Tue advantages and disadvantages of portant proprietorship have been much mesed of late, The experience of Ohina ought to be of great value in the controversy, for here peasant proprictorship has bad full play for centuries, But in a country ao large as Chinn and embracing such a variety of evil and olimnte, the state of agricul. ture and the condition of the peasantry muar vary considerably in the different porta of the Empire, Whut is true of Obibti will hardly hold good of Canton, nor will a description of Onnton apply to Szechuan, A brief nooount of the frat mentioned province is all that we can attempt to-day; but with slight modi. fiontions Chilli may be taken as a sample of a large portion of North." China.
With the exception of the Banner-Innds, given to Mancha Princes and others at the time of conquest, the soil la mostly in the hands of the peasants, By freqaout sub-division, however, the lois have become very small, In a village Of three hundred families shout eight. familion may perhaps have 400 mu ench ("mu is 733} square yards or 6.6 of an English cee), nhont thirty families may have over 100 mu, many have Tess than 20 mu, and not a few no land of their own at all, but rent two or three acres from others, or work as form-hands, There are, however, large Janded proprietors here and "there throughout the province having teu or even fifteen thousand acres of land, the greater part of which is let in small Tots to the surrounding peasantry. These wonlthy families see many ups and downs, Whut the father accumulates the Bou often squanders, and a goud deal of the land thas changes hands, There is no law of entail, nor dues the Govern-mont in any way interfere with the gale of land, Ench is free to do whint he likes with hiv own, The peasantry, however, cling very tenaciously to the ancestral plot, and part with it only under severe pressure, Even then they seldom sol! their land, bat mortgage it ab ita market value, reserving to themselves the right of redemption should the wheel of fortune bring them to the top again. The mortgages is usually a thrifty or wealthy neighbour anxious the family estate, But the Pésssnt in his distress often resorts to the professional money-louder, and borrows small sams at enormous interest on the security of his land or crops. If unable to meet his obligations, these sharks soon manage to get all he has, Bat the Chinese peasantry do not suffer from these pests so severely as the peasantry of Russia, Egypt and some other countries appear to do. Rich land capable of bearing two crops a year is worth $20 a mu, but the average price is under rather than over $10. The annual rent for ordinary Innd, when paid in money, is about fifty cents a mu, the tenant taking all risks it is however more common to pay in kind, the landlord taking half the grni as his share, the tenant the other half, together with the straw. In good seasons the average yield, including straw, is about $8 per mu, though good land yield at least $3.50, But North-China is subject to frequent drought, which renders farming. precarious and greatly diminishes ite profits, The productiveness of the soil ight. be largely inorensed, often times doubled, if it were more liberally manured. But the peasants are too porto keep more thun a donkey, a cow or a pig, and very manny not even one of these, and consequently have ing to return to th he laud is robbed of everything. Ben the stubble, leaves and grass are all carefully collected for tael; not a blade, stalk, or root is left. Nor can the ashes be used asa manure, Most of the land is more or less impregnated with natron, an impure carbonate of soda; any addition therefore of alkaline matter, such as potash, would be in-juncus to the soil, The want of manure is to some extent conspensated for by ® constant rotation of crops. The productions of the northera pro-vinoes are very varied. Wheat, millet, sorgo (kno liang), maize, beans, melons, sesame, cotton, hemp, buckwheat, and, in well.watered di luxuriantly, Where fall advantage taken of this variety, goud soil will produce a fair crop without much manure, But a good deal of the laud is so poor, either from excess of natron or excess of sand, that nothing will grow except sorgo and beans. Sach land if not well manured scarcely pays for cultivation. In the hands of poor man it is nearly useless, The balk of the peasantry do not cultivate more than thirty mu n family, and taking five as the average number of persons ina family and $3 as the average yield per mu, it follows that the gross income of the ordinary peasantry, even in good seasons, iv only $18 per head, But this is by no means all clear gain. The government Innd-tax has to be paid. That tax greatly in different provinces, and it varies also in the same province neoording to the quality of the land, Tu Shantung the best land pays twenty cents a mu, while the average in only five cents. Then ther local assessments for repairs of temples and such-like, which amount to at least another five cents, probably more; to which must be added the keep of an ox or ass, ontley for farm implemente, repair of buildings, purchase of manure and so forth, These itema will come to at least fifty cours a mu, and the net annual receipts from thirty mu of land in fairly good seasons are about $75, or $15 a head in a supposed family of five, But a family having thirty mu of land is considered respectable; a very large number have only ten or twenty mu. With such, life mast be a rather hard struggle, and the wolf can never be very far from the door, Bat though the peasantry are mostly poor com. paratively few suffer from actual want, except in bad son sons, when they are often reduced to eating garbage; and when that fails, they dio in crowds, was the onso in 1878 and 1879, They live, however, in the best of times on the lowliest fare and dress in the plainest fashion, Their food consists almost entirely of sorgo, maize, and millet mixed with beans or benu-ourd. A. bit of wheaten bread is an unusual front, and animal food of any kind is seldom tasted, A poor peasant, patiating one day on the immune of the great, anid that if he were Emperor he would eat wheaten cakes wil day long, and when satisfied lie down to rest, Thia was the poor man's highest conception of luxurious living. Another of these humble tiller of the svil is supposed to have that if he were Emperor be would i dulge in a bowl of vermicelli jast whenever he wished, To the surge. fed pensaut an unstinted supply of vermicelli ideal fare, The poorer peasants eke out their slonder means by working for their wealthier neighbours, whenever work oan be got and they oan spare the time from their own fields, The pay for a farm labourer, la slack times, is five conta a day and hie food; in busy times, it averages twenty cents a day and food. In winter, the ground being frozen, it is dificult to get work of any kind, so the men lounge about the house, smoking their pipes and nursing the babies, or go out in search of stubble, grass and leaves for fuel—the fields after harvest being free to all,—or wander along the roads with basket and fork picking up hor dang for manure, The women devote every spare moment to spinning and and weaving, the buzz of the spindle and the click of the shuttle being often heard far into the night. Nearly all native cotton cloth is the product of peasant women's Inbour. In the south. ern part of Chihli and the northern part of Shantung straw plaiting is the great industry, and is said to pay better than cotton weaving, The earnings of the women are a very appreciable addition to the income of every peasant home. Those homes are of the humblest description and very comfortless. They are low three-roomed structures built of mud and roofed with sorgoslalks, over which a layer of ohaffmixed mud is spread. The centre room
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.