There are, in fact, no immense estates grasping nearly the whole of a district; no monopolizing farmers, nor dealers in grain. Every one can bring his produce to a free and open market. No fisheries are let out to farm. Every subject is equally entitled to the free and uninterrupted enjoyment of the sea, of the coasts, and the estuaries; of the lakes and rivers. There are no manor lords with exclusive privileges; no lands set apart for feeding beasts or birds for the profit or pleasure of particular persons; every one may kill game on his own grounds, and on the public commons. Yet with all these seeming advantages, there are rarely three successive years without a famine in one province or another. As in the Roman Empire examples were not wanting of the first characters in the state glorying to put their hands to the plough, to render the earth fertile, and to engage in the natural employment of man; as, In ancient times the sacred plough employ'd, The kings and awful fathers, So, in China, the Emperor at the vernal equinox, after a solemn offering to the God of Heaven and Earth, goes through the ceremony of holding the plough, an example in which he is followed by the viceroys and governors and great officers in every part of the empire. This ceremony, though, in all probability, the remains of a religious institution, is well calculated to give encouragement to the labouring peasantry, whose profession, thus honourably patronized, cannot fail to be pursued with more energy and cheerfulness than where it receives no such marks of distinction. Here merchants, tradesmen, and mechanics, are considered far beneath the husbandman. So far from obtaining the honours attendant on commerce in the ancient city of Tyre, "whose merchants were princes, whose traffickers were the honourable of the earth"--or the ancient immunities granted in Alfred's reign, by which an English merchant, who had made three foreign voyages by sea, was raised to the rank of nobility, the man who, in China, engages in foreign trade is considered as little better than a vagabond. The home trade only is supposed to be necessary, and deserving the protection of government. It allows all goods and manufactures, the produce of the country, to be interchanged between the several provinces, on payment only of a small transit duty to the state, and certain tolls on the canals and rivers, applied chiefly to the repairs of flood-gates, bridges, and embankments. This trade, being carried on entirely by barter, employs such a multitude of craft of one description or other, as to baffle all attempts at a calculation. I firmly believe, that all the floating vessels in the world besides, taken collectively, would not be equal either in number or tonnage to those of China.