Southern boors” by their own countrymen; and it may safely be stated of the people of Fokien and the southern coasts of China, with whom alone foreigners come in contact, that they are all more or less addicted to piracy and smuggling, and have adopted the nefarious habits which commerce invariably engenders when carried on between nations who despise, and whose only desire is to overreach one another. The inadequacy of the ordinary data for judging of Chinese character is at once perceived by the few travellers who have got glimpses of the interior, or of those parts of the country where the manners of the people are unaltered by contact with foreigners. We have already quoted Mr Fortune’s pleasing picture of cottar-life in the interior, and on the general question he says:—“The natives of the southern towns and all along the coast, at least as far north as Chekiang, richly deserve the bad character which every one gives them; being remarkable for their hatred to foreigners and conceited notions of their own importance, besides abounding in characters of the very worst description, who are nothing else than thieves and pirates. But the character of the Chinese as a nation must not suffer from a partial view of this kind; for it must be recollected that, in every country, the most lawless characters are amongst those who inhabit seaport towns, and who come in contact with natives of other countries: and unfortunately we must confess that European nations have contributed their share to make these people what they are. In the north of China, and more particularly inland, the natives are entirely different. There are, doubtless, bad characters and thieves amongst them too: but generally the traveller is not exposed to insult; and the natives are quiet, civil, and obliging.” Lord Jocelyn, who was with our fleet during the late war, and who landed on various points of the coast, states, as the experience of his rambles among the villagers, that a kind word to a child, or any little notice taken of the young, will at once ingratiate a stranger with this humane and simple-minded people. Mr Abel, also, (one of Lord Amherst’s retinue) in like manner testifies to the simple kindness of the country people. The nation at large (thanks to their education) are remarkable for the virtues of sobriety and filial reverence,—instances of noble generosity in individuals are said not to be infrequent,—and we may add that no people in the world, unless it be the French, are so ready to take notice of and applaud the casual utterance of noble sentiments. In fine, Mr Lay says, that “no man can deny the Chinese the honourable character of being good subjects—though, from the venality of their magistrates in general, they must often be exposed to many kinds of usage that tempt them to throw off allegiance.” And he attributes their steady obedience to constituted authority, not to a tameness of disposition that disposes a man to take kicks without feeling the gall of indignation, but to “a habitual sentiment of respect and a share of sterling good sense, that lead him to see and choose what is really best for his own interest.”
We have said that there are no separate castes among the Chinese; but one of the most curious features that strikes a stranger in their social life is the division of the people into clans, somewhat resembling the clanships of the Scottish Highlanders. There are altogether about 454 of these clans, each of which has its peculiar surname; but no jealous line of demarcation is allowed to be kept up between these different septs (some of whom number a million of souls), for, by a wise though somewhat stringent provision, every man is required to seek a bride in a different clan from his own,—thus acquiring two surnames. These clans are results of the Patriarchal or Family system, which forms the basis of the whole political and social arrangements in China. This system may seem a very narrow and illiberal one to us enlightened Westerns, and especially to our Transatlantic brethren, among whom the fifth commandment is but little regarded; but its influence upon the social relations in China has been unquestionably good. A Chinese father is a little emperor in his own household; he is held responsible in some degree for their conduct, and is invested with unlimited power over them, so that even the punishment of death is hardly beyond his prerogative. Yet abuses of power are at least as rare there as here. “I have reason to believe,” says Mr Lay, “that the sway exercised by Chinese parents is seldom burdensome, and that their will and pleasure are enforced, for the most part, with great mildness.” And if we seek to judge of the system by its fruits at large, we find that the duties of mutual love and mutual help are fully recognised, as incumbent upon all who are within the circle of blood or affinity; while the hilarities of family-feasts, or the sorrows of family-mourning, are entered into with a keenness of relish, or an acuteness of feeling, which leaves the Chinese perhaps without a parallel in the world. “Fear God” is a precept of which the modern Chinese know little or nothing; but “Love, honour, and obey your parents,” is the fundamental commandment of their moral system,—and to say or do anything against it, is as shocking and disgusting to their feelings as blasphemy to those of a Christian. “The practice of infanticide,” says Mr Meadows, speaking of Canton, “exists here, as the bodies of infants floating occasionally on the river sufficiently prove; but it may be fairly doubted whether there is much more of it than in England,” where the crime is punished with death, and where, of course, every means is taken to conceal it; “and often having remarked instances ofdeformed femalechildren being treated with constant and evident affection by their parents, I am inclined to believe that when infants are put to death, it is solely because their parents are altogether unable to support them.” And Mr Lay says, that therareoccurrence of dead bodies of children being found in the Canton river “proves that, among a swarming population of indigent people, such deeds are none of their customary doings.”
