up for sale no purchaser could be found; and breaking them up to make smaller vessels would be like paring down the beam of a house to make a peg, or unpicking embroidered work to get a skein of silk. No one would willingly do that. Besides they hope that some day the clouds will break and the sun shine out, that the prohibition will be repealed and trade go on as before; and the loss of a single one of these large junks would reduce many families to misery and ruin. The present destitute state of the sea-bord population is entirely due to the stoppage of trade. Those of them who understand marine work and are accustomed to act as sailors are unable to adapt themselves to the duties of weight-carriers and earn their living as ordinary coolies. They prefer the dangers of the sea where piracy supplies them with their daily food. The rowdies and blackguards have still less before them. They go off in large numbers to Formosa, and there rebel against the Imperial Government as they actually did in the year 1721 under the leadership of Ch'en Fu-shou. It is a principle that nothing should be left undone which may turn out of the smallest advantage to the State and to the people; and, similarly, that everything likely to cause the least detriment to either should be incontinently cast away. Now to prohibit trade with the southern foreigners, so far from being advantageous, is very much the contrary. Of the sea-bord population the rich will be made poor, and the poor, destitute. Their artisans will be changed into loafing vagabonds, their loafing vagabonds into pirates and robbers. Further, Fuhkien has no silver mines and is dependent on the barbarians for its supply of that metal. But since the prohibition none has been forthcoming, and the result will be some such expedient as a paper, cloth, or leather issue, whereby great mischief will be done. The advantages of repealing the prohibition would be the circulation of goods and the absorption of our own bad characters; and thus the people would have the wherewithal to support their parents and rear their children. Hence it would follow that a larger revenue would be yielded by the Customs, and the country enriched by the wealth of the people. Surely this is no trifling advantage. As to selling their
