Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/81

Rh word for families being hoo, "doors," in distinction from kow, "mouths," which is the proper word for individuals. Again, the work to which he refers, though published in 1743, may refer to a census of the population at a previous date, and thus nearly synchronize with the census given in the year 1711, which we have seen by authentic records to have been 28,605,716.

Grosier's own enumeration was taken from an estimate of the population in "the tribunal of lands" at Peking, which was made in the twenty-seventh year of Këen-lung, A. D. 1762, and was received in France in 1779. It was written both in Chinese and French, and was translated into the latter at Peking. By this estimate it appears that the population amounted to 198,214,553. Upon this we may remark, that Grosier himself does not appear to have consulted the work referred to, but only an extract from it, or a translation of it. It is possible, therefore, that there may be some mistake, either in the number, or the date. Still as the census is placed between the years 1753, when the population was 102,328,256, and 1792, when it was 307,467,200, the intermediate number of 198,214,553 is not an unlikely estimate.

The account published by Dr. Morrison, in his view of China, for philological purposes, exhibits the population as amounting to 143,125,225 in 1790. This estimate was taken from a new edition of the Ta-tsing-yïh-tung-che, or "a complete statistical account of the empire under the present dynasty," published about the close of the reign of Këen-lung, probably A. D. 1790; which is the identical work referred to by Amiot, only a later edition. The edition which Dr. Morrison consulted exhibits the original amount of the population,