Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/64

 of them find in procuring a subsistence, that they willingly quit friends and home, and brave the dangers of the deep, with the inhospitalities of a foreign clime, in a state of poverty, rather than stay at home, and drag on a miserable existence in want of all things. Hence they have not only removed from the more populous provinces of China, to those more thinly peopled; but have crossed the wall, the desert, and the ocean—pouring forth their hordes to the east, west, north, and south—occupying the waste lands of Tartary—colonizing Thibet, Burmah, Camboja, and Siam, and basking under the fostering care of European governments, in the islands of the Malayan Archipelago. What stronger proof of the dense population of China could be afforded than the fact, that emigration is going on, in spite of restrictions and disabilities; from a country, where learning and civilization reign, and where all their dearest interests and prejudices are found—to one where comparative ignorance and barbarity prevail, and where the heat or cold of a tropical or frozen region, is to be exchanged for a mild and temperate climate; added to the consideration, that not a single female is permitted, or ventures to leave the country, when consequently all the tender attachments, that bind heart to heart, must be burst asunder, and perhaps for ever. Where is the country—where, under such circumstances, emigration would prevail, unless stern necessity compelled, and unless the ever-increasing progeny pressed on the heels of the adult population, and obliged them to seek a precarious subsistence in a less thickly peopled part of the earth?

The breaking through of another restriction, in the otherwise unalterable system of Chinese policy, proves