China: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 2/Chapter 2
Chapter II
ADMINISTRATION
The Empire is divided into various administrative units, of which the lowest is the hien. It is difficult to find a satisfactory English equivalent for the term hien. "Prefecture," "canton," and "department have all been suggested, but none is strictly applicable. The hien is about equal to an English county in area, and, on the whole, "county" is perhaps the most intelligible translation. Each province is divided into a number of hien, varying from thirty-four to a hundred and forty, and the hien may be roughly described as a walled city with the region surrounding it, an area of from five hundred to one thousand square miles. Two or more hien are grouped under a fu, or first-class town, so that there are from five to ten fu in a province. The fu has no independent local existence; it is, in fact, nothing more than the chief of the hien that are under it. A still larger administrative area than the fu is the tao, or circuit. Two or more fu, or one fu and several hien (or chou)[1] form a tao.[2] The hien, according to the latest and best commentators, "is the true official unit of Chinese corporate life," every Chinaman being described, before all other attributes, as coming from such a hien, and the hien magistrate (Chih-hien), being in practice the real administrator of all local affairs as well as the judge and tax- collector in his district. The chief official of the fu (Chih-fu) stands next to the Chi-hien, and immediately above both is the chief official of the tao, the Tao-tai, a term familiar to all foreign readers of Chinese annals. Still higher in the scale stands the governor or prefect (Fu-tai or Fu-yuen), and highest of all is the governor-general (Tung-tub), commonly called "viceroy" by foreigners. The office of governor-general is of comparatively modern creation. Its origin dates from the closing years of the Ming dynasty (third decade of the seventeenth century), when, for the purpose of dealing with some questions of special importance which involved more than one province, a kind of high commissioner was temporarily appointed. To the Manchu rulers who succeeded the Ming, this post of high commissioner, or governor-general, presented itself as a useful instrument for establishing and consolidating their sway, and thus the office assumed its permanent character. Stated in the order of supposed importance the viceroyalties, or governor-generalships are:———
1. The Viceroyalty of the Two Kiang (the provinces of Kiangsi and the original Kiangnan, the latter of which is now replaced by Kiangsu and Anhwei). The metropolis of this viceroyalty is at Nanking, on the Yangtse.
2. The Viceroyalty of Chili. This viceroy originally had his seat of government at Poating, the provincial capital, which lies westward of Peking, but he now conducts his administration at Tientsin on the south of the imperial metropolis.
3. The Viceroyalty of the Two Kuang (the provinces of Kuangtung and Kuansi). The seat of this viceroyalty is the city of Kuangtung (Canton).
4. The Viceroyalty of Min-cheh (Cheh-kiang and Fuhkien provinces). The original name of Fuhkien having been Minyueh, the term Min-cheh was formed by combining the first syllables of that name and of Cheh-kiang). The seat of government is at Foochow.
5. The Viceroyalty of the Hu-kuang (lake dis- trict, namely, the provinces of Hupeh and Hunan). The seat of authority is at Wuchang on the bank of the Yangtse, opposite to Hankow.
6. The Viceroyalty of Yun-kwei (Yunnan and Kweichou provinces), having its seat of govern- ment at the city of Yunnan.
7. The Viceroyalty of Szchuan (province of Szchuan), having its seat of government at Chengtu.
8. The Viceroyalty of Shen-kan (provinces of Shensi and Kansuh), having its seat of government at Lanchou. A fundamental idea of the Chinese tive system is that the governor of a province is the direct link between that province and the imperial metropolis; he reports direct to the central government in Peking, and he memorialises the Emperor when such a course seems necessary. He He is nominally inferior to the viceroy, but in practice neither official moves without the co-operation of the other: according to close observers, there is not even the degree of subor- dination that exists between the governors and the viceroy in India. Nevertheless, in the course of practical experience it has naturally resulted that some matters fall specially under the viceroy's purview while others are reserved entirely for the governor's. No general rule, however, can be laid down, different localities having different customs. Thus, though in some provinces the governor is supreme in the realm of civil promotion and of the land tax- the principal source of revenue while the direction of foreign affairs, general military control, and the management of the salt gabelle belong to the viceroy's special functions, in others no such hard and fast line can be dis- cerned. In short, it is not possible to formulate an accurate distinction between the functions of the two officials, and so ineffectual in practice is the interval of rank dividing them that not infrequently one of the governors in a viceroyalty is more powerful than the viceroy himself. The personal equation decides the question.
