when they wiihed to repair the defolation that their civil wars
had occafioned, yet public opinion confiders celibacy as disgraceful,
and a fort of infamy is attached to a man who continues
unmarried beyond a certain time o f life. And although
in China the public law be not eftabliihed o f the Ju s trium
Jiberorum, by which every Roman citizen haying three children
was entitled- to certain privileges and immunities, yet every
male child may be provided for, and receive a ftipend from the
moment o f his birth, by his name being enrolled on the military
lift. B y the equal diviiion o f the country into fmall farms,
every peafant has the means o f bringing up his family, i f
drought and inundation do not fruftrate his labour; and the
purfuits o f agriculture are more favourable to health, and consequently
to population, than mechanical employments in
crowded cities, and large manufactories, where thofe who are
doomed to toil are more liable to become the victims o f difeafe
and debauchery, than fuch as are expofed to the free and open
air, and to aCtive and wholefome labour. In China there
are few o f fuch manufacturing cities. No great capitals are
here employed in any one branch o f the arts. In general
each labours for himfelf in his own profeflion. From the
general poverty that prevails among the lower orders o f people,
the vice o f drunkennefs is little praCtifed among them. The
multitude, from neceflity, are temperate in their diet to the
laft degree. The climate is moderate and, except in the
northern provinces where the cold is Severe, remarkably uniform,
not liable to thofe fudden and great, changes in temperature,
which the human conftitution is lefs able to refift, than the
extremes
extremes o f heat or cold when fteady and invariable, and from
which the inconveniencies are perhaps nowhere fo Severely
felt as on our own iiland. Except the fmall-pox and contagious
difeafes that occafionally break out in their confined
and crowded cities,' they are liable to few epidemical diforders.
The ftill and inanimate kind o f life which is led by the women,
at the fame time that it is fuppofed to render them
prolific, preferves them from accidents that might caufe
untimely births. Every woman fuckles and nurfes her own
child.
T he operation o f thefe and other favourable caufes that
might be afligned, in a country that has exifted under the
fame form o f government, and preferved the fame laws and
cuftoms for fo many ages, muft neceifarily have created an excels
o f population unknown in moft other parts o f the world,
where the ravages o f war, Several times repeated in the courfe
o f a century, or internal commotions, or peftilential difeafe, or
the efFe£ts o f overgrown wealth, fometimes fweep away one
half o f a nation within the ufual period allotted to the life o f
man.
“ What a grand and curious fpeCtacle,” as Sir George Staunton
obferves, “ is here exhibited to the mind o f fo large a pro-
“ portion o f the whole human race, connected together in one
“ great fyftem o f polity, Submitting quietly and through fo
“ confiderable an extent o f country to one great Sovereign ; and
“ uniform