n
us as it is in them to call Europeans barbarians. They are a good,
intelligent, and happy people. Lieutenant Forbes, who spent five years in
China,--from 1842 to 1847,--says: "I found myself in the midst of as
amiable, kind, and hospitable a population as any on the face of the
earth, as far ahead of us in some things as behind us in others." As to
the charge of dishonesty brought against them by those who judge the whole
nation by the degraded population of the suburbs of Canton, Forbes says,
"My own property suffered more in landing in England and passing the
British frontier than in my whole sojourn in China."

"There is no nation," says the Jesuit Du Halde, "more laborious and
temperate than this. They are inured to hardships from their infancy,
which greatly contributes to preserve the innocence of their manners....
They are of a mild, tractable, and humane disposition." He thinks them
exceedingly modest, and regards the love of gain as their chief vice.
"Interest," says he, "is the spring of all their actions; for, when the
least profit offers, they despise all difficulties and undertake the most
painful journeys to procure it" This may be true; but if a Chinese
traveller in America should give the same account of us, would it not be
quite as true? One of the latest writers--the author of "The Middle
Kingdom"--accuses the Chinese of gross sensuality, mendacity, and
dishonesty. No doubt these are besetting sins with them, as with all
nations who are educated under a system which makes submission to
authority the chief virtue. But then this writer lived only at Canton and
Macao, and saw personally only the refuse of the people. He admits that
"they have attained, by the observance of peace and good order, to a high
security of life and property; that the various classes are linked
together in a remarkably homogeneous manner by the diffusion of education;
and that property and industry receive their just reward of food, raiment,
and shelter." He also reminds us that the religion of China differs from
all Pagan religions in this, that it encourages neither cruelty nor
sensuality. No human victims have ever been offered on its altars, and
those licentious rites which have appeared in so many religions have never
disgraced its pure worship.

The Chinese citizen enjoys a degree of order, peace, and comfort unknown
elsewhere in Asia. "He can hold and sell landed property with a facility,
certainty, and security which i