MARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, ty S. S. SCRANTON & COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of Connecticut. WESTCOTT & THOMSON, 47 PREFACE. THE relation which the writer has held to Christian and philanthropic efforts in behalf of a race whose advent to our shores is now awaking universal and anxious inquiry as to their character, their capacities and their probable influence upon the future of our country and continent, has imposed upon him the necessity of preparing the present volume. In the years 1840 to '42 the Opium War strongly drew his attention toward China, where was presented the strange spectacle of a heathen but civilized nation suffering the bombardment and destruction of numerous cities, and the slaughter of thousands of its people, in its natural and righteous, but vain, resistance to the fraudulent introduction among them of what it justly styled "a flood of poison," the track of which in society was black and desolate as that of a stream of lava down a mountain's side. In 1846 he was sent by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions to the province of Canton, and in 1852 to California, where he was the first to preach the gospel in their own language to the Chinese coming there. In the very trying circumstances in which they were placed during the first few years of their immigration to a country whose people, language, laws and usages were so strange to them, and where their peculiarities became the subjects of grave and pernicious misapprehensions on the part of the Americans, it pleased God to make his labors the means of rendering to them important benefits. These facts will explain whatever of peculiarity this book may possess. It is largely made up of materials which have grown up in the writer's experience, labors and intercourse with the Chinese under circumstances which drew out the best side of their character, warmly interested his feelings and personally attached him to many of them; and which led him to consider the nation and its institutions in a new light. He has been made to carefully and practically examine the past relations of China with the United States and this continent, the advantages we may expect to derive from the increasing political and commercial intimacy, and from the introduction of many of the people into various departments of labor in all parts of our country, and the duties we owe to these new wards which the great Father of all has brought and placed in our national family. It has been deemed important by judicious friends that in connection with the volume as thus constituted there should be presented for the benefit of popular readers a summary account of the Chinese at home, the history of their empire, their manners, arts, institutions, etc., which should be a ground-work for the information and suggestions connected with their relations to us. For some of the chapters devoted to this object (the third to the twelfth) I am indebted chiefly to an English compilation published by Bohn, of London, prepared by various hands, the materials of which were drawn from Gutzlaff's "History of China," Williams' " Middle Kingdom," Davis' "General Description of China," and other well-known and reliable books. To the portions used of this compilation I have made considerable additions, have re-written parts of them, corrected many mistakes and misapprehensions into which compilers not well acquainted with the Chinese people and language would fall, and given to them a more candid and Christian tone. It is a strange thing that we Americans have acquired the fashion of speaking of the Chinese with contempt and dislike. It is a fashion-and it should be changed. In almost all the nations of Southern and Western Asia and of the Continent of Europe, the Empire of China has been generally mentioned and described in language of honor and admiration. Louis the Fourteenth of France, and many other distinguished European monarchs, have taken the warmest interest in its history and institutions, and in the efforts to impart to its people the advanced science and the religious knowledge of the West. Some of the most intelligent of the French nobility have gone to China as religious missionaries, with the royal advice and approbation, and that too at times when it was probable that their lives would be a sacrifice. A leading German philosopher (Frederick Von Schlegel), in summing up the characteristics of the Chinese, says that their skill in agriculture, and "their unique and, in their way, excellent products of industry and manufacture, prove the very high degree of civilization to which this people has attained;" that they are "entitled to a high, even one of the highest, places among civilized nations," and are "remarkable for the utmost polish and refinement of manners." It is hard to account for the common estimate of China and its people in Great Britain and America otherwise than by attributing it to the influence of the bad East India Company and the diabolical opium trade. The Chinese are a heathen people, and much that is evil can truthfully be said against them. But why do we judge them so much more severely than other heathen empires which have not excelled or equaled them in morality? The Romans were a far more depraved and cruel people than the Chinese. Their idolatry was more gross and loathsome. .... "Idols of monstrous guise, Terrific, monstrous shapes, preposterous gods, And yet many of our poets have exhausted the language of praise upon the Romans and their virtues. They have painted a glory which, "Like the day, diffused itself, and still Blesses the earth-the light of genius, virtue, 1 J. DYER, Ruins of Rome. 2 SAMUEL ROGERS, Italy. Can we not then exercise candor in forming our opinions of the Chinese? In the case of a people in whom we and our descendants must be so much interested, it surely becomes us to act with fairness and with charity. They have had reason to judge us, our institutions and our religion with severity. This book is an attempt to make our people better acquainted with them, and to incite efforts which shall lead them to hold a better opinion of us. It will have subserved a good end should it accomplish no more than to bring their manly and indignant REMONSTRANCE TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES thoroughly before the attention of our legislators and people. The volume is made as full and complete as possible, in the free use of a mass of original and other materials which the author has been long accumulating for this end. For any defects which may be discerned in it he can only plead that it has been finally put in shape for the press in hours taken from rest and relaxation amidst the weighty cares of a sacred and responsible office which he dare not neglect. Were he to have attempted a formal dedication of the book it would have been in the line of the work in which he is now engaged to the Christian young men of the United States, whose task and honor it will be, by the diffusion of the blessings of education and the gospel, to accomplish the regeneration of this Newest Empire of the world as the chief human means of effecting that of its Oldest Empire. This seems to be the consummating work which the Church and our nation have to perform in order to prepare the earth for the Kingdom of the Messiah. |