women desire for themselves the best fortunes appropriate to their actual lot, rather than a lot of a totally different kind. The exceptions to the general rule of contentment are to be found among the younger women, who are the victims of Chinese society. If any members of the family group are sacrificed to the pleasure or caprice of others, it is the daughterin-law or the inferior wife, or both.

The mother-in-law may bully her son's lawful wife, and the latter in her turn may oppress his other spouses. The national good temper may be a security against very serious abuses, still abuses do exist, and that in sufficient number to cause anti-matrimonial secret societies to be formed amongst girls, the members of which are sometimes pledged to prefer suicide to a bridegroom. And as it is not natural for women to be less contented than men with the married state, there must be something much amiss in the domestic habits that can provoke such a reaction. The education of the mass of Chinese women is neglected, and the powers assigned to the Chinese materfamilias are greater than can be safely entrusted to a person whose mind, like her feet, has been confined within artificially narrow limits.

That the abuses in question are not more general is owing, no doubt, to the educational effect of the powers and responsibilities above described; and it is probable that the girls' suicide clubs would come to an end, if every woman, whose sons are regarded as legitimate, were held to possess the same personal rights as the principal wife. Without any

violent dislocation of Chinese custom, a reasonable extension of the rights of this class would gradually encourage the preference for monogamous unions, which are already general, and which we must be permitted to regard as belonging to a higher civilization.

It is the rule for marriages to be arranged by the parents, but the code permits a young man, employed at a distance from home, in trade or the Government service, to contract a marriage for himself, and if his contract is completed, it supersedes the one made by his family without his knowledge; but if not, not. A French novel of Chinese Life 1 turns on the dilemma of a young doctor, who has practically married a girl without his mother's consent, and is then entrapped by his mother into a formal marriage ceremony with somebody else. The offence of bigamy, contemplated by the code, consists in marrying two first wives; it is punished by blows and the second marriage declared invalid. If the young man, to whom a girl has been betrothed, dies before the marriage has been consummated, she may if she pleases regard herself as his widow. Among the charitable institutions of the country are asylums where poor widow ladies and their children, and girl widows of this kind may be received. One such "Hall of Rest for Pure Widows" is described as containing 150 women and 300 children. Each inmate pays an entrance fee of a few pounds, and the current expenses are met by the subscriptions of wealthy families.

1 Le Roman de l'homme Jaune. Tcheng-ki-tong.

2 China Review, x. p. 425.

CHAPTER XXX.

AGRARIAN LAWS AND CUSTOMS.

NEXT in importance to the family comes the neighbourhood. The fifteenth precept in the Sacred Edict exhorts men to "Combine in Hundreds and Tithings in order to suppress robbery." The chia, or tithing, consists in theory of ten families, with a mutual responsibility like that of the ancient tsing. The pao, or hundred, also in theory includes ten chia, but both groups are elastic. It is supposed that the members of such groups, owing to their smallness, can exercise such an effective supervision over each other as to make crime impossible, and that if a theft is committed, this supervision must have been so culpably relaxed as to justify the injured person in appealing to his neighbours for compensation. Each chia and pao elects one of its members to act as headman; the literati are excused, and officials or police officers are disqualified from serving in this capacity. Besides the optional measures for the good government of the locality which the headman may take with the consent of his constituents, he is also required to apportion and collect the taxes. for his district.

