In 1845 the Emperor Tao Kang himself published an edict condemning the practice and declaring that the extreme punishment permitted by the law would be meted out to the guilty. The edict had no effect. In 1848 another endeavour was made by the chief magistrate of Canton, acting on the initiative of Ki, to eliminate the evil in that particular city, but neither in Canton or in the province of Koang Tong was there a cessation of the evil for eighteen years afterward. The Emperor Kong Tche listed both Canton and the province as among the places where infanticide was most common. During the reign of Hien Fong, 1851–1862, little progress was made. In many parts of China during the following reign, that of Tong Tche, 1862–1875, attempts were made to check the evil. During the minority of the Emperor the two Empress Regents issued a proclamation in which they appealed to the “nobles and rich of all villages to contribute for the erection of orphanages where there might be received abandoned children so that the poor will not be able to justify their abominable practice on the ground of poverty.” The reign of Koang Siu began in 1875, and was marked with vigorous proclamations and warnings to the people to take their children to the orphan asylums that were being established rather than to throw them into the river.[94] Of the conditions as they exist in modern times, travellers and writers are of one accord—infanticide is horribly prevalent. The conditions vary with different localities. “In Fuhkien province,” says Williams, “especially in the department of Chang Chau, infanticide prevails to a greater extent than in any other part of the Empire yet examined. Mr. Abeel extended his inquiries to forty different towns and villages lying in the first, and found that the percentage was between seventy and eighty down to ten, giving an average of about forty per cent. of all girls born in those places as being murdered. In Chang Chau, out of seventeen towns, the proportion lies between one fourth and three tenths in some places, occasionally rising to one third, and in others sinking to one fifth, making an average of one fourth put to death. In other departments of the province the practice is confessed, but the proportion thought by intelligent natives to be less, since there is less poverty and fewer people than formerly.” “Infanticide, which until now has gone unpunished,” says Dr. Lauterer, “is practised especially in Pekin and Fuhkien. A large per cent. of female infants meet with an unnatural death because of their parents’ poverty or their niggardliness. The unfortunates are simply cast into the nearest stream and the corpse left until the morning when the government’s wagon collects them, or they are exposed in the open where, not being protected from the cold, they soon perish. Lately a decree has been made to prohibit it.”[95]