CHINA, (Encycl.) The immense population of China, recorded under that article, n° 55, falls very far short of that recorded by some late authors. In the Memoirs of the History, &c. of the Chinese by the missionaries at Pekin, published at Paris in 1780, we find a controversy on this subject between M. Pau and the ex-jesuit M. Amiott. The former had published a book, intitled "Philosophical Inquiries concerning the Egyptians and Chinese," in which he rates the population of China much below 82 millions. Amiott is so far from being of this opinion, that he estimates their number at 200 millions. To confirm this estimate, he produces a list made in 1743, of all that paid taxes in the respective provinces, that is, of all the heads of families; and, on summing up their numbers, he finds 28,516,428 families; in which enumeration, says he, women, children, and domestics, are not reckoned. The Chinese reckon, at an average, six to a family; M. Amiott reduces this computation to five, and on this supposition makes the inhabitants of China amount to 142,582,400 souls. But in this number the Missionary comprehends neither the grand mandarins, the inferior ones, nor the literati, nor the military, which amount, according to his calculations, to upwards of seven millions; which added to the enumeration abovementioned, make 149,663,000 souls. Fifty millions are nevertheless still wanting to make up the 200 millions at which our Missionary estimates the inhabitants of China. These he finds in the inhabitants of Pekin, which he reckons at two millions, the Manchou Tartars, who live among the Chinese, the tradesmen, the persons employed in the silk manufactures, and the populace of the cities, which are not registered. But the computations of M. Amiott are liable to great difficulties, and are certainly arbitrary and uncertain in several respects. He comprehends in his enumeration districts and provinces that belong to Tartary, and not to China; and he calculates often from registers of the same districts, that are discordant and contradictory. When it is considered, that the enumerations of the inhabitants of China have been different under different dynasties, as all the emperors did not possess the same extent of territory,—that the wars with the Tartars often obliging the Chinese to withdraw in great numbers towards the south, rendered certain provinces more populous at one period than they were at another,—that the numbers of the poor, the straggling labourers, and of those that ply on the rivers, cannot be easily computed,—and that many of the registers are evidently arbitrary; we find ourselves disposed to suspend our determination of the controversy between M. Amiott and M. Pau relative to the object now under consideration. If population had gone on increasing in China, from the third century before the Christian æra (which was the period of their rising power), the Chinese might have sent into Tartary numerous colonies, which would have peopled that country and civilized its inhabitants. But this has not been the case; and notwithstanding all the pompous relations of the Missionaries, it is certain, that a bad administration,—the extortions and oppressive conduct of civil and military officers,—the revolutions occa-
sioned by the establishment of different dynasties,—famine,—epidemics,—inundations,—wars,—massacres—and the fall of great ministers, involving their friends and families in ruin, keep population within certain bounds, and hinder it from rising to a pitch that would produce new and fatal revolutions.