97^ 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1804. 



is, perhaps, no country where a6ts 

 of suicide occur more frequently 

 than in China, among the women 

 as well as the men : such acts be- 

 ing marked with no disgrace, are 

 not held in any abhorrence. The 

 government, indeed, shoujd seem to 

 hold out encouragement to suicide, 

 by a very common practice of miti- 

 gating the sentence of death, in al- 

 lowing the criminal to be his own 

 executioner. The late viceroy of 

 Canton, about two years ago, put 

 an end to his life by swallowing his 

 stone snuff-bottle, which stuck in 

 the oesophagus ; and he died in ex- 

 cruciating agonies. 



" In a government, where every 

 man is liable to be made a slave, 

 ■where every man is subject to be 

 flogged with the bamboo at the nod 

 of one of the lowest rank of those 

 in office, and where he is compelled 

 to kiss the rod that beats him, or, 

 which amounts to the same thing, to 

 thank the tyrant on his knees for 

 the trouble he has taken to correct 

 his morals, high notions of honour 

 and dignified sentiments are not to be 

 expected. ^Vhn-e the maxims of 

 the government commanding, and 

 fhc opinions of the people agreeing, 

 that corporal punishment may be 

 inflicted, on the ground of a favour 

 conferred upon the person punished, 

 a principle of humiliation is admit- 

 ted, that is well calculated to ex- 

 clude and obliterate every notion of 

 the dignity of human nature. 



" A slave, in fact, cannot be disho- 

 noured. The condition itself of be- 

 ing dependent upon, and subject to 

 the caprice of another, without the 

 privilege of appeal, is such a de- 

 graded state of the human species, 

 that those who are unfortunately 

 reduced to it, have no further igno- 

 miny or sense of shame to undergo. 



The vices of such a condition ate 

 innumerable, and they appear on 

 all occasions among this people, ce- 

 lebrated (rather undeservedly, I 

 think) for their polished manners 

 and civilized government. A Chi- 

 nese merchant will cheat, when- 

 ever an opportunity offers him the 

 means, because he is considered to 

 be incapable of acting honestly ; a 

 Chinese peasant will steal when- 

 ever he can do it without danger of 

 being detected, because the punish- 

 ment is only the bamboo, to whicK 

 he is dally liable; and a Chinese 

 prince, or a prime minister, will ex- 

 tort the property of the subject, 

 and apply it to his private use, 

 whenever he thinks he can do it 

 with impunity. The only check 

 upon the rapacity of men in power 

 is the influence of fear, arising from 

 the possibility of detection ; the 

 love of honour, the dread of shame, 

 and a sense of justice, seem to be 

 equally unfelt by the majority of 

 men in office. 



" It would be needless to multi- 

 ply instances to those already on 

 record of the refined knavery dis- 

 played by Chinese merchants, in 

 their dealings with Europeans, or 

 the tricks that they play oflin their 

 transactions with one another. They 

 are well known to most nations, 

 and are proverbial in their own. A 

 merchant with them is considered as 

 the lowest chara6ter in the country, 

 as a man that w ill cheat if he can, 

 and whose trade it is to create and 

 then supply artificial W'ants. To 

 this general character, which public 

 opinion has most probably made to 

 be what it is, an exception is due 

 to those merchants' who, acting un- 

 der the immediate sanction of the 

 government, have always been re- 

 Biarkedfbr their liberality and accu- 

 racy 