The Chinese are a cheerful light-hearted race, well trained to social duties, and with no proclivity to the melancholy of the southern nations of Europe, or to the John-Bull tendency towards reserve and isolation. Social feeling—or good-humour, mildness of disposition, and a good-natured propensity to share in the mirth and hilarity of others, are seen wherever one meets with a company of Chinese. To live in society is a Chinaman’s meat and drink. In a company of his fellows he is something,—by himself, nothing. Men of study and retirement are to be found in China, but by far the greater number seem to have their hearts set upon social delights and the celebration of public festivity. And what most strikes the spectator at such meetings is, therespectwhich every one is so anxious to pay to all around him,—(another point in which the Chinese nation is most nearly paralleled by the French). Nor are such attentions the frigid offspring of mere formality. “Apart from business,” says Mr Lay, “the intercourse of natives in China is made up of little acts of homage. The rules of relative duty command an individual to regard a neighbour as an elder brother, and thence entitled to the respect belonging to such eldership. These displays of veneration are not occasioned, then, by dread or hope of gain, but are the spontaneous results of a propriety essential to the character of the people,” and strongly developed by their domestic training and the teaching of their schools. In walking abroad, for instance, the stranger may wonder what two gentlemen can have so suddenly found to dispute about; but he soon perceives that each of them is severally refusing to advance a step till the other has set the example, and consented to go ahead!
On the other hand, it must be allowed that most of the loftier qualities of our nature seem to be deficient among the Chinese. The feeling of patriotism, at least nowadays, is almost unknown,—partly, it may be, owing to the immense size of the empire, and the imperfect intercourse kept up between the several provinces. Loyalty, as we understand the feeling, apparently never at any time had much hold upon the Chinese mind. Reason, rather than emotion, is the prominent feature of their mental constitution; and although they have at all times entertained a profound regard for their sovereign, that regard had reference to the office, not the man, and is quite different from that chivalrous devotion to the monarch’s person which plays so prominent a part in the history of European struggles. Self-denial and self-devotion, in fact—that fundamental basis of the noblest of human virtues—rare everywhere, isveryrare in China. Even peace has its disadvantages. Virtues, like talents, require congenial circumstances to develop them; and probably the long reign of public tranquillity in China—where for nine centuries it has hardly been broken save at intervals of two hundred years—has helped to numb the courageous and masculine sentiment of self-devotion, and allowed the national mind to “settle on its lees.” Pleasure, money, sensuality,—these are now the objects that most greatly engross a Chinese. “The Chinese,” says Mr Lay, “are lovers of pleasure, from the greatest to the least. They study ease and comfort in a way that leaves them, as a nation, without a rival in the art of ministering to sensual gratification.” This proneness to sensual indulgence is unhappily increased by the narrow spirit in which certain portions of their legislation are conceived,—the rich not being allowed to expend their superfluous wealth in the erection of elegant mansions, (that being looked upon as a misdirection of money from more useful purposes); nor dare they indulge in much public munificence, lest they attract the covetous eyes of the generally extortionate and unscrupulous mandarins. “A Chinese,” says Mr Lay, “is licentious in the general turn of his ideas, and makes a public display of those forbidden pleasures which in many countries are somewhat screened amidst the shades of retirement. The floating abodes for ladies of pleasure are generally of the gayest kind, and are consequently the first thing to attract the traveller’s attention as he draws near the provincial city of Canton.” Theauri sacra famesis not less strong in the breast of a Celestial. “At a very early age,” says Mr Lay, “the love of money is implanted in his nature: indeed, one of the first lessons a mother teaches a child is to hold out its hand for a bit of coin.” Money, says Gutzlaff, is the idol of the Chinese. “It is the national spirit, the public sentiment, the chief good of high and low”—the higher classes being as eager to obtain it in order to gratify their sensual inclinations, as the poor to procure food.
