The _Calmucks_ are considered as remarkably lenient in their conduct to the women: but fathers dispose of their daughters without their consent, and even antecedently to their birth. Their chiefs and princes have, besides, large harems or seraglios where domestic rivalship imbitters existence. They are, moreover, regarded in general as servants, and infidelity is compensated by a trifling offering to their mercenary rapacity. The _Georgians and Circassians_ are celebrated for their surpassing beauty, and their young women are brought up to some industrious habits. The daughters of slaves receive a similar education, and are sold according to their beauty, at from twenty to a hundred pounds each, or upwards. They consider all their children in the light of property, exposing them to sale as they would their cattle, and too often obtain large sums from the agents of despotism and depravity. CHINA. In this, and almost all the countries of Southern Asia, the condition of women is truly deplorable. Forced marriages and sales are universal, and the Chinese are so excessively jealous, that they do not permit their wives to receive any visitors of the other sex, and transport them from place to place in vehicles secured by iron bars. Their concubines are not only treated with the most degrading inhumanity, but are slaves to the wives, who never fail to sway a despotic sceptre; they are besides liable at any time to be sold. The children of concubines are regarded as the offspring of the legitimate wife; hence they manifest no affection for their real mothers, but often treat them with the most marked disrespect. The laws of China and Siam allow the lawful wives and sons, after the death of their husbands and fathers, to exclude concubines and their children from all share in the property of the deceased, and to dispose of their persons by public or private sale. The wives of people of rank are always confined to their apartments from motives of jealousy; those of a middle class are a kind of upper servants deprived of liberty; and the wives of the lower orders are mere domestic drudges. The handsomest women are usually purchased for the courts and principal mandarins. "We can readily," says a respectable writer, "give credit to the custom of a landlord taking the wife of a ryat or peasant, as a pledge for rent, and keeping her till the debt is discharged (in the kingdom of Nepaul;) since we know, on the best authority, that their wise polished neighbours, the Chinese, have found it necessary to enact a prohibitory statute against lending wives and daughters on hire." [65]