AREA AND VALUE OF ARABLE LAND IN CHINA.If the same proportion between the arable and uncultivated land exists in China as in England, namely one-fourth, there are about six hundred and fifty millions of acres under cultivation in China; and we are not left altogether to conjecture, for by a report made to Kienlung in 1745, it appears that the area of the land under cultivation was 595,598,221 acres; a subsequent calculation places it at 640,579,381 acres, which is almost the same proportion as in England. Estimating it at six hundredand fifty millions—for it has since increased rather than diminished—it gives one acre and four-fifths to every person, which is by no means a small supply for the Chinese, considering that there are no cultivated pastures or meadows.In comparing the population of different countries, the manner of living and the articles of food in use, form such important elements of the calculation, in ascertaining whether the country be overstocked or not, that a mere tabular view of the number of persons on a square mile is an imperfect criterion of the amount of inhabitants the land would maintain if they consumed the same food, and lived in the same manner in all of them. Living as the Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, and other Asiatics do, chiefly upon vegetables, the country can hardly be said to maintain more than one-half or one-third as many people on a square mile as it might do, if their energies were developed to the same extent with those of the English or Belgians. The population of these eastern regions has been repressed by the combined influences of ignorance, insecurity of life and property, religious prejudices, vice, and wars, so that the land has never maintained as many inhabitants as one would have otherwise reasonably expected therefrom.Nearly all the cultivated soil in China is employed in raising food for man. Woollen garments and leather are little used, while cotton and mulberry cultivation take up only a small proportion of the soil. There is not, so far as is known, a single acre of land sown with grass-seed, and therefore almost no human labor is devoted to raising food for animals, which will not also serve to sustain man. Horses are seldom used for pomp or war, for travelling or carrying burdens, but mules, camels, asses, and goats are employed for transportation and other purposes north of the Yangtsz’ River. Horses are fed on cooked rice, bran, sorghum seed, pulse, oats, and grass cut along the banks of streams, or on hillsides. In the southern and eastern provinces, all animals are rare, the transport of goods and passengers being done by boats or by men. The natives make no use of butter, cheese, or milk, and the few cattle employed in agriculture easily gather a living on the waste ground around the villages. In the south, the buffalo is applied morethan the ox to plough the rice fields, and the habits of this animal make it cheaper to keep him in good condition, while he can also do more work. The winter stock is grass cut upon the hills, straw, bean stalks, and vegetables. No wool being wanted for making cloth, flocks of sheep and goats are seldom seen—it may almost be said are unknown in the east and south.No animal is reared cheaper than the hog; hatching and raising ducks affords employment to thousands of people; hundreds of these fowl gather their own food along the river shore, being easily attended by a single keeper. Geese and poultry are also cheaply reared. In fishing, which is carried on to an enormous extent, no pasture-grounds, no manuring, no barns, are needed, nor are taxes paid by the cultivator and consumer.While the people get their animal food in these ways, its preparation takes away the least possible amount of cultivated soil. The space occupied for roads and pleasure-grounds is insignificant, but there is perhaps an amount appropriated for burial places quite equal to the area used for those purposes in European countries; it is, however, less valuable land, and much of it would be useless for culture, even if otherwise unoccupied. Graves are dug on hills, in ravines and copses, and wherever they will be retired and dry; or if in the ancestral field, they do not hinder the crop growing close around them. Moreover, it is very common to preserve the coffin in temples and cemeteries until it is decayed, partly in order to save the expense of a grave, and partly to worship the remains, or preserve them until gathered to their fathers, in their distant native places. They are often placed in the corners of the fields, or under precipices where they remain till dust returns to dust, and bones and wood both moulder away. These and other customs limit the consumption of land for graves much more than would be supposed, when one sees, as at Macao, almost as much space taken up by the dead for a grave as by the living for a hut. The necropolis of Canton occupies the hills north of the city, of which not one-fiftieth part could ever have been used for agriculture, but where cattle are allowed to graze, as much as if there were no tombs.Under its genial and equable climate, more than three-fourths of the area of China Proper produces two crops annually. In Kwangtung, Kwangsí, and Fuhkien, two crops of rice are taken year after year from the low lands; while in the loess regions of the northwest, a three-fold return from the grain fields is annually looked for, if the rain-fall is not withheld. In the winter season, in the neighborhood of towns, a third crop of sweet potatoes, cabbages, turnips, or some other vegetable is grown. De Guignes estimates the returns of a rice crop at ten for one, which, with the vegetables, will give full twenty-five fold from an acre in a year; few parts, however, yield this increase. Little or no land lies fallow, for constant manuring and turning of the soil prevents the necessity of repose. The diligence exhibited in collecting and applying manure is well known, and if all this industry result in the production of two crops instead of one, it really doubles the area under cultivation, when its superficies are compared with those of other countries. If the amount of land which produces two crops be estimated at one-fourth of the whole (and it is perhaps as near one-third), the area of arable land in the provinces may be considered as representing a total of 812 millions of acres, or 2¾ acres to an individual. The land is not, however, cut up into such small farms as to prevent its being managed as well as the people know how to stock and cultivate it; manual labor is the chief dependence of the farmer, fewer cattle, carts, ploughs, and machines being employed than in other countries. In rice fields no animals are used after the wet land has received the shoots, transplanting, weeding, and reaping being done by men.In no other country besides Japan is so much food derived from the water. Not only are the coasts, estuaries, rivers, and lakes, covered with fishing-boats of various sizes, which are provided with everything fitted for the capture of whatever lives in the waters, but the spawn of fish is collected and reared. Rice fields are often converted into pools in the winter season, and stocked with fish; and the tanks dug for irrigation usually contain fish. By all these means, an immense supply of food is obtained at a cheap rate, which is eaten fresh or preserved with or without salt, and sent over the Empire, at a cost whichplaces it within the reach of all above beggary. Other articles of food, both animal and vegetable, such as dogs, game, worms, spring greens, tripang, leaves, etc., do indeed compose part of their meals, but it is comparatively an inconsiderable fraction, and need not enter into the calculation. Enough has been stated to show that the land is abundantly able to support the population ascribed to it, even with all the drawbacks known to exist; and that, taking the highest estimate to be true, and considering the mode of living, the average population on a square mile in China is less than in several European countries.TENDENCIES TO INCREASE OF POPULATION.The political and social causes which tend to multiply the inhabitants are numerous and powerful. The failure of male posterity to continue the succession of the family, and worship at the tombs of parents, is considered by all classes as one of the most afflictive misfortunes of life; the laws allow unlimited facilities of adoption, and secure the rights of those taken into the family in this way. The custom of betrothing children, and the obligation society imposes upon the youth when arrived at maturity, to fulfil the contracts entered into by their parents, acts favorably to the establishment of families and the nurture of children, and restricts polygamy. Parents desire children for a support in old age, as there is no legal or benevolent provision for aged poverty, and public opinion stigmatizes the man who allows his aged or infirm parents to suffer when he can help them. The law requires the owners of domestic slaves to provide husbands for their females, and prohibits the involuntary or forcible separation of husband and wife, or parents and children, when the latter are of tender age. All these causes and influences tend to increase population, and equalize the consumption and use of property more, perhaps, than in any other land.The custom of families remaining together tends to the same result. The local importance of a large family in the country is weakened by its male members removing to town, or emigrating; consequently, the patriarch of three or four generations endeavors to retain his sons and grandsons around him, their houses joining his, and they and their families forming a social, united company. Such cases as those mentioned in theSacred Commandsare of course rare, where nine generations of the family of Chang Kung-í inhabited one house, or of Chin, at whose table seven hundred mouths were daily fed,[154]but it is the tendency of society. This remark does not indicate that great landed proprietors exist, whose hereditary estates are secured by entail to the great injury of the state, as in Great Britain, for the farms are generally small and cultivated by the owner or on the metayer system. Families are supported on a more economical plan, the claims of kindred are better enforced, the land is cultivated with more care, and the local importance of the family perpetuated. This is, however, a very different system from that advocated by Fourier in France, or Greeley in America, for these little communities are placed under one natural head, whose authority is acknowledged and upheld, and his indignation feared. Workmen of the same profession form unions, each person contributing a certain sum on the promise of assistance when sick or disabled, and this custom prevents and alleviates a vast amount of poverty.RESTRICTIONS UPON EMIGRATION.The obstacles put in the way of emigrating beyond sea, both in law and prejudice, operate to deter respectable persons from leaving their native land. Necessity has made the law a dead letter, and thousands annually leave their homes. No better evidence of the dense population can be offered to those acquainted with Chinese feelings and character, than the extent of emigration. “What stronger proof,” observes Medhurst, “of the dense population of China could be afforded than the fact, that emigration is going on in spite of restrictions and disabilities, from a country where learning and civilization reign, and where all the dearest interests and prejudices of the emigrants are found, to lands like Burmah, Siam, Cambodia, Tibet, Manchuria, and the Indian Archipelago, where comparative ignorance and barbarity prevail, and where the extremes of a tropical or frozen region are to be exchanged for a mild and temperate climate? Added to this consideration, that not a single female is permitted or ventures to leave the country, when consequently, all the tender attachments thatbind heart to heart must be burst asunder, and, perhaps, forever.”