It would be needless to multiply instances to those already on record of the refined knavery displayed by Chinese merchants in their dealings with Europeans, or the tricks that they play off in their transactions with one another. They are well known to most nations, and are proverbial in their own. A merchant with them is considered as the lowest character in the country, as a man that will cheat if he can, and whose trade it is to create and then supply artificial wants. To this general character, which public opinion has most probably made to be what it is, an exception is due to those merchants who, acting under the immediate sanction of the government, have always been remarked for their liberality and accuracy in their dealings with Europeans trading to Canton. These men who are styled the _Hong_ merchants, in distinction to a common merchant whom they call _mai-mai-gin_, _a buying and selling man_, might not unjustly be compared with the most eminent of the mercantile class in England. But as traders in general are degraded in all the state maxims, and consequently in public opinion, it is not surprising they should attach so little respect to the character of foreign merchants trading to their ports, especially as several knavish tricks have been practised upon them, in spite of all their acuteness and precaution. The gaudy watches of indifferent workmanship, fabricated purposely for the China market and once in universal demand, are now scarcely asked for. One gentleman in the Honourable East India Company's employ took it into his head that cuckoo clocks might prove a saleable article in China, and accordingly laid in a large assortment, which more than answered his most sanguine expectations. But as these wooden machines were constructed for sale only, and not for use, the cuckoo clocks became all mute long before the second arrival of this gentleman with another cargo. His clocks were now not only unsaleable, but the former purchasers threatened to return theirs upon his hands, which would certainly have been done, had not a thought entered his head, that not only pacified his former customers but procured him also other purchasers for his second cargo--he convinced them by undeniable authorities, that the cuckoo was a very odd kind of bird which sung only at certain seasons of the year, and assured them that whenever the proper time arrived, all the cuckoos they had purchased would once again "tune their melodious throats." After this it would only be fair to allow the Chinese sometimes to trick the European purchaser with a wooden ham instead of a real one.