TtSo TRAVELS IN 
very trifling encouragement would draw into the colony as 
many Chinese as it might be thought prudent to admit. 
Were ten thousand of this industrious race of men distributed 
over the Cape district, and those divisions of Stellenbosch and 
Drakenstein which he on the Cape side of the mountains, the 
face of the country would exhibit a very different appearance 
from that it now wears, in the course of a few years ; the 
markets would be better and more reasonably supplied, and 
an abundance of surplus produce acquired for exportation. 
It is not here meant that these Chinese should be placed under 
the farmers ; a situation in which they might probably become, 
like thei poor Hottentots, rather a load and an encumbrance 
■on the colony, than a benefit to it. The poorest peasant in 
China, if a free man, acquires notions of property. After 
paying a certain proportion of his produce to the State, which 
is limited and defined, the rest is entirely his own ; and though 
the Emperor is considered as the sole proprietary of the soil, 
the land is never taken from him so long as he continues to 
pay his proportion of produce to Government. 
I should propose then, that all the pieces of ground inter- 
vening between the large loan farms, which in many places 
are equal in extent to the farms themselves, and other unoc- 
cupied lands, should be granted to these Chinese on payment 
of a moderate rent after the first seven years, during which 
period they should hold them free. The British Government 
would find no difficulty in prevailing upon that, or a greater, 
number of these people to leave China; nor is the Govern- 
inent of that country so very strict or solicitous in preventing 
its subjects from leaving their native land as is usually sup- 