[155]Moreover, if they return with wealth enough to live upon, they are liable to the vexatious extortions of needy relatives, sharpers, and police, who have a handle for their fleecing whip in the law against leaving the country;[156]although this clause has been neutralized by subsequent acts, and is not in force, the power of public opinion is against going. A case occurred in 1832, at Canton, where the son of a Chinese living in Calcutta, who had been sent home by his parent with his mother, to perform the usual ceremonies in the ancestral hall, was seized by his uncle as he was about to be married, on the pretext that his father had unequally divided the paternal inheritance; he was obliged to pay a thousand dollars to free himself. Soon after his marriage, a few sharpers laid hold of him and bore him away in a sedan, as he was walking near his house, but his cries attracted the police, who carried them all to the magistrates, where he was liberated—after being obliged to fee his deliverers.[157]Another case occurred in Macao in 1838. A man had been living several years in Singapore as a merchant, and when he settled in Macao still kept up an interest in the trade with that place. Accounts of his great wealth became rumored abroad, and he was seriously annoyed by relatives. One night, a number of thieves, dressed like police-runners, came to his house to search for opium, and their boisterous manner terrified him to such a degree, that in order to escape them he jumped from the terrace upon the hard gravelled court-yard, and broke his leg, of which he shortly afterward died. A third case is mentioned, where the returned emigrants, consisting of a man and his wife, who was a Malay, and two children, were rescued from extortion, when before the magistrate, by the kindness of his wife and mother, who wished to see the foreign woman.[158]Such instances are now unknown,owing to the increase of emigration; they were, indeed, never numerically great, on account of the small number of those who came back.The anxiety of the government to provide stores of food for times of scarcity, shows rather its fear of the disastrous results following a short crop—such as the gathering of clamorous crowds of starving poor, the increase of bandits and disorganization of society—than any peculiar care of the rulers, or that these storehouses really supply deficiencies. The evil consequences resulting from an overgrown population are experienced in one or another part of the provinces almost every year; and drought, inundations, locusts, mildew, or other natural causes, often give rise to insurrections and disturbances. There can be no doubt, however, that, without adding a single acre to the area of arable land, these evils would be materially alleviated, if the intercommunication of traders and their goods, between distant parts of the country, were more frequent, speedy, and safe; but this is not likely to be the case until both rulers and ruled make greater advances in just government, science, obedience, and regard for each other’s right.It would be a satisfaction if foreigners could verify any part of the census. But this is, at present, impossible. They cannot examine the records in the office of the Board of Revenue, nor can they ascertain the population in a given district from the archives in the hands of the local authorities, or the mode of taking it. Neither can they go through a village or town to count the number of houses and their inhabitants, and calculate from actual examination of a few parts what the whole would be. Wherever foreigners have journeyed, there has appeared much the same succession of waste land, hilly regions, cultivated plains, and wooded heights, as in other countries, with an abundance of people, but not more than the land could support, if properly tilled.METHOD OF TAKING THE CENSUS.The people are grouped into hamlets and villages, under the control of village elders and officers. In the district of Nanhai, which forms the western part of the city of Canton, and the surrounding country for more than a hundred square miles, there are one hundred and eightyhiangor villages; the population of eachhiangvaries from two hundred and upwards to one hundred thousand, but ordinarily ranges between three hundred and thirty-five hundred. If each of the eighty-eight districts in the province of Kwangtung contains the same number ofhiang, there will be, including the district towns, 15,928 villages, towns, and cities in all, with an average population of twelve hundred inhabitants to each. From the top of the hills on Dane’s Island, at Whampoa, thirty-six towns and villages can be counted, of which Canton is one; and four of these contain from twelve to fifteen hundred houses. The whole district of Hiangshan, in which Macao lies, is also well covered with villages, though their exact number is not known. The island of Amoy contains more than fourscore villages and towns, and this island forms only a part of the district of Tung-ngan. The banks of the river leading from Amoy up to Changchau fu, are likewise well peopled. The environs of Ningpo and Shanghai are closely settled, though that is no more than one always expects near large cities, where the demand for food in the city itself causes the vicinity to be well peopled and tilled. In a notice of an irruption of the sea in 1819, along the coast of Shantung, it was reported that a hundred and forty villages were laid under water.Marco Polo describes the mode followed in the days of Kublai khan: “It is the custom for every burgess of the city, and in fact for every description of person in it, to write over his door his own name, the name of his wife, and those of his children, his slaves, and all the inmates of his house, and also the number of animals that he keeps. And if any one dies in the house, then the name of that person is erased, and if a child is born its name is added. So in this way the sovereign is able to know exactly the population of the city. And this is the practice throughout all Manzi and Cathay.”[159]This custom was observed long before the Mongol conquest, and is followed at present; so that it is perhaps easier to take a census in China than in most European countries.The law upon this subject is contained in Secs. LXXV. andLXXVI. of the statutes. It enacts various penalties for not registering the members of a family, and its provisions all go to show that the people are desirous rather of evading the census than of exaggerating it. When a family has omitted to make any entry, the head of it is liable to be punished with one hundred blows if he is a freeholder, and with eighty if he is not. If the master of a family has among his household another distinct family whom he omits to register, the punishment is the same as in the last clause, with a modification, according as the unregistered persons and family are relatives or strangers. Persons in government employ omitting to register their families, are less severely punished. A master of family failing to register all the males in his household who are liable to public service, shall be punished with from sixty to one hundred blows, according to the demerits of the offence; this clause was in effect repealed, when the land tax was substituted for the capitation tax. Omissions, from neglect or inadvertency to register all the individuals and families in a village or town, on the part of the headmen or government clerks, are punishable with different degrees of severity. All persons whatsoever are to be registered according to their accustomed occupations or professions, whether civil or military, whether couriers, artisans, physicians, astrologers, laborers, musicians, or of any other denomination whatever; and subterfuges in representing one’s self as belonging to a profession not liable to public service, are visited as usual with the bamboo; persons falsely describing themselves as belonging to the army, in order to evade public service, are banished as well as beaten.[160]From these clauses it is seen that the Manchus have extended the enumeration to classes which were exempted in the Han, Tang, and other dynasties, and thus come nearer to the actual population.ITS PROBABLE ACCURACY.