In conclusion, it may be asked, are the results of the enumeration of the people, as contained in the statistical works published by the government, to be rejected or doubted, therefore, because the Chinese officers do not wish to ascertain the exact population; or because they are not capable of doing it; or, lastly, because they wish to impose upon foreign powers by an arithmetical array of millions they do not possess? The question seems to hang upon this trilemma. It is acknowledged that they falsify or garble statements in a manner calculated to throw doubt upon everything they write, as in the reports of victories and battles sent to the Emperor, in the memorials upon the opium trade, in their descriptions of natural objects in books of medicine, and in many other things. But the question is as applicable to China as to France: is the estimated population of France in 1801 to be called in question, because the _Moniteur_ gave false accounts of Napoleon’s battles in 1813? It would be a strange combination of conceit and folly, for a ministry composed of men able to carry on all the details of a complicated government like that of China, to systematically exaggerate the population, and then proceed, for more than a century, with taxation, disbursements, and official appointments, founded upon these censuses. Somebody at least must know them to be worthless, and the proof that they were so, must, one would think, ere long be apparent. The provinces and departments have been divided and subdivided since the Jesuits made their survey, because they were becoming too densely settled for the same officers to rule over them. Still less will any one assert that the Chinese are not capable of taking as accurate a census as they are of measuring distances, or laying out districts and townships. Errors may be found in the former as well as in the latter, and doubtless are so; for it is not contended that the four censuses of 1711, 1753, 1792, and 1812 are as accurate as those now taken in England, France, or the United States, but that they are the best data extant, and that if they are rejected we leave tolerable evidence and take up with that which is doubtful and suppositive. The censuses taken in China since the Christian era are, on the whole, more satisfactory than those of all other nations put together up to the Reformation, and further careful research will no doubt increase our respect for them.