a wife sufficiently young to be considered his daughter; should he want money, and the lady another husband, (both very likely cases,) or from any other reason should they wish to part, and think proper to act in collusion, she is sold as his daughter to another man, who is thus imposed upon by having a second-hand wife palmed off upon him, instead of a new one. The rigour of the law against offenders of this kind, which awards a very severe bambooing to all principals, aiders, and abettors, affords a proof that frauds of this description are not unfrequent. The gentleman has the privilege, on the first sight of his bride, should he not approve her, of locking the door of the chair, and sending her home again to her parents, provided he thinks proper to lose the money he paid for her, but for the poor woman there is no choice whatever. On her side it is a better or worse case; and what seems still more unfair, a Chinese husband is empowered, (in addition to the other causes of divorce existing in most countries,) to put away his

wife, should she turn out either sickly or too talkative.

With a people, who still imagine the earth to be a plain, and China in the middle, with all her tributary kingdoms around her; who are equally uninformed with regard to astronomy;-who, in the prohibition of the study of the human frame, preclude the attainment of the very basis of all medical knowledge; and who, in fact, in every branch of natural philosophy, are equally ignorant, and determined to continue so; it is evidently impossible to connect the term science in any shape or manner.

The natural productions of the country, and the acquaintance of the people with agriculture and the arts, (as far as they had advanced previous to that glorious edict which stamped them perfect, and commanded they should not proceed beyond the bounds of excellence,) have already been described, by those whose peculiar opportunities, as well as talent, for observation, enabled them to speak fully, and with precision, on those subjects.

The government of China, however plausible it may sound in theory, is, by all that could be observed in a transient view, and by every concurrent testimony of residents in the country, most iniquitous and tyrannical in practice. The mandarins, and even the Emperor, it is true, cannot boldly and openly chop off heads like a Turkish bashaw or the dey of Algiers, but they have the knack of rendering life very miserable, and assume the power of bambooing, torturing, fining (or squeezing), and practise every species of oppression short of death.

The human kind can scarcely be more degraded than in China, for no where is power more diabolically perverted. Their laws, with the exception of some absurdities (such, for example, as that of visiting mere accidental homicide with the same punishment as the most deliberate murder), read very well; and, were they duly and impartially administered, might be found sufficiently adapted (as all laws ought to be) to the genius and character of the people they are formed for. This, however, is by no means the case; bribery and corruption

being so common, as scarcely to be the objects of indignation or remark.

Few, it is supposed, (who have ever been in China) will be credulous enough to believe, that the people have the privilege of criticising the conduct of their superiors, or of remarking publicly on the measures of the emperor. The law which permits them to do so may, indeed, be considered as a very severe piece of irony on their actual state.

But

A few years since an affray took place (as usual) between some of the seamen of the Indiamen who were at Canton on leave, and the Chinese mob, in which one of the latter by an unlucky blow was killed. The Chinese authorities insisted on blood for blood, one of the seamen having been seized and detained in the factory. this demand was not tamely yielded to (as in the case of the innocent gunner, who was sacrificed in so cowardly a manner many years ago), being resisted, on the ground either of the aggression of the Chinese, or of a mutual inclination to fight, in which a man happened to be killed, without the

least previous intention of murder. Fortunately the Lion, of 64 guns, Captain Rolles, happened to be there, which probably gave some weight to these arguments. The mandarins dwelt on the precedent of a man having been delivered up to them on a former occasion; and asked, why there should be so many difficulties in the present instance? Sir George Staunton replied, that it was not the rule amongst Englishmen to err a second time, merely because they had once done wrong. "Have you no useless person on board the ships that you could spare us, said the mandarins, in order to settle this affair?""None" was the reply. Finding Captain (now Admiral) Rolles and the leading members of the factory firm and unyielding, and seeing no hope of success either by threats or persuasion, they now offered to compromise the matter for money, proposing that a certain sum should be paid to them for the benefit of the deceased's relations, and a slave could then be purchased of the Portuguese at Macao, whom they would strangle in lieu of one of the sailors,