To call a man a liar is, in England, and in the European world generally, the surest way to provoke anger; but such an epithet has but little weight attached to it in China. This is partly owing to the fact that “white lies” have there a recognised and reputable existence not openly accorded to them elsewhere. In the eyes of a Chinese, as in the code of the Jesuits, a lie in itself is not absolutely criminal, and it may, on the contrary, be very meritorious. According to Confucius, a lie told by a child to benefit a parent is deserving of praise; and a Jeannie Deans, or the stern old father in Mr Warren’sNow and Then, so far from being held models of religion, would be regarded, the one as a stubborn fanatic, and the other as the most heartless and unnatural of parents. But another, and, we suspect, a much more powerful cause of this want of veracity among the Chinese, is their system of government. Here, as throughout Asia generally, Despotism—or, in other words, an Executive power from which there is no proper appeal—generates mendacity in the people, as their sole refuge from irresponsible Power. Duplicity is the resource to which Weakness naturally betakes itself; and it is universally adopted wherever the decrees of Government officials are felt to be unjust as well as unappealable. Everywhere the result is the same; and in this, as in many other respects, a perfect parallel might be drawn between those two vastest empires of modern times, the Chinese and the Russian. In the latter empire, as in the former, the vastness of the country and consequent impossibility of an efficient surveillance over the host of officials, joined to the absence of municipal institutions and a free press to act as checks upon local tyranny, render it most difficult to detect or repress abuses of power on the part of the Government officers. And the consequence in both countries may be told in the words of Alison, applied to Russia:—“So universal is the dread of authority, that it has moulded the national character. Dissimulation is universal; and, like the Greeks under the Mussulman yoke, the Russians have become perfect adepts in all the arts by which talent eludes the force of authority, and astuteness escapes the discoveries of power.” And we suspect we ought to add, in justice to the Chinese, that this disposition has been impressed upon them, as upon the Russians, by the invasion of the Tartar hordes, which in both countries reduced the native race to subjection for three long centuries.
In China, however, the domination of the Tartars has never been in any degree so complete as it was in Russia; and even among the maritime population, with whom foreigners are brought most in contact, and among whom lying is probably most prevalent, there exists a check which is found sufficient for the transaction of all matters of ordinary importance. Every great, busy, and closely-connected society (which Russia is not) requires some bond of mutual trust; and this is found, in China, in the custom ofguaranteeing, which pervades all domestic and mercantile relations. Mr Meadows states it as a fact that he has never known an instance in which a Chinese openly violated a guaranty known to have been given by him; and though, under strong temptations, they will sometimes try to evade its fulfilment, yet such instances are extremely rare, and they generally come promptly forward to meet all the consequences of their responsibility. “A Chinaman,” says Mr Lay, “is a man of business, and therefore understands the value of truth.... The standard of honesty is perhaps as high in China as in any other commercial country; and strangers who have known this people during the longest space, speak in the best terms of their integrity. Thieves of a most dexterous kind, and rogues of every description, are plentiful in China, because she has a swarming population to give them birth,—but they are not numerous enough to affect a general estimate of the national character.”
The imperfections of human language render it a difficult matter to give a description, at once short and correct, of national character. Thus it is both true and false to say that the Chinese possess a high degree of fortitude. They bear pain or adversity without murmuring or despondency; and, taken individually, they perhaps possess as much constitutional or animal courage as any other specimens of our race. But they are deficient in that courage which is based on self-reliance, and which enables a man to confront danger with a ready intrepidity—because their institutions and education are as unfavourable to its development as those of the Anglo-Americans are singularly propitious. They possess a great command over their tempers, and instances are common of their bearing, with the greatest apparent equanimity, insults and injuries which would make a European ungovernable; and this proceeds not from cowardice, but from their really regarding self-command as a necessary part of civilisation, and passionate or hasty conduct as indecent, and giving evidence of a low nature. The readiness they evince to yield to the force of reason is another quality for which, says Mr Meadows, “the Chinese certainly deserve to be considered a highly civilised people.” They settle their disputes more by argument than by violence (a strange thing in the East); and a Chinese placard posted at the street-corners, exposing the unreasonable (i. e.unequitable) conduct of a party in any transaction is, if the want of equity be sufficiently proven, to the full as effective, if not more so, than a similar exposure of an Englishman in a newspaper. Bullies seem to be kept in check by the force of public opinion, and the Chinese neither fight duels, nor, though murders occur as in England, can they be said to assassinate or poison. Finally, we may round off thisprécisof Chinese character in the words of Mr Lay:—“It is an abuse of terms to say that they are a highly moral people, but we may affirm that the moral sense is in many particulars highly refined among them. Respect to parents and elders, obedience to law, chastity, kindness, economy, prudence, and self-possession, are the never-failing themes for remark and illustration.”
