Intra-mural interments had long been forbidden by the sanitary intuitions of the law, and foreigners could not buy land outside the towns, any more than houses within them, without a license by no means to be counted on. It was therefore quite as difficult for a foreigner to be buried decorously in China as to reside there openly. After his death, Ricci's status as a friendly foreigner of eminence was again expounded by his representatives; the distance from his own country was shown to be such that his friends were not unreasonable in shrinking from the journey involved in bearing his remains to their proper resting-place among his own people; and out of regard for his personal character and these weighty and exceptional circumstances, the imperial sanction was given to his interment in Chinese soil. After the question of principle was decided the rest was easy, and a small farm, belonging to a disgraced eunuch, was given to the Jesuits for a burial-ground.

Semedo's account of China is dated from Goa in 1638;1 he mentions a few traits that had escaped Trigault, but, like him, is substantially in accord with all later travellers. He admires the horticultural skill of the Chinese, and their use of hot water-pipes to force the growth of plants. The pleasure boats which abound on the lake Si-hou seem by his account to have been more usually private property than now. The very numerous barbers, he explains, are not employed to shave, but to comb and dress the hair, which both men and women allow to grow long, whence the name by which they call themselves, of "the black-haired people." He also notices those advantages of the Chinese method of block-printing which have since led to the adoption of the modern "stereotype edition." He contrasts, as other writers have done, the abundance of all things for use with the thrift that suffers nothing to be wasted, even rags and bones being carefully gathered and sorted for manure. He connects the low prices which prevail with the scarcity of money, and compares both with the state of things in the reign of John I. of Castille, or the old days in Portugal when, for one maravedi, worth six sols, six different things could be bought.

In the south of China, where commerce was most active, and money therefore least scarce, prices, he observes, tend to rise. In large transactions, silver only is used as a medium of exchange, and its purity is carefully tested; but to purchase trifling provisions, he expressly says that base money is as good as the purest, which proves that under the Ming, as we have already surmised to be the case in earlier times, the false coiners did little more than supplement with inconvertible tokens a really insufficient currency. Semedo describes with as much admiration as an "Old Resident," at Canton three hundred years later, the "inviolable fidelity with which the Chinese merchants fulfil their business engagements," and this in spite of the great facilities for fraud offered by the fact that the Portuguese were obliged to give in advance to the native agents the money with which the latter make purchases on account of the foreigners in different parts of the interior. Ricci complained that money forwarded for his use through

1 Relazione della gran monarchia della Cina.

Chinese agents did not always come to hand; but Semedo, on the contrary, met with kindness as well as honesty: for more than once, as strangers from a distant region, the Fathers had money lent to them without interest.

Our author endeavours to interpret the Chinese feeling as to the close connection between good manners and good morals. "They believe,” he says, “that no virtue is more important than courtesy, an appearance of composure, and to do things with circumspection, reserve, and mature judgment, all which they express under all circumstances and at all times by the word Li." The maxim to which chiefly they attribute the duration of the empire is that which recommends that THE COMMUNITY should be RICH, AND ITS MEMBERS POOR.

He goes on that, it is true, those who pass for rich in China would not be so considered in Europe; but, on the other hand, the poor are not so necessitous. Semedo enumerates three causes which facilitate the collection of the taxes in China, and these also are connected with the fundamentally democratic character of the Constitution. They are, first, "that the officers, great and small, are not so absolute as ours;" secondly, that "the cultivators live in the fields, not in towns or villages," by which perhaps he means that they live on the plots they till; and, thirdly, that the "houses are grouped in tens under a decurion," a phrase which no doubt includes all the system of administration by local elders, which has been in force more or less since the first inception of the Rites of Chow.

The conjectural estimates of the whole revenue of the Empire given by different Fathers do not differ much from the statistics of the Ming, published under the present dynasty. According to them, the money revenues alone may have amounted to about £14,000,000, though this statement is not of much use without a more exact estimate than can be made of the amount and value of the contributions in kind, which were, if anything, more considerable than under the Mongols. But in population and revenue the Ming empire was certainly far inferior to that of the Mantchus, and its palmiest days were far from witnessing such a development of wealth and population as took place in the 18th century.

Martini, who lived in China down to 1651,1 may be counted among the authorities for the Ming period, though he wrote the history of the Tatar conquest. He occupies a sort of middle position between the first generation of missionary pioneers and the school of writers who, as Chinese students, produced the Mémoires concernant les Chinois, and as Christian missionaries, the Chinese volumes of the Lettres Édifiantes. He has a way of his own of summing up his impressions, though they agree in substance with those of his predecessors. He often thought that if the Great Wall had extended round the whole of China, the effect would be like that of a single well-built and populous city, "à raison que si vous sortez d'un lieu cultivé et habité, vouz entrez tout aussitôt dans un autre qui ne l'est pas moins." The Government of this wide city strikes him as resembling or copying "la conduite d'un ordre religieux bien étably;" and considering 1 Description Géographique de la Chine.

1

how strict a control the Order of Loyola aimed at exercising over its members, it would be hard for a Jesuit to find a stronger expression to describe the reality and vigour of the administrative machine.

Martini's scholarship did not allow him to depend upon the letter of the Classics unassisted by oral information, and he is only repeating or commenting upon the commonplaces of good society when he says of his native friends: "Ils disent des choses fort relevées touchant les vertus, rapportant le tout au gouvernement de la république." The doctrine of the sect of the philosophers "teaches the exercise of public and private virtues, which they say ought to be cultivated for their own sake, without reference to external rewards. Virtue being the finest thing in the world, Is a sufficient end in itself." The antique severity of the doctrine calls up reminiscences of Greece and Rome, but the Father quaintly concludes, the ancients never said anything "de semblable ni de meilleur."

