Slidell arrived at Mexico and presented his credentials in December, four months before Gen. Taylor started.

Mexico had refused to negotiate on the basis of peaceful relations, and demanded satisfaction for the annexation of Texas. The United States could not send a commission to settle with Mexico for the annexation of Texas, without an acknowledgment of the wrongfulness of the act as against Mexico. Mexico did not offer to be satisfied with the appointment of a commissioner or commissioners to settle the boundary of Texas, but for its annexation. Such being the determination and views of the two governments, how could the matter have been settled but by arms?

If by the allegation be meant that the act of sending our army to the Rio Grande was wrongful as against Mexico, and therefore was the cause of the war, still more do we complain of it. As this appears now to be the turning point of the controversy, we propose to demonstrate, by a very brief and simple process of reasoning, that the act was rightful as against Mexico, and that in truth and fact Mexico had commenced actual hostilities; and this leads us to an examination of the question of boundary of which so much has recently been said.—(To be continued.)

CONDITION OF CHINA;

WITH REFERENCE TO THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY, IN A REPLY TO THE LATE HON. A. H. EVERETT, U. S. MINISTER TO CHINA, BY PROF. GEORGE TUCKER, LATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

To the Editor of the Democratic Review:

SIR-When I some weeks since received the letter from the late Mr. Everett, which you have published in the Nov. number of your Review, my intention was to reply to it at some length; for, according to what commonly takes place in speculative controversy, and to which ours has proved no exception, my first opinions remained unaltered; and I even thought that Mr. Everett's own letter furnished ample materials for their confirmation.

But when, a few days afterwards, I received the melancholy tidings. of his death, my purpose was entirely changed. The pride of opinion, the spirit of disputation, the zeal of proselytism-or whatever else may have actuated me-all gave way to my regret that his career of usefulness was thus unexpectedly arrested, when he was in the vigor of life, and his prospects were brightest. I no longer felt a disposition to continue a correspondence which death had forever closed to him; and I was willing to trust, for the support of my views with the candid and discerning portion of the public, to the facts and arguments I had already adduced.

I have, however, been lately reading some recent writers on China, prompted by Mr. Everett's last interesting letter, and I find my purpose again changed. It now seems to me that the interests of moral and economical science requires that some reply should be made to the facts respecting China relied on by Mr. Everett; but in making it, I shall confine myself strictly to the evidence which that country affords for or against our respective opinions. I learn from recent travellers, that the "Celestial Empire," like most other countries, has its pleasing and its homely aspects; and that Mr. Everett has amiably looked chiefly to the first. The cause of truth seems to require that witnesses should be heard on both sides: and no one would more readily have assented to that than Mr. Everett himself.

But I have another reason for troubling you with the present communication. It is to correct an error which you, and not improbably others, have fallen into, as to my opinions on the Malthusian theory.

The leading points of that theory are, that mankind, in common with all animals, have a tendency to increase in numbers so long as they can obtain food; that this tendency is so strong and unremitting, that it sooner or later makes the population of every country press so closely on the means of subsistence, as to cause much human suffering; and that the redundancy of numbers thus produced, though it might be prevented by prudence and forbearance, is, in point of fact, principally kept in check by war, pestilence, or famine, or some form of calamity or crime which prevents or destroys life.

To this conclusion of Mr. Malthus my opposition is as decided as Mr. Everett's; and I long ago endeavored to show that he had overrated the multiplying propensity; that though very strong, it was not too strong for the dangers to which human life was exposed; and that the evils of redundancy not only could be averted by prudence, which Malthus admitted, but that I thought they probably would be so averted under the best forms of government, and more especially under that commencement of the social state which is one of the fortunate peculiarities of our country. Supposing that the direst evils which afflict mankind to be the inevitable results of that undue propensity to increase, the transition is easy to consider these evils as salutary correctives of human recklessness and improvidence; and, at all events, the doctrine is calculated to discourage our efforts to better the condition of society, and affords too plausible an apology for bad governments. This dissent from the most important part of Malthus's theory was indeed distinctly stated in my first letter to Mr. Everett, and I should not have now repeated it, if it had not appeared, by your remarks in the number of October, 1845, to have escaped your attention.

་

But I do agree with Malthus, and most other political economists in the gradual rise of raw produce compared with labor, as population increases in density. I concur with them, that if a community continues to increase after all its good lands are taken into cultivation, such increase must be at the expense of lower wages to the laboring class, though not necessarily to the same extent, as certainly as that each individual's share of the earth's surface must diminish with increasing numbers. There is, however, a wide difference between that reduction of wages, when estimated in raw produce, which compels men to resort to the coarsest and cheapest food, and sometimes makes even such pittance unattainable, and that abundance which is found in our fortunate country; and all that I meant to contend for in my discussion with Mr. Everett was, that, in the progress from thinness of population to the utmost density consistent with a sufficiency of wholesome food, the portion earned by the laborer, after a certain point of density was reached, must be gradually less and less.