No people in the world consume so little butcher-meat as the Chinese; and, unlike the Eastern nations—such as the Jews, Hindoos, Parsees, and Mohammedans generally—their favourite meat is pork. In fact in China, as in other parts of the world, the cottar-system of land-holding is found unfavourable to the rearing of horses, cattle, or sheep, but quite adapted (as witness Ireland) for the rearing of pigs. The national system of agriculture, like almost everything else in China, is based upon the strictly utilitarian principle of turning everything to the greatest account. We do not pretend to settle off-hand here how far the stimulating diet of animal food is necessary or advantageous to mankind. We would simply remark that butcher-meat is matter in a more highly organised form, and more nearly assimilated in composition to our own frames than vegetable food. It is in diet what alcohol is in drink; and the nations who most indulge in it—such as the British, the Anglo-Americans, and savages who live by the chase, (we beg pardon for the unflattering conjunction!)—are generally as remarkable for gloomy strength and perseverance, as the more vegetarian nations are for cheerful quickness and volatility. But the preference which from time immemorial has been accorded to grain-crops in China is based upon the principle (of which our free-trade authorities are too forgetful in their admonitions to “plough less and graze more”), that grain is the cheapest form in which food can be produced, and that a much more numerous population can be maintained in comfort by tillage than by pasturage. Sheep have been justly styled “the devourers of men;” and the Chinese monarch who first turned the people from pastoral life, and taught them the civilising science of agriculture, is still, after the lapse of more than four thousand years, venerated throughout the empire by the title of “the divine Husbandman.” Fish, which abound in the numerous lakes with which the country is studded, and rice and other kinds of vegetable produce, form the staple of the national diet. From stern necessity, as well as from a wise and unparalleled economy, everything is turned to full account, and even hair-cuttings and parings of all kinds are made matter of traffic,—while everything nutritive, including “rats and mice, and such small deer,” (however unclean, according to European notions), are searched out and eaten for food. Opium is much in use; but both the perniciousness of its effects, and the extent to which it is indulged in, have been overstated by most writers on the subject. The misery caused by it is never to be compared to the plague of drunkenness, which is the bane of our own country. “Redness of the eyes,” as a mark of intoxication, is very conspicuous in the Chinese, as it was in the days of Solomon among the Jews; and if you see two Chinamen walking hand in hand in the street, says Mr Lay, it is ten to one that they are both flustered with drink!
The Chinese, like most Asiatics, do not dance for pleasure, nor are their unmelodious voices formed for song. Their favourite amusements are games of chance,—in which, perhaps, they out-do all Asiatics. The grand aim of a Chinaman, as we have said, isto enjoy himself; and this colours even his gravest doings. With him, banqueting and religious ceremonies are the same thing, and he would never keep any sacred festival if he could not enjoy himself. No festival is without its play, and only a few temples are without a stage; and so fond are the people of theatricals, that they will attend a whole night to them, without showing the least weariness, and will afterwards recount with ecstasy what they have seen. The people in general never pray, nor have they any forms of prayer; and the Mandarins, on public occasions, only recite a formula, in the shape of a simple message, to the idols, but never address them in their own words. The affairs of this life are ever uppermost in the mind of a Chinese; and long life, wealth, and male children, are the great objects of desire. Nothing is regarded with so much horror as death—gloomy death, after which their souls go to wander cheerless among the genii; and strange to say, the elixir of life seems to have been more generally and more perseveringly sought after in reasoning and materialistic China than among the most spiritual and imaginative nations of mankind.
