Ch. xii. China and Japan. 219 



The poor, though they would probably always 

 marry when the slightest prospect opened to 

 them of being able to support a family, and, from 

 the permission of infanticide, would run great 

 risks in this respect; yet they would undoubtedly 

 be deterred from entering into this state, under 

 the certainty of being obliged to expose all their 

 children, or to sell themselves and families as 

 slaves; and from the extreme poverty of the 

 lower classes of people, such a certainty would 

 often present itself. But it is among the slaves 

 themselves, of which, according to Duhalde, the 

 misery in China produces a prodigious multitude, 

 that the preventive check to population princi- 

 pally operates. A man sometimes sells his son, 

 and even himself and wife, at a very moderate 

 price. The common mode is, to mortgage them- 

 selves with a condition of redemption, and a great 

 number of men and maid servants are thus bound 

 in a family.* Hume, in speaking of the practice of 

 slavery among the ancients, remarks very justly, 

 that it will generally be cheaper to buy a full- 

 grown slave, than to rear up one from a child. 

 This observation appears to be particularly appli- 

 cable to the Chinese. All writers agree in men- 

 tioning the frequency of the dearths in China; 



* Duhalde's China, vol. i. p. 278. La misere et le grand nom- 

 bre d'habitants de l'empire y causent cette multitude prodigieuse 

 d'esclaves : presquc tous les valets, et gi-neralement toutcs les fillea 

 de service d'une niaison sont esclaves. Lettres Edil. torn. xix. p, 

 145. 



