Chinese horrors and persecutions of the Christians; containing a full account of the great insurrection in China; atrocities of the "Boxers" ..together with the complete history of China down to the present time .. . r a lazy person toabide in the cities;then a farmer will notlay aside his plough and hoe; nor the ^ house-wife put away her silkworms or herweaving. These commands have sunk deep into thenational character, and the greatest devotionto their calHng, sharpened, it is true, by akeen sense of self-interest, is everjwhereshown by Chinese farmers. From these menit is impossible to withh
Chinese horrors and persecutions of the Christians; containing a full account of the great insurrection in China; atrocities of the "Boxers" ..together with the complete history of China down to the present time .. . r a lazy person toabide in the cities;then a farmer will notlay aside his plough and hoe; nor the ^ house-wife put away her silkworms or herweaving. These commands have sunk deep into thenational character, and the greatest devotionto their calHng, sharpened, it is true, by akeen sense of self-interest, is everjwhereshown by Chinese farmers. From these menit is impossible to withhold the highest praisefor their untiring industry. With endlesslabor and inexhaustible resource they wrestfrom the soil the very utmost that it is capa- ble of producing. Unhappily to them, as toother classes of the community, the law asit is administered is oppressively unjust. Itmakes them poor and keeps them poor. The principal imperial tax is derived fromthe land, and by the law of succession it isgenerally necessary, on the decease of thehead of the family, to subdivide his posses-sions, which thus become a diminishingquantity to each generation of successors tohis wealth. Low grinding poverty is the re-. CHINESE CURIOSITY SHOP. suit, and it is remarkable, though not sur-prising, to observe the large number ofcrimes which are attributable to disputesarising out of feuds in connection with theinheritance of the land and its products. Probably there is no potentate on the earthwho can say as truly as the Emperor ofChina can The Empire is mine. Not onlythe lives and property of his subjects are athis disposal, but the land which they till ispart of the heritage which belongs to him. 278 CHINA: PAST AND PRESENT. Just as he alone sacrifices to Heaven, and ashe alone is the one Emperor over all theearth—in accordance with the dictum of anancient sage, There is one sun in the skyand one Emperor over the earth—so he isthe universal landlord of the soil of the Em
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