Sous months ago, we drew attention to the very curious subject of cannibalism in China, pointing out by how little the most civilised nation in Asia was removed from one of the most bar-barons of human practices. Since that time a correspondent of the Chinese Recorder as followed up our remarks, with additional instances of how naturally this taste for human flesh displayed itself amongst the population of China. With these instances in view, we are the more disposed to believe in the accounts which have been handed down to us, of the greater prevalence of the vice in former times and, even in the absence of internal testimony from the Chinese writers themselves, to believe such statements as those made by Polo and other European travellers daring the Middle Ages. The silence of the Chinese writers on the subject is of itself suspicious. Either the crime was looked upon as too natural to provoke comment or, on the other hand, it was felt to bea subject on which the less said the better for the reputation of the nation. The careful avoidance, in fact, of unpleasant troths, is always a conspicuous feature of Chinese literature; the habit of glossing over what is bad with a veil of specious truth, is as character tic of Chinese writers and histor asitisin the present day of Chine: statesmen, The accounts of the voy: of the Arabs to China, in the ninth century, make a more direct charge of cannibalism against the inhabitants than even Marco Polo, These accounts are told in so simple a way, and bear so evidently the stamp of authenticity, and of having been written or dictated by one well acquainted with the country and its institutions, that the passage is worth reproduction. " When any one of "the princes or governors of oilies "within the dominions of the Emperor "of China is guilty of a crime, ho put to death and eaten; and in general it may be said that the Chinese "cat all those that are put to death."
The prevale of the custom in former times m e believe. then, both from extern: idence and from the internal evidence of the Chinese part copwia, be looked upon as estab li beyond question, while recent events have shown that, atmougst the body of the people, there still exists more or less indulgence in the revolting pr tice. The subject raises up a curious question in ethnology. One school have been always ready to maintain that cannibalism is only to be found among those tribes who, scattered in small and isolated islands, were, in the absence of other animal food, forced to satisfy the craving ing use of the only supply ai of their own aged or the bodies of their enemies; the former prevalence of the vice in China, and its con ed existence even at the present d: seem to prove that cannibalism i question of race and iustiuet rather than of external circumstances. Thi Chinese themselves, moreover, seem to have an instinctive dread of this latent disposition amongst the masses. Pret. mortem cxaminativas amongst the Chinese have very properly been made the subject of ridicule; the objection evinced by the people at large to allow a dead body to be opened, and the apparently superstitious dread of allowing alimb to be amputated during life, are perhaps only unconscious mauifestations of this dread. At one time, such customs may have been found necessary to check a prevailing practice, and were probably introduced with that object in view. They have in the present day apparently outlived the necessity of their introduction, and now remain as mute witnesses ofastate of affairs it is trae, but possess fascination for the masses of a pretending to have attained to the; summit of civilisation. Amongst the Chinese, in China, we external force of circumstances could have induced the crime; the transmission of the instinct through thousands of years, without any fresh temptation to its outbursts, is one of those strange instances of the perminence of hereditary character, of which China and the Chinese have afforded so many notable examples.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.