In China, as everywhere else, slavery appeared as a disease in the social body. It was generated by war and crime. Prisoners of war and condemned criminals became, so to say, slaves of the state, which used them for public labors or hired them out to private individuals. The highest officers of state, persons over seventy years old, and children, could not be condemned to slavery, excepting children exposed or abandoned by their parents. Slaves hired by private individuals were only used as helps or servants in households and families. But most of the servants were always freemen--they are so now; and slaves never were used in agriculture or in the different handicrafts. The land being generally considered as the property of the state, or of the emperor, the sovereign divided, distributed it, under certain conditions and servitudes, for tribute in money or kind, etc. But slaves are not mentioned among the various objects enumerated as constituting the tribute. The increase of population generated poverty, and paupers sold and still sell themselves or their children into slavery. Repeated domestic or internecine wars, recorded at a very distant historical epoch, were among the prominent agencies in increasing poverty. Impoverished persons and those deprived of their homes either sold themselves or became serfs attached to the soil, but not chattels. As serfs their legal condition and denomination is preserved in the books written about the twelfth century B.C., by Ma-tuan-lin--they are named _usurped families_ or _usurpees_. Even after the conquest by the Mantschou Tartars, chattelhood did not get hold of the political structure, nor did it absorb the agricultural and industrial domestic economy of the Chinese. With the exception of the reigning family, no social position or function is privileged as hereditary; and in the same way, accidental slavery was not transmitted to the children of the enslaved. Their condition was and is controlled and regulated by law, which watches over the property of the state. Among the numerous domestic wars there are never recorded any revolts of slaves--an evidence of their very limited number. Over-population generated and generates the most terrible and varied oppressions and miseries; but all of them lose their sting when compared with chattelhood. Over-population and misery generated the so-called coolie-system, which in principle is based on voluntary indenture. The reckless cruelties and the numerous infamies characterizing the manner in which the coolie trade is carried on, is evidence of the utter moral degradation and depravity of the white civilized Christian traders, and the inefficiency of their respective governments.