The extraordinary encouragements given to marriage also contribute to make China more populous in proportion to the extent of its territory than any other country. The permission given by parents to abandon their children, which exists in China, is shown by Sir G. Staunton to facilitate marriage, and cause even greater over-population than in more civilized states where such barbarities are not permitted. The effect of this early marriage and rapid peopling is to subdivide property; and it is a common remark among the Chinese, that fortunes seldom continue considerable in the same family beyond the third generation. One of the Jesuits, writing on China, says: “The richest and most flourishing empire of the world is, in one sense, the poorest and most miserable of all. Four times as much territory would be necessary to put the inhabitants at their ease.” It cannot be said in China, as it often is said in Europe, that the poor are idle, and might gain a subsistence if they would work. The labours and efforts of these poor people are beyond conception. “A Chinese will pass whole days in digging the earth, sometimes up to his knees in water, and in the evening is happy to eat a little spoonful of rice, and to drink the insipid water in which it is boiled.” This is the remark of a Jesuit: and although it is evidently an exaggeration, since modern researches on diet show that such food could not maintain animal existence, it shows what miseries are caused by the peopling down to such a low standard of comfort. “The procreative power,” says Malthus, “would, with as much facility, double in twenty-five years the population of China, as that of any of the States of America.” We can readily sympathise, then, with the alarm felt by our fellow-countrymen in Australasia and California, at the possible invasion of the untold millions which China could, with the greatest facility, pour into them. It is, for this reason, that the Legislature of New South Wales has quite recently, by a large majority, passed a Bill to stem the current of Chinese immigration. It will be for the ultimate advantage of the human race that nations with such a low standard of comfort as the Chinese, should learn that they must imitate the more prosperous nations in prudential restraint before they can become entitled to claim to become citizens of such countries.