Except from the Spaniards and the Portuguese, we do not receive any real information from European sources about China in the 16th or first half of the 17th centuries. Neither the English nor the Dutch had any success in their attempts to open an overland route. English ships do not seem to have reached the coast of China till the close of the 16th century, when the expedition under Benjamin Wood was repulsed, at the instance of the Spaniards, who denounced the English as "robbers." They were refused access on the ground of their being enemies of Spain, Spain not being an enemy of China-an objection raised again in the 18th century against Sir George Anson.

A Dutch embassy, projected before the Tatar conquest, succeeded in reaching the Court of Peking in 1656, and found that the change of dynasty had made little difference even in the personnel of the administration. Most of the civil officers with whom they came in contact were Chinese, and the final defeat of the mission was a triumph of courteous Chinese diplomacy. Adam Schall, the Jesuit astronomer, whom they found in high favour at court, was also suspected of using his influence and some Portuguese money to defeat their object. After performing the kotow and receiving the Emperor's presents, which were not of very great value, the Dutch were asked if they could come every three years to do homage. They offered to come every five years if they were allowed meanwhile to send four vessels regularly to trade with Canton; but at this the Chinese officials, in professed concern for their long and dangerous voyage, suggest that once in nine years will be often enough for them to come, this kind of homage not carrying with it leave to trade ad interim.

Finally they were told that it was contrary to Chinese custom to allow foreigners to trade, and the fact that such liberty was not expressly asked for in the Ambassador's credentials was acutely seized on. The party was compelled to start on the homeward journey within two hours after receiving the Emperor's official letter of reply. In it, with much politeness, and out of consideration for the risks and sufferings to which they and their vessels would be exposed upon such long and dangerous voyages,

the emperor declined their request, and they were invited instead, if they still desired to send to his country, to do so only once in nine years, and with a party of not more than twenty men, who should be allowed to come to his court, while the rest of the expedition and the merchandise should be securely lodged on shore at Canton. Thus the Dutch returned re infecta, after spending 30,000 taels and prostrating their burly forms at the feet of the indifferent Tatar.

The Government of China in the 17th or 18th century was no doubt sincerely unable to understand what there was offensive to European powers in its pretensions.

The princes, who acknowledged the authority of a strong king of one of the first Chinese dynasties, were originally local or tribal chieftains, who joined or adhered to a loose national federation for the sake of the protection the central power could give to outlying branches scattered among barbarous or hostile tribes. The accession of strength was reciprocal, and the reality of the tie between the suzerain and his feudatories is proved by the importance attached in the earliest classics to the regular visits of the princes to the royal court. The etiquette concerning the reception of tribute-bearers was thus fixed at a time when the tributary princes were for the most part of Chinese nationality, and the alien ambassadors only represented really barbarous tribes. The etiquette established for such receptions is as old as the Chow Li, and until European ambassadors understood in what character they were supposed to approach the Chinese Court, they could not explain clearly and convincingly in what particulars the supposition was erroneous. And, at the same time, till the Europeans had explained their own view of their own position, China could not be expected to understand in what respects the modern foreigners from the West differed from the tributaries and barbarians of antiquity, and from the dangerous barbarian neighbours of recent history.

As the proposed adherence to an unsuitable etiquette has been one great obstacle, in the way of intercourse between China and the kingdoms of the West, it becomes evident that the course of European trade in the present century has been materially influenced by the course of Chinese history 3,000 years before. A demonstration, on the one hand of the natural solidarity of mankind, and on the other an argument for including the ancient history of all the nations in the world in the curriculum of a diplomat's education. The orginal claims of the Court of China are reduced by the translation of the Chinese Classics, to the harmless proportions of an historical survival, archæologically interesting rather than politically offensive.

VOL. 11.-P.C.

T

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE MANTCHU DYNASTY CALLED TSING.

1644-***

THE date given for the accession of the first Mantchu emperor of China, known as Shun-chi, is 1644; but the Mantchus, not improperly from the Chinese point of view, count his father and grandfather respectively as the Tai-tsong and Tai-tsou of the dynasty. Of course the official history of the reigning house has not yet been published, but the emperor known as Kang-hi (Profound Peace) had some memoirs compiled, which reach down to 1708; and from 1702, De Mailla, who carries the history down to the accession of Yung-ching in 1723, was an eye-witness of the events he records. His editor compiled an account of the following reign, and there is no dearth of materials for the long period Kien-lung (Protection of Heaven), which brings us almost to the beginning of the present century,

As in the time of the Mongols, the South of China held out longest against the new rulers. The defeated officers, who remained faithful to the fallen dynasty, were put to death if they refused allegiance to the conquerors; but their scruples and the feelings of their descendants were so far respected that, after the execution, they were interred with honourable ceremonies. In 1651 the Emperor began to govern without a regency, and ordered the Six Boards to have their numbers doubled, so that there should be a Mantchu and a Chinese in every post. The next year literary examinations were held, and the granting of degrees for bribes was severely punished. In 1654 Adam Schall, who stood high in the Emperor's favour, "presented" a system of astronomy, which was ordered to supersede that of the Mahomedans.

In 1656 an embassy from Russia, desiring leave to trade, was refused audience because the members of it refused to perform the customary prostrations, or to accept the status of vassals. Two years later the Grand Lama was allowed to do homage at Peking, the Chinese emperor having acquired, through the accession of the Mantchu reigning house, a curious sort of protectorate over the established church of Tatary. In the same year the last recognised scions of the Ming Dynasty were put to death, and the lamas, who had been expelled under the later Chinese emperors, applied for leave to return and resume possession of their foundations. The young emperor fell under the influence of these sectaries, but died at