INTRODUCTORY

Summary

The history of our intercourse with China, from the days of the East India Company until now, is nothing but the record of a continuous struggle to open up and develop trade, with a people, who from the days of Pliny “ipsis feris persimiles, cœtus reliquorum mortalium fugiunt.” There is something pathetic in the honest persistency, with which the people and their officials have vainly struggled to keep themselves uncontaminated from the outer world, and it is impossible for any disinterested onlooker not to sympathize heartily with them. An enormous population has here solved, imperfectly of course, but to a comparatively successful degree, the problem of the greatest happiness of the greatest number The venality of the officials notwithstanding, the people are, if not well governed, certainly not misgoverned; riches are fairly distributed, and the contrast of grinding poverty with arrogant wealth, the rule in Europe, is the exception here. Taxation is nominal, and such is the innate and universal love of order, that the reserve of force behind the decrees of the magistrate is limited to a few hundred men in a Province as large as an European kingdom. Competent investigators compute the total cost of the central and local governments at not more than 40,000,000l. a year, say two shillings per head for the whole population. Education is universal and voluntary.