Note (return) — NOTES OF A READER.

China presents the very remarkable spectacle of a civilization entirely political, whose principal aim has constantly been to draw closer the bonds which unite the society it formed, and to merge, by its laws, the interest of the individual in that of the public; an empire possessing an active, skilful, and contented population of 155,000,000 souls, who are spread over 1,372,450 square miles of the fairest and, probably, earliest inhabited region of the globe—that maintains a standing army of 1,182,000 men, and levies a revenue of only 11,649,912l. sterling—an empire that has preserved the records of its dominion and the integrity of its name from a period of three thousand years antecedent to our era, while the most powerful monarchies of remote or modern ages have dwindled into nothingness, or been borne towards the ocean of eternity, by the swiftly destructive gulf of time,—an empire whose people have materially contributed to advance the civilization of Europe and America, by the discovery of the most useful arts and sciences, such as writing, 3 astronomy, the mariner's compass, gunpowder, sugar, silk, porcelain, the smelting and combination of metals,—and, in fine, enjoying within its own territories all the necessaries and conveniencies, and most of the luxuries of life; standing, as it proudly asserts, in no need of intercourse with other countries, 4 which it is its studied policy to prohibit, 5 openly and arrogantly proclaims its total independence of every nation in the world!