The third maxim of the Sacred Edict exhorts the people to "Cultivate peace and concord in your neighbourhoods, in order to prevent litigations ;" and the exposition of this text by the Emperor Yung-ching, and a popular paraphrase of the same by a salt commissioner named Wang-yupo, abundantly illustrate the Chinese ideal of neighbourliness. Among the things mentioned as likely to lead to angry contentions are such as these : "One might wish to borrow from another who would not lend, or to recover a debt the payment of which was refused; or he would buy a field or build a house without giving the neighbours notice and ascertaining that they had no objections. If people are foolish enough to begin to quarrel over such points as these, artful schemers will go on and stir them up to litigation." "In that case," says Mr. Wang, "you will have to kneel before the magistrate in the public courts, to throw away large sums of money, and to suffer much shameful treatment. If you lose your lawsuit, you will scarcely be able to show your face in society again; and even if you gain it, you will find that everybody looks coldly and askance upon you. Where is the advantage of all this ?" 1

1 Imperial Confucianism. Four Lectures by Rev. James Legge. China Review, 1877, p. 156.

The difference between Chinese and European ideas of morality is curiously exemplified in these passages: to refuse payment of a lawful debt, and to refuse to lend to a neighbour who asks it, are bracketed as acts of similarly objectionable tendency. Even such simple exercises of individual rights as the purchase of what is for sale should not be indulged. in without considering the wishes of persons who may be affected by them. It would, for instance, clearly be contrary to propriety to buy a field, which a neighbour was renting with intent to purchase, so as to enlarge his family property. But the moral advice which follows the picture of the evils of litigation is not addressed to the persons who commit aggressions on their neighbours. Ordinary persons are advised to guard against the beginnings of strife, and to cultivate habits of consideration and deference for others; but the counsel of perfection is to reach such an elevation of character as will enable them to disregard offences, and on no account bear malice against the offender, who, "if worthy to be accounted a human being," will, according to Mr. Wang, "blush almost to death" at the sight of such magnanimity.

This commentary and paraphrase on the edict of Kang-hi are publicly read once a fortnight, and give the sanction of Imperial authority to the popular distrust of the lawcourts; but from the reports of Chinese trials, given by European writers, we should have been inclined to believe that, apart from such accessories as bribery and the bamboo, the justice dealt by Chinese magistrates was painstaking and even-handed.

There is an article in the Code forbidding persons from taking up more land than they can cultivate, after a war or famine, these being the only occasions upon which uncultivated land is plentiful. Land which is not registered, or for which the registered owner omits to pay taxes, lapses in theory to the State, which grants it afresh to any one cultivating it and becoming responsible for the tax; but the Government does not press the right, and the former owner is reinstated on application. Land in Shantung would only sell for a tithe of its value after a recent famine, because, on a similar occasion once before, the purchasers had been compelled to restore their acquisitions to the original owners.'

Waste lands may be enclosed as private property by obtaining leave from the magistrate and actually reclaiming them within a reasonable time. Grants, nominally of vacant lands, were made by the early Mantchu Emperors to their followers, and these are the only lands exempt from taxation; but the holders render military services, and the largest grant did not exceed 720 mow-say 125 acres—and even these consisted mainly of barren or pasture land, so that the burden to the population was inconsiderable. Owners of 200 acres and upwards are not allowed to reclaim alluvial wastes, and this probably explains the absence of any marked distinction between the fortunes of landlord and tenant. The former is not necessarily either richer or less industrious than the latter, but having

1 China Review, vol. viii. p. 263.

some other occupation to live by, which prevents his cultivating his freehold, he sells the very slight difference which there is between the customary earnings of a tenant farmer and a taxpaying owner.1 The owner's motive for letting is that he can occupy himself more profitably than as a cultivator, and the tenant's protection against rack-renting is that he also could at any time employ himself more profitably than as a tenant, except upon the customary terms, which include the remission of rent in bad seasons.

Apparently the peculiar Malabar combination of lease and mortgage has been tried in China, though the absence of any feudal authority on the part of landlords has caused it to fall into disuse. It is stated that when an owner lets land, he is careful to exact "a pledge equivalent to or even exceeding the income of the property he leases.” 2 The reason given (by a missionary complaining of persecution), that otherwise the tenant would refuse to pay the rent agreed on, is hardly adequate, because even in China a man could not make his fortune in one year, even out of a farm held rent-free. There can be little doubt that the advanced rent answers to the Malabar Kanam, and that if mortgage leases have become rare, it is because tenant-farming itself has declined, in the absence of any class distinction between owners and cultivators.