Two other local dignitaries of great importance are the provincial treasurer and the provincial judge. The treasurer was at one time the chief official in a province, but nearly five hundred years ago it became the custom to send eunuchs or other court functionaries on "soothing circuit" and gradually these officers became a permanent institution, so that the modern name for a governor is "circuit- soother." The official relation of the treasurer to the judge is not more intimate than that of the vice- roy to the governor yet the names of the four are usually found together on memorials to the throne with regard to appointments and promotions, the viceroy and the governor presenting and endorsing recommendations made by the treasurer and the judge. Without attempting to set up any clear and uniformly observed distinction between the official spheres of these four functionaries, they may be concisely described as forming the executive, consultative, and, in a measure, the judicial and legislative body of each province; in a word, its government.
For it may truly be said that each province is an independent state so far as its corporate existence is concerned. It has its own army, its own fiscal system, and its own manners and customs. For naval and commercial purposes as well as for foreign affairs there is a more or less general connection. This is especially true of foreign affairs. The pressure exercised upon China by the outer world in modern times has corrected something of the looseness of her political structure, and has compacted her eighteen provinces into two groups; the northern being represented by the Viceroy of Chili, who acts in Tientsin as Imperial High Trade Commissioner for the North Sea-Board, and the southern by the Viceroy at Nanking, who has the same title for the South Sea-Board. These officials, especially the High Commissioner at Tientsin which position was held for many years by the celebrated Earl (posthumous Duke) Li Hungchang, and is now occupied by a statesman of rapidly rising fame, His Excellency Mr. Yuan Shihkai — are invested with considerable authority in everything relating to foreign affairs, though their competence is neither initiative nor conclusive. The Empire's navy is also divided into the north-sea squadron (Peiyang fleet) and the south-sea squadron (Nanyang fleet), each section being under the immediate control of the corresponding viceroy and the ultimate control of the Board of Naval Affairs in Peking. But it would be misleading to assert, as has been frequently claimed, that the navy of China is an unit for national purposes. In the war of 1894-95 between China and Japan the south-sea squadron never fired a shot in defence of the country. It remained sed- ulously beyond the zone of peril throughout all the incidents of the campaign, and so far as con- cerned its influence on the fate of the war, it might as well have had no existence.
A certain element of interdependence is furnished by the fact that some of the wealthy provinces have to contribute a part of their revenue for the support of their less fortunate neighbours, and in cases of great emergency (as, for example, on the occasion of the Mohamme- dan insurrection in Yunnan fifty years ago) several provinces are laid under monetary contribution for the direct succour of the jeopardised region. Sometimes, too, a group of provinces combine to memorialise the Throne on a subject of common interest. But in the main the provinces are separate states. Their relations with the imperial metropolis, too, are limited. They have to make to the central exchequer yearly contributions the amount of which is fixed by the Board of Revenue in the capital, and they have to send up their annual contingent of students to compete for the prizes of the civil service. But for the rest Peking does not interfere with them. It neither harasses them with new laws nor makes, as a rule, any troublesome scrutiny into their affairs. The fundamental principle is that so long as a province lives at peace within its borders, the central government leaves it in peace. There must not be any insurrection, nor any discontent sufficiently strong to disturb the serenity of the imperial atmosphere in Peking, nor any complaint loud enough to reach the Throne, nor any flagrant neglect of time-honoured duties, nor any abuse of established customs, nor, above all, any excess of official zeal. Uninterrupted calm, respectability at least superficial, and solvency for public purposes,- these are all the requirements that a province need satisfy in order to be left in secure possession of administrative autonomy. During recent years a thin thread of mutual sympathy has been woven through this wide-meshed web of states by the finger of foreign aggression and by the electric telegraph, so that the metropolitan heart grows more visibly sensitive to the incidents of provincial life. The Throne now takes professed thought for the education of the local inhabitants, for the organisation of a national army, and for the protection of foreign life and property in distant regions. But these changes are operating very slowly, and on the whole it may be said that the eight viceroyalties and the three non-viceregal provinces (Shantung, Shansi, and Honan) constitute as many kingdoms, autonomous and autocratic.
It is by the thirteen hundred hien magistrates that the principal functions of active administration are discharged. Mr. E. H. Parker has written a succinct and graphic account of these officials and their doings:———
The hien magistrate is the very heart and soul of all official life and emolument, his dignity and attributes, in large centres such as Canton or Chungking, not falling far short in many respects of those of the Lord Mayor of London. His comparatively low "button" rank places him in easy touch with the people, whilst his position as the lowest of the yu-sz, or executive," clothes him with an imperial status which even a viceroy must respect. He is the lowest officer on whom the Emperor himself (at times) directly confers an appointment. He is so much identified with the soul of "empire," that the Emperor or Government itself is elegantly styled hien-kwan, or "the district magistrate." He is judge in the first instance in all matters whatso- ever, civil or criminal, and also governor of the gaol, coroner, sheriff, mayor, head-surveyor, civil service examiner, tax-collector, registrar, lord-lieutenant, ædile, chief bailiff, interceder with the gods; and, in short, what the people always call him "father and mother officer." He cuts a very different figure in a remote country district from that accepted by him in a metropolis like Canton, where he is apt to be overshadowed by innumerable civil and military superiors; just as in London the Lord Mayor is outshone by the Court and the Cabinet Ministers. In his own remote city he is autocratic and everybody. He has no technical training whatever, except in the Chinese equivalent for "Latin verse;" he has a permanent staff of trained specialists who run each department for him, share the plunder with him, and keep themselves well in the background. If a weak man, he is at the mercy of these tools, and also of his "belly-band," i. e. the man who advances the money for him first to secure and then to reach his post. But, if a strong man, he soon transforms all these into contributory "suckers," of the sponge he personally clutches.
