TENDENCIES TO INCREASE OF POPULATION.
The political and social causes which tend to multiply the inhabitants are numerous and powerful. The failure of male posterity to continue the succession of the family, and worship at the tombs of parents, is considered by all classes as one of the most afflictive misfortunes of life; the laws allow unlimited facilities of adoption, and secure the rights of those taken into the family in this way. The custom of betrothing children, and the obligation society imposes upon the youth when arrived at maturity, to fulfil the contracts entered into by their parents, acts favorably to the establishment of families and the nurture of children, and restricts polygamy. Parents desire children for a support in old age, as there is no legal or benevolent provision for aged poverty, and public opinion stigmatizes the man who allows his aged or infirm parents to suffer when he can help them. The law requires the owners of domestic slaves to provide husbands for their females, and prohibits the involuntary or forcible separation of husband and wife, or parents and children, when the latter are of tender age. All these causes and influences tend to increase population, and equalize the consumption and use of property more, perhaps, than in any other land.
The custom of families remaining together tends to the same result. The local importance of a large family in the country is weakened by its male members removing to town, or emigrating; consequently, the patriarch of three or four generations endeavors to retain his sons and grandsons around him, their houses joining his, and they and their families forming a social, united company. Such cases as those mentioned in the Sacred Commands are of course rare, where nine generations of the family of Chang Kung-í inhabited one house, or of Chin, at whose table seven hundred mouths were daily fed,[154] but it is the tendency of society. This remark does not indicate that great landed proprietors exist, whose hereditary estates are secured by entail to the great injury of the state, as in Great Britain, for the farms are generally small and cultivated by the owner or on the metayer system. Families are supported on a more economical plan, the claims of kindred are better enforced, the land is cultivated with more care, and the local importance of the family perpetuated. This is, however, a very different system from that advocated by Fourier in France, or Greeley in America, for these little communities are placed under one natural head, whose authority is acknowledged and upheld, and his indignation feared. Workmen of the same profession form unions, each person contributing a certain sum on the promise of assistance when sick or disabled, and this custom prevents and alleviates a vast amount of poverty.
RESTRICTIONS UPON EMIGRATION.
The obstacles put in the way of emigrating beyond sea, both in law and prejudice, operate to deter respectable persons from leaving their native land. Necessity has made the law a dead letter, and thousands annually leave their homes. No better evidence of the dense population can be offered to those acquainted with Chinese feelings and character, than the extent of emigration. “What stronger proof,” observes Medhurst, “of the dense population of China could be afforded than the fact, that emigration is going on in spite of restrictions and disabilities, from a country where learning and civilization reign, and where all the dearest interests and prejudices of the emigrants are found, to lands like Burmah, Siam, Cambodia, Tibet, Manchuria, and the Indian Archipelago, where comparative ignorance and barbarity prevail, and where the extremes of a tropical or frozen region are to be exchanged for a mild and temperate climate? Added to this consideration, that not a single female is permitted or ventures to leave the country, when consequently, all the tender attachments that bind heart to heart must be burst asunder, and, perhaps, forever.”[155]
Moreover, if they return with wealth enough to live upon, they are liable to the vexatious extortions of needy relatives, sharpers, and police, who have a handle for their fleecing whip in the law against leaving the country;[156] although this clause has been neutralized by subsequent acts, and is not in force, the power of public opinion is against going. A case occurred in 1832, at Canton, where the son of a Chinese living in Calcutta, who had been sent home by his parent with his mother, to perform the usual ceremonies in the ancestral hall, was seized by his uncle as he was about to be married, on the pretext that his father had unequally divided the paternal inheritance; he was obliged to pay a thousand dollars to free himself. Soon after his marriage, a few sharpers laid hold of him and bore him away in a sedan, as he was walking near his house, but his cries attracted the police, who carried them all to the magistrates, where he was liberated—after being obliged to fee his deliverers.[157] Another case occurred in Macao in 1838. A man had been living several years in Singapore as a merchant, and when he settled in Macao still kept up an interest in the trade with that place. Accounts of his great wealth became rumored abroad, and he was seriously annoyed by relatives. One night, a number of thieves, dressed like police-runners, came to his house to search for opium, and their boisterous manner terrified him to such a degree, that in order to escape them he jumped from the terrace upon the hard gravelled court-yard, and broke his leg, of which he shortly afterward died. A third case is mentioned, where the returned emigrants, consisting of a man and his wife, who was a Malay, and two children, were rescued from extortion, when before the magistrate, by the kindness of his wife and mother, who wished to see the foreign woman.[158] Such instances are now unknown, owing to the increase of emigration; they were, indeed, never numerically great, on account of the small number of those who came back.
The anxiety of the government to provide stores of food for times of scarcity, shows rather its fear of the disastrous results following a short crop—such as the gathering of clamorous crowds of starving poor, the increase of bandits and disorganization of society—than any peculiar care of the rulers, or that these storehouses really supply deficiencies. The evil consequences resulting from an overgrown population are experienced in one or another part of the provinces almost every year; and drought, inundations, locusts, mildew, or other natural causes, often give rise to insurrections and disturbances. There can be no doubt, however, that, without adding a single acre to the area of arable land, these evils would be materially alleviated, if the intercommunication of traders and their goods, between distant parts of the country, were more frequent, speedy, and safe; but this is not likely to be the case until both rulers and ruled make greater advances in just government, science, obedience, and regard for each other’s right.
It would be a satisfaction if foreigners could verify any part of the census. But this is, at present, impossible. They cannot examine the records in the office of the Board of Revenue, nor can they ascertain the population in a given district from the archives in the hands of the local authorities, or the mode of taking it. Neither can they go through a village or town to count the number of houses and their inhabitants, and calculate from actual examination of a few parts what the whole would be. Wherever foreigners have journeyed, there has appeared much the same succession of waste land, hilly regions, cultivated plains, and wooded heights, as in other countries, with an abundance of people, but not more than the land could support, if properly tilled.
METHOD OF TAKING THE CENSUS.
The people are grouped into hamlets and villages, under the control of village elders and officers. In the district of Nanhai, which forms the western part of the city of Canton, and the surrounding country for more than a hundred square miles, there are one hundred and eighty hiang or villages; the population of each hiang varies from two hundred and upwards to one hundred thousand, but ordinarily ranges between three hundred and thirty-five hundred. If each of the eighty-eight districts in the province of Kwangtung contains the same number of hiang, there will be, including the district towns, 15,928 villages, towns, and cities in all, with an average population of twelve hundred inhabitants to each. From the top of the hills on Dane’s Island, at Whampoa, thirty-six towns and villages can be counted, of which Canton is one; and four of these contain from twelve to fifteen hundred houses. The whole district of Hiangshan, in which Macao lies, is also well covered with villages, though their exact number is not known. The island of Amoy contains more than fourscore villages and towns, and this island forms only a part of the district of Tung-ngan. The banks of the river leading from Amoy up to Changchau fu, are likewise well peopled. The environs of Ningpo and Shanghai are closely settled, though that is no more than one always expects near large cities, where the demand for food in the city itself causes the vicinity to be well peopled and tilled. In a notice of an irruption of the sea in 1819, along the coast of Shantung, it was reported that a hundred and forty villages were laid under water.