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The accounts of all travellers, inconsistent in many other

respects, agree in the low wages of labour, and in the difficulty

which a labourer finds in bringing up a family in China. If by

digging the ground a whole day he can get what will purchase a

small quantity of rice in the evening, he is contented. The

condition of artificers is, if possible, still worse. Instead of

waiting indolently in their work-houses for the calls of their

customers, as in Europe, they are continually running about the

streets with the tools of their respective trades, offering their

services, and, as it were, begging employment. The poverty of the

lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most

beggarly nations in Europe. In the neighbourhood of Canton, many

hundred, it is commonly said, many thousand families have no

habitation on the land, but live constantly in little

fishing-boats upon the rivers and canals.