“In the Chinese government,” observes Dr. Morrison, “there appears great regularity and system. Every district has its appropriate officers, every street its constable, and every ten houses their tything man. Thus they have all the requisite means of ascertaining the population with considerable accuracy. Every family is required to have a board always hanging up in the house, and ready for the inspection of authorized officers, on which the names of all persons, men, women, and children, in the house are inscribed. This board is calledmun-paior ‘door-tablet,’ because when there are women and children within, the officers are expected to take the account from the board at the door. Were all the inmates of a family faithfully inserted, the amount of the population would, of course, be ascertained with great accuracy. But it is said that names are sometimes omitted through neglect or design; others think that the account of persons given in is generally correct.” The door-tablets are sometimes pasted on the door, thus serving as a kind of door-plate; in these cases correctness of enumeration is readily secured, for the neighbors are likely to know if the record is below the truth, and the householder is not likely to exaggerate the taxable inmates under his roof. I have read thesemun-paion the doors of a long row of houses; they were printed blanks filled in, and then pasted outside for thepao-kiahor tithing man to examine. Both Dr. Morrison and his son, than whom no one has had better opportunities to know the true state of the case, or been more desirous of dealing fairly with the Chinese, regarded the censuses given in theGeneral Statisticsas more trustworthy than any other documents available.EVIDENCES IN FAVOR OF THE CENSUS.In conclusion, it may be asked, are the results of the enumeration of the people, as contained in the statistical works published by the government, to be rejected or doubted, therefore, because the Chinese officers do not wish to ascertain the exact population; or because they are not capable of doing it; or, lastly, because they wish to impose upon foreign powers by an arithmetical array of millions they do not possess? The question seems to hang upon this trilemma. It is acknowledged that they falsify or garble statements in a manner calculated to throw doubt upon everything they write, as in the reports of victories and battles sent to the Emperor, in the memorials upon the opium trade, in their descriptions of natural objects in books of medicine, and in many other things. But the question is as applicable to China as to France: is the estimatedpopulation of France in 1801 to be called in question, because theMoniteurgave false accounts of Napoleon’s battles in 1813? It would be a strange combination of conceit and folly, for a ministry composed of men able to carry on all the details of a complicated government like that of China, to systematically exaggerate the population, and then proceed, for more than a century, with taxation, disbursements, and official appointments, founded upon these censuses. Somebody at least must know them to be worthless, and the proof that they were so, must, one would think, ere long be apparent. The provinces and departments have been divided and subdivided since the Jesuits made their survey, because they were becoming too densely settled for the same officers to rule over them.Still less will any one assert that the Chinese are not capable of taking as accurate a census as they are of measuring distances, or laying out districts and townships. Errors may be found in the former as well as in the latter, and doubtless are so; for it is not contended that the four censuses of 1711, 1753, 1792, and 1812 are as accurate as those now taken in England, France, or the United States, but that they are the best data extant, and that if they are rejected we leave tolerable evidence and take up with that which is doubtful and suppositive. The censuses taken in China since the Christian era are, on the whole, more satisfactory than those of all other nations put together up to the Reformation, and further careful research will no doubt increase our respect for them.Ere long we may be able to traverse a census in its details of record and deduction, and thus satisfy a reasonable curiosity, especially as to the last reported total after the carnage of the rebellion. On the other hand, it may be stated that in the last census, the entire population of Manchuria, Koko-nor, Ílí, and Mongolia, is estimated at only 2,167,286 persons, and nearly all the inhabitants of those vast regions are subject to the Emperor. The population of Tibet is not included in any census, its people not being taxable. It is doubtful if an enumeration of any part of the extra provincial territory has ever been taken, inasmuch as the Mongol tribes, and still less the Usbeck or other Moslem races, are unused to such a thing, and wouldnot be numbered. Yet, the Chinese cannot be charged with exaggeration, when good judges, as Klaproth and others, reckon the whole at between six and seven millions; and Khoten alone, one author states, has three and a half millions. No writer of importance estimates the inhabitants of these regions as high as thirty millions—as does R. Mont. Martin—which would be more than ten to a square mile, excluding Gobi; while Siberia (though not so well peopled) has only 3,611,300 persons on an area of 2,649,600 square miles, or 1⅓ to each square mile.The reasons just given why the Chinese desire posterity are not all those which have favored national increase. The uninterrupted peace which the country enjoyed between the years 1700 and 1850 operated to greatly develop its resources. Every encouragement has been given to all classes to multiply and fill the land. Polygamy, slavery, and prostitution, three social evils which check increase, have been circumscribed in their effects. Early betrothment and poverty do much to prevent the first; female slaves can be and are usually married; while public prostitution is reduced by a separation of the sexes and early marriages. No fears of overpassing the supply of food restrain the people from rearing families, though the Emperor Kienlung issued a proclamation in 1793, calling upon all ranks of his subjects to economize the gifts of heaven, lest, erelong, the people exceed the means of subsistence.It is difficult to see what this or that reason or objection has to do with the subject, except where the laws of population are set at defiance, which is not the case in China. Food and work, peace and security, climate and fertile soil, not universities or steamboats, are the encouragements needed for the multiplication of mankind; though they do not have that effect in all countries (as in Mexico and Brazil), it is no reason why they should not in others. There are grounds for believing that not more than two-thirds of the whole population of China were included in the census of 1711, but that allowance cannot be made for Ireland in 1785; and consequently, her annual percentage of increase, up to 1841, would then be greater than China, during the forty-two years ending with 1753. McCulloch quotes De Guignes approvingly, but the Frenchman takes therough estimate of 333,000,000 given to Macartney, which is less trustworthy than that of 307,467,200, and compares it with Grosier’s of 157,343,975, which is certainly wrong through his misinterpretation. De Guignes proceeds from the data in his possession in 1802 (which were less than those now available), and from his own observations in travelling through the country in 1796, to show the improbability of the estimated population. But the observations made in journeys, taken as were those of the English and Dutch embassies, though they passed through some of the best provinces, cannot be regarded as good evidence against official statistics.Would any one suppose, in travelling from Boston to Chatham, and then from Albany to Buffalo, along the railroad, that Massachusetts contained, in 1870, exactly double the population on a square mile of New York? So, in going from Peking to Canton, the judgment which six intelligent travellers might form of the population of China could easily be found to differ by one-half. De Guignes says, after comparing China with Holland and France, “All these reasons clearly demonstrate that the population of China does not exceed that of other countries;” and such is in truth the case, if the kind of food, number of crops, and materials of dress be taken into account. His remarks on the population and productiveness of the country are, like his whole work, replete with good sense and candor; but some of his deductions would have been different, had he been in possession of all the data since obtained.[161]The discrepancies between the different censuses have been usually considered a strong internal evidence against them, and they should receive due consideration. The really difficult point is to fix the percentage that must be allowed for the classes not included as taxable, and the power of the government to enumerate those who wished to avoid a census and the subsequent taxation.POSSIBILITIES OF ERROR.After all these reasons for receiving the total of 1812 as the best one, there are, on the other hand, two principal objections against taking the Chinese census as altogether trustworthy. The first is the enormous averages of 850, 705, and 671 inhabitants on a square mile, severally apportioned to Kiangsu, Nganhwui, and Chehkiang, or, what is perhaps a fairer calculation, of 458 persons to the nine eastern provinces. Whatever amount of circumstantial evidence may be brought forward in confirmation of the census as a whole, and explanation of the mode of taking it, a more positive proof seems to be necessary before giving implicit credence to this result. Such a population on such an extensive area is marvellous, notwithstanding the fertility of the soil, facilities of navigation, and salubrity of the climate of these regions, although acknowledged to be almost unequalled. While we admit the full force of all that has been urged in support of the census, and are willing to take it as the best document on the subject extant, it is desirable to have proofs derived from personal observation, and to defer the settlement of this question until better opportunities are afforded. So high an average is, indeed, not without example. Captain Wilkes ascertained, in 1840, that one of the islands of the Fiji group supported a population of over a thousand on a square mile. On Lord North’s Island, in the Pelew group, the crew of the American whaler Mentor ascertained there were four hundred inhabitants living on half a square mile. These, and many other islands in that genial clime, contain a population far exceeding that of any large country, and each separate community is obliged to depend wholly on its own labor. They cannot, however, be cited as altogether parallel cases, though if it be true, as Barrow says, “that an acre of cotton will clothe two or three hundred persons,” not much more land need be occupied with cotton or mulberry plants, for clothing in China, than in the South Sea Islands.The second objection against receiving the result of the census is, that we are not well informed as to the mode of enumerating the people by families, and the manner of taking the account, when the patriarch of two or three generations lives in a hamlet, with all his children and domestics around him. Two of the provisions in Sec. XXV. of theCode, seem to be designed for some such state of society; and the