Upon the whole, if I might venture to offer an opinion with respect to the merit of the Chinese as agriculturists, I should not hesitate to say that, let as much ground be given to one of their peasants as he and his family can work with the spade, and he will turn that piece of ground to more advantage, and produce from it more sustenance for the use of man, than any European whatsoever would be able to do; but, let fifty or one hundred acres of the best land in China be given to a farmer, at a mean rent, so far from making out of it the value of three rents, on which our farmers usually calculate, he would scarcely be able to support his family, after paying the expence of labour that would be required to work the farm.
In fact there are no great farms in China. The inhabitants enjoy every advantage which may be supposed to arise from the lands being pretty equally divided among them, an advantage of which the effects might probably answer the expectations of those who lean towards such a system, were they not counteracted by circumstances that are not less prejudicial, perhaps, to the benefit of the public, than monopolizing farmers are by such persons supposed to be in our own country. One of the circumstances I allude to is the common practice, in almost every part of the country, of assembling together in towns and villages, between which very frequently the intermediate space of ground has not a single habitation upon it; and the reason assigned for this custom is the dread of the bands of robbers that infest the weak and unprotected parts of the country. The consequence of such a system is, that although the lands adjoining the villages be kept in the highest state of cultivation, yet those at a distance are suffered to remain almost useless; for having no beasts of burden, it would be an endless task of human labour to bear the manure that would be required, for several miles, upon the ground, and its produce from thence back again to the village. That such robbers do exist who, in formidable gangs, plunder the peasantry, is very certain: She-fo-pao was watching his grain to prevent its being stolen, when he had the misfortune of shooting his relation, who had also gone out for the same purpose. They are sometimes indeed so numerous, as to threaten their most populous cities. The frequency of such robberies and the alarm they occasion to the inhabitants are neither favourable to the high notions that have been entertained of the Chinese government, nor of the morals of the people. Another, and perhaps the chief, disadvantage arising from landed property being pretty equally divided, will be noticed in speaking of the population and the frequent famines.
The province of Kiang-nan extends from about 31° to 34½° of northern latitude; and the mean temperature, according to Fahrenheit's thermometer, from the 30th of October to the 9th of November, was 54° at sun-rise and 66° at noon; the sky uniformly clear.
The province of Tche-kiang abounds in lakes and is intersected with rivers and canals like Kiang-nan; but the produce, except that of a little rice, is very different, consisting principally of silk. For feeding the worms that afford this article, all the fertile and beautiful vallies between the mountains, as well as the plains, are covered with plantations of the mulberry-tree. The small houses, in which the worms are reared, are placed generally in the centre of each plantation; in order that they may be removed as far as possible from any kind of noise; experience having taught them, that a sudden shout, or the bark of a dog, is destructive of the young worms. A whole brood has sometimes perished by a thunder storm. The greatest attention is, therefore, necessary; and, accordingly, they are watched night and day. In fine weather, the young worms are exposed to the sun, upon a kind of thin open gauze stretched in wooden frames; and at night they are replaced in the plantation houses. The trees are pruned from time to time, in order to cause a greater quantity and a constant succession of young leaves. The inhabitants of this province, especially in the cities, are almost universally clothed in silks; this rule among the Chinese of consuming, as much as possible, the products of their own country, and receiving as little as they can avoid from foreign nations, extends even to the provinces; a practice arising out of the little respect that, in China, as in ancient Rome, is paid to those concerned in trade and merchandize.
Besides silk Tche-kiang produces camphor, tallow from the Croton, a considerable quantity of tea, oranges, and almost all the fruits that are peculiar to the country. Every part of the province appeared to be in the highest state of cultivation and the population to be immense. Both the raw and manufactured silks, nankins and other cotton cloths, were sold at such low prices in the capital of this province, that it is difficult to conceive how the growers or the manufacturers contrived to gain a livelihood by their labour. But of all others, I am the most astonished at the small returns that must necessarily be made to the cultivators of the tea plant. The preparations of some of the finer kinds of this article are said to require that every leaf should be rolled singly by the hand; particularly such as are exported to the European markets. Besides this, there are many processes, such as steeping, drying, turning, and packing, after it has been plucked off the shrub leaf by leaf. Yet the first cost in the tea provinces cannot be more than from four-pence to two shillings a pound, when it is considered that the ordinary teas stand the East India Company in no more than eight-pence a pound; and the very best only two shillings and eight-pence[64]. Nothing can more clearly point out the patient and unremitting labour of the Chinese, than the preparation of this plant for the market. It is a curious circumstance that a body of merchants in England should furnish employment, as might easily be made appear, to more than a million subjects of a nation that affects to despise merchants, and throws every obstacle in the way of commercial intercourse.
