Des rapports observés entre les moyens d’existence et l’état social des peuples d’espèce mongole, de

CHAP. 28: > Of the relations observed between the means of existence and the social state of the peoples of the Mongol species, of the Orient and of the center of Asia. — Parallel between the morals of the peoples of this species who live under a cold climate, and the morals of those who live under a temperate climate or under a hot climate.Asia encompasses nations of the three principal divisions that have been made of the human race: it encompasses peoples of the Mongol species, peoples of the Caucasian species, and peoples of the Malay species. The peoples of these three species have sometimes mixed with one another on various points; however, the Asian continent has remained divided in such a way that each species has always exclusively occupied a more or less considerable fraction of it.

In the most western part, the mass of the population is composed of individuals classified under the name of the Caucasian species. At the southern extremity and in the neighboring islands, one finds peoples classified under the name of the Malay species. In the other parts, the mass of the population belongs almost entirely to the Mongol species, or to varieties of this species. It is solely with the morals of the latter that we must occupy ourselves at this moment [1].

In examining which parts of Asia the physical and intellectual faculties of the nations of the Mongol species are the most developed, we have found the weakest, least intelligent, and least numerous peoples under the coldest climates of this vast continent; and we have observed that as one approached the equinoctial line, the men of this species were taller, stronger, more intelligent, or more industrious. It is now a matter of knowing whether the same gradation that we have observed relative to physical and intellectual development exists relative to moral development; whether, starting from the coldest climates and approaching the equator, we will find that the benevolent passions develop, and that the contrary passions weaken or are extinguished; whether there exists among the peoples of hot climates less activity, energy, or courage than among the peoples of cold climates.

The peoples who inhabit the northern extremity of America, those of the Aleutian Islands placed between the north of America and Asia, and those who inhabit the northeast of this latter continent, all belong to the same species of men. I have made known the coarse and barbarous morals of the former, in speaking of the peoples of North America [2]. We are about to see that the morals of the tribes of northeast Asia and of the islands that seem to link this continent to that of America are neither gentler nor purer [3].

The inhabitants of Kamchatka and those of the Aleutian Islands have never risen above the state of hunter and fisher peoples. The land, the rivers, and the sea have therefore always been common properties among them. No other private properties could have existed than their dwellings, their hunting or fishing instruments, and their provisions. They have therefore had almost no need of government; in time of peace and in time of war, a chief was sufficient for them to direct them in their expeditions. Their principal relations must have been, consequently, relations from individual to individual, or from horde to horde.

At the arrival of the Russians in this country, women were treated as slaves. A man sometimes had five or six of them, and as he could not maintain order among them by means of his eunuchs, he had each of them inhabit a separate yurt. Women being considered the property of the one who possessed them, a husband who received a visit had nothing more pressing than to offer one of his to his guest; if he had only one, he offered him his daughter. Women were exchanged, rented, sold at the pleasure of their possessor; in time of scarcity, a husband would give his for a bladder filled with fat, and he believed he was making an excellent bargain. There is no need to state the evils to which women were subjected: one can have an idea of them, from what has been seen among peoples placed in similar circumstances. The contempt for women led men into a vice that was long thought to be particular to the peoples of hot climates: this vice was so common and inspired so little shame, that several individuals had a male lover disguised as a woman.

The relations that existed between parents and children were analogous to those that existed between the two sexes. A father treated his children as he treated his wives: he lent them, rented them, or sold them; and to cede ownership of them he was sometimes content with things of the smallest value. For their part, the children, when they had reached a certain age, had no respect for the elderly, and treated them as they themselves had been treated in their infancy. These peoples had no idea of cleanliness nor of modesty.

In their relations from individual to individual, the islanders were ceaselessly quarreling, and they committed murder without remorse. In their relations from horde to horde, they were always at war with one another: women were the booty they proposed for themselves in their expeditions. With regard to the foreigners who visited them, they were coarse and inhospitable [4].