Mr. Everett, we know, took a much more cheering view of human society. He not only denied the gloomy results which Malthus considered as man's almost certain destiny, and the gradual reduction of wages, but maintained, on the contrary, that they rose with the increasing density of population. These views, which he supported with great ability. and ingenuity, he has long since presented to the public; first in a professed answer to Malthus, and more recently in his discussion with me. His late letter from China, shows that he thought he had found much in that country to confirm them. Let us, then, see how far his account of that remarkable country agrees with the testimony of others.

Before the Embassies of Lord Macartney from Great Britain, and of Mr. Van Braam, from Holland, we knew little of China, except what Iwas derived from the missionaries of the Jesuits. Their accounts are substantially embodied in the following passage from Smith's Wealth of Nations:

"China has been long one of the richest-that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times. It had, perhaps, even long before his time, acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its laws and institutions permits it to acquire. The accounts of all travellers, inconsistent in many other respects, agree in the low wages of labor, and in the difficulty which a laborer finds in bringing up a family in China. If by digging the ground a whole day, he can get what will purchase a small quantity of rice in the evening, he is contented. The condition of artificers is, if possible, still worse. Instead of waiting indolently in their workhouses, for the calls of their customers, as in Europe, they are continually running about the streets, offering their service, and, as it were, begging employment. The poverty of the lower ranks of people in China, far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe. In the neighborhood of Canton, many hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no habitation on the land, but live constantly in little fishing boats upon the rivers and canals. The subsistence which they find there is so scanty, that they are eager to fish up the nastiest garbage thrown overboard from any European ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a dead dog or cat, for example, though half putrid and stinking, is as welcome to them as wholesome food to the people of other countries. Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them. In all great towns, several are every night exposed in the street, or drowned like puppies in the water. The performance of this horrid office is even said to be the avowed business by which some people earn their subsistence."

He then adds:

"China, however, though it may perhaps stand still, does not seem to go backwards. Its towns are nowhere deserted by their inhabitants. The lands which had once been cultivated, are nowhere neglected. The same, or very nearly the same, annual labor must therefore continue to be performed, and the funds destined for maintaining it must not, consequently, be sensibly diminished. The lowest class of laborers, therefore, notwithstanding their scanty subsistence, must some way or other make shift to continue their race so far as to keep up their annual number."

The accounts given about twenty years after Adam Smith wrote, by Sir George Staunton, of the British Embassy, and by the Dutch Embassador, of the condition of the people of China, are in accordance with Smith's. But what say the recent travellers in that country? They all, so far as I have seen and heard, with the single exception of Mr. Lay, cited by Mr. Everett, concur with former travellers as to the low real wages of labor in China, and the evils of a redundant population. Such as are within my reach at present I will cite.

Mr. L. Ritchie, in his "British World in the East," says,

"It is no wonder that in a state of society where sumptuous furniture, and the other elegancies of life indispensable to wealthy Europeans, are illegal, men should fly to the indulgencies of the table. But among the lower classes almost every thing is eaten that has either animal or vegetable life; and even in the mineral kingdom, gypsum is largely used as one of the ingredients of a jelly. Cats, dogs, apes, rats, mice, frogs, worms-all things that an English beggar would turn from with loathing and horror, are freely eaten by the Chinese; although the

sweet potato in the south, and millet in the north, with rice throughout the whole kingdom, constitute the principal food of the masses.”—Vol. II., p. 259.

In a subsequent passage,

"An acre, if well cultivated, produces three thousand six hundred pounds of rice in two crops in the year, which, at two pounds a day, would be sufficient for five persons, or at one pound a-day for ten persons. But an adult Chinese, to say nothing of young children, cannot reckon even on the latter quantity. He is fain to make up with pulse, sweet potatoes, pith, and the animal horrors that have been indicated as furnishing his table. But still the industrious, untiring, hard and foul-feeding plodder has not enough. The people starve in multitudes, notwithstanding that the government every now and then distributes food and clothes among them; and in spite of the severity of the law against emigration,— in spite of the religious bonds which link them to the tombs of their ancestors,in spite of the ties of nature and kindred, which are nowhere stronger than in China, and in spite of the national vanity which represents the Celestial Empire as the centre of civilization and paradise of the world,—the famished population bursts its prescribed bounds, and overflows the neighboring regions."-lb. p. 278. "But while this clever and hard-working people have brought the cultivation of the soil to a degree of perfection by sheer dint of numbers, these very numbers have kept up the price of its produce to an extent which retains them on the brink of starvation. Where the labor-market is overstocked, wages, of course, cannot rise higher than the level of mere subsistence; and that this is the case in China, is proved by the facility with which service can be obtained for nothing more than sufficiency of food. The wages of a day-laborer, we are told, are four pence a day; those of a journeyman silversmith, painter, or engraver, one pound per month; and the earning of a common schoolmaster about the same sum. After this, we are almost afraid to take the price of rice from Gutzlaff, who is the only recent authority who mentions it, at two taels per stone-or something less than a shilling a pound,* or the price of pork at a hundred cash, or eight pence a pound! Rice, however, it must be recollected, is a luxury to the poor; and as for animal food (of what we think in Europe the legitimate kinds) they consider themselves well off if they taste it once in the month.”—p. 281.

