Education in China, as we have seen, is directed almost exclusively to the inculcation of moral and constitutional principles; and with such good effect, that nowhere in the East are the social relations so well understood and preserved. Class has never risen against class, and the religious apathy of the people has prevented any war of creeds. This social harmony has had the best effects upon the welfare of the people, by rendering an iron rule unnecessary on the part of the Government. However absolute the administration may be, the great mass of the people live quietly and happily, enjoying the fruits of their industry. The legislation is disfigured by an excessively minute attention to trifles,—an unavoidable result of the system of regulating the mind of the people through the agency of external observances; but the code is, on the whole, a clear and concise series of enactments, savouring throughout of practical judgment and European good sense; and if not always conformable to our liberal notions of legislation, in general approaching them more nearly than the codes of most other nations. The laws are more generally known and equally administered than in the other States of Asia,—wealth, comfort, and cheerful industry more equally diffused; and Mr Ellis pronounces the Celestial Empire superior to them all in the arts of government and the general aspect of society. Sir George Staunton says that the condition of the people is “wholly inconsistent with the hypothesis of a very bad government or a very vicious state of society,” and conceived that he could trace almost everywhere the unequivocal signs of an industrious, thriving, and contented people. But we may go further than this, and fully concur with Mr Davis that “there is a business-like character about the Chinese, which assimilates them in a striking degree to the most intelligent nations of the West; and there is less difference [in this respect?] between them and the British, French, and Americans, than between these and the inhabitants of Spain and Portugal, whose proneness to stolid bigotry and Oriental laziness was perhaps in part imbibed from the Arabs.”