“Polygamy,” says Mr Lay, “is not practised by all, and is seldom indulged in till the husband is advanced in years. It appears that by far the greater number among the rich, as well as all among the poor, reap the solaces of connubial life without suffering this hemlock to grow in their furrows. A few, from the surfeit of too much ease and prosperity, indulge in this practice, and a few more have recourse to it for the sake of building up their house with an heir, or a more numerous progeny;” while on the other side, it is fostered by “the anxiety of parents to see their daughters provided for in the houses of the great, and to reap a personal advantage from noble alliances.” For untiring industry, cheerfulness of temper, fidelity to their husbands, and care of their offspring, the poor women are every way exemplary. Any one who visits China will find proofs of this wherever he turns his eyes, and a traveller has only to lay his hand upon the head of a little child to earn applause from a whole crowd of bystanders.
Constancy, habit of respect, and the social feeling are easily recognisable in the character of the Chinese women. Chinese stories are full of examples of love that knows no bounds. “There is only one heaven,” said a forlorn maiden, when her parents upbraided her for spending her days in sorrowful libations of salt tears at the tomb of her lover, “and he was that heaven to me!” “A native of the United States,” says Mr Lay, “married a Chinese female, who had never felt the benefits of education, and therefore could scarcely have learnt to cultivate this sentiment by lessons from those who were older than herself. She accompanied her husband to America, and afterwards back again to Macao, where a friend of mine paid her lord a visit. On his return, I asked him how she demeaned herself towards her better half. ‘With great respect,’ was the answer. And this testimony in her favour was not solitary; for the captain who conveyed the pair across the Atlantic declared he had never met with such passengers before, and that the wife rendered the services of a stewardess unnecessary in the cabin, and with her own hands kept everything in an admirable state of order and neatness.” When a stranger sees that a Chinese lady of the house is not entitled to receive any civilities or acts of courtesy from the friend of her husband, and forgets that this interdict is founded upon motives of propriety, consecrated by the usage of the earliest times, he is very apt to think her slighted, and that those apartments which the Chinese have decorated with so many flowery names are but a sort of prison. This is a great mistake, however, and the women of China are not only exempt from that rigid seclusion which prevails elsewhere in the East; but are treated much more nearly on terms of equality with their husbands. There is nothing abject or mean, either in principle or practice, in the deference which is paid, among high and low alike, to husbands; and “the air of a Chinawoman,” says Mr Lay, “has a majesty about it which is only compatible with sentiments of freedom; and the tone of her voice, and the glance of her eye indicate a consciousness that she was not born to be despised.”
The existing monuments of ancient civilisation in China are not of the same kind as those of Egypt and Assyria, of Greece and Rome. Time has spared the mighty structures of these latter empires, as if in compensation for having buried the nations that reared them; but in China, where the dynasties have succeeded one another without interruption, and the people have gone on increasing in numbers, down to our own day, the wars which have swept over it, and the revolutions which have shaken it, have destroyed almost all the monuments which would have attested its former magnificence. We refer particularly to the great revolution effected by the Emperor Che-hoang-te, (about 246A.C.), who, for political purposes, ordered the destruction of every monument of the past, whether in metal, in stone, or on paper,—a proscription which lasted for nearly a century, and which left comparatively little to be regained by the most persevering researches of after ages. Nevertheless, the early ages of the Chinese empire seem to have been distinguished by not a little science, and many rare discoveries. In their carefully kept ancient annals, we have full particulars of the circumstances attending an eclipse of the sun, which happened 2155 years before Christ; and in the reign of Shun, a century before this, we read of “the instrument adorned with precious stones, which represented the stars, and the movable tube which served to observe them”—words which plainly indicate a celestial sphere, and a telescope, of some kind or other. After speaking of the discussions which took place in Europe last century, in regard to the high antiquity of astronomical observations in China, M. Pauthier remarks,—“All that we know of the reigns of the philosophical emperors, Yao, Shun, and Yu, and of the state of astronomical science in their time, justifies the supposition that, in the days of those emperors, sure methods were known for calculating beforehand the precise date of eclipses of the sun and moon, and all that concerned the calendar.” Another piece of knowledge possessed by the ancient Chinese, which is calculated to astonish our modern astronomers and mathematicians, is that not merely of the general spherical shape of the earth, but of its oblate form, in consequence of the flattening of the poles. We have not space to set forth the grounds we have for holding it probable that they really were acquainted with this recondite fact in physics; we must hasten on to add that theSacred Book of Annalsmentions facts which indirectly prove that music, poetry, and painting were known from the earliest historic times of China, and we know for certain that in the days of Confucius, the first of those arts was carefully studied, and apparently highly developed. Gunpowder was known four centuries before our era, and we read not only of this “devouring fire,” but of “fireboxes,” “fire-tubes,” and “globes containing the fire of heaven,”—which latter expression, by its allusion to lightning, seems to indicate as if powder, even in those days, was used as something more than a mere toy. A knowledge of the properties of the magnet or loadstone is another thing in which the Chinese were some two thousand or more years in advance of us Europeans; and the art of printing (by means of wooden blocks—xylography) was in use among them six centuries before anything of the kind was thought of elsewhere.