liability to underrate the males fit for public service, when a capitation tax was ordered, and to overrate the inmates of such a house, when thehead of it might suppose he would thereby receive increased aid from government when calamity overtook him, are equally apparent. The door-tablet is also liable to mistake, and in shops and workhouses, where the clerks and workmen live and sleep on the premises, it is not known what kind of report of families the assessors make. On these important points our present information is imperfect, while the evident liability to serious error in the ultimate results makes one hesitate. The Chinese may have taken a census satisfactory for their purposes, showing the number of families, and the average in each; but the point of this objection is, that we do not know how the families are enumerated, and therefore are at fault in reckoning the individuals. The average of persons in a household is set down at five by the Chinese, and in England, in 1831, it was 4.7, but it is probably less than that in a thickly settled country, if every married couple and their children be taken as a family, whether living by themselves, or grouped in patriarchal hamlets.No one doubts that the population is enormous, constituting by far the greatest assemblage of human beings using one speech ever congregated under one monarch. To the merchants and manufacturers of the West, the determination of this question is of some importance, and through them to their governments. The political economist and philologist, the naturalist and geographer, have also greater or less degrees of interest in the contemplation of such a people, inhabiting so beautiful and fertile a country. But the Christian philanthropist turns to the consideration of this subject with the liveliest solicitude; for if the weight of evidence is in favor of the highest estimate, he feels his responsibility increase to a painful degree. The danger to this people is furthermore greatly enhanced by the opium traffic—a trade which, as if the Rivers Phlegethon and Lethe were united in it, carries fire and destruction wherever it flows, and leaves a deadly forgetfulness wherever it has passed. Let these facts appeal to all calling themselves Christians, to send the antidote to this baleful drug, and diffuse a knowledge of the principles of the Gospel among them, thereby placing life as well as death before them.REVENUE OF THE EMPIRE.If the population of the Empire is not easily ascertained, asatisfactory account of the public revenue and expenditures is still more difficult to obtain; it possesses far less interest, of course, in itself, and in such a country as China is subject to many variations. The market value of the grain, silk, and other products in which a large proportion of the taxes are paid, varies from year to year; and although this does not materially affect the government which receives these articles, it complicates the subject very much when attempting to ascertain the real taxation. Statistics on these subjects are only of recent date in Europe, and should not yet be looked for in China, drawn up with much regard to truth. The central government requires each province to support itself, and furnish a certain surplusage for the maintenance of the Emperor and his court; but it is well known that his Majesty is continually embarrassed for the want of funds, and that the provinces do not all supply enough revenue to meet their own outlays.SOURCES AND AMOUNT OF REVENUE.The amounts given by various authors as the revenue of China at different times, are so discordant, that a single glance shows that they were obtained from partial or incomplete returns, or else refer only to the surplusage sent to the capital. De Guignes remarks very truly, that the Chinese are so fully persuaded of the riches, power, and resources of their country, that a foreigner is likely to receive different accounts from every native he asks; but there appears to be no good reason why the government should falsify or abridge their fiscal accounts. In 1587, Trigault, one of the French missionaries, stated the revenue at only tls. 20,000,000. In 1655, Nieuhoff reckoned it at tls. 108,000,000. About twelve years after, Magalhaens gave the treasures of the Emperor at $20,423,962; and Le Comte, about the same time, placed the revenue at $22,000,000, and both of them estimated the receipts from rice, silk, etc, at $30,000,000, making the whole revenue previous to Kanghí’s death, in 1721, between fifty and seventy millions of dollars. Barrow reckoned the receipts from all sources in 1796 at tls. 198,000,000, derived from a rough estimate given by the commissioner who accompanied the embassy. Sir George Staunton places the total sum at $330,000,000; of which $60,000,000 only were transmitted to Peking. Medhurst,drawing his information from original sources, thus states the principal items of the receipts:Land taxes in money,sent to Peking,Tls.31,745,966valued at$42,327,954Land taxes in grain,Shih4,230,957„12,692,871Custom and transit duties,Tls.1,480,997„1,974,662Land taxes in money,kept in provincesTls.28,705,125„38,273,500Grain,Shih31,596,569„105,689,707$200,958,694Theshihof rice is estimated at $3, but this does not include the cost of transportation to the capital.[162]At $200,000,000, the tax received by government from each person on an average is about sixty cents; Barrow estimates the capitation at about ninety cents. The account of the revenue in taels from each province given in the table of population on page264, is extracted from theRed Bookfor 1840;[163]the account of the revenue in rice, as stated in the official documents for that year, is 4,114,000 shih, or about five hundred and fifty millions of pounds, calling eachshiha pecul. The manner in which the various items of the revenue are divided is thus stated for Kwangtung, in theRed Bookfor 1842:Taels.Land tax in money1,264,304Pawnbrokers’ taxes5,990Taxes at the frontier and on transportation719,307Retained339,143Miscellaneous sources59,530Salt department (gabel)47,510Revenue from customs at Canton43,750Other stations in the province53,6702,533,204This is evidently only the sum sent to the capital from this province, ostensibly as the revenue, and which the provincial treasury must collect. The real receipts from this province or any other cannot well be ascertained by foreigners; it is, however, known, that in former years, the collector of customs at Canton was obliged to remit annually from eight hundred thousand to one million three hundred thousand taels, andthe gross receipts of his office were not far from three millions of taels.[164]This was then the richest collectorate in the Empire; but since the foreign trade at the open ports has been placed under foreign supervision, the resources of the Empire have been better reported. A recent analysis of the sources of revenue in the Eighteen Provinces has been furnished by the customs service; it places them under different headings from the preceding list, though the total does not materially differ. Out of this whole amount the sum derived from the trade in foreign shipping goes most directly to the central exchequer.Taels.Land tax in money18,000,000Li-kinor internal excise on goods20,000,000Import and export duties collected by foreigners12,000,000Import and export duties on native commerce3,000,000Salt gabel5,000,000Sales of offices and degrees7,000,000Sundries1,400,000Amount paid in silver66,400,000Land tax paid in produce13,100,00079,500,000De Guignes has examined the subject of the revenue with his usual caution, and bases his calculations on a proclamation of Kienlung in 1777, in which it was stated that the total income in bullion at that period was tls. 27,967,000.Taels.Income in money as above27,967,000Equal revenue in kind from grain27,967,000Tax on the second crop in the southern provinces21,800,000Gabel, coal, transit duties, etc.6,479,400Customs at Canton800,000Revenue from silk, porcelain, varnish, and other manufactures7,000,000Adding house and shop taxes, licenses, tonnage duties, etc.4,000,000Total revenue89,713,400The difference of about eighty millions of dollars between this amount and that given by Medhurst, will not surprise one who has looked into this perplexing matter. All these calculations are based on approximations, which, although easily madeup, cannot be verified to our satisfaction; but all agree in placing the total amount of revenue below that of any European government in proportion to the population. In 1823, a paper was published by a graduate upon the fiscal condition of the country, in which he gave a careful analysis of the receipts and disbursements. P. P. Thoms translated it in detail, and summarized the former under three heads of taxes reckoned at tls. 33,327,056, rice sent to Peking 6,346,438, and supplies to army 7,227,360—in all tls. 46,900,854. Out of the first sum tls. 24,507,933 went to civilians and the army, leaving tls. 5,819,123 for the Peking government, and tls. 3,000,000 for the Yellow River repairs and Yuen-ming Palace. The resources of the Empire this writer foots up at tls. 74,461,633, or just one-half of what Medhurst gives. The extraordinary sources of revenue which are resorted to in time of war or bad harvests, are sale of office and honors, temporary increase of duties, and demands for contributions from wealthy merchants and landholders. The first is the most fruitful source, and may be regarded rather as a permanent than a temporary expediency employed to make up deficiencies. The mines of gold and silver, pearl fisheries in Manchuria and elsewhere, precious stones brought from Ílí and Khoten, and other localities, furnish several millions.PRINCIPAL ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE.The expenditures, almost every year, exceed the revenue, but how the deficit is supplied does not clearly appear; it has been sometimes drawn from the rich by force, at other times made good by paltering with the currency, as in 1852-55, and again by reducing rations and salaries. In 1832, the Emperor said the excess of disbursements was tls. 28,000,000;[165]and, in 1836, the defalcation was still greater, and offices and titles to the amount of tls. 10,000,000 were put up for sale to supply it. This deficiency has become more and more alarming since the drain of specie annually sent abroad in payment for opium has been increased by military exactions for suppressing the rebellion up to 1867. At that date the Empire began to recuperate. The principal items of the expenditure are thus stated by De Guignes:
AREA AND VALUE OF ARABLE LAND IN CHINA.
