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PLAN SUGGESTED.

If we

cannot with any grace, ask them to assist us. consent, however, to do what we can to assist the Chinese in excluding opium, we are bound in all honour and honesty, first, to discontinue the growth of opium in our own colonies; next, to prohibit the transport of it through the company's territories; and then to restrict British vessels from trading with it along the coast of China. The mere issuing of a decree of the governor in council at Calcutta would effect the former, and a very small force stationed on the coast of China, would accomplish the latter. In putting down the slave trade, it was not considered too much to maintain a naval force on the coast of Africa; and to abolish slavery in the British dominions, the sum of twenty millions was willingly sacrificed ; yet slavery was not productive of more misery and death than the opium traffic, nor were Britons more implicated in the former than in the latter. In the case before us, however, no compensation money could be demanded; and only a few light armed vessels would be required; while the real compensation would be, the turning of four millions annually into another channel, to the benefit of our manufactures and the mother country. By paying four millions for opium, the Chinese shew that they have money to spend, and if we can but induce them to take our cottons and woollens instead of our opium, we shall be blessing them and enriching ourselves. The money paid for opium is equal to what we give for our teas; thus the Chinese are parting with their produce for what is worse than useless, while it impoverishes their country and diminishes their population.

The ruin it threatens to China has already arrested

CLAIMS OF CHINA.

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the attention of her greatest statesmen, and they have devised various schemes for remedying the evil. One recommends, that opium be admitted on the payment of regular duties, in order that the clandestine trade may be stopped, and the practice be brought under the control of government. This would increase the public revenue, and by raising the price to the consumer, would place the drug out of the reach of the poor. The emperor has hitherto resolved to reject this plan, and thinks that increased rigour in prohibiting the article will avail. But the Chinese laws are already sufficiently severe, and yet the traffic increases at the rate of four thousand chests per annum. The remedy,

then, is not with them, and if neither the East India Company nor the British government interfere, the British public must be appealed to; the cry of "no opium" raised, and be made as loud as the cry of "no slavery," until the voice of humanity prevail, and end in the abolition of the whole system.

But to return to the population, we shall find, that though checked in its growth, it is still immensely great, and claims the attention of the Christian evangelist, as much, or even more than other parts of the heathen world. In attempting to do good, we should do it on the largest scale, and to the greatest number of persons. The physician is most needed where the malady is most distressing, and the diseased most numerous; and so the missionary is principally required where the heathen most abound. Upon this principle, China requires our first attention, and will exhaust our most strenuous efforts. There, all the disposable labourers in the Christian church may employ their energies, without fear of over working the field,

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THE FIELD FOR EXERTION.

Piety the most may there find

or standing in each other's way. exalted,―talents the most splendid, ample room for display; the greatest trophies of Divine grace will there be obtained, and the Gospel is destined to achieve more in China than has ever been witnessed elsewhere, mainly on account of the number of individuals to be brought under its influence. This then is the field for missionary exertions; the sphere where the most influential societies should direct their chief efforts, for until some impression is made upon China, it will matter little what is achieved in other more confined and thinly peopled regions. The conversion of a few islands to Christ, and the introduction of the Gospel to the extremities of a continent, resemble an investing of the outworks of heathenism; but the strong hold remains still untouched, and until China is evangelized, the greatest half of our work remains to be begun.

CHAPTER V.

THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA.

COMPARATIVE CIVILIZATION-SOLILOQUY OF A CHINESE-NATIVE POLITENESS-DISPLAYED IN CONVERSATION-AND DAILY INTERCOURSE — GENIUS OF THE CHINESE-DISCOVERY OF THE COMPASS-THE ART OF PRINTING - -THE INVENTION OF GUNPOWDER - THE SCIENCESASTRONOMY-BOTANY-MEDICINE-SURGERY-THE ARTS-PAINTING -ENGRAVING- - MANUFACTURE OF SILK-PORCELAIN-TEA-PAPER — LACKERED WARE-METALS-CONCLUSION.

In seeking to evangelize the heathen world, two descriptions of people claim our attention; namely, the barbarous and the civilized. China belongs to the latter class. Instead of a savage and untutored people -without a settled government, or written laws,— roaming the desert, and living in caves,-dressed in skins, and sitting on the ground,-knowing nothing of fashion, nor tasting luxuries; we behold in the Chinese a quiet, orderly, well-behaved nation, exhibiting many traces of civilization, and displaying them at a period when the rest of mankind were for the most part sunk in barbarism. Of course we must not look for that high degree of improvement, and those well-defined civil rights, which are in a great measure the effects of Christianity; neither are we warranted to expect in China any of those advances in science, or improvements in the arts, which now distinguish Europe, and which are the result of that march of mind so charac

H

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SOLILOQUY OF A CHINESE.

teristic of the age we live in. Railways, tunnels, machinery, and all the ramifications and operations of gas and steam, are not to be looked for in China. With these exceptions, however, China possesses as much civilization as Turkey now, or England a few centuries ago. Indeed, were the question proposed

to a Chinese, as to which he considered the most civilized nation, while he might acknowledge the superiority of Europeans in cunning and force, he would not scruple to claim for his own countrymen the praise of a superior polish. They denominate China, "the flowery nation," "the region of eternal summer,"

the land of the sages,"" the celestial empire," while they unscrupulously term all foreigners "barbarians," and sometimes load them with epithets still more degrading and contemptuous; such as swine, monkeys, and devils.

The soliloquy of one of them is rather amusing; "I felicitate myself," says Teen Ke-shih, "that I was born in China; and constantly think how very different it would have been with me, if born beyond the seas, in some remote part of the earth, where the people, deprived of the converting maxims of the ancient kings, and ignorant of the domestic relations, are clothed with the leaves of plants, eat wood, dwell in the wilderness, and live in the holes of the earth; though living in this world in such a condition, I should not have been different from the beasts of the field. But now, happily, I have been born in the middle kingdom. I have a house to live in; have food, drink, and elegant furniture; clothing, caps, and infinite blessings; truly the highest felicity is mine!"

The Chinese have a proverb, that he who judges of