Land is sometimes let because it cannot be sold. Land belonging to family endowments or charitable uses of any kind is inalienable, and, if wrongfully sold, will be reclaimed and the purchase money returned. Land devoted to public purposes, mountains belonging to the State, roads, sea-walls, embankments, official temples, famous sites, and ancient buildings or monuments cannot be sold. In theory the holdings of private families --or at least a part of them-are also inalienable; relatives not only have a right of pre-emption and redemption, but are required to consent to the sale. An edict of the 18th year of Kien-lung provides that the words "absolute sale without power of redemption " must be used in every deed of sale intended to be absolute; and as it was added that land conveyed more than thirty years before the edict was to be irredeemable, it is evident that the right of relatives to redeem was asserted frequently and after unduly long intervals. In modern deeds of sale, the vendor professes to have offered the land first to his relations; and the next of kin, as far as cousins, have a right to insist on his doing so. It is a formula that the owner desires to sell "on account of poverty;" and that this is really the usual motive appears from the fact that advertisements of such sales are not posted on the walls, out of regard for the reduced owner's feelings.

It is unlawful to sell land to a creditor in discharge of a debt, though it may be sold to a disinterested party in order to obtain money to pay

1 Amyot observed last century that "those who cultivate the lands belonging to others retain more for themselves than in other countries." (Mém. conc. les Chin., iv. p. 318.) 2 Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, vii. p. 642.

various debts. And this very singular provision 1 is perhaps the strongest example of the unscrupulous consistency, with which Chinese legislation. aims at protecting the cultivator, from the dangers to which his class in all ages and countries seems to have been especially exposed. Widows cannot sell land without their father-in-law's consent, if he is alive, nor alienate their sons' inheritance, though they have discretionary powers to buy and sell for the good of the family in practice no doubt they would not propose to sell land without the consent of the family council.

All contracts are entered into subject to local usage, and Europeans who omit to acquaint themselves therewith are sometimes much disgusted. at its unexpected divergences from British law. Thus the man who buys. a piece of ground does not thereby become possessed of the buildings. which a tenant has erected on them, and if he wishes to pull them down and build himself, he must buy them from their lawful owner by a separate transaction; and in fact, when Europeans buy land, as they think, outright, the native vendor himself compensates the owners of the houses on it.

Deeds going back for fifty years are desirable to give a secure title, and these should be compared with the counterparts kept in the Government Registration Office. As in ancient Egypt, a fee is charged for the registration of sales or transfers, but in return the public archives serve as title-deeds; and while England vainly envies Australia the advantages of the Torrens Act, China has long since adopted this simple means of controlling claims which frequently go back for several centuries. Go-betweens, who are employed in most important purchases, are essential in the case of land transfer. They must be, at least, two in number, and their function is partly that of official witnesses, as they are required to give evidence in court if any dispute arises about the transaction in which they were concerned.2

Hill sites for tombs were the subject of much litigation, and the antiquarian learning of the law courts has sometimes been tried by really ancient deeds, which prove, however, to belong to a later dynasty than the seals attached to them. It was therefore decided by Kien-lung that in such cases, whatever adverse ancient documents might be produced, the holder of the land-tax receipts, whose name appears on the register, is to be regarded as lawful owner. Otherwise any representative of an old decayed family, which had preserved its ancient records, might oust occupiers who had fulfilled all the duties of ownership for centuries.

The so-called patrimonial field, which every Chinaman is supposed to possess, and forbidden to alienate, is most probably a survival from, or reminiscence of, the "duty fields" by which, in less prosperous times than the present, the State endeavoured to make sure of all its citizens having wherewithal to pay their taxes. This institution tried to link itself on to the ancient tradition of communal tillage and the inalienable pro

1 Met with, it will be remembered, in the Syro-Roman Law-book, ante, vol. i. p. 491. Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, vii. p. 658.