If the same proportion between the arable and uncultivated land exists in China as in England, namely one-fourth, there are about six hundred and fifty millions of acres under cultivation in China; and we are not left altogether to conjecture, for by a report made to Kienlung in 1745, it appears that the area of the land under cultivation was 595,598,221 acres; a subsequent calculation places it at 640,579,381 acres, which is almost the same proportion as in England. Estimating it at six hundredand fifty millions—for it has since increased rather than diminished—it gives one acre and four-fifths to every person, which is by no means a small supply for the Chinese, considering that there are no cultivated pastures or meadows.
In comparing the population of different countries, the manner of living and the articles of food in use, form such important elements of the calculation, in ascertaining whether the country be overstocked or not, that a mere tabular view of the number of persons on a square mile is an imperfect criterion of the amount of inhabitants the land would maintain if they consumed the same food, and lived in the same manner in all of them. Living as the Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, and other Asiatics do, chiefly upon vegetables, the country can hardly be said to maintain more than one-half or one-third as many people on a square mile as it might do, if their energies were developed to the same extent with those of the English or Belgians. The population of these eastern regions has been repressed by the combined influences of ignorance, insecurity of life and property, religious prejudices, vice, and wars, so that the land has never maintained as many inhabitants as one would have otherwise reasonably expected therefrom.
Nearly all the cultivated soil in China is employed in raising food for man. Woollen garments and leather are little used, while cotton and mulberry cultivation take up only a small proportion of the soil. There is not, so far as is known, a single acre of land sown with grass-seed, and therefore almost no human labor is devoted to raising food for animals, which will not also serve to sustain man. Horses are seldom used for pomp or war, for travelling or carrying burdens, but mules, camels, asses, and goats are employed for transportation and other purposes north of the Yangtsz’ River. Horses are fed on cooked rice, bran, sorghum seed, pulse, oats, and grass cut along the banks of streams, or on hillsides. In the southern and eastern provinces, all animals are rare, the transport of goods and passengers being done by boats or by men. The natives make no use of butter, cheese, or milk, and the few cattle employed in agriculture easily gather a living on the waste ground around the villages. In the south, the buffalo is applied morethan the ox to plough the rice fields, and the habits of this animal make it cheaper to keep him in good condition, while he can also do more work. The winter stock is grass cut upon the hills, straw, bean stalks, and vegetables. No wool being wanted for making cloth, flocks of sheep and goats are seldom seen—it may almost be said are unknown in the east and south.
No animal is reared cheaper than the hog; hatching and raising ducks affords employment to thousands of people; hundreds of these fowl gather their own food along the river shore, being easily attended by a single keeper. Geese and poultry are also cheaply reared. In fishing, which is carried on to an enormous extent, no pasture-grounds, no manuring, no barns, are needed, nor are taxes paid by the cultivator and consumer.
While the people get their animal food in these ways, its preparation takes away the least possible amount of cultivated soil. The space occupied for roads and pleasure-grounds is insignificant, but there is perhaps an amount appropriated for burial places quite equal to the area used for those purposes in European countries; it is, however, less valuable land, and much of it would be useless for culture, even if otherwise unoccupied. Graves are dug on hills, in ravines and copses, and wherever they will be retired and dry; or if in the ancestral field, they do not hinder the crop growing close around them. Moreover, it is very common to preserve the coffin in temples and cemeteries until it is decayed, partly in order to save the expense of a grave, and partly to worship the remains, or preserve them until gathered to their fathers, in their distant native places. They are often placed in the corners of the fields, or under precipices where they remain till dust returns to dust, and bones and wood both moulder away. These and other customs limit the consumption of land for graves much more than would be supposed, when one sees, as at Macao, almost as much space taken up by the dead for a grave as by the living for a hut. The necropolis of Canton occupies the hills north of the city, of which not one-fiftieth part could ever have been used for agriculture, but where cattle are allowed to graze, as much as if there were no tombs.
Under its genial and equable climate, more than three-fourths of the area of China Proper produces two crops annually. In Kwangtung, Kwangsí, and Fuhkien, two crops of rice are taken year after year from the low lands; while in the loess regions of the northwest, a three-fold return from the grain fields is annually looked for, if the rain-fall is not withheld. In the winter season, in the neighborhood of towns, a third crop of sweet potatoes, cabbages, turnips, or some other vegetable is grown. De Guignes estimates the returns of a rice crop at ten for one, which, with the vegetables, will give full twenty-five fold from an acre in a year; few parts, however, yield this increase. Little or no land lies fallow, for constant manuring and turning of the soil prevents the necessity of repose. The diligence exhibited in collecting and applying manure is well known, and if all this industry result in the production of two crops instead of one, it really doubles the area under cultivation, when its superficies are compared with those of other countries. If the amount of land which produces two crops be estimated at one-fourth of the whole (and it is perhaps as near one-third), the area of arable land in the provinces may be considered as representing a total of 812 millions of acres, or 2¾ acres to an individual. The land is not, however, cut up into such small farms as to prevent its being managed as well as the people know how to stock and cultivate it; manual labor is the chief dependence of the farmer, fewer cattle, carts, ploughs, and machines being employed than in other countries. In rice fields no animals are used after the wet land has received the shoots, transplanting, weeding, and reaping being done by men.
In no other country besides Japan is so much food derived from the water. Not only are the coasts, estuaries, rivers, and lakes, covered with fishing-boats of various sizes, which are provided with everything fitted for the capture of whatever lives in the waters, but the spawn of fish is collected and reared. Rice fields are often converted into pools in the winter season, and stocked with fish; and the tanks dug for irrigation usually contain fish. By all these means, an immense supply of food is obtained at a cheap rate, which is eaten fresh or preserved with or without salt, and sent over the Empire, at a cost whichplaces it within the reach of all above beggary. Other articles of food, both animal and vegetable, such as dogs, game, worms, spring greens, tripang, leaves, etc., do indeed compose part of their meals, but it is comparatively an inconsiderable fraction, and need not enter into the calculation. Enough has been stated to show that the land is abundantly able to support the population ascribed to it, even with all the drawbacks known to exist; and that, taking the highest estimate to be true, and considering the mode of living, the average population on a square mile in China is less than in several European countries.
TENDENCIES TO INCREASE OF POPULATION.
The political and social causes which tend to multiply the inhabitants are numerous and powerful. The failure of male posterity to continue the succession of the family, and worship at the tombs of parents, is considered by all classes as one of the most afflictive misfortunes of life; the laws allow unlimited facilities of adoption, and secure the rights of those taken into the family in this way. The custom of betrothing children, and the obligation society imposes upon the youth when arrived at maturity, to fulfil the contracts entered into by their parents, acts favorably to the establishment of families and the nurture of children, and restricts polygamy. Parents desire children for a support in old age, as there is no legal or benevolent provision for aged poverty, and public opinion stigmatizes the man who allows his aged or infirm parents to suffer when he can help them. The law requires the owners of domestic slaves to provide husbands for their females, and prohibits the involuntary or forcible separation of husband and wife, or parents and children, when the latter are of tender age. All these causes and influences tend to increase population, and equalize the consumption and use of property more, perhaps, than in any other land.
The custom of families remaining together tends to the same result. The local importance of a large family in the country is weakened by its male members removing to town, or emigrating; consequently, the patriarch of three or four generations endeavors to retain his sons and grandsons around him, their houses joining his, and they and their families forming a social, united company. Such cases as those mentioned in theSacred Commandsare of course rare, where nine generations of the family of Chang Kung-í inhabited one house, or of Chin, at whose table seven hundred mouths were daily fed,[154]but it is the tendency of society. This remark does not indicate that great landed proprietors exist, whose hereditary estates are secured by entail to the great injury of the state, as in Great Britain, for the farms are generally small and cultivated by the owner or on the metayer system. Families are supported on a more economical plan, the claims of kindred are better enforced, the land is cultivated with more care, and the local importance of the family perpetuated. This is, however, a very different system from that advocated by Fourier in France, or Greeley in America, for these little communities are placed under one natural head, whose authority is acknowledged and upheld, and his indignation feared. Workmen of the same profession form unions, each person contributing a certain sum on the promise of assistance when sick or disabled, and this custom prevents and alleviates a vast amount of poverty.
