China and the West

Hunt, Leigh. Domestic news from China [ID D31309].
A curiosity has arrived in town, of a nature more interesting to those who consider the world at large, and the prospects of it, than twenty more obvious phenomena. We mean, the first three numbers of an English newspaper, printed in China. It is called the Canton Register; and is to give us as much information as possible relative to the manners and proceedings of that very populous, cunning, twinkle-eyed, tea-drinking, pettitoed, and out-of-the-way country; which has so long contrived to keep its monotony to itself.
When an ambassador arrives in China, he is had up to town (as we should say) by the most secret possible conveyance ; suffered to look about him as little as may be ; and dispatched as fast as he can be turned out, with a toy for his master, and none of his objects gained. Furthermore, Canton is the Yarmouth or Portsmouth of China ; and from that quarter an occasional decree has transpired from the Emperor, just as a Chinese might have carried off one of our king's proclamations from a wall at a sea-port. In this manner, all the information hitherto afforded us has been brought away. We know something of the rabble of Canton, and the rabble of the Court; but respecting the great mass of the people, travellers have been able to tell us little or nothing.
We suspect, however, that the world has been enabled to form a better judgment of the Chinese than they fancy. We might believe the account of the Jesuits, or not, as we pleased ; but those reverend gentlemen, besides the history of their own praises and progress, furnished us with some Chinese dramas and novels, which have turned out to be genuine. The number of these has latterly been increased ; Sir George Staunton has added a translation of their chief book of the law ; and thus, from the evidences afforded by books (books, ever the great enlighteners of the earth !) we have been enabled to form at least some good probable guesses at the state of society and knowledge among all the classes of our little-eyed friends ; the upshot of which appears to be this ; that they are a people naturally intelligent, humane, and fanciful, who, by reason of an excess of veneration paid to their fathers and forefathers,
have been kept for an extraordinary period of time in a state of profound submission to their " paternal government ;" and the consequence has been, that their gentleness has been converted into effeminacy, their intelligence into cunning and trickery, and the whole popular mind rendered stationary for centuries. It is impossible not to be sensible of the miniature scale upon which everything proceeds in their novels. They take little sups of wine, little cups of tea; have little feet and eyes ; write little poems, and get on in the world by dint of very little tricks. One cannot but fancy them writing with crow-quills, and speaking at the tip of their voice. At the same time, there is something not unamiable, nor even undignified or unprofound, in that universal sense of the filial duties, of which the government has taken so much advantage. And this has kept alive certain virtues and humanities among them, which
would have gone out under any other despotism. A Chinese is taught to have a sort of worship for the authors of his being, and if we mistake not, for their's; perhaps for two or three generations upward. Wherever subsistence is easy, and the temper not excessively bad, this can hardly fail to produce a corresponding tenderness towards the children, at least a mild and considerate treatment. It is true, instances of the reverse, when they do occur, must be
frightful, and give double force to that excess of arrogance and selfish exaction which parents, not overwise, are sometimes guilty of in all countries : for even in China the mistake must be exasperated by an instinctive sense of it's contradictin; the first laws of nature, which are rather prospective than retrospective, and for an obvious reason, consider rather children than parents. But necessity and public opinion must, upon the whole, combine to render the principle of filiality a convenience rather than an abuse; and we have little doubt, that, in their domestic intercourse, the Chinese are prepared to entertain all the gentler sympathies of their nature, subject to those drawbacks which accompany excessive submission of any sort, and which keep them timid, secret, and circumventing. The worst of it is that the paternal system of law is apt, like other dull parents, to mistake anger and bodily correction for good things ;
and thus the Chinese are the most bastinadoed people on earth.
It is remarkable, that the first account we have of a Chinese paper (for such the Canton Register may be called) brings with it an instance of this extraordinary reverence inculcated towards parents, of the licence into which their effeminacy leads them, and of the opportunities taken by government to turn the national feeling to its own purposes. At the same time the government itself, not being out of the pale of this feeling, and always making a
shew both of its power and humanity, takes into consideration the "extenuating" circumstances of the case, and, though apparently both cruel and unjust, is not more so, it is to be supposed, than it can help. The following is the extract: —
"The offender, Vaou-a-pa, detected his uncle in incestuous intercourse with his mother, for which his uncle tied him up, and heat him. After which he witnessed his uncle jjoing and spending the whole night in his mother's room. Yaou-a-pa's feelings of anger and indignation were now worked up to the highest pitch. He seized a sickle, and made blows at Yaou-tseih, his dear uncle. The uncle slipped and got behind him, and seized the handle of the sickle, with his arms round his nephew. The mother came behind, and reheved the uncle from his embrace. He fled, and the mother threw her arms round the youth without his conscious of the change. The struggle continued until the young man overpowered the woman, and wounded her mortally before he was aware that the stroke of the sickle entered his mother's heart.
On the 21st of August his INIajesty's decision in the case of Yaou-a-npa was received. His sentence is decapitation, after a period of imprisonment ; this sentence usually terminates in strangling on a cross, which, leaving the body entire, is regarded as a lesser punishment than beheading. Yaou-tseih, the incestuous uncle, is ordered for immediate execution.
Some amusing specimens of national manners and feeling accompany this tragic story.
The Governor of Canton, a personage of the name of Le, who appears to have newly entered upon his office, is, we are told, " a gentleman of mild and conciliating manners, easily satisfied with pecuniary offerings, and desirous of tranquillity. In short, he is considered a good governor."
His Excellency the Hoppo also, whose name is Wan, is a very mild, good-natured man, when he is sober ; but he has an unhappy propensity, like most of the Tartars, to strong liquors; and,
when under their influence, he is rather violent and unruly.''
Thus it is under all Imperial Governments. " Let observation, as Johnson says, as Johnson says, - with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru, and, besides equally bad poetry written by the critics, it will find that the way to satisfy great men in all countries is to make them pecuniary offerings ; and that they are not above the temptation of drinking strong liquors ; upon which occasion the ruler becomes unruly. The Hoppo however is still a God-send, considering he is a Governor; for he is mild when sober: and Le is still better, for he is "easily satisfied with pecuniary offerings;" which, as fees appear to be ad lihitum in that quarter, is more than you could say of gentlemen in less heathen countries.
The religion of the intelligent classes in China is understood to be deism : but the public one is polytheistica. They have a gun-powder-plot in November "in honour of the god of Fire", with illuminations and street plays ; and last summer, thanksfivings were ordered to the Great Dragon, or God of Water, for visiting the thirsty province of Pekin with rain.
"The law against parricide stands as follows, in the book translated by Sir
George Staunton : —
"Any person convicted of a design to kill his or her father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, whether by the father's or mother's side ; and any woman convicted of a design to kill her husband's father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, shall, whether the blow is or is not struck in consequence, sufl'er death by being beheaded. In punishing this criminal design, no distinction shad be made between principals and accessaries, except as far as regards their respective relationships to the persons against whose life the design is entertained. If the murder is coriimitted, all parties concerned therein, and related to the deceased, as above-mentioned, shall suffer death by a slow and painful execution. If the criminal should die in prison, an execution similar in mode shall lake place on his body."