incapable o f ailing honeftly; a Chinefe peafant will fleal when
ever he can do it without danger o f being deteited, .becaufe the
punilhment is only the bamboo, to which he is daily liable ;
and a Chinefe prince, or a prime minifter, will extort the property
o f the iubjefl, and apply it to his private ufe, whenever
he thinks he can do it with impunity. The only check upon
the rapacity o f men in power is the influence o f fear, arifing
from the poflibility o f detection : the love o f honour, the dread
o f ihaijie, and a fenfe o f juftice, feem to be equally unfelt by
the majority o f men in office.
It would be needlefs to multiply inftances to thofe already on
record o f the refined knavery difplayed by Chinefe merchants
in their dealings with Europeans, or the tricks that they play off
in their tranfariions with one another. T h e y are well known
to moll nations, and are proverbial in their own. A merchant;
with them is confidered as the lowed character in the country,
as a man that will cheat if he can, and whofe trade it is to
create and then fupply artificial wants. T o this general character,
which public opinion has moil probably made to be
what it is, an exception Is due to thofe merchants who, aCting
under the immediate fanCtion o f the government, have always
been remarked for their liberality and accuracy in their dealings
with Europeans trading to Canton. Thefe men who are ftyled
the Hong merchants, in diftinCtion to a common merchant whom
they call mai-mai-gin, a buying and fellin g man, might not un-
juftly be compared with the moil eminent o f the mercantile
clais in England.
Butas traders in general are degraded in all the ilate maxims,
and confequently in public opinion, it is not furprifing they ihould
attach fo little refpeCt to the character o f foreign merchants trading
to their ports, efpecially as feveral knaviih trieks have been
praCtifed upon them, in fpite o f all their acutenefs and precaution.
The gaudy watches o f indifferent Workmanihip, fabricated
purpofely for the China market and once in univerfal demand,
are now fcarcely aiked for. One gentleman in the Honourable
Eaft India Company’s employ took it into his head
that cuckoo clocks might prove a faleable article in China, and
accordingly laid in a large affortment, which more than an-
fwered his moll fanguine expectations. But as thefe wooden
machines were conllruCted, for fale only, and not for ufe, the
cuckoo clocks became all mute long before the fecond arrival o f
this gentleman with another cargo. His clocks were now not
only unfaleable, but the former purchafers threatened to return
theirs upon his hands, which would certainly have been done,
had not a thought entered his head, that not only pacified his
former cuftomers but procured him alfo other purchafers for
his fecond cargo : he convinced them by undeniable authorities,
that the cuckoo was a very odd kind o f bird which fung only at
certain feafons o f the year, and affured them that whenever the
proper time arrived, all the cuckoos they had purchafed would
once again “ tune their melodious throats.” After, this it would
only be fair to allow the Chinefe fometimes to trick the European
purchafer with a wooden ham inftead o f a real one.
But as fomething more honourable might be expected in a
prince of the blood, a grandfon o f the Emperor, I ihall juft
mention