RESTRICTIONS UPON EMIGRATION.
The obstacles put in the way of emigrating beyond sea, both in law and prejudice, operate to deter respectable persons from leaving their native land. Necessity has made the law a dead letter, and thousands annually leave their homes. No better evidence of the dense population can be offered to those acquainted with Chinese feelings and character, than the extent of emigration. “What stronger proof,” observes Medhurst, “of the dense population of China could be afforded than the fact, that emigration is going on in spite of restrictions and disabilities, from a country where learning and civilization reign, and where all the dearest interests and prejudices of the emigrants are found, to lands like Burmah, Siam, Cambodia, Tibet, Manchuria, and the Indian Archipelago, where comparative ignorance and barbarity prevail, and where the extremes of a tropical or frozen region are to be exchanged for a mild and temperate climate? Added to this consideration, that not a single female is permitted or ventures to leave the country, when consequently, all the tender attachments thatbind heart to heart must be burst asunder, and, perhaps, forever.”[155]
Moreover, if they return with wealth enough to live upon, they are liable to the vexatious extortions of needy relatives, sharpers, and police, who have a handle for their fleecing whip in the law against leaving the country;[156]although this clause has been neutralized by subsequent acts, and is not in force, the power of public opinion is against going. A case occurred in 1832, at Canton, where the son of a Chinese living in Calcutta, who had been sent home by his parent with his mother, to perform the usual ceremonies in the ancestral hall, was seized by his uncle as he was about to be married, on the pretext that his father had unequally divided the paternal inheritance; he was obliged to pay a thousand dollars to free himself. Soon after his marriage, a few sharpers laid hold of him and bore him away in a sedan, as he was walking near his house, but his cries attracted the police, who carried them all to the magistrates, where he was liberated—after being obliged to fee his deliverers.[157]Another case occurred in Macao in 1838. A man had been living several years in Singapore as a merchant, and when he settled in Macao still kept up an interest in the trade with that place. Accounts of his great wealth became rumored abroad, and he was seriously annoyed by relatives. One night, a number of thieves, dressed like police-runners, came to his house to search for opium, and their boisterous manner terrified him to such a degree, that in order to escape them he jumped from the terrace upon the hard gravelled court-yard, and broke his leg, of which he shortly afterward died. A third case is mentioned, where the returned emigrants, consisting of a man and his wife, who was a Malay, and two children, were rescued from extortion, when before the magistrate, by the kindness of his wife and mother, who wished to see the foreign woman.[158]Such instances are now unknown,owing to the increase of emigration; they were, indeed, never numerically great, on account of the small number of those who came back.
The anxiety of the government to provide stores of food for times of scarcity, shows rather its fear of the disastrous results following a short crop—such as the gathering of clamorous crowds of starving poor, the increase of bandits and disorganization of society—than any peculiar care of the rulers, or that these storehouses really supply deficiencies. The evil consequences resulting from an overgrown population are experienced in one or another part of the provinces almost every year; and drought, inundations, locusts, mildew, or other natural causes, often give rise to insurrections and disturbances. There can be no doubt, however, that, without adding a single acre to the area of arable land, these evils would be materially alleviated, if the intercommunication of traders and their goods, between distant parts of the country, were more frequent, speedy, and safe; but this is not likely to be the case until both rulers and ruled make greater advances in just government, science, obedience, and regard for each other’s right.
It would be a satisfaction if foreigners could verify any part of the census. But this is, at present, impossible. They cannot examine the records in the office of the Board of Revenue, nor can they ascertain the population in a given district from the archives in the hands of the local authorities, or the mode of taking it. Neither can they go through a village or town to count the number of houses and their inhabitants, and calculate from actual examination of a few parts what the whole would be. Wherever foreigners have journeyed, there has appeared much the same succession of waste land, hilly regions, cultivated plains, and wooded heights, as in other countries, with an abundance of people, but not more than the land could support, if properly tilled.
METHOD OF TAKING THE CENSUS.
The people are grouped into hamlets and villages, under the control of village elders and officers. In the district of Nanhai, which forms the western part of the city of Canton, and the surrounding country for more than a hundred square miles, there are one hundred and eightyhiangor villages; the population of eachhiangvaries from two hundred and upwards to one hundred thousand, but ordinarily ranges between three hundred and thirty-five hundred. If each of the eighty-eight districts in the province of Kwangtung contains the same number ofhiang, there will be, including the district towns, 15,928 villages, towns, and cities in all, with an average population of twelve hundred inhabitants to each. From the top of the hills on Dane’s Island, at Whampoa, thirty-six towns and villages can be counted, of which Canton is one; and four of these contain from twelve to fifteen hundred houses. The whole district of Hiangshan, in which Macao lies, is also well covered with villages, though their exact number is not known. The island of Amoy contains more than fourscore villages and towns, and this island forms only a part of the district of Tung-ngan. The banks of the river leading from Amoy up to Changchau fu, are likewise well peopled. The environs of Ningpo and Shanghai are closely settled, though that is no more than one always expects near large cities, where the demand for food in the city itself causes the vicinity to be well peopled and tilled. In a notice of an irruption of the sea in 1819, along the coast of Shantung, it was reported that a hundred and forty villages were laid under water.
Marco Polo describes the mode followed in the days of Kublai khan: “It is the custom for every burgess of the city, and in fact for every description of person in it, to write over his door his own name, the name of his wife, and those of his children, his slaves, and all the inmates of his house, and also the number of animals that he keeps. And if any one dies in the house, then the name of that person is erased, and if a child is born its name is added. So in this way the sovereign is able to know exactly the population of the city. And this is the practice throughout all Manzi and Cathay.”[159]This custom was observed long before the Mongol conquest, and is followed at present; so that it is perhaps easier to take a census in China than in most European countries.
The law upon this subject is contained in Secs. LXXV. andLXXVI. of the statutes. It enacts various penalties for not registering the members of a family, and its provisions all go to show that the people are desirous rather of evading the census than of exaggerating it. When a family has omitted to make any entry, the head of it is liable to be punished with one hundred blows if he is a freeholder, and with eighty if he is not. If the master of a family has among his household another distinct family whom he omits to register, the punishment is the same as in the last clause, with a modification, according as the unregistered persons and family are relatives or strangers. Persons in government employ omitting to register their families, are less severely punished. A master of family failing to register all the males in his household who are liable to public service, shall be punished with from sixty to one hundred blows, according to the demerits of the offence; this clause was in effect repealed, when the land tax was substituted for the capitation tax. Omissions, from neglect or inadvertency to register all the individuals and families in a village or town, on the part of the headmen or government clerks, are punishable with different degrees of severity. All persons whatsoever are to be registered according to their accustomed occupations or professions, whether civil or military, whether couriers, artisans, physicians, astrologers, laborers, musicians, or of any other denomination whatever; and subterfuges in representing one’s self as belonging to a profession not liable to public service, are visited as usual with the bamboo; persons falsely describing themselves as belonging to the army, in order to evade public service, are banished as well as beaten.[160]From these clauses it is seen that the Manchus have extended the enumeration to classes which were exempted in the Han, Tang, and other dynasties, and thus come nearer to the actual population.
ITS PROBABLE ACCURACY.
“In the Chinese government,” observes Dr. Morrison, “there appears great regularity and system. Every district has its appropriate officers, every street its constable, and every ten houses their tything man. Thus they have all the requisite means of ascertaining the population with considerable accuracy. Every family is required to have a board always hanging up in the house, and ready for the inspection of authorized officers, on which the names of all persons, men, women, and children, in the house are inscribed. This board is calledmun-paior ‘door-tablet,’ because when there are women and children within, the officers are expected to take the account from the board at the door. Were all the inmates of a family faithfully inserted, the amount of the population would, of course, be ascertained with great accuracy. But it is said that names are sometimes omitted through neglect or design; others think that the account of persons given in is generally correct.” The door-tablets are sometimes pasted on the door, thus serving as a kind of door-plate; in these cases correctness of enumeration is readily secured, for the neighbors are likely to know if the record is below the truth, and the householder is not likely to exaggerate the taxable inmates under his roof. I have read thesemun-paion the doors of a long row of houses; they were printed blanks filled in, and then pasted outside for thepao-kiahor tithing man to examine. Both Dr. Morrison and his son, than whom no one has had better opportunities to know the true state of the case, or been more desirous of dealing fairly with the Chinese, regarded the censuses given in theGeneral Statisticsas more trustworthy than any other documents available.
