Europe will prove that this is not a high proportion; and on examining the amount of revenue or taxation, together with the number of troops, it will be seen that China is less taxed and less armed than any other country equally civilised and of equal political importance. As some of the details of the Chinese revenue and expenditure may be interesting to many readers, I append the following items, which are taken from an article in the China Mail,' written, I have reason to believe, by Dr. Bridgeman, in 1848. Land-tax ESTIMATED REVENUE. .. Taels of Silver. Grain, rice, &c., received in kind, valued at 9,438,670 The expenditure return is too long to be given in full, and I shall only draw attention to a few important and remarkable items :--- Taels. Pay to civilians, police, and military officers 7,087,198 668,337 CHAPTER III. Missions.1 THE geographical labours performed in China by the Jesuits and other missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith will ever command the gratitude and excite the wonder of all geographers. Travellers who visit foreign countries with the purpose of ascertaining and fixing unknown points of latitude and longitude well know, even with all the modern discoveries and appliances that they have to aid them, how difficult it is to obtain accurate results. Portable chronometers and aneroid barometers, boiling-point thermometers, sextants and theodolites, sympiesometers and micrometers, compasses and artificial horizons, are, notwithstanding all possible care, frequently found to fail; and yet one hundred and fifty years ago a few wandering European priests traversed the enormous state of China proper, and laid down on their maps the positions of cities, the direction of rivers, and the height of mountains with a correctness of detail and a general accuracy of outline that are absolutely marvellous. To this day all our maps are based upon their 1 The actions of the European missionaries have been of such consequence in bringing about the present rebellion, that I have deemed it advisable to devote this chapter to the consideration of the past and present state of the foreign missions, chiefly for the purpose of endeavouring to ascertain what has been the effect of their religious and scientific teaching upon the Chinese nation. observations; and in the few instances in which our modern surveyors have had opportunities to examine carefully certain points, especially on the borders of the Yang-zte-kiang, their errors have been found to be so slight as to be barely worthy of notice, except for the stricter purposes of geographical inquiry. To these missionaries the Chinese are not only principally indebted for a knowledge of the extent of their own country, but also for much of their present improved state of astronomical science. Late in the seventeenth century, the wisest monarch that has yet governed the empire1 passed much of his time in studying, under the direction of the Fathers Gerbillon, Bouvet, and Thomas, arithmetic, Euclid, and some of the higher branches of mathematics. A century earlier, the Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci, a pupil of the celebrated Clavius, and a man of remarkable intellect, found his way, after severe privations, to Pekin, and there for many years spread his knowledge and his religion. At the close of the last century, the most famous man in the Board of Mathematics was M. Raux, a Lazarist missionary, one of the noble and devoted order of St. Vincent de Paul. The well-known Père Verbiest not only took a leading position at the Astronomical Board during the reign of Kang-hi, but added to his fame by writing several important mathematical works in the Chinese language. He also undertook to teach the process of casting cannon, and was personally most successful in producing numerous pieces of considerable calibre. 1 Kang-hi. Even the act by which the Roman Catholic missionaries drew upon themselves and their converts the terrible persecution in the year 1805, and which threatened the existence of Chinese Christianity, is traceable to the laudable desire to impart to their brethren in Europe some reliable information respecting the provincial divisions of the empire. But the whole history of the endeavours to spread the Christian faith in China and the immediately adjacent countries presents a singular instance of the unwearied devotion of its propagators; and there are but few more instructive works than the volumes of letters in which their efforts are rcorded.1 In the year 1625 some labouring masons, who were employed in digging under the ruins of a few old houses situated near the walls of Singan, the capital of the north-western province of Shensi, discovered a large slab of marble, upon which was written a full account of the earliest introduction of Christianity. The inscription bore the date of A.D. 781, and referred to the arrival and subsequent labours of the Nestorians. According to this tablet, it appears that a man named Olopun, a traveller from Syria, was the first Christian that planted his foot in China (A.D. 636). For seven hundred years the Nestorians spared no efforts in attempting to proselytize the people, and, had it not been for the then powerful opposition of the Buddhists, 1 The persecution, which lasted for several years, was caused by the discovery of a map that the Père Adéodat was forwarding to Europe, and which was supposed by the suspicious Chinese authorities to have been drawn up for the purpose of showing to the Western Powers the assailable points of the country. would probably have been comparatively successful. In the ninth century they possessed many churches, and had a considerable number of converts. At present, however, no trace of either exists; and, but for the chance discovery of the tablet, and a few allusions made to them in the letters of the early Catholic bishops, it is doubtful whether they or their works would now have been known. The mendicant order of St. Francis had the honour of being the first to supply brethren for the purpose of spreading Roman Catholicism in China. John de Monte Corvino, a Franciscan, was, by Clement V., in 1307, appointed Bishop of Pekin (or, as it was then called, Cambalu). In 1333 Nicolas de Bentra, also a Franciscan, succeeded him. Under the tolerant rule of Kubla-khan and his successors, their subjects were allowed perfect immunity with regard to religious opinions; and throughout their dominions were to be found Nestorian and Roman Catholic Christians, together with Buddhists, Jews, and the fast-spreading Mahometans. Corvino, a few years after his installation, boasted of having already obtained several thousand converts, and built numerous churches. This zealous man did not choose to rest content with even this result, but, during his residence at Pekin, mastered the Tartar language, and translated into it the Psalms and the whole of the New Testament. To the dissensions between the Franciscans and the Nestorians must be attributed the want of success that attended the development of Christianity, which at this period was becoming very prevalent in the north-west provinces, |