Title: A Peep at China in Mr. Dunn’s Chinese Collection; with Miscellaneous Notices Relating to the Institutions and Customs of the Chinese, and the Commercial Intercourse with Them.

Author: By E.C. Wines.

Printed for Nathan Dunn

Year Published: 1839

“We will close this very imperfect notice of the Chinese criminal law, with the following testimony of an able writer in the Edinburgh Review. He says: “The most remarkable thing in this code is its great reasonableness, clearness, and consistency; the business-like brevity and directness of the various provisions, and the plainess and moderation of the language in which they are expressed. It is a clear, concise, and distinct series of enactments, savouring throughout of practical judgement and European good sense. When we turn from the ravings of the Zendavesta, or the Puranas, to the tone of sense and of business of this Chinese collection, we seem to be passing from darkness to light, from the drivellings of dotage to the exercise of an improved understanding: and, redundant and minute as these laws are in many particulars, we scarecely know any European code that is at once so copious and so consistent, or that is nearly so free from intricacy, bigotry and fiction.”

page 89-90

Wow.  That is quite a description of Chinese law.  I wonder if today’s Chinese law is as good as it was back then!?!

“The population of China has been variously estimated. Lord Macartney states the number of inhabitants at 333,000,000; Dr. Morrison’s son at 360,000,000. It is well known that the learned doctor’s own estimate was only 150,000,000, but he stated to Mr. Dunn, two years before his death, that he was then convinced that the highest number ever given did not exceed the true one. Wherever the truth may lie, it is certain that every part of the Empire teems with life.”

page 94

I love that.  Every part of this empire is teeming with life.  True.  So true.

“…when Rome was still an infant, and the Grecian philosophy among the things to be, China had produced a sage, second only, in the long catalogue of heathen philosophers, to the illustrious and pure minded Socrates.”

page 97

This puts China and her history in perspective with the rest of the west.  Wow!

The book can be found here.

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