These morals have probably been modified by the sojourn and by the domination of the Russians: it is difficult to believe, however, that they have gained much, when one sees that the population, far from increasing since they have been established in its midst, has greatly diminished. One would, moreover, have some difficulty in determining what kind of virtue could have been born of servitude. These peoples appear, besides, to have been easily subjugated: in the judgment of the Russians, there are nowhere men more docile and more disposed to submit to the yoke than the inhabitants of Kamchatka. One cannot, however, attribute their weaknesses or their vices to the heat of the climate, since winter lasts nine or ten months among them, and, during the greater part of this season, the country is covered with nine or ten feet of snow.

The Kuril Islands, which in a way unite Kamchatka to the islands of Japan, and which evidently belong to the same mountain chain, are situated under a less cold latitude than the Aleutian Islands. The peoples who inhabit them are, however, strangers to the agricultural life: hunting and fishing furnish them their principal means of existence. These peoples, if one judges them by those of the island of Sakhalin, with whom they have several connections, appear to have much less barbarous morals than those of the islands closer to the north; but they are not well enough known for it to be possible to describe their social state.

The islands of Japan, which embrace about fifteen degrees of latitude, have a very variable climate throughout the course of the year. The winters there are cold; the snow remains for several days on the ground, even in the southern part. The heats of summer are often moderated there by the winds that blow from the sea. However, the peoples of these islands have been cited as examples of the corrupting influence that the heat of the climate exercises on the moral character of nations. Montesquieu speaks of the atrocious morals of the Japanese, as if in effect this people were the most corrupt and most ferocious on earth; but, besides the fact that he is mistaken as to the temperature of the climate, the authorities on which he relies generally deserve rather little confidence. Missionaries who, after having been welcomed, honored, and respected by a nation that had not called them, attempt to deliver it to a foreign power and have themselves banished as conspirators, may be suspected of some partiality when they speak of it.

Since a conspiracy formed by the Portuguese in these islands, in 1737, caused all Europeans to be excluded from them, with the exception of the Dutch, navigators have had few relations with the inhabitants; however, it is easy to be convinced, by the little they report of them and especially by the voyage of Thunberg, who penetrated into the country with the Dutch, that the moral character of the Japanese is, in many respects, superior to the moral character of the islanders higher to the north.

The Japanese have made very great progress in all the arts. The land, divided into private properties, is well cultivated among them; they therefore have a more or less complicated government. According to travelers, this government is theocratic and absolute. Thunberg assures, however, that the prince conducts himself with much circumspection, according to the laws of the country and the counsel of the grandees. He says that the functions of the administrators last only five years; that at the end of this term, they return to private life, and are obliged to render an account of their management; finally, that everyone can easily obtain justice for the wrongs he has experienced [5]. Nothing demonstrates that these agents of authority allow themselves to be easily corrupted, and the impossibility in which the Russians found themselves of having anything accepted by an officer of the Japanese government, even at the extremity of the empire, leads one to presume the contrary [6]. Finally, it is without example that the Japanese have attempted to make conquests, and they have always repulsed the attacks that have been made on their independence; characteristics of moderation and courage of which few nations can boast [7].

The Japanese, having never been either conquerors or conquered, know neither domestic slavery, nor the enslavement of the soil, and the slave trade horrifies them. Among them, each one exercises the trade he pleases to choose, and establishes himself in such place of the empire as seems good to him. Their government pays them on the spot for all that it buys from them; it has the main roads maintained with extreme care, and the prosperity of the country is such that, according to Thunberg, no other can equal it.

The women of Japan enjoy great liberty, and consequently polygamy is out of use among this people, although it is not formally prohibited. The children are raised with gentleness; they are never mistreated; one even abstains from speaking to them in a harsh manner. Gentleness is so natural to the men of this country, that they were revolted by the brutal manner in which the Dutch treated their servants. Having frugality and foresight, one rarely encounters debauchery or drunkenness among them; famine is unknown to them, and they do not even appear subject to experiencing scarcities; the vices that these two calamities engender are therefore foreign to them. Having been deceived by the Europeans, they have become circumspect with regard to them; but they are naturally good and trusting [8].