The character of Chinese literature may be guessed from what we have said of their system of education, which eschews speculation, and attends to little else than the precepts of public and private morality. The grandest, or we may say, the only grand, achievements of their literature are in the department of practical politics and morals; and next to this are their annals and statistical reports upon the various provinces of the empire. Poetry is much studied by the educated classes in early life for the sake of obtaining command of language and elegance of expression, the latter of which is highly valued in the communications and epistles of the government officials; but the Chinese temperament possesses little of thevis poetica; and of the millions of Mandarins who have learned to rhyme, very few indeed have written anything that would pass as mediocre in Europe. They have a good command of poetic figures and expressions, and their descriptive pieces and moral odes are fair productions; but that is all that can be said in their favour. Historical writings occupy a prominent place in their literature, and the greatest pains are taken to insure accuracy of statement; but these works are mere annals or chronologies, and have no pretensions to those intellectual and artistic qualities which distinguish the Livys and Xenophons, the Gibbons and Humes of ancient and modern Europe. It is to the credit of China that it has had a drama from a very early period, although we cannot speak particularly as to its merits. The writing of novels, also, dates as far back as the third century, and seems to be a department of literature very congenial to the Chinese mind. Such works exist in great numbers, and amongst much trash there are some very able productions.
In the appreciation of beauty, the Chinese are below any other nation that everemerged from barbarism. Their painting is of a very commonplace description,—though not so bad, we believe, as it is generally supposed to be in this country; and their only notion of sculpture is, to represent a thing lusty in order that it may look grand. Their architecture, says Mr Barrow, “is void of taste, grandeur, beauty, solidity, or convenience; their houses are merely tents [an exaggeration]; and there is nothing magnificent even in the palace of the emperor.” One of the few notable exceptions to this remark is the celebrated Porcelain Pagoda at Nanking, which Du Halde thought “the most solid, remarkable, and magnificent structure in the eastern world.” For this want of beauty in their buildings, some excuse may be found in the circumstance that the law does not permit them to deviate from the established rules, and that any Mandarin who should venture to indulge an architectural fancy of his own would quickly draw down upon himself the vengeance of the Board of Rites; but “when there’s a will there’s a way,” and had the general taste ever advanced beyond the tent-shaped domiciles of their early ancestors, the administration of the law would hardly have proved an insurmountable barrier to improvement.
