274 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



people of the south and west ; and though the reflec- 

 tive powers confer but feeble modes of reasoning, and 

 often false conclusions, a sort of erratic common sense 

 has caused them to alight upon moral truths and hu- 

 mane sentiments, which the most polished nations of 

 Europe acknowledge, but scarcely put in practice. 

 With the conditions of existence here shown, it is evi- 

 dent that a people, such as the Chinese in particular, 

 according to their own annals, while residing in the 

 southern flanks of the Khinghan mountains, would 

 multiply in time, till want of subsistence compelled the 

 masses to industry, and that unwarlike and sedentary 

 in the plains, they would fall beneath the energy of 

 kindred tribes, coming upon their horses from the 

 bleak north, to commit devastation, grasp the empire, 

 enslave by mandates, and by an enormous.. police, till 

 vanquished by the enervating process of the system, 

 these too would fall in turn beneath a new horde of 

 invaders. There were unquestionably more than the 

 two well-known conquests of China, since the empire 

 included the more ancient separate sovereignties ; and 

 though the fate of rude conquerors over more civilized 

 nations of homogeneous origin, is ever to become, in 

 civil administration, the pupils of the vanquished, the 

 new dominion debases both. 



These events are clearly shown in early ages, where 

 tbo conquering hordes on the plateau of Thibet come 

 up, or are first observed stationed on the south-east, as 

 if tV.ey emanated from China ; and they speak of great 

 empires, formed in remote ages, among which that of 