The Japanese doubtless have their vices like all peoples; they appear not to place the same importance as we do on the chastity of unmarried women; they give their sovereign and his officers marks of respect that our morals reprove; their national pride is very exalted, although it perhaps differs from that of other peoples only in that it is less dissimulated; but, all things considered, they enjoy a sum of civil liberty infinitely greater and they have less vicious morals than any of the peoples of northern Asia and even of northern Europe [9].

The inhabitants of the Lieu-Kieu Islands, who appear to be of the same race as the Japanese, who have adopted the same policy relative to foreigners, and who are much closer to the equinoctial line, have made themselves known to European navigators only by a politeness and by a generosity that one would perhaps find among no other people. Not only did they welcome with gentleness the travelers who lacked assistance, and showed them the part they took in their sufferings; but they gave them gratuitously and in as great a quantity as they could desire, all the provisions they needed. They did not admit them to visit the interior of their islands, since it appears that their laws are opposed to it; but they refused them this favor with gentleness and while testifying regret at not being able to grant it to them [10]. These peoples, as industrious and as anciently civilized as the Chinese, are however closer to the equator than the inhabitants of the islands of Japan by about ten degrees, and they should, consequently, have two or three times more vices, and be subjected to a much more tyrannical government. They appear to be the happiest peoples of Asia.

The peoples of China all belong to the Mongol species; but they are divided, like the peoples of the center of America, into two very distinct classes, each having particular morals: the class of the conquerors and that of the conquered. The Tatars, who form the first, who are the least numerous, and who always fear being pushed back into the north from which they came, have sought to take on the morals of the vanquished. They have taken their language, their forms of government, their costume; but, despite themselves and despite the influence of climates, they have preserved their primitive morals [11]. They are coarse, and proud, and would know no other trade than that of soldier, if they were not obliged to contribute to the labors of agriculture. Their principal occupation consists in maintaining the domination of their chief, and in living like him on the multitude that works [12]. Idleness, pride, ignorance, and contempt for the laboring classes are the characteristics of the descendants of the conquerors, in the empire of China, as in all the countries of the world, under whatever latitude they may be situated. The honors they are forced to render to agriculture prove only the empire that a civilized people exercises over the very barbarians who have conquered it.

Although the Tatar chief who is at the head of the empire has taken the language, the laws, and the costume of the vanquished nation, although he was born in the country and several generations have passed since the conquest, he preserves for all the descendants of the conquerors the partiality that his ancestors naturally had for their fathers; he always considers himself and is considered by his subjects as a Tatar; it is from among the Tatars that he takes his soldiers, his officers, his ministers, his trusted servants, his wives, his concubines, his domestics, and even his eunuchs [13].

The same partiality that the chief of the empire shows for men of Tatar origin is manifested in his ministers. In all the difficulties that take place between the Tatars and the Chinese, says Macartney, partiality has occasion to manifest itself; and one must hardly expect the balance of justice to be held with a firm hand between the conqueror and the vanquished. This evil is, however, little felt in the southern provinces, where one finds no other Tatars than those who are raised to the first employments [14]. The pride and superiority affected by the men of this race are still such that they frighten the descendants of the vanquished, and that a Chinese, whatever his dignity, dares scarcely sit down before a Tatar of the same rank [15]. This will astonish us little, if we pay attention that an industrious, agricultural, and peace-loving people is subjected to an army of a million foot soldiers and nine hundred thousand cavalrymen [16].

A secret antipathy reigns between these two peoples. The Chinese consider their conquerors as barbarians, ignorant, deceitful, coarse, and wicked; they make the vices of the Tatars the habitual subjects of their conversations; they designate treason and wickedness by the very name of their nation [17]. For their part, the Tatars, convinced of the hatred that oppression engenders, feel for the Chinese the same antipathy that they inspire in them, and know poorly how to hide it; however numerous their army may be, they have no confidence in the duration of their domination; they seem convinced that a subjugated people can put an end to its humiliations and its sufferings only by the expulsion or the ruin of the race of its vanquishers; and, as they do not want to leave the remains of their ancestors among an enemy people, they have them carried to the land that was the cradle of their power [18].

The Chinese do not know imprisonment; they appear not to know either the punishments we call purely infamous; they consequently punish offenses only by corporal punishments: the bamboo and exile for small offenses, and for great ones strangulation. The first of these punishments can be graduated, from a simple threat, to the most cruel torture; it therefore leaves an immense latitude to the arbitrary; it reaches everyone indiscriminately, from the first minister to the last of the laborers; it falls on the individual of Tatar origin with as much rigor as on the Chinese; to have it inflicted, only a complaint and the order of a civil officer are needed; it is often inflicted by anger, and in a cruel manner [19]. There, assuredly, is despotism; but it is remarkable that this despotism is of exactly the same nature as that which is exercised in the north of Europe and Asia; the only difference one observes between the one and the other is that the one that exists in the cold countries is the most violent [20].A portion of the population of China is incidentally subject to certain forms of forced labor for the government, for which they then receive only a very meager wage [21]. On occasions when the multitude gathers, the police officers are armed with whips with which they strike the ground [22]. Sumptuary laws place limits on private expenditures, and thus hinder the disposition of property [23]. Finally, in case of insolvency, a debtor and the members of his family can be reduced to slavery [24]. These laws and some other analogous ones can only belong to nations that are not entirely free; and the peoples of Europe may be right to prefer to the police of the Chinese a police force with bayonets that do not strike the ground [25].

We must not, however, let these customs or these laws make us forget that the Chinese are not slaves of the soil; that there are no slaves among them except for individuals who sell themselves or insolvent debtors [26]; that even these may, after a certain time, claim their liberty; that they are subject only to an invariable tax on the products of the land, and that this tax takes from them only a tenth of their revenues; that they are ignorant of that multitude of contributions under which all the free peoples of Europe groan; that their emperor cannot condemn anyone to death by his private authority; that, if he wishes to ruin or oppress an enemy, he is obliged to corrupt or intimidate the judges, which is not always necessary among the peoples of the north; that the government subjects the officials it appoints to trials unknown in the States that claim to be the freest; that, in an empire that surpasses the entire population of Europe by more than 117 million souls, the number of those condemned to capital punishment rarely rises above 200 in a fairly long period of time; that all their trials are reviewed in the capital of the empire; finally, that there exists in the country no privileged class, and that if the throne is hereditary in the reigning family, the prince can always choose as his successor the one of his children who seems to him the most worthy to govern [27].

Freedom of worship is more complete in China than in any place in the world, not excepting the United States of America: no dominant religion is known there; the government neither pays nor encourages any priest; no tax is established in favor of any clergy. Everyone works or rests on the days he pleases, having in this regard no other rules than his needs and his personal opinions: the temples are open every day, and one prays when one deems it useful. One does not profess a religious opinion to court power; the emperor has his religion; the mandarins have theirs; the majority of the people has its own. Everyone pays his priests, if he sees fit, Christians like the others. The priests are not at all fanatical; they have pure and regular morals, and enjoy only the consideration that attaches to personal merit [28].

The Chinese have known, like all the peoples of the earth, religious persecutions: every time the government has believed it should grant particular protection to a religion, there have been found in that religion hypocrites or fanatics who have persuaded it that it was in its interest and its duty to proscribe all the others. One then saw disputes, quarrels, massacres: the priests of the dominant party slaughtered their adversaries, overturned their temples; but, since the Tatar dynasty has been established, no religion having received particular marks of its favor, they have all lived in harmony [29].

When, among a people, there reigns a complete freedom of religious opinion, one can reasonably believe that freedom of thought is very little constrained, at least on all matters that do not touch upon the government. Thus, there exists in China no restriction on the freedom of the press: no precaution, no measure prior to publication, prevents the emission of thought there. Everyone can, at his own risk, publish what he deems useful, and the profession of printer is freer there than the most common of trades is elsewhere [30]. It is very probable that the fear of punishments is sufficient to repress license and restrain liberty; but this fear, with which not all governments would be content, is far less of a constraint on men than the debasing measures to which peoples who claim that despotism is relegated to Asia submit without a murmur [31].

Polygamy and the seclusion of women, which is its ordinary consequence, are permitted in China; and there is no doubt that several kinds of vices result from it. Women are given to men they have never seen; one could say that the terms are equal between the spouses, since the men accept women they do not know; but in case of error on one side or the other, it is clear that the disadvantage is always on the side of weakness [32]. It is probable, however, that in China as in Persia, before concluding a marriage, both parties know who the person is they are to marry. According to Chardin, the male or female reporters or matchmakers have such exactitude in this regard that one is more informed after having heard them than if one had seen the person oneself. And as the intellectual faculties of women are counted for nothing, as seclusion is a sufficient guarantee of their virtue, and finally as physical qualities are the only ones that are valued, it is very probable that the inconveniences resulting from this manner of proceeding are not as serious as they appear to us. There are many countries where no more value is placed on the intelligence of women than in China, where one is less assured of their chastity, and where one knows them no better, although one is permitted to see them. All things considered, there are perhaps as many deceived husbands in the countries where the sexes enjoy the freest association as in the Asiatic States [33].

Montesquieu attributes polygamy and the seclusion of women in Asia to the heat of the climate; but, besides the fact that the greater part of China's territory is under a very temperate climate, women are more enslaved as one approaches the cold climates. The emperor of China populates his seraglio only by means of the women who are voluntarily delivered to him by their own parents; whereas the Khan of the Tatars chooses those who suit him, and, according to the report made to the English ambassador, no girl can marry before it has been examined by eunuchs whether she is worthy of the seraglio [34]. In Asia, polygamy, the servitude of women, and castration thus exist in the coldest climates as in the hottest countries, and everywhere they are followed by the same consequences. In the Chinese empire, as in Persia and in all countries where the plurality of women takes place, it is, moreover, only a luxury that a small number of rich and powerful persons permit themselves, but which the mass of the population does not know. In the lower ranks of society, women are not secluded, and they engage in very harsh labors [35].

According to Barrow, the Chinese are the most timid and most cowardly people on the surface of the earth; they thank the magistrate who punishes them, and kiss the bamboo that strikes them; the mere act of drawing a sword or presenting a pistol is enough to make them fall into convulsions. It is very possible, indeed, that a people to whom all the arts and all the habits of war are foreign is not endowed with that kind of courage so common among the peoples of Europe. We see among us multitudes of men whom the sight of a police officer, or the threat of a civil magistrate, makes tremble in all their limbs, and who would not dare to speak their mind in the presence of two witnesses. These men, judged by the inhabitants of a free country, would be the most cowardly and most vile of mortals; but let them be placed before a battery and let their chief order them to go and get themselves killed, they will go. These diverse kinds of cowardice and courage cannot be productions of the climate, since they are found at once on the same soil. The governing Tatars are no less exposed to the influence of the climate than the governed Chinese; how then would they be less fearful?

It is difficult, moreover, to be persuaded that this cowardice with which the population of China is reproached is very real, or at least that it is general, when the same travelers who speak of it tell us that one should hardly expect the Tatar dynasty to maintain itself long enough on the throne to merge with the Chinese [36]; that, despite the numerous armies of the government, bands of thieves are formed that are so formidable that they threaten the most populous cities [37]; that, without reasoning on the right to change their government, several of them are pleased to regard such a change as proper to improve their condition; that they are inclined to take part in the revolts that frequently manifest themselves, now in one province and now in another [38]; that the simple declaration of the rights of man could produce fermentation among them, because they are susceptible to strong impressions and disposed to enterprises; that there exist among them men whose principles are based on a hatred of monarchy, and who have the hope of overthrowing it [39]; finally, when we see that a few pirates of the same nation inspire terror in all the southern provinces, and make a general insurrection feared there [40].

Inactivity and laziness being considered as particular to hot climates, one will not be astonished that the Chinese, who for the most part inhabit a temperate and variable climate, are active and laborious [41]; but what will doubtless be astonishing is that activity appears to increase as one advances toward the equinoctial line. At Ting-Hai, less than thirty degrees from the equator, industry and activity reign throughout the city; men pass with a busy air in the streets; no one asks for alms; everyone, without exception, appears to be engaged in work [42]. The activity of the Chinese is the same between the tropics: at Macao their industry is ceaselessly active. It is true that the Portuguese, who possess this island as conquerors, have brought there that antipathy for labor common to all possessors of men. When they cannot live on taxes, they go into the streets, head high and sword at their side, to nobly ask for alms; but it is conquest, and not the heat of the climate, that has made gentlemen of them [43]; at Manila, where one sees thousands of Portuguese, they are ceaselessly active, alongside the lazy Spanish [44].

The Dutch colonies placed almost under the equator offer a still more striking contrast. There, under the same latitude and on the same soil, one finds three different populations: the Dutch, conquerors and masters; the natives, conquered or purchased slaves; and some Chinese who have come freely to establish themselves there, and who have the liberty to leave the country. The Dutch, so active, so industrious, so economical in their native land, have, in the island of Java, all the habits and all the vices of conquerors: they have their idleness, pride, insolence, prodigality, luxury, and above all, cruelty. There exists no difference between them and an army of soldiers except that they have joined the calculation and avidity of commerce to the vices proper to all conquerors. The slaves and the subjugated population are cowardly, indolent, lazy; a multitude of them is needed to execute what a single free person would do with ease [45]. Finally, a hundred thousand Chinese, who are neither victors nor vanquished, and who have neither the pride of the former nor the baseness of the latter, execute all the labors. These industrious peoples, according to Barrow, alone exercise all the professions. They cultivate the land, supply the markets with vegetables, poultry, and meat; they gather the rice, pepper, coffee, and sugar necessary for consumption and for export. They trade in the interior and on the coasts; they serve as brokers, factors, and interpreters for the Dutch and the natives. They lease and collect the taxes and revenues from one another; in a word, they have the monopoly of the entire island [46]. The same traveler says elsewhere that at Batavia the Chinese are masons, carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, retail merchants, and brokers; that they do everything that requires care and trouble, and that, without them, the Dutch would run the risk of dying of hunger. These same Chinese who are distinguished by their activity and by their love for work, are noted for their peaceful morals and for their honesty [47].

The inhabitants of the Celebes, who live under the equator, are agile, robust, industrious, and have much courage. Other peoples situated under the same latitude and in the same regions, such as the Papuans, the inhabitants of Ceram and of the Mindanao islands, are distinguished, if not by their civilization, at least by their energy and their audacity [48]. Finally, the peoples of Asia who inhabit the closest to the equator, those of the Malay Peninsula, are also its most courageous and most energetic.

“These barbarians,” says Raynal, “outdo their ancient morals, where the strong made it a point of honor to attack the weak: animated today by an inexplicable fury to perish or to kill, they go with a boat of thirty men to board our vessels, and sometimes they capture them. If they are repulsed, it is not at least without carrying away with them the consolation of having slaked their thirst with blood. A people to whom nature has given this inflexibility of courage, may well be exterminated, but not submitted by force [49].”

It is just to observe that these latter peoples are classified among those who belong to the Malay species.