However flattering to the Chinese some of the preceding statements may be, it will be seen, on the whole, that they by no means hold a high place in regard to might of intellect. The discoverers of many important facts, and inventors of many useful arts, they yet seem as if they had stumbled upon them by chance, and were unable to appreciate their value; and the highly civilised race who, ages ago, were familiar with astronomy and printing, gunpowder and the magnetic needle, are now incomparably surpassed in their use by nations comparatively of yesterday. “Their mechanical contrivances,” says Mr Wade, “remain but as monuments of an originality which seems to have exhausted itself by its earlier efforts. They appear never to have investigated the principles of the discoveries by which the requirements of their agriculture, architecture, or navigation, were first satisfied. The means which their genius suggested to meet their immediate wants they adopted, and, without the aid of theory, perfected—in some instances, to a degree not surpassed, if attained, by the most scientific of nations; but errors and defects were left untouched; no spirit of inquiry quickened the dormant powers of their reason, and the lack of a habit of reflection prevented their pushing their invention beyond a certain necessary point.” There is something stunted or microscopic in the intellect of the Chinese, which leads them to magnify trifles, yet to be blind when great facts stare them in the face,—to keep the steam-engine a toy and gunpowder a plaything, yet to spend an infinity of skill and patience upon the manufacture of one of their ivory “puzzles.” Excellent in imitation, and well adapted for details, they are yet deficient in that highest quality of genius, which grasps a subject at once in all its bearings—which reasons outwards and upwards from the centre-object of contemplation, and which discerns in it its latent powers and the uses to which they may be applied,—which sees in the vapour of a kettle the embryo of the mighty steam-engine, and in the fall of an apple the gravitating force that sustains the universe.
There cannot be a doubt, however, that the Chinese character has never yet had fair play. It has never had such advantages as those enjoyed by the nations of Europe, or indeed by every civilised community of modern times. We will not speak of the over-population, and consequent ceaseless and absorbing struggle for the necessaries of life, which ever tends to act injuriously upon the moral and intellectual qualities of the majority of the people,—by extinguishing all high aspirations, and bending down the soul in slavery to the wants of the moment; for that over-population is not peculiar to China, and has, moreover, the attendant, though hardly compensating benefit of sharpening the national wits, and placing a large supply of cheap labour at the disposal of capital. We would rather point out the following peculiarity which affects this people alone of the nations of the earth, and which must ever be kept in mind by those who would correctly appreciate China’s place in universal history.
The Chinese empire belongs to the ancient—indeed, we ought to say to the primitive, world. It has long survived the empires of Egypt and Assyria, and the kingdoms of ancient India,—yet it is with these States alone that the isolated civilisation of China can fairly be compared. Like them, China has reared a civilisation for herself, without any help from without. Throughout her unparalleled existence of more than forty centuries, she has been a world to herself. No influx of new ideas, no inspection of other civilisation than her own, has been granted to her. She has grown up like a Crusoe and his children and grandchildren, upon a solitary island,—forced ever to compare themselves by themselves, and never enjoying the rare privilege, and help to improvement, to “see ourselves as others see us.” We Europeans of the present day—in this age of “running to and fro upon the earth”—are privileged to behold the endless variety of life, manners, and institutions with which the world is stored—to judge of them by their several effects, as revealed in the pages of history, and to draw from them their moral; thus benefiting by the experience of a whole world, and perfecting ourselves upon the model of the best of our race. Moreover, the blood of a dozen different tribes of mankind runs in our veins (as was the case on a smaller scale in ancient Greece), producing a richly-blended nature, excelling in all departments, whether of thought or action—producing now a Shakespeare and now a Napoleon, now a Hildebrand and now a Howard, now a Richard Cœur-de-Lion and now a Peter the Hermit, now a Luther and now a Mozart, now a Cromwell and now a Robespierre, now a Scott, a Watt, a Burns, a Dickens, a Kean, or a Grimaldi. China, on the contrary, presents but one phase of human nature,—but to that phase it has done marvellous justice. Good sense is its only idol—practical usefulness its prime test; but we have yet to learn that the former of these qualities has ever been more wisely or so perseveringly worshipped, or the latter been so unflinchingly and universally applied.
