The second objection against receiving the result of the census is, that we are not well informed as to the mode of enumerating the people by families, and the manner of taking the account, when the patriarch of two or three generations lives in a hamlet, with all his children and domestics around him. Two of the provisions in Sec. XXV. of the _Code_, seem to be designed for some such state of society; and the liability to underrate the males fit for public service, when a capitation tax was ordered, and to overrate the inmates of such a house, when the head of it might suppose he would thereby receive increased aid from government when calamity overtook him, are equally apparent. The door-tablet is also liable to mistake, and in shops and workhouses, where the clerks and workmen live and sleep on the premises, it is not known what kind of report of families the assessors make. On these important points our present information is imperfect, while the evident liability to serious error in the ultimate results makes one hesitate. The Chinese may have taken a census satisfactory for their purposes, showing the number of families, and the average in each; but the point of this objection is, that we do not know how the families are enumerated, and therefore are at fault in reckoning the individuals. The average of persons in a household is set down at five by the Chinese, and in England, in 1831, it was 4.7, but it is probably less than that in a thickly settled country, if every married couple and their children be taken as a family, whether living by themselves, or grouped in patriarchal hamlets. No one doubts that the population is enormous, constituting by far the greatest assemblage of human beings using one speech ever congregated under one monarch. To the merchants and manufacturers of the West, the determination of this question is of some importance, and through them to their governments. The political economist and philologist, the naturalist and geographer, have also greater or less degrees of interest in the contemplation of such a people, inhabiting so beautiful and fertile a country. But the Christian philanthropist turns to the consideration of this subject with the liveliest solicitude; for if the weight of evidence is in favor of the highest estimate, he feels his responsibility increase to a painful degree. The danger to this people is furthermore greatly enhanced by the opium traffic--a trade which, as if the Rivers Phlegethon and Lethe were united in it, carries fire and destruction wherever it flows, and leaves a deadly forgetfulness wherever it has passed. Let these facts appeal to all calling themselves Christians, to send the antidote to this baleful drug, and diffuse a knowledge of the principles of the Gospel among them, thereby placing life as well as death before them. ~REVENUE OF THE EMPIRE.~