They are inured to hardships from their infancy, which greatly contributes to preserve the innocence of their manners....
They are of a mild, tractable, and humane disposition." He thinks them exceedingly modest, and regards the love of gain as their chief vice.
"Interest," says he, "is the spring of all their actions; for, when the least profit offers, they despise all difficulties and undertake the most painful journeys to procure it" This may be true; but if a Chinese traveller in America should give the same account of us, would it not be quite as true?
One of the latest writers--the author of "The Middle Kingdom"-- accuses the Chinese of gross sensuality, mendacity, and dishonesty.

No doubt these are besetting sins with them, as with all nations who are educated under a system which makes submission to authority the chief virtue.

But then this writer lived only at Canton and Macao, and saw personally only the refuse of the people.

He admits that "they have attained, by the observance of peace and good order, to a high security of life and property; that the various classes are linked together in a remarkably homogeneous manner by the diffusion of education; and that property and industry receive their just reward of food, raiment, and shelter." He also reminds us that the religion of China differs from all Pagan religions in this, that it encourages neither cruelty nor sensuality.

No human victims have ever been offered on its altars, and those licentious rites which have appeared in so many religions have never disgraced its pure worship.
The Chinese citizen enjoys a degree of order, peace, and comfort unknown elsewhere in Asia.