An attentive observation seems to indicate that this most ancient of empires, for long stationary in power and intellect, has of late been in many respects retrograding. “The arts once peculiarly their own,” says Mr Wade, “have declined;—neither their silks nor their porcelain, in their own estimation, equal in quality those of former years.” And Mr Fortune arrives at a similar conclusion from the signs of decay which he met with in his wanderings. “There can be no doubt,” he says, “that the Chinese empire arrived at its highest state of perfection many years ago, and since then it has been rather retrograding than advancing. Many of the northern cities, evidently once in the most flourishing condition, are now in a state of decay, or in ruins; the pagodas which crown the distant hills are crumbling to pieces, and apparently are seldom repaired; the spacious temples are no longer as they used to be in former days; even the celebrated temples on Poo-too-San (an island near Chusan), to which, as to Jerusalem of old, the natives came flocking to worship, show all the signs of having seen better days. And from this I conclude that the Chinese, as a nation, are retrograding.” Were this falling off only visible in the case of the temples, it might be wholly accounted for by the increasing apathy or scepticism of the people in regard to their religion; but, in truth, these signs of decay extend into almost every department of the State. And, writing immediately before the present rebellion broke out, Mr Wade says, “With a fair seeming of immunity from invasion, sedition, or revolt, leave is taken to consider this vast empire as surely, though slowly, decaying. It has, in many respects, retrograded since the commencement of the present dynasty, and in none that we are aware of has it made any sensible progress.”
It would be a great error, however, to suppose that this vast empire is now stooping irretrievably to a fall. The whole tenor of its past history forbids the supposition. Again and again has it reformed itself;—again and again has it passed through the purifying furnace of suffering and convulsion, and re-emerged firm as before. Its periodic convulsions are the healthy efforts of nature to throw off the corruptions which ease engenders in the system; and however much temporary suffering may attend the present, like every other of its score of preceding revolutions, the resultant good will ultimately atone for all. China will never fall. Its homogeneousness, and the unconquerable vastness of its population, endow it with an earthly immortality. We have said that it lacks the variety of Europe; but in that variety, be it noted, there lurks political weakness, as much as intellectual strength. Every unit of Chinese society is homogeneous. The whole population areone—in blood, sentiments, and language;—and hence it contains none of those discordant elements, those unwillingly-yoked parts, which proved the destruction of the old “universal empires,” and which are destined ere long to annihilate the present territorial system of Europe. China, in fact, has ever been, and is, what European Germany and Slavonia, and every other great State of the future will be—aRace-Empire;—and therefore indestructible. The Monguls may reign in it for eighty years, or the Mantchoos for two hundred,—and even then only by adopting the political and social institutions of the natives. But as time runs on, the wheel ever turns; one after another the foreign hosts are chased from the land, and a native dynasty is destined still to wield the sceptre of the Flowery Land.
But we must say more than this in regard to the fortunes of China. What it has hitherto wanted is,new ideas,—and now it is about to get them. In old times, nations could hardly inoculate their neighbours with their ideas save by conquest, and new mental life was only produced after a temporary death of liberty. It is otherwise nowadays, and China is likely to benefit by the change. As long as she was feeble, and as long as the sword was the only civiliser, Providence kept her shut in from the prowess of the restless Western nations. But now that her people have grown like the sands on the sea-shore for multitude, and that steam has become the peaceful “locomotive of principles,” China is opened. Often as she has reformed herself before, the present is her true second-birth. She will now obtain those new ideas of which she has hitherto been starved, and will enter into ever-memorable union with the rest of the civilised world. The energy and science of the Anglo-Saxons will penetrate the empire, and the Chinese will not be slow to avail themselves of the new lights. Aversion to change, when such change is recommended by manifest utility, is not an original element of the Chinese character,—as we learn on the authority of Jesuit writers two centuries ago, before the advent to power of the Tartars, and their jealous exclusion of foreigners. And then, what country in the world can compare with China as a field for the triumphs of mechanical enterprise! Its vast rivers and canals present unrivalled scope for steam-navigation; and its wide plains and valley-lands offer matchless facilities for railways. And then all this amidst the densest and perhaps busiest population in the world. The amount of internal travelling in China is such, that we are assured by those who have penetrated into the interior, that there are continuous streams of travellers on horse, on foot, and on litters, as well as long lines of merchandise, from Canton to the Great Wall, and over distances of fifteen hundred miles;—in many parts so crowded as to impede one another, and even in the mountain-passes so numerous as to leave no traveller out of sight of others before or behind. In what other country of the world are such phenomena to be met with? And though it were vain to enter upon the tempting field for speculation which these few facts—and they could be multiplied indefinitely—present to us; yet we need have no hesitation to predict a striking future for the Chinese race, and one which will benefit the world at large, perhaps not less than themselves.