CHAPTER II.

THE GOVERNMENT.

THE nobles have nothing necessarily to do with the administration of the empire, which is entirely in the hands of those men whom, following the Portuguese term, we know as mandarins. These officers belong to the people, and, in theory at least, owe their position to their success at the examination halls. As, however, in every other system in China, custom makes strange inroads into this virtuous arrangement. It often happens that the country is subjected to great national disasters. Crops fail, or the Yellow River floods thousands of square miles bordering on its treacherous banks. The Government, with every desire to help the sufferers, finds that it has no funds with which to gratify its generous instincts. It appeals to the country, and rich men, who have made their fortunes as farmers of the salt monopoly, or in some other branch of trade, come forward to supply the necessary money. They are commonly rewarded on a sliding scale in accordance with the amounts of their donations. The most liberal contributors get high official rank and office, while those who can give little have to content themselves with the lower grades. It is reckoned that one-half of the mandarins of the

empire have gained their positions by this species of purchase.

For administrative purposes the empire is divided into eighteen provinces, many of which are as large as European kingdoms. Fifteen of these provinces are grouped into eight vice-royalties, while the remaining three are administered by governors. Each province is autonomous, and the viceroy or governor is allowed a free hand so long as he preserves order and forwards with regularity the annual quota of his taxes to Peking. He raises his own land and naval forces, and is practically a king within the limits of his rule. The central government is content to see that he carries out the general instructions laid down for his guidance, and considers that viceroy is most successful of whom it hears least. The responsibility thus thrown upon him makes him very watchful over his subordinates, of whose faults and failings he is an unsparing critic. The Peking Gazette bears constant evidence of the official crimes of provincial underlings. This man is extortionate; that man is an inveterate opium smoker; a third spends his time in drinking wine and playing chess, while the people in vain demand his intervention in their affairs; a fourth employs illegal torture to extract confessions; a fifth leaves untried prisoners to rot in jail year after year; and so the record runs on, covering every delinquency which is likely to swell the usually placid souls of the people to rage and riot. The degree in which peace is preserved is the test which is applied to actions of the mandarins.

They may indulge in the pleasant vices, and may fill their pockets, as most of them do, by illegal

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exactions and by the sale of justice, so long as they maintain order and quiet among those over whom they are set. Such faults as they possess lie gently on them; and as bribery and corruption are, with very few exceptions, common to all, from the highest to the lowest, there is naturally a conspiracy of silence on those subjects in which all are alike guilty. Should it be forced on the knowledge of a high mandarin that his subordinates are battening on the people, he charitably assumes that their stars are more in fault than they, so long as no émeute is likely to arise from their evil actions. But if circumstances compel him to visit on them the penalties of their misdeeds, he does so with no sparing hand. Double motives urge him on to severity. The instant dismissal of a maladroit official often saves his own post, and in nine cases out of ten it secures him a substantial financial gain. The one object of the dismissed mandarin is to work his way back to office, and the readiest way to attain this is by bribing his superior to reinstate him. Large sums are often paid in this way, and lately as much as twenty thousand taels were paid for this purpose by a dismissed magistrate.

In extenuation of this state of things it is only fair to say that the salaries awarded to the mandarins are not sufficient, even with the exercise of the severest economy, to provide for the necessary expenses pertaining to their offices. So fully recognized is this fact that, in addition to the legal salary, each mandarin receives an anti-extortion allowance, which in most cases is about thirty times as large as the salary. Even with this addition, however, the incomes are disproportionately low, and are

quite inadequate to support the dignity of the service. A viceroy, for example, receives about £6000 a year, a sum which does not do much more than pay the countless clerks, secretaries, messengers, and hangers-on who crowd his yamun, and all of whom are entirely dependent on his private purse. In this condition of affairs, the mandarins are compelled to derive from the people under them the difference between the amount which they receive from the Government, and the sum which is necessary for their existence. So habituated are the people to this system, that they entirely acquiesce in it, and no murmur is ever heard unless the amount extracted from them is extorted with greed and violence. The evils arising from this practice are palpable and familiar. The course of justice is perverted in exchange for bribes. Evils which demand redress are left unheeded, and crimes are daily committed which remain for ever unpunished. But there is an aggravation even to these ills. Innocent people are constantly arrested, imprisoned, and tortured to shield others who are guilty of the offences of which they are charged; prisoners are left untried for years in dungeons of which only those who have lived in the East know the horrors; and charges are invented against persons to vent spite, or gratify revenge. In works of fiction the mandarins are commonly represented as using their power and position as cloaks for oppression and robbery. In one well-known novel the hero meets a friend in dire distress at the loss of his affianced bride, who has been carried off by so exalted an official that he dare not even make a complaint of the wrong done him. Fortunately the hero,

like all heroes in Chinese novels, constitutes himself a redresser of such deeds, and he secures the release of the victim. In quite another part of the country, the same hero is insulted with violence by a number of young roues; and when he carries his complaint before the provincial judge, that officer shows such manifest reluctance to take any steps against men to whom the god of wealth had been so liberal, that the hero withdraws his case. On the stage the same mirror is held up to the life of the mandarins, and in one popular Peking farce the ignorance of an officer who has bought his position is amusingly described. On the first occasion of his sitting in judgment, a woman presents a petition which he cannot read. He summons his secretary, who is as illiterate as himself, and recourse is at last had to a poor scholar who earns the support of the magistrate by marrying the petitioner, whom the mandarin does not know how else to dispose of.

The central government is perfectly aware of these evils; but their habit is to move along the line of least resistance, leaving heroic remedies on one side and adopting such palliatives as can be easily put into force. Many of these are excellent in theory, and some are useful in practice. Every office is held for three years only. This naturally prompts the holder of it so to conduct himself in the eyes of his superiors as to ensure his appointment to another post on retirement. At the same time. he feels it to be less incumbent on him to cultivate the good will of the inhabitants of the district than if he were to be longer resident among them, and his short tenure of power inclines him to squeeze all he can out of their pockets. A further regu