countenance. No law, however, allows, as I obferve it noticed
in a modern author o f reputation, a father to expofe all the
daughters and the third fon. I believe the laws o f China do
not fuppofe fuch an unnatural crime to exift, and have therefore
provided no puniihment for it. It is true, they have left a
child to the entire difpofal o f the father, concluding, perhaps,
that i f his feelings will not prevent him from doing it an injury,
no other confideration will. Thus, though the com million o f
infanticide be frequent in China, it is confidered as more prudent
to wink at it as an inevitable evil which natural affe£ticm
will better correft than penal ftatutes; an evil that, on the other
hand, i f publicly tolerated, would direftly contradid the grand
principle o f filial piety, upon which their fyftem o f obedience
refts, and their patriarchal form o f government is founded.
It is, however, tacitly confidered as a part o f the duty o f the
police o f Pekin to employ certain perfons to go their rounds
at an early hour in the morning, with carts, in order to pick up
fuch bodies o f infants as may have been thrown out into the
ftreets in the. courfe o f the night. No inquiries are made, but the
bodies are carried to a common pit without.the city walls, into
which all thofe that may be livingj as well as thofe that are dead,
are faid to be thrown prqmifeuoufly. A t this horrible pit o f de-
flrudion the Roman Catholic nuffi.qnanes,, . eftabliffied in Pekin
attend by turns as a part o f the duties o f their office, in order,
as one o f them expreffed himfelf to me on this fubje£t,.to chufe
among them thofe that are the moft lively, to make future
prefelytes, and by the adminiftration o f baptifm to fuch o f the
reft
reft as might be ftill alive, fo u r leurfauvir Paine. The Mahome-
dans who, at the time that their lervices were ufeful ini dffifting to
prepare the national calendar, had a powerful influence at
Court, did much better: thefe zealous bigots to a religion,
whofe leaft diftinguiihifig feature is that o f humanity, were,
however, on thefe occafions, the means o f faving the lives o f all
the little innocents they poffibly could fave from this maw o f
death, which was an humane a d , although it might be for the
purpofe o f bringing them up in the principles o f their own faith.
I was allured by one o f the Chriftian miffionaries, with whom I
had daily conversation during a refidence o f five weeks within
the walls o f the Emperor’s palace at Yuen-min-yuen, and who
took his turn in attending, pour leur fauver Pame, that fuch
fcenes were fometimes exhibited on thefe occafions as to make
the feeling mind ihudder with horror. When I mention that
dogs and fwine'are let loofe in all the narrow ftreets o f the capital,
the reader may conceive what will fometimes neceffarily
happen to the expofed infants, before the police-carts can pick
them up.
T he number’ o f children' thus unnaturally and inhumanly
fiaughtered, or interred alive, in the courfe o f a yea r,'is differently
ftated b y different authors, fome making it about ten
and others thirty tlioufand in the whole empire. The truth, as
generally happens, may probably lie about the middle. The
miffionaries, who alone poffefs the means o f afcertaining nearly
the number that is thus facrificed in the capital, differ very materially
in their ftatements : taking the mean, as given by thofe
with whom we converfed on the fubjed, I ihould conclude that
z about