Page:Ta Tsing Leu Lee; Being, The Fundamental Laws, and a Selections from the Supplementary Statutes, of the Penal Code of China.djvu/11

viii intimate knowledge of the Chinee empire. That empire was, on that occaion, in ome degree laid open to the view of perons, whoe talents and judgment were worthy of their country, and of an enlightened age; and who, it was natural to expect, would be dipoed to decribe the country and its inhabitants, as they really found them, and to tate the opionions they might be led to form on the different objects which occurred, with candour and incerity.—If, in etimating the credit due to their impartiality, ome allowance for the national prejudices of Englihmen hould be deemed requiite, the tendency of thoe prejudices would, at all events, be very diimilar to that of the bias which had influenced their predeceors in the ame field of enquiry. When alo it is conidered that, in paing rapidly over the narrow path to which they were confined, the opportunities of obervation mut have been comparatively few and limited, it will jutly be deemed a ubject of pride and atisfaction, and a very material addition to the immediate advantages which that expedition produced to this country, that it has, in o hort a time, and under uch unfavourable circumtances, been the means of throwing an entire new light upon, and of correcting and extending our ideas of that extraodrinary and intereting empire; that, in hort if it has not led tot he dicovery of a new world, it has, as it were, enabled us to recover a portion of the old, by removing, in a coniderable degree, thoe obtacles by which our contemplation of it had been intercepted.

The hort reidence in China of Lord Macartney's Embay, although it carcely afforded any opportunity of either confirming or diproving the various geographical, hitorical, and tatitical details, with which we had been furnihed by the Miionaries, was amply ufficient to dicover that the uperiority over other nations, in point of knowledge and of virtue, which the Chinee have long been accutomed to aume to themelves, and which ome of their European hitorians