CHAP. XIX.: How this Union of Religion, Laws, Manners, and Customs, among the Chinese, was effected.

THE principal object of government, which the Chinese legislators had in view, was the peace and tranquility of the empire: and subordination appeared to them as the most proper means to maintain it. Filled with this idea, they believed it their duty to inspire a respect for parents, and therefore exerted all their power to effect it. They established an infinite number of rites and ceremonies to do them honour when living, and after their death. It was impossible for them to pay such honours to deceased parents without being led to reverence the living. The ceremonies at the death of a father were more nearly related to religion; those for a living parent had a greater relation to the laws, manners, and customs: however, these were only parts of the same code; but this code was very extensive.

A veneration for their parents was necessarily connected with a suitable respect for all who represented them, such as old men, masters, magistrates, and the sovereign. This respect for parents supposed a return of love towards children, and consequently the same return from old men to the young, from magistrates to those who were under their jurisdiction, and from the emperor to his subjects. This formed the rites, and these rites the general spirit of the nation.

We shall now shew the relation which things, in appearance the most indifferent, may have to the fundamental constitution of China. This empire is formed on the plan of a government of a family. If you diminish the paternal authority, or even if you retrench the ceremonies which express your respect for it, you weaken the reverence due to magistrates, who are considered as fathers; nor would the magistrates have the same care of the people, whom they ought to look upon as their children; and that tender relation, which subsists between the prince and his subjects, would insensibly be lost. Retrench but one of these habits, and you overturn the state. It is a thing in itself very indifferent, whether the daughter-in-law rises every morning to pay such and such duties to her mother-in-law; but, if we consider that these exterior habits incessantly revive an idea necessary to be imprinted on all minds, an idea that forms the ruling spirit of the empire, we shall see that it is necessary that such or such a particular action be performed.