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fund and stated that recent circumstances would render it necessary for me to address a separate communication to your Lordship on the subject.
2. Unquestionably there exists amongst the lower class of Chinese, not only here but throughout the greatest part of their vast empire, an odious prejudice amounting to superstitious horror of allowing a person, whether relative or casual acquaintance, to die in a house inhabited by other parties. They consider that such a house would thereby be rendered unlucky and polluted.
3. This national prejudice is said to be often selfishly availed of, merely to save the trouble and expense of further attendance on the sick; but whether that be the case or not, it is certain that amongst the poorer classes, when a person is thought to be at the point of death or hopelessly ill, he is often carried out to the nearest field or hillside and there left to die.
4. There is doubtless something revoltingly inhuman in the idea that at the moment when human suffering and weakness most require sympathy and aid, they should be thrust forth beyond the reach and hope of either, and that this should often be done with savage indifference to everything but the relief obtained thereby from the ordinary obligations of humanity. Nevertheless, whatever may be the opinion and feeling of Europe in such a matter, it is a fact