EVIDENCES IN FAVOR OF THE CENSUS.
In conclusion, it may be asked, are the results of the enumeration of the people, as contained in the statistical works published by the government, to be rejected or doubted, therefore, because the Chinese officers do not wish to ascertain the exact population; or because they are not capable of doing it; or, lastly, because they wish to impose upon foreign powers by an arithmetical array of millions they do not possess? The question seems to hang upon this trilemma. It is acknowledged that they falsify or garble statements in a manner calculated to throw doubt upon everything they write, as in the reports of victories and battles sent to the Emperor, in the memorials upon the opium trade, in their descriptions of natural objects in books of medicine, and in many other things. But the question is as applicable to China as to France: is the estimatedpopulation of France in 1801 to be called in question, because theMoniteurgave false accounts of Napoleon’s battles in 1813? It would be a strange combination of conceit and folly, for a ministry composed of men able to carry on all the details of a complicated government like that of China, to systematically exaggerate the population, and then proceed, for more than a century, with taxation, disbursements, and official appointments, founded upon these censuses. Somebody at least must know them to be worthless, and the proof that they were so, must, one would think, ere long be apparent. The provinces and departments have been divided and subdivided since the Jesuits made their survey, because they were becoming too densely settled for the same officers to rule over them.
Still less will any one assert that the Chinese are not capable of taking as accurate a census as they are of measuring distances, or laying out districts and townships. Errors may be found in the former as well as in the latter, and doubtless are so; for it is not contended that the four censuses of 1711, 1753, 1792, and 1812 are as accurate as those now taken in England, France, or the United States, but that they are the best data extant, and that if they are rejected we leave tolerable evidence and take up with that which is doubtful and suppositive. The censuses taken in China since the Christian era are, on the whole, more satisfactory than those of all other nations put together up to the Reformation, and further careful research will no doubt increase our respect for them.
Ere long we may be able to traverse a census in its details of record and deduction, and thus satisfy a reasonable curiosity, especially as to the last reported total after the carnage of the rebellion. On the other hand, it may be stated that in the last census, the entire population of Manchuria, Koko-nor, Ílí, and Mongolia, is estimated at only 2,167,286 persons, and nearly all the inhabitants of those vast regions are subject to the Emperor. The population of Tibet is not included in any census, its people not being taxable. It is doubtful if an enumeration of any part of the extra provincial territory has ever been taken, inasmuch as the Mongol tribes, and still less the Usbeck or other Moslem races, are unused to such a thing, and wouldnot be numbered. Yet, the Chinese cannot be charged with exaggeration, when good judges, as Klaproth and others, reckon the whole at between six and seven millions; and Khoten alone, one author states, has three and a half millions. No writer of importance estimates the inhabitants of these regions as high as thirty millions—as does R. Mont. Martin—which would be more than ten to a square mile, excluding Gobi; while Siberia (though not so well peopled) has only 3,611,300 persons on an area of 2,649,600 square miles, or 1⅓ to each square mile.
The reasons just given why the Chinese desire posterity are not all those which have favored national increase. The uninterrupted peace which the country enjoyed between the years 1700 and 1850 operated to greatly develop its resources. Every encouragement has been given to all classes to multiply and fill the land. Polygamy, slavery, and prostitution, three social evils which check increase, have been circumscribed in their effects. Early betrothment and poverty do much to prevent the first; female slaves can be and are usually married; while public prostitution is reduced by a separation of the sexes and early marriages. No fears of overpassing the supply of food restrain the people from rearing families, though the Emperor Kienlung issued a proclamation in 1793, calling upon all ranks of his subjects to economize the gifts of heaven, lest, erelong, the people exceed the means of subsistence.
It is difficult to see what this or that reason or objection has to do with the subject, except where the laws of population are set at defiance, which is not the case in China. Food and work, peace and security, climate and fertile soil, not universities or steamboats, are the encouragements needed for the multiplication of mankind; though they do not have that effect in all countries (as in Mexico and Brazil), it is no reason why they should not in others. There are grounds for believing that not more than two-thirds of the whole population of China were included in the census of 1711, but that allowance cannot be made for Ireland in 1785; and consequently, her annual percentage of increase, up to 1841, would then be greater than China, during the forty-two years ending with 1753. McCulloch quotes De Guignes approvingly, but the Frenchman takes therough estimate of 333,000,000 given to Macartney, which is less trustworthy than that of 307,467,200, and compares it with Grosier’s of 157,343,975, which is certainly wrong through his misinterpretation. De Guignes proceeds from the data in his possession in 1802 (which were less than those now available), and from his own observations in travelling through the country in 1796, to show the improbability of the estimated population. But the observations made in journeys, taken as were those of the English and Dutch embassies, though they passed through some of the best provinces, cannot be regarded as good evidence against official statistics.
Would any one suppose, in travelling from Boston to Chatham, and then from Albany to Buffalo, along the railroad, that Massachusetts contained, in 1870, exactly double the population on a square mile of New York? So, in going from Peking to Canton, the judgment which six intelligent travellers might form of the population of China could easily be found to differ by one-half. De Guignes says, after comparing China with Holland and France, “All these reasons clearly demonstrate that the population of China does not exceed that of other countries;” and such is in truth the case, if the kind of food, number of crops, and materials of dress be taken into account. His remarks on the population and productiveness of the country are, like his whole work, replete with good sense and candor; but some of his deductions would have been different, had he been in possession of all the data since obtained.[161]The discrepancies between the different censuses have been usually considered a strong internal evidence against them, and they should receive due consideration. The really difficult point is to fix the percentage that must be allowed for the classes not included as taxable, and the power of the government to enumerate those who wished to avoid a census and the subsequent taxation.
POSSIBILITIES OF ERROR.
After all these reasons for receiving the total of 1812 as the best one, there are, on the other hand, two principal objections against taking the Chinese census as altogether trustworthy. The first is the enormous averages of 850, 705, and 671 inhabitants on a square mile, severally apportioned to Kiangsu, Nganhwui, and Chehkiang, or, what is perhaps a fairer calculation, of 458 persons to the nine eastern provinces. Whatever amount of circumstantial evidence may be brought forward in confirmation of the census as a whole, and explanation of the mode of taking it, a more positive proof seems to be necessary before giving implicit credence to this result. Such a population on such an extensive area is marvellous, notwithstanding the fertility of the soil, facilities of navigation, and salubrity of the climate of these regions, although acknowledged to be almost unequalled. While we admit the full force of all that has been urged in support of the census, and are willing to take it as the best document on the subject extant, it is desirable to have proofs derived from personal observation, and to defer the settlement of this question until better opportunities are afforded. So high an average is, indeed, not without example. Captain Wilkes ascertained, in 1840, that one of the islands of the Fiji group supported a population of over a thousand on a square mile. On Lord North’s Island, in the Pelew group, the crew of the American whaler Mentor ascertained there were four hundred inhabitants living on half a square mile. These, and many other islands in that genial clime, contain a population far exceeding that of any large country, and each separate community is obliged to depend wholly on its own labor. They cannot, however, be cited as altogether parallel cases, though if it be true, as Barrow says, “that an acre of cotton will clothe two or three hundred persons,” not much more land need be occupied with cotton or mulberry plants, for clothing in China, than in the South Sea Islands.
The second objection against receiving the result of the census is, that we are not well informed as to the mode of enumerating the people by families, and the manner of taking the account, when the patriarch of two or three generations lives in a hamlet, with all his children and domestics around him. Two of the provisions in Sec. XXV. of theCode, seem to be designed for some such state of society; and the liability to underrate the males fit for public service, when a capitation tax was ordered, and to overrate the inmates of such a house, when thehead of it might suppose he would thereby receive increased aid from government when calamity overtook him, are equally apparent. The door-tablet is also liable to mistake, and in shops and workhouses, where the clerks and workmen live and sleep on the premises, it is not known what kind of report of families the assessors make. On these important points our present information is imperfect, while the evident liability to serious error in the ultimate results makes one hesitate. The Chinese may have taken a census satisfactory for their purposes, showing the number of families, and the average in each; but the point of this objection is, that we do not know how the families are enumerated, and therefore are at fault in reckoning the individuals. The average of persons in a household is set down at five by the Chinese, and in England, in 1831, it was 4.7, but it is probably less than that in a thickly settled country, if every married couple and their children be taken as a family, whether living by themselves, or grouped in patriarchal hamlets.
