is similarly circumstanced, contained according to the first census but 51,089, and according to the next estimate of the same writer nearly 3,000,000. There is also much inconsistency with regard to the returns for Fŭh-këen; the population of that region contained according to the fourth column but 1,684,528; while we may venture to say, that there are a million emigrants from Fŭh-këen in various parts of the Chinese coast, and the Malayan archipelago, and more than ten times that number in the province itself. Lastly, the province of Hoo-pih, in the centre of China, fertile, populous, and one of the first that submitted to the Tartar yoke, is rated at 469,927 in the first column, and at 24,604,369 in the fourth column. These incongruities compel us to hesitate respecting the estimates in question, and incline us to depend more implicitly on those accounts the dates of which are certain, and the items consistent with each other.
It will easily be seen from what has been before stated, that the author inclines to receive the highest estimate that has been given of the Chinese population, and to rate it at 361,221,900: and thus after the fullest consideration of all that has been said on either side of the subject,—after the most patient investigation of native documents,—and after extensive enquiries and observations among the people for more than twenty years, he cannot resist the conviction which forces itself upon him, that the population of China Proper is as above stated; besides upwards of a million more for the inhabitants of Formosa, and the various tribes of Chinese Tartary, under the sway of the emperor of China.
We cannot dismiss the preceding table, without
