Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/27

thirteenth; dwindle to twenty-nine millions in 1711; leap to 108 millions forty-two years later, and thenceforth grow steadily until 362 millions is reached in 1812—a figure regarded as specially trustworthy—and 420 millions at the present time. These figures have been subjected to much scrutiny by Occidental writers, many of whom have been disposed to place a minimum of faith in Chinese methods of enumeration. On the other hand, it has been pointed out with much apparent justice that there are no valid reasons to query the truth of census returns in a country where all other kinds of statistics show considerable accuracy; and, further, that the information collected during recent years by the Imperial Customs officials under the direction of Western experts, indicates a figure tallying closely with the Chinese record for the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Ming rulers, to the end of the fourteenth century, counted the population of the eighteen provinces at sixty millions, and when, in the year 1735, the Manchu sovereign, Chien-lung, demanded a return, not of "taxable units which never increase, nor of free units which pay no revenue, but of human beings," the population was declared by his officials to be 143 millions. That would be quite consistent with 420 millions at the close of the nineteenth century. Undoubtedly famines and wars sometimes caused acute fluctuations in the number of the people. It has been estimated by good authori-