ON MARRIAGE AND INFANTICIDE IN CHINA. 181 



But, thirdly, the sons may be born and reared, and yet fail to per- 

 form the duties devolved upon them. They may be indolent, stupid, 

 inefficient, or even dissolute, drunken, and utterly worthless. All 

 these possibilities make it the more important to multiply the chances 

 of success by a larger number of sons. It is generally supposed that, 

 with four or five, there is very little danger of suffering in old age. 



Let us consider the case of a man who, having been long married, 

 has no son ; or, of him who, at the age of forty, is still too poor to 

 buy a wife. If the married man is really attached to his wife, he 

 may be unwilling to take a concubine ; or, he may be too poor to buy 

 one. In such cases recourse is had to adoption. Yet it would be 

 cheaper to buy a wife than a large, well-grown boy. At Amoy the 

 adopted boys are brought from the Northern provinces. There the 

 general destitution seems to be far greater than in the South. Inun- 

 dations often produce wide-spread desolation ; famines are more fre- 

 quent. Boys are often brought from Tien-Tsin to Amoy who have 

 been purchased at very low prices, or have even been given away by 

 their parents, because they could no longer feed them. These boys 

 are sold to men who have no sons, and who desire to adopt them. 

 The highest prices are given for the youngest boys. The reason of 

 this is obvious. A boj" removed, at the age of five or six years, from 

 his home to a distant province, growing up among a strange people, 

 talking a different language, utterly forgets his home and kindred and 

 country. If kindly treated, he learns to love his adopted father as if 

 he were his own. Whereas, a boy of ten or twelve will always re- 

 member his own home ; his parents, and the scenes of his early life. 

 Unless very affectionate and grateful, there is danger that he will fail 

 to adopt his new father. 



Having thus briefly shown that, notwithstanding the great diflicul- 

 ties in the way of obtaining a scanty support, the poor are most anxi- 

 ous to marry, a serious question presents itself. " How does it hap- 

 pen that the population of China does not increase to an extent alto- 

 gether exceeding the power of the country to sustain it ? " If the 

 learned Malthus had been requested to give counsel to a nation in the 

 condition of the Chinese, he would have been greatly puzzled. "Self- 

 restraint," " prudence," " forethought," are his great preventives of 

 a too rapid increase of population. But the case of the Chinese is 

 without the range of his philosophy. It is not an overmastering pas- 

 sion which urges on the infatuated Chinaman to marriage. He is 



