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Excerpt from The Chinese, Vol. 1 of 2: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants
The following work owes its origin to a, collection of notes which the author made while resident in China; and these notes were compiled for a reason not altogether dissimilar to the motive which a French writer alleges for an undertaking of the same kind - "le desir de tout connaitre, en etant oblige de le decrire." A residence of more than twenty years (which terminated in the author succeeding, for some months previous to his final retirement, the late amiable and unfortunate Lord Napier as His Majesty's chief authority in China) has perhaps been calculated to mature and correct those opinions of the country and people which he had formed, as a. very young man, in accompanying Lord Amherst on the embassy to Peking in 1816. If some acquaintance, besides, with the language and literature of the Chinese empire has not been of considerable assistance to him in increasing the extent and accuracy of his information, it must be his own fault entirely and not any want of opportunities and means.
It is singular that no general and systematic work on China has ever yet been produced in this country, notwithstanding that our immediate interest in the subject has been vastly greater than that of any other European nation.
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