good behavior of every vessel entering the port for trade. This monopoly was abolished by the treaty between China and Great Britain, and the foreign trade made free to all.

The Chinese have been ridiculed for assuming to be the only civilized nation in the world. This assumption is probably owing to their peculiar institutions. They live on the past, we on the future, and consequently they are not to be judged by our standard. We have thousands of presses furnishing information of all kinds and from all quarters of the globe, which is distributed with astonishing rapidity to every one. They have no newspapers except those used for government purposes, which have a very limited circulation, and information with them, like light from some distant world, which may have been blotted from existence for years, does not reach the mass of the Chinese until it has ceased to be new to the rest of the world. There was a time, and that not many centuries since, that the Chinese were farther advanced in the arts of civilized life than any European nation, and they are still far in advance of the rest of Asia. Is it strange then when they see the greatest European nation seize upon the neighboring country of India and clandestinely flood their shores with a drug which destroys thousands, and is known to be prohibited by their laws, that they should look upon them as barbarians. Is it strange when they formerly saw the governments and merchants of foreign nations belieing each other and perpetually quarreling for the sake of gain that they should look upon them all with suspicion and contempt and call them "Fan-qui's," "foreign devils!" When foreigners first began trading with the Chinese, every port was open to their commerce, and the trade was free to all; the country was also open to missionaries, and the Catholics converted many thousands to their faith and stood high in favor with the government, but the misconduct of the former caused

them to be confined in their trade to Canton, and the attempts of the latter to interfere with the government caused them to be excluded from the country. The Chinese have also been denounced for their exclusiveness; but who can doubt its being the correct policy of her rulers to ensure the stability of their government. They themselves are foreigners, were invited into the Empire to quell a rebellion, which they did, and then took possession, and they well know the danger they subject themselves to by the visits of strangers.

In 1812, according to the best Chinese authority, there were in the eighteen provinces of China 360,279,827 inhabitants, and 2,167,286 in Tartary, subject to the Chinese government. As they have had no wars of consequence since that time, and the cholera is said to have passed lightly over this nation they must now exceed 400,000,000. The eighteen provinces contain 830,719,360 English acres, more than three-fourths of which are under cultivation, and with a climate so various, that everything they wish for is produced by themselves, they need not and care not for foreign com

merce.

Twenty-seven dynasties, furnishing two hundred and forty-three sovereigns including the present and excluding those considered mythological by the Chinese themselves, have swayed the destinies of China for more than 4,600 years. Well may the Tartar and his subjects be proud of the throne upon which he sits unrivalled as it stands in the annals of the world, and without boasting can they point to its antiquity, and that of their laws and customs, founded prior, or at least coeval with the Empire of Babylon, the very site of whose greatest city, with its stupendous walls and hundred gates of brass, is now a matter of doubt.

Other great empires and kingdoms have risen and flourished for a season, but where are they? Go seek

their history among the pyramids and ruins of splendid edifices, the equals of which the world may never see again.

The most powerful modern kingdoms of Europe arc but of yesterday compared with China. While they count their existence by hundreds, she reckons hers by thousands of years, and is now in the enjoyment of a green old age under the administration of laws founded upon the precepts of her sages.