Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

them; and prevailing in spite of circumstances favourable to a general distribution of the means of subsistence. It may be as well to review, in the first place, the principal causes which conduce to the unexampled population of China, and then to exhibit the different statements as to the actual amount.

We have already seen that the advantages with which the country has been gifted by nature have been improved to the utmost by its industrious inhabitants, in the actual state of their knowledge and social condition; that agriculture, the source of food, has been honoured and encouraged beyond every other pursuit; and that the culture of the land (even when divested of the exaggerations of early writers) and the nature of its produce are such as to afford the largest return, under the circumstances, to the labour employed. It has been remarked, too, that the prevalence of agricultural over manufacturing occupations must tend to prolong life, as well as to increase food. Excepting those of the emperor in the vicinity of the capital, there are no extensive parks or pleasure-grounds reserved from the operations of productive industry. In the prevailing absence of wheel-carriages and horses, the least possible ground is occupied by roads; and the only tracts devoted to sepulchral purposes are the sides of barren hills and mountains. There is no meadow-cultivation whatever; nothing is raised for the food of cattle, but all for man; and this is a more important circumstance than it may at first sight appear.

In China there exists, as we have observed, the smallest possible number of horses and of any animals for the purposes of labour, carriage, or draft; and these maintain themselves as they can on pastures unsusceptible of cultivation. Scarcely any domestic animals are kept unless for food. There is a very limited con

sumption of any kind of meat among even the higher orders; and the lower subsist almost exclusively on the productions of tillage.* Now it has been calculated that, in Great Britain, above a million horses are engaged in transporting passengers and goods, and that the support of each horse requires as much land as would feed eight men. Here then are eight millions supplanted; and it is when this point has been reached that the maintenance and use of horses become so comparatively costly as to give rise to inventions for superseding them, like steamcarriages. In China, whatever cannot be transported by water is borne on men's shoulders, and the very boats on their canals are tracked by men.

In no other country, besides, is so much food derived from the waters. The missionaries employed in constructing the map of the empire observed that a large number of boats were collected from various parts on the great Keâng, at a particular period of the year, to procure the spawn of fish. A portion of the river being dammed up with mats and hurdles, the water becomes charged with the spawn, which is carried in vessels to distant places, and distributed wherever fish can subsist. Besides the ordinary contrivances of nets and wicker-traps of all kinds, the Chinese have several modes of taking fish peculiarly their own. During moonlight nights they use long narrow boats, having wooden flaps at their sides, descending to the surface of the water at a particular inclination, and painted white. The fish, being deceived by the light reflected from these boards, leap upon them, and are turned over into the boat with a jerk. We have already had occasion to observe that the innumerable

*The present price of meat in England is about four times that of bread; or, where an acre of ploughed land will feed a given number of persons, it would require nearly four of pasture.

fishing-boats on the southern coasts maintain a race of hardy sailors, who have more than once, by their piratical combinations, given great trouble to the government, and were gained over at last only by concession.* The vast quantities of fish which are caught are mostly salted, and thus consumed with rice. It is on the lakes and swamps of Shantung and Keang-nân that the fishing-bird is trained to exercise his piscatorial habits in the service of man, and they may now be seen on the pieces of water within the town of Ning-po. Numbers of them were observed by our embassies perched in every boat, froin which, at a given signal, they disperse themselves over the water and return regularly with their prey.

[graphic][merged small]

The political causes which tend to swell the population of China are numerous and powerful. Among these are the paternal rights which continue during life, and render a son, even in that over-peopled country, an important acquisition. How effectual and necessary male children

*Since our war they have again become as numerous as ever.

are considered to the support of aged parents, is proved by the laws of the country, which grant life sometimes even to a condemned homicide, if the want of another son or grandson, above the age of sixteen, renders his existence necessary to the support of a parent. In some cases the next nearest relative, as a nephew, may be reprieved from death under the same plea.* We have seen before that the power over children is in reality absolute, and it appears that the original relation of the offspring to both their parents remains in full force, notwithstanding the divorce of the latter. The other cause which renders male children so desirable is the sentiment regarding sacrifices at the tombs, and in the temple of ancestors, on which the whole plot of one of their plays has been mentioned as turning. In default of male children, there is a legalized mode of adoption, by which the line is perpetuated, and the family prevented from becoming extinct. Even the tendency of slavery to check population is counteracted, by a law which makes the owners of domestic slaves, who do not procure husbands for their females, liable to prosecution.

But the perpetuation of families does not tend more to the density of the population than the manner in which those families live and are maintained. It is a universal system of clubbing on the most economical plan. The emperor observes, in the Sacred Instructions, that nine generations once lived under the same roof, and that "in the family of Chang-she, of Keang-chow, seven hundred partook of the same daily repast. Thus ought all those who are of the same name to bear in remembrance their common ancestry and parentage. May your regard for your ancestors be manifested in your mutual love and affection; may you be like streams diverging

[ocr errors]

* Peking Gazettes. Royal Asiatic Transactions, vol. i. p. 395.

from their sources,* or trees branching from their stems. The claims of kindred being thus strengthened and enforced, and supported besides by common opinion, the property of families is made to maintain the greatest number possible; and even if any prudential scruples respecting marriage were supposed to exist in the mind of a Chinese, this would tend effectually to remove them. Another political cause that aggravates the over-population of the country is the obstacle that exists, both in law and prejudice, to emigration. "All officers of government, soldiers, and private citizens, who clandestinely proceed to sea to trade, or remove to foreign islands for the purpose of inhabiting and cultivating the same, shall be punished according to the law against communicating with rebels and enemies."+ Necessity of course renders this in a great measure nugatory; but it must discourage emigration; because, even supposing a subject to have amassed a fortune in foreign countries, there is the clear letter of the law to hang perpetually over him on his return; and it is precisely in this way that all persecution and extortion in China is exercised-by quoting the law against a man. But, independently of this, the abandonment of his native place, and of the tombs of his ancestors, is always abhorrent to the mind of a Chinese; and the consequence is, that no persons but the most indigent or desperate ever quit their country.

In the general list of causes must not be omitted a very important one-the uninterrupted peace which, up to our own war, has been enjoyed by this country since the complete establishment of the Manchow dynasty, a period now considerably exceeding a century and a half. The

*This comparison is evidently false. Streams converge from their sources; and a genealogical river would be as absurd as a genealogical tree is correct. + Penal Code, sect. ccxxv.

« ZurückWeiter »