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A Chinese Chrestomathy.
APRIL,
encouragements to induce the young men in their factory at Canton to study the Chinese language. We know, also, that both at Malacca and Singapore the British government has made grants of money fur the education of Chinese youths. Yet neither at the Straits of Ma- lacca nor in China, either at any previous time or at present, has this subject received all the consideration which it demands from the British government; while by all other governments, the Portuguese only excepted, it has received little or no attention, nor were their circumstances such as to require it. We are glad to know, however, that her Britannic majesty's plenipotentiary has not allowed this sub- ject to escape his notice; and we congratulate the friends of Chinese education on the assurances, which his excellency has been pleased to give, not only of a willingness, but of an anxious desire to promote this laudable object by every possible means, public as well as private.
Commercial affairs, it is true, have been managed with a tolerable degree of satisfaction to the foreign factors, through the agency of native linguists,-if it be proper so to designate a class of men, who are as notorious for their double-dealing as they are for their igno- rance, they being unable to read or write a word of English or of any other foreign tongue. As the losses occasioned by these men have fallen chiefly on that government which gave them their appoint- ments, and upheld them therein, the foreign merchants have had much less cause, than otherwise they would have had, for complaint. Still they have often complained, and not without reason.
But if, as many hope, the days of these linguists and of the monopoly of the co- hong, are about to cease, it is needless to expose the malpractices of either the one or the other of them.
Religious considerations hitherto have effected far more than all others, in promoting the study of the Chinese language. The conduct of the East India Company was remarkable. When a poor and "ob- scure individual” asked for a passage in one of its ships to China, it was denied him, and he was compelled to seek a conveyance “by an indirect course;" and not only so, but after his arrival in China he was obliged to "continue as an American." One year and a half, however, had not elapsed, before the factory of the said E. I. Com- pany sought for the services of this obscure individual, offering him a salary of £500 per annum. This offer was accepted, because but for his connection with the Company's factory, it would have been necessary for Morrison to leave China. Though he continued to act as translator and interpreter as long as he lived, his labors as a Christian minister and missionary were never interrupted till his life