CHARACTER OF THE CHINESE. 
233 
freely give me their much valued plants that decorated their court 
yards. On the banks of the Pei-ho, after purchasing of an itinerant 
salesman, under the usual circumstances, some trifling article, I 
stopped to examine a well wrought chain apparently of silver, 
from which his little apparatus was suspended : he immediately 
unfastened, and begged me to accept, and was evidently much mor- 
tified at my refusing it. 
Of the middling class of people, if such there were distinct from 
that of the mercantile, we had no opportunity of judging, excepting 
as they might form a part of the crowds which surrounded us in the 
neighbourhood of towns and cities. In these assemblages, an eager 
curiosity assimilated the characters of the whole mass. 
Amongst the lowest orders of Chinese abject penury appeared to 
have extinguished most of the qualities which distinguish man from 
inferior animals, save that of national importance, for even these people 
prided themselves on being members of the “ celestial empire.” 
In the peasantry alone, were we likely to find any approach to 
what might be called the radical character of the people ; and as 
far as my experience has gone respecting it, it is all in favour of its 
simplicity and amiableness. Before my unlucky illness, I was often 
enabled to get amongst them apart from my friends and usual atten- 
dant soldiers, and always found them mild, forbearing, and humane. 
Respecting the validity of those general charges of inhumanity 
brought against the whole Chinese people, and founded on their 
reputed practice of infanticide, and their apathy in withholding 
assistance to their countrymen when in danger, my information is 
chiefly of a negative kind. It will readily be supposed, that in our 
almost linear progress through the empire, we were not in the way 
of obtaining a sufficient number of facts for estimating the different 
degrees of credibility attached to the statements*, according as little 
* The late Sir George Staunton estimated the yearly amount of infantile exposures in 
the city of Pekin alone at 2000, Mr. Barrow at 9000, and many of the Missionaries still 
higher. 
H H 
