TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
xxxv
also almost the first essay at tranlations from a Chinese original into the English language, he trusts that even in that point of view it will not be deemed undeserving of indulgence.
His own wishes will be gratified in their full extent, if he can be considered to have succeeded in giving, through the medium of an authentic work, containing incidental notices upon the manners, customs, civil and religious habits, national characteristics, and moral principles of the Chinese, a just idea of the spirit, and a sufficiently extended specimen of the substance, of the coercive and penal laws by which the government of that vast empire has so long been maintained and regulated.
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