No one doubts that the population is enormous, constituting by far the greatest assemblage of human beings using one speech ever congregated under one monarch. To the merchants and manufacturers of the West, the determination of this question is of some importance, and through them to their governments. The political economist and philologist, the naturalist and geographer, have also greater or less degrees of interest in the contemplation of such a people, inhabiting so beautiful and fertile a country. But the Christian philanthropist turns to the consideration of this subject with the liveliest solicitude; for if the weight of evidence is in favor of the highest estimate, he feels his responsibility increase to a painful degree. The danger to this people is furthermore greatly enhanced by the opium traffic—a trade which, as if the Rivers Phlegethon and Lethe were united in it, carries fire and destruction wherever it flows, and leaves a deadly forgetfulness wherever it has passed. Let these facts appeal to all calling themselves Christians, to send the antidote to this baleful drug, and diffuse a knowledge of the principles of the Gospel among them, thereby placing life as well as death before them.
REVENUE OF THE EMPIRE.
If the population of the Empire is not easily ascertained, asatisfactory account of the public revenue and expenditures is still more difficult to obtain; it possesses far less interest, of course, in itself, and in such a country as China is subject to many variations. The market value of the grain, silk, and other products in which a large proportion of the taxes are paid, varies from year to year; and although this does not materially affect the government which receives these articles, it complicates the subject very much when attempting to ascertain the real taxation. Statistics on these subjects are only of recent date in Europe, and should not yet be looked for in China, drawn up with much regard to truth. The central government requires each province to support itself, and furnish a certain surplusage for the maintenance of the Emperor and his court; but it is well known that his Majesty is continually embarrassed for the want of funds, and that the provinces do not all supply enough revenue to meet their own outlays.
SOURCES AND AMOUNT OF REVENUE.
The amounts given by various authors as the revenue of China at different times, are so discordant, that a single glance shows that they were obtained from partial or incomplete returns, or else refer only to the surplusage sent to the capital. De Guignes remarks very truly, that the Chinese are so fully persuaded of the riches, power, and resources of their country, that a foreigner is likely to receive different accounts from every native he asks; but there appears to be no good reason why the government should falsify or abridge their fiscal accounts. In 1587, Trigault, one of the French missionaries, stated the revenue at only tls. 20,000,000. In 1655, Nieuhoff reckoned it at tls. 108,000,000. About twelve years after, Magalhaens gave the treasures of the Emperor at $20,423,962; and Le Comte, about the same time, placed the revenue at $22,000,000, and both of them estimated the receipts from rice, silk, etc, at $30,000,000, making the whole revenue previous to Kanghí’s death, in 1721, between fifty and seventy millions of dollars. Barrow reckoned the receipts from all sources in 1796 at tls. 198,000,000, derived from a rough estimate given by the commissioner who accompanied the embassy. Sir George Staunton places the total sum at $330,000,000; of which $60,000,000 only were transmitted to Peking. Medhurst,drawing his information from original sources, thus states the principal items of the receipts:
Land taxes in money,sent to Peking,Tls.31,745,966valued at$42,327,954Land taxes in grain,Shih4,230,957„12,692,871Custom and transit duties,Tls.1,480,997„1,974,662Land taxes in money,kept in provincesTls.28,705,125„38,273,500Grain,Shih31,596,569„105,689,707$200,958,694
Theshihof rice is estimated at $3, but this does not include the cost of transportation to the capital.[162]At $200,000,000, the tax received by government from each person on an average is about sixty cents; Barrow estimates the capitation at about ninety cents. The account of the revenue in taels from each province given in the table of population on page264, is extracted from theRed Bookfor 1840;[163]the account of the revenue in rice, as stated in the official documents for that year, is 4,114,000 shih, or about five hundred and fifty millions of pounds, calling eachshiha pecul. The manner in which the various items of the revenue are divided is thus stated for Kwangtung, in theRed Bookfor 1842:
Taels.Land tax in money1,264,304Pawnbrokers’ taxes5,990Taxes at the frontier and on transportation719,307Retained339,143Miscellaneous sources59,530Salt department (gabel)47,510Revenue from customs at Canton43,750Other stations in the province53,6702,533,204
This is evidently only the sum sent to the capital from this province, ostensibly as the revenue, and which the provincial treasury must collect. The real receipts from this province or any other cannot well be ascertained by foreigners; it is, however, known, that in former years, the collector of customs at Canton was obliged to remit annually from eight hundred thousand to one million three hundred thousand taels, andthe gross receipts of his office were not far from three millions of taels.[164]This was then the richest collectorate in the Empire; but since the foreign trade at the open ports has been placed under foreign supervision, the resources of the Empire have been better reported. A recent analysis of the sources of revenue in the Eighteen Provinces has been furnished by the customs service; it places them under different headings from the preceding list, though the total does not materially differ. Out of this whole amount the sum derived from the trade in foreign shipping goes most directly to the central exchequer.
Taels.Land tax in money18,000,000Li-kinor internal excise on goods20,000,000Import and export duties collected by foreigners12,000,000Import and export duties on native commerce3,000,000Salt gabel5,000,000Sales of offices and degrees7,000,000Sundries1,400,000Amount paid in silver66,400,000Land tax paid in produce13,100,00079,500,000
De Guignes has examined the subject of the revenue with his usual caution, and bases his calculations on a proclamation of Kienlung in 1777, in which it was stated that the total income in bullion at that period was tls. 27,967,000.
Taels.Income in money as above27,967,000Equal revenue in kind from grain27,967,000Tax on the second crop in the southern provinces21,800,000Gabel, coal, transit duties, etc.6,479,400Customs at Canton800,000Revenue from silk, porcelain, varnish, and other manufactures7,000,000Adding house and shop taxes, licenses, tonnage duties, etc.4,000,000Total revenue89,713,400
The difference of about eighty millions of dollars between this amount and that given by Medhurst, will not surprise one who has looked into this perplexing matter. All these calculations are based on approximations, which, although easily madeup, cannot be verified to our satisfaction; but all agree in placing the total amount of revenue below that of any European government in proportion to the population. In 1823, a paper was published by a graduate upon the fiscal condition of the country, in which he gave a careful analysis of the receipts and disbursements. P. P. Thoms translated it in detail, and summarized the former under three heads of taxes reckoned at tls. 33,327,056, rice sent to Peking 6,346,438, and supplies to army 7,227,360—in all tls. 46,900,854. Out of the first sum tls. 24,507,933 went to civilians and the army, leaving tls. 5,819,123 for the Peking government, and tls. 3,000,000 for the Yellow River repairs and Yuen-ming Palace. The resources of the Empire this writer foots up at tls. 74,461,633, or just one-half of what Medhurst gives. The extraordinary sources of revenue which are resorted to in time of war or bad harvests, are sale of office and honors, temporary increase of duties, and demands for contributions from wealthy merchants and landholders. The first is the most fruitful source, and may be regarded rather as a permanent than a temporary expediency employed to make up deficiencies. The mines of gold and silver, pearl fisheries in Manchuria and elsewhere, precious stones brought from Ílí and Khoten, and other localities, furnish several millions.
PRINCIPAL ITEMS OF EXPENDITURE.
The expenditures, almost every year, exceed the revenue, but how the deficit is supplied does not clearly appear; it has been sometimes drawn from the rich by force, at other times made good by paltering with the currency, as in 1852-55, and again by reducing rations and salaries. In 1832, the Emperor said the excess of disbursements was tls. 28,000,000;[165]and, in 1836, the defalcation was still greater, and offices and titles to the amount of tls. 10,000,000 were put up for sale to supply it. This deficiency has become more and more alarming since the drain of specie annually sent abroad in payment for opium has been increased by military exactions for suppressing the rebellion up to 1867. At that date the Empire began to recuperate. The principal items of the expenditure are thus stated by De Guignes: