Votre zele est louable, lui dit le missionnaire, mais je n'ai pas maintenant de quoi fournit aune pareille depense.Je pretends bien la faire moi-meme repartit le villageois.Le missionnaire, accoutume ale voir depuis plusieurs annces mener une vie tres-pauvre, le crut hors d'etat d'accomplir ce qu'il promettoit; il loua de nouveau ses bonnes intentions, en lui representant que son village etant tres-considcrable, il y falloit batir une eglise aussi grande que celle qui etait dans la ville voisine; que dans la suite il pourtit y contribuer selon ses forces; mais que seul il ne pourtit surfire a de si grands frais.Excusez moi, reprit le paysan, je me crois en situation de faire ce que je propose.Mais savez vous, repliqua le pere, que pour une parethe entreprise, il faut au moins deux mille ecus? Je les ai tout prets, repondit, le vieillard, et si je ne les avait pas, je n'aurois garde de vous importuner par une semblable demande.Le pere fut charméd'apprendre que ce bon homme, qu'il avoit cru fort pauvre, se trouvat neanmoins avoir tant d'argent comptant, et qu'il voulut l'employer si utilement.
Mais il fut bien plus surpris, lorsqu' ayant eu la curiosite de demander a ce villigeois comment il avoit pu se procurer cette somme, il repondit ingenument que depuis quarante ans qu'il avait concu ce dessein, il retranchait de sa nourriture et de son vetement tout ce qui n'etoit pas absolument necessaire, afin d'avoir, la consolation avant de mourir de laisser dans son village une eglise elevee a l'honneur du vrai Diem Vol.XII.p.363.
To these extracts I am induced to add the two following, as strikingly illustrative of the strange contrasts which the morality of the Chinese exhibits.
"This dominion is tempered," (that of husbands over their wives) "indeed, by the maxims of mild conduct in the different relations of life, inculcated from early childhood, amongst the lowest as well as the highest classes of society.The old persons of a family live generally with the young.
The former serve to moderate any occasional impetuosity, violence, or passion of the latter.The influence of age over youth is supported by the sentiments of nature, by the habit of obedience, by the precepts of morality engrafted in the law of the land, and by the unremitted policy and honest arts of parents to that effect.They who are past labor, deal out the rules which they had learned, and the wisdom which experience taught them, to those who are rising to manhood, or to those lately arrived at it.Plain sentences of morals are written up in the common hall, where the male branches of the family assemble.Some one, at least, is capable of reading them to the rest.In almost every house is hung up a tablet of the ancestors of the persons then residing in it.References are often made, in conversation, to their actions.Their example, as far as it was good, serves as an incitement to travel in the same path.The decendents from a common stock, visit the tombs of their forefathers together, at stated times.This joint care, and indeed other occasions, collect and unite the most remote relations.
They cannot lose sight of each other; and seldom become indifferent to their respective concerns.The child is bound to labor and to provide for his parents maintenance and comfort, and the brother for the brother and sister that are in extreme want, the failure of which duty would be followed by such detestation that it is not necessary to enforce it by positive law.Even the most distant kinsman, reduced to misery by accident or ill health, has a claim on his kindred for relief.Manners, stronger far than laws, and, indeed, inclination, produced and nurtured by intercourse and intimacy, secure assistance for him." Staunton's China , vol.11.
p.21.
"The frail females in the boats had not embraced this double occupation, after having quilted their parents, or on being abandoned by them on account of their misconduct; but the parents themselves, taking no other interest in the chastity of their daughters, than as it might contribute to an advantageous disposal of them to wealthy husbands, feel little reluctance, when no such prospect offers, to devote them to one employment," (that of conveying passengers in boats) "with a view to the profits of another." (of prostitution.)Ibid.p.328.
NOTE G.
According to the view of banking given in the text, it is an art which time, and what we call chance, have wrought out of the circumstances of European society, and the use of which is to quicken the exhaustion of instruments, by facilitating exchanges.But, according to this view of the subject, the consideration of two circumstances generally combined with banking transactions, is omitted.The business of banking has been very often combined with the payment and receipt of the revenue of the state.Whatever the government receives, in lieu of the precious metals, or other commodities, in payment of the imposts it levies, will have the value of that for which it is taken in exchange.Government may so give the value of the precious metals to paper, or any other materials, and, for its own convenience, may circulate the money which it in this manner issues through the medium of a bank.Thus the Bank of England may be said to be rounded on the transactions of this sort, of the British government.
This is, however, a circumstance by no means necessarily connected with banking.Indeed, I think there is reason to believe, that, from the great fluctuations thus introduced into what is called the money market, by the magnitude of the transactions of the state, the union of the two, when it takes place, operates injuriously on the general system of exchange of the country.