The travelers who speak of the domestic morals of the Chinese give an unfavorable account of them; but it is not clear how men who have been kept under close guard could have judged them; and they are not always in agreement with themselves [50]. The Chinese are accused of lacking good faith in their commerce with the Europeans; and on this point the testimonies are far from being in agreement. It seems that, in many cases, travelers have given more faith to the reports that were made to them than to their own experience.

“We had,” says Barrow, “convincing and repeated proofs of the sobriety, honesty, attentiveness, and delicacy of our crews and of all the Chinese who approached us [51].” Are there many foreigners who could give such praise to the population of Paris or of London?

Macartney observed that the Chinese could engage in moderate labor for a longer duration of time than most Europeans of the lower classes. He sought the cause of this phenomenon, and he believed he saw it in the superiority of education and morals of the former. They are given, he says, better and healthier habits from an early age; they remain longer under the direction of their parents. They are for the most part sober; they marry young; they are less exposed to the temptations of debauchery, and less subject to contracting diseases that corrupt the sources of life [52].

At the same time that the general class of merchants is accused of lacking good faith and probity, it is said that they must not be confused with those who deal with the Europeans at Canton, under the immediate sanction of the government, and who have always been noted for their loyalty and their scrupulous exactness [53].

“We have, in several respects,” says George Dixon, “incontestable proofs of the superiority of their police over all the countries of the world; for the English supercargoes often leave at Canton, when they depart for Macao, a sum of at least one hundred thousand pounds sterling, and have no other security than the seal of the members of the Hong and of the mandarins [54].”

However, the complaints made by the European merchants who frequent the port of Canton are too general for them to be devoid of foundation: but is it quite certain that, if Chinese merchants came to trade in the principal cities of Europe, without understanding a single word of our languages, and without knowing any of our habits, they would not have the same complaints to make? Does one think that a Chinese vessel that came into the ports of London would have less to fear from the avidity, the ruses, the civilities of the individuals who would go to offer it their services, than a European vessel in the ports of China? Does one believe, finally, that the picture he would have to paint of the populace that had surrounded him during his stay, would be an exact representation of the population he had not seen?Be that as it may, it is not a question here of comparing peoples of the Mongol species to peoples of the Caucasian species; it is only a matter of expounding the circumstances under which peoples belonging to the same species prosper best, and the positions in which certain passions develop in preference to others.

We have seen that as one advances from the north toward the equinoctial line, the population of China becomes more active and more industrious; that at Ting-Hai everyone, without exception, appears to be engaged in work, and that no one there begs for alms. We have also seen that, in the islands of Asia situated between the tropics, the Chinese distinguish themselves among all other nations by their probity and the purity of their morals, while those further to the north are subject to grave reproaches. The reason for these phenomena is found in the manner in which the conquerors spread throughout the country. The greatest number are found around their chief; there, consequently, activity, industry, and respect for property are held in little honor. In the southern provinces of China, on the contrary, one finds no Tatars other than those who fill the highest offices: it is therefore the morals of the men of the country that dominate there: the vices and prejudices imported from the center of Asia can scarcely make themselves felt there.

Do the peoples of the Mongol species, of the north and northeast of Asia, have gentler and purer morals than the peoples of the same species from the southeast or the south? Do they have more generosity, frankness, and above all, liberty? The greater part of the north of Asia and of Europe, from the Sea of Kamchatka to the Baltic Sea, is part of the Russian empire. We have already seen what the virtues and the sum of liberty belonging to some of the peoples spread across this immense territory amount to; we will see later what virtues and liberty exist in the other parts of the Russian empire. It remains to be seen whether the Tatars who are not yet independent are freer and more virtuous than the Chinese.

“The military life,” says Macartney, “is better suited for a Tatar than for a Chinese. The harsh education, coarse morals, active spirit, vagabond inclinations, lax principles, and irregular conduct of the Tatar are more suited to war than the calm, regulated habits, and the domestic, moral, and philosophical tastes of the Chinese. Tatary seems made to produce warriors, and China literati [55].”