Mr. M. Martin, who held an official station at Hong Kong under the British government, and whose work on China, as well as Mr. Ritchie's, was published during the present year, says:

"A considerable portion of the taxes levied upon the productions of the whole empire, is paid in kind, and is here [at Pekin] stored up; the amount of rice alone in these granaries, at one portion of the year, is enormous; but they are often empty before the new crop is gathered; so that a great many die for want of food.-Vol. I., p. 17.

1

The poor are divided into two classes: the laborer and the mendicant; the latter are a most degraded class, resembling somewhat the gipsies, and may be seen in the streets almost in a state of nudity; no one will shelter them, lest they should rob the house. They sleep at night on bridges, and in public places, being denied even the caves of rocks, lest they should die there; for, in that case, the proprietor would be obliged to pay the officer, whose duty it is to inter the corpse." p. 31.

Dr. Gutzlaff, who has examined a great portion of the empire, thus writes of the population on the coast:

"I invariably found the people civil and obliging, but for the most part poor and wretched, and dreadfully diseased."—Ib.

"The poorer sort of females work in the fields up to their knees in mud, and with truth may be said to drag out a miserable existence."-p. 32.

This is manifestly an error, as appears not only from Mr. Everett's statements, but also from those made by Dr. Gutzlaff himself, in his answers to the queries propounded by Mr. Montgomery Martin.

"The people possess few of the comforts of life; neither table, chair, nor any article of furniture can be seen in the dwellings of the poor."-Ib.

“Infanticide is not confined to the poorer classes: as a proof of the existence of that crime, foundling hospitals are erected in all large towns to receive girls only, in which they are kept until they are fourteen years of age. Some contend that child-murder does not exist to a great extent, in some provinces, as the females are more numerous than the men in several districts. The crime, however, is not held in the abhorrence it should be.”—p. 37.

"The excellent missionary, Mr. Abeel, who was for several years at Kulongsoo and Amoy, says, that from a comparison with many other parts of the country, there is reason to believe that a greater number of children are destroyed at birth, in this district, than in any other department. By inquiry of persons from forty different towns and villages (of which the names are here omitted,) the number destroyed varies exceedingly in different places; the extremes extending from seven to eight-tenths (Chinese mode,) i. e. seventy or eighty per cent. to onetenth, or ten per cent. ; and the mean of the whole number, the average proportion destroyed in all these places, amounted to nearly four-tenths, or exactly thirty-nine per cent."

66

In seventeen of these forty towns and villages, the informants declared that more than one-half of the children are deprived of existence. Taking eight other places as a standard, it lies between one-fourth and three-tenths, or near thirty per cent."-p. 48.

-"Dogs, cats, rats, mice, snakes, toads, and other reptiles, are eaten by them who can afford to buy little; indeed, every thing that is found, even to the elephant, is eaten by the poor."-p. 50.

"Many of the most skilful men do not earn a guinea a month; the most industrious manufacturers get only three dollars monthly, on an average, and with this they are content.”—p. 53.

The Chinese may more properly be called gardeners than agriculturalists, as the space allotted to each family is very small, and on this they must subsist. A Chinaman, in the country parts, is seldom seen without a basket and rake, with which he collects anything in the shape of manure; Chinese have been seen dressed in silk, following the buffaloes and hogs, to collect whatever is dropped." -p. 83.

66

The importation of rice from America is increasing; the average yearly importation is about fifty-five million pounds weight."-Ib.

In Mr. Ellis's "Embassy to China" is the following passage:

Population, which during our journey through the southern part of Shantung and commencement of Kiang-nan, had lost its overflowing aspect, now reassumes its former character, but certainly not to the excess which we were taught to expect. A military mandarin observed that in times of peace, the supply of food became scanty, and that wars were absolutely necessary to maintain the proportion between the supply and the consumers. It is something singular to meet a disciple of Malthus on the Imperial canal.”—p. 275.

The Rev. George Smith, who has recently visited China as a Missionary, gives but too conclusive evidence of one of the worst consequences of redundant population-child-murder:

"During my occasional visits on horseback to the villages scattered over the island (Amoy), the subject of female infanticide was brought under my notice. The facts with which I became acquainted at Amoy produced in my mind a conviction that this social evil exists in the province of Foqueen to an extent which would be incredible, unless the fullest evidence were at hand to establish its truth. In the other parts of China which I visited, no well authenticated cases were brought under my knowledge sufficient to prove that this crime prevailed to any considerable extent."

He then gives in detail the evidence of the crime which he obtained in different villages, by which it appeared that about half the daughters