The mean temperature of Tche-kiang, in the middle of November, was from fifty-six degrees at sun-rise, to sixty-two degrees at noon. The extent from North to South is between the parallels of twenty-eight and thirty-four and a half degrees of northern latitude.
The northern part of Kiang-see contains the great Po-yang lake, and those extensive swamps and morasses that surround it, and which, as I have already observed, may be considered as the sink of China. The middle and southern parts are mountainous. The chief produce is sugar and oil from the Camellia Sesanqua. In this province are the principal manufactories of porcelain, whose qualities, as I have in a former chapter observed, depend more on the care bestowed in the preparation and in the selection of the materials, than in any secret art possessed by them. There are also, in this province, large manufactories of coarse earthen ware, of tiles, and bricks.
The extent of Kiang-see is from twenty-eight to thirty degrees, and the temperature, in November, was the same as that of the neighbouring province of Tche-kiang.
I have now to mention a subject on which much has already been written by various authors, but without the success of having carried conviction into the minds of their readers, that the things which they offered as facts were either true or possible; I allude to the populousness of this extensive empire. That none of the statements hitherto published are strictly true, I am free to admit, but that the highest degree of populousness that has yet been assigned may be possible, and even probable, I am equally ready to contend. At the same time, I acknowledge that, prepared as we were, from all that we had seen and heard and read on the subject, for something very extraordinary; yet when the following statement was delivered, at the request of the Embassador, by Chou-ta-gin, as the abstract of a census that had been taken the preceding year, the amount appeared so enormous as to surpass credibility. But as we had always found this officer a plain, unaffected, and honest man, who on no occasion had attempted to deceive or impose on us, we could not consistently consider it in any other light than as a document drawn up from authentic materials; its inaccuracy, however, was obvious at a single glance, from the several sums being given in round millions. I have added to the table the extent of the provinces, the number of people on a square mile, and the value of the surplus taxes remitted to Pekin in the year 1792, as mentioned in the seventh chapter.
| Provinces. | Population. | Square Miles. | No. on each square Mile. | Surplus taxes remitted to Pekin. |
| oz. silver. | ||||
| Pe-tche-lee | 38,000,000 | 58,949 | 644 | 3,036,000 |
| Kiang-nan | 32,000,000 | 92,961 | 344 | 8,210,000 |
| Kiang-see | 19,000,000 | 72,176 | 263 | 2,120,000 |
| Tche-kiang | 21,000,000 | 39,150 | 536 | 3,810,000 |
| Fo-kien | 15,000,000 | 53,480 | 280 | 1,277,000 |
| { Hou-pee | 14,000,000 } | { 1,310,000 | ||
| Houquang { Hou-nan | 13,000,000 } | 144,770 | 187 | { 1,345,000 |
| Honan | 25,000,000 | 65,104 | 384 | 3,213,000 |
| Shan-tung | 24,000,000 | 65,104 | 368 | 3,600,000 |
| Shan-see | 27,000,000 | 55,268 | 488 | 3,722,000 |
| Shen-see } one | 18,000,000 } | { 1,700,000 | ||
| Kan-soo } province | 12,000,000 } | 154,008 | 195 | { 340,000 |
| Se-tchuen | 27,000,000 | 166,800 | 162 | 670,000 |
| Quan-tung | 21,000,000 | 79,456 | 264 | 1,340,000 |
| Quang-see | 10,000,000 | 78,250 | 128 | 500,000 |
| Yu-nan | 8,000,000 | 107,969 | 74 | 210,000 |
| Koei-tchoo | 9,000,000 | 64,554 | 140 | 145,000 |
| Totals | 313,000,000 | 1,297,999[65] | —— | 36,548,000 |