Peorte do not usually invent new crimes, of which to accuse an enemy. They take up the worst one of which they are cognisant, and Iny it at his door. When our forefathers accused a neighbour of bewitching their cows, or of practising upon themselves by the aid of a waxen image, they named a crime universally believed to exist. When the partisans of Margaret procured the condemnation of Duke Hamhirey's wife, for practising against the ife of the King, they invented no new tale; nor did the apologists of Mary Stuart or of Margaret of Navarre invent a new excuse, when they set down ther eccentricities to the malignant arts of unprincipled lovers. So we may take the frequent accusations of kidnapping and mutilation, brought in China against missionaries, asevidencethat the first crime at lerist is widespread, and that the second is believed in, People who spread a rumour that children's eyes and brains are being boiled down for medicine, and people who grow excited over the necnsation, must believe that this is done; just as our forefathers Delieved that buccaneers were in the habit of burying their valuables in some secluded nook, and killing a captive and li ug him with the spoil, in order that his spirit might guard it. The tales with which we have grown familiar of late, in China, are fairly on a par with the last-named. Buccaneers at home, and kidnappers, here, represent the actual fact; the guardian ghost and the philtra cor posed from children's eyes, represent the superstition. Referring to old volumes of the Chinese Repository, we find precisely the same reports current in regard to child stealing, as now. Only the literati bad not then learned to implicate foreigners in the charge. Thirty-five years ago, we find a writer complaining that thefts, robberies and kidnapping were growing more and more frequent in Canton. The way was "for kidnappers to give notice to the parents that, if a"certain sam were sent, within a certain time, to a certain place, the girl would be returned.
Otherwise she would be sold as slave." And a very little later, mention is made of the same crime at Peking and Macao, That notable publication, the Peking Gazelle, even, condescended to speak of it as "agres infraction of the laws, which ougitt to be carefully investigated and prohibited." In 1833 we find a complaint, in the Canton Court Circular, that there were " several hundreds of kidnappers in and about the city of Canton, who were constantly carrying off and selling young women and children, and who Rained their livelihood by this wicked traffic." And in 1834 a censor complained to the Emperor about a system of kidnapping children and young persons, in Peking. The agents of this traffic were women who, when convicted, got off easily by pleading general laws in favour of their sex; 80 that, instead of corporal punishment, or transportation, they merely incurred fine. The censor suggested a more
a few of the thieves, as a warning. He appropriate and severe punishment to recommended that they should be trausported, and given as slaves to the common soldiers.
It is evident, therefore, as we said before, that the crime of kidnapping is one common enough, in China, And Dr. Porter Smith' has shown us that the idea of children's bodies being used in the manufacture of medicine is also familiar to Chinese. In a letter, published twelve months ago—in the N.-C. Herald, on this very subject—he points out that the last of the sixteen great classes into which all medicinal substances are divided, in the Pen Tsan Kang Mab, is devoted to a description of at least thirty-nine kinds of medicines derived from the human body, in its various conditions of sex and age. "The skin, bones, flesh, hair, nails, sweat, blood, tears and many other secretions too numerous to mention, are all directed to be used in medicine" All that is new, is the adaptation of the idea as a charge against foreigners. For this, we are i ightened, educated, and polished frien the literati.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.