‘ 74 THE MATURE AMI) CAUSES OK

ing indolently in their work-houses, for the calls of their cus-tomers, as in Europe , they are continually running about thestreets with the tools of their respective trades, ottering theirservice, and as it were begging employment. The povertyof the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that ofthe most beggarly nations in Europe . In the neighbour-hood of Canton many hundred, it is commonly said, manythousand families have no habitation on the land, but liveconstantly in little fishing-boats upon the rivers and canals.The subsistence which they find there is so scanty, that theyare eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboardfrom any European ship. Any carrion, the carcass of adead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stink-ing, is as welcome to them as the most wholesome food tothe people of other countries. Marriage is encouraged inChina , not by the profitableness of children, but by the li-berty of destroying them. In all great towns several areevery night exposed in the street, or drowned like puppies inthe water. The performance of this horrid office is even saidto be the avowed business by which some people earn theirsubsistence.

China, however, though it may perhaps stand still, doesnot seem to go backwards. Its towns are nowhere desertedby their inhabitants. The lands which had once been culti-vated are nowhere neglected. The same, or very nearly thesame, annual labour must therefore continue to be performed,and the funds destined for maintaining it must not, conse-quently, be sensibly diminished. The lowest class of la-bourers, therefore, notwithstanding their scanty subsistence,must some way or another make shift to continue their raceso far as to keep up their usual numbers.

But it would be otherwise in a country where the fundsdestined for the maintenance of labour were sensibly decay-ing. Every year the demand for servants and labourers would,in all the different classes of employments, be less than it hadbeen the year before. Many who had been bred in the su-perior classes, not being able to find employment in their ownbusiness, would be glad to seek it in the lowest. The lowestclass being not only overstocked with its own workmen, butwith the overflowings of all the other classes, the competitionfor employment would be so great in it, as to reduce thewages of labour to the rqost miserable and scanty subsistenceof the labourer. Many would not be able to find employment