第70章

From the same cause, much land, that in other countries would be cultivated, lies waste.All travellers take notice of large tracts of land, chiefly swamps, which continue in a state of nature.To bring a swamp into tillage is generally a process, to complete which, requires several years.It must be previously drained, the surface long exposed to the sun, and many operations performed, before it can be made capable of bearing a crop.Though yielding, probably a very considerable return for the labor bestowed on it, that return is not made until a long time has elapsed.The cultivation of such land implies a greater strength of the effective desire of accumulation than exists in the empire.(40)The produce of the harvest is, as we have remarked, always an instrument of some order or another, it is a provision for future want, and regulated by the same laws as those to which other means of attaining a similar end conform.It is there chiefly flee, of which there are two harvests, the one in June, the other in October.The period then of eight months, between October and June, is that, for which provision is made each year, and the different estimate they make of to-day and this day eight months, will appear in the self-denial they practise now, in order to guard against want then.The amount of this self-denial, would seem to be small.The father Parennin, indeed, asserts, that it is their great deficiency in forethought and frugality in this respect, which is the cause of the scarcities and famines, that frequently occur."I believe," he says, "that, notwithstanding its great number of inhabitants, China would furnish enough of grain for all, but that there is not sufficient economy observed in its consumption, and that they employ an astonishing quantity of it in the manufacture of the wine of the country, and of raque." As confirmative of his observations he remarks, the number of fires occasioned by the habit of drinking to excess before going to bed, and the prevalence, among the lower orders, of a malady called ye-che, produced by the same vice.(41)A document given in the Jesuit's Letters, a translation from the Gazette of the empire in 1725, probably shows nearly what order instruments of this sort, and therefore of all sorts, really belong to; that is, the difference between a quantity of rice, or of any thing else, in possession at the end of harvest, and a quantity to be had in spring.It proceeds on the supposition that three bushels at the former period are equivalent, and, in ordinary years, when there is neither famine nor scarcity, will produce four at the latter.By purchasing at the former period, and selling at the latter, the writer therefore estimates, that thirty bushels will, at the end of five years, produce more than one hundred.The estimate is perhaps a little high, but from the nature of it, of the individual from whom it comes, and those to whom it is addressed, it is unreasonable to suppose that it is much too high.Taken in conjunction with a description of a scheme for raising funds, of which an account is subjoined, (42) it indicates that instruments in China are about the order D.

The deficiency of the strength of the effective desire of accumulation, is balanced by the smallness of the necessary cost of subsistence, and wages of labor, and by the great progress which has been made in the knowledge of the arts suited to the nature of the country, and the wants of its inhabitants.

Where the returns are quick, where the instruments formed require but little time to bring the events for which they are formed to an issue, even the defective principle of accumulation of the Chinese is able to grasp a very large compass of materials.

The warmth of the climate, the natural fertility of the country, the knowledge which the inhabitants have acquired of the arts of agriculture, and the discovery and gradual adaptation to every soil of a variety of the most useful vegetable productions enable them very speedily to draw from almost any part of the surface, what is there esteemed an equivalent to much more than the labor bestowed in tilling and cropping it.They have commonly double, sometimes, treble harvests.These, when they consist of a grain so productive as rice, the usual crop, can scarce fail to yield to their skill, from almost any portion of soil that can be at once brought into culture, very ample returns.Accordingly there is no spot that labor can immediately bring under cultivation, that is not made to yield to it.

Hills, even mountains, are ascended and formed into terraces; and water, in that country the great productive agent, is led to every part by drains, or carried up to it by the ingenious and simple hydraulic machines, which have been in use from time immemorial among this singular people.They effect this the more easily from the soil, even in these situations, being very deep and covered with much vegetable mould.But what yet more than this marks the readiness with which labor is found to form the most difficult materials into instruments, where these instruments soon bring to an issue the events for which they are formed, is the frequent occurrence on many of their lakes and waters of structures resembling the floating gardens of the Peruvians, rafts covered with vegetable soil and cultivated.Labor in this way draws from the materials on which it acts very speedy returns.

Nothing can exceed the luxuriance of vegetation, when the quickening powers of a genial sun are ministered to by a rich soil, and abundant moisture.