The "value" of every hien in the Empire is of course perfectly well known; but although there is bribery and corruption at Peking as well as in the provinces, the solid basis of government is not really bad, and from my experience of Chinese officials I should say that the majority of them are men no worse than American "bosses," that is, mere hacks of a corrupt growth, with as much "conscience" as their system vouchsafes. Purchase of official rank, and even of office, has been sadly on the increase since China began to get into trouble with rebels and Europeans; even now, though higher office can no longer be bought, the office of hien may be purchased, and many even higher brevet-titles are on sale. But, putting aside questions of bribery and jobbery, most hien magistrates obtain their posts either because they have passed brilliant examinations, or because their parents have served the State well, or because they themselves have "earned their turn by special services or efforts of some kind, which "services" include patriotic offerings" (office purchase) in different shapes and sizes. Whether the officer has obtained his post honorably or otherwise, his first care is (unless he be an enthusiast or a crank, in either of which cases he promptly comes to grief) to repay the expense of working up for his post, and of getting to it; his next care is to feather his nest, keep on the soft side of the Treasurer and the Governor, and prepare the way for future advancement. This is how he does it. His most important, or at least his most profitable duty, is the collection and remission of the land-tax, for which purpose he pays a liberal salary to a highly trained conveyancer kept permanently on the premises. The Board at Peking never asks for more than the regulation amount of this, and is uncommonly glad to see even "eight-tenths" of it paid. But by means of juggling with silver rates and "copper-cash rates; drawing pictures of local disasters and poverty; by legerdemain in counting and measuring; charging fees for the receipts, notices, tickets, attendance, and what not; it has come about in the course of time that the actual amount of the land-tax collected is anything between twice and four times the legal amount, whilst under no circumstances is the full amount even officially due ever admitted to be in hand. Say the land-tax of the district is 10,000 taels, a profit of this sum, or (at the old silver exchanges) £2,000 to £3,000 a year, would evidently bring the man back to his native village, after twenty years of work, with a handsome fortune. But he does not get all this for himself; many superiors have to be squared in a fixed, decorous, and it may even be said imperially-recognised way.
Then there is the administration of justice. Every hien magistrate, bad or good, must keep an army (usually hereditary rogues) of runners, collectors, lictors, and police; and in only very few cases can he afford to pay them anything, even for food, should his integrity be so unusual as to awaken within him the desire to do So. The smallest district needs thirty, the largest 300 or more of these ruffians. In practice these men, invariably the riff-raff of the town, live on their "warrants," and no man who is "wanted under a warrant," be he witness, criminal, or plaintiff, can as a general rule get off without payments to them of some sort. Moreover, every yâmen has hovering in the vicinity a vulture-like multitude of champerty and maintenance men, who live by sowing ill-will, and run "hand-in-glove" with the police. The amount of tyranny and villany varies in each district with each magistrate. I have myself seen enough with my own eyes, and had innumerable free- and-easy conversations with both magistrates and runners, to enable me to state with absolute certainty that a downright bad magistrate, succeeding to a post dominated by a nest of evil-minded runners with a long-established tyrannical habit ingrained in their hearts, and practising amongst a stupid, timid, or malignant population, can with impunity assassinate anyone he likes in his own gaol, accept any bribe, commit or condone any injustice, make his fortune, and even preserve his reputation in spite of all this. On the other hand, I have seen completely honest, simple-minded, benevolent magistrates, perfectly clean-handed (subject to custom), anxious to do right, loyal to their superiors, beloved of the people, and quite capable of restraining the police; who, again, under a kind master soon fall into the habit of reasonable obedience and fairness. I once had a very faithful black guard in my service (lent to me by a hien ruler for my protection) who nearly lost his life in my defence, and who used to tell me frankly of his own former crimes as we walked along the lonely country road together. There is a substratum of good in most hien (the current name for chi-hien) and their myrmidons. "'Tis oft the sight alone of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done.' With all this, however, it must be stated that most magistrates supplement their gains on land-tax account by considerable profits under the head of "justice," and the lawyer, or special "justice secretary who "shapes the law" is the most important person behind the hien's back.
There are other little pickings in the way of inquests (blind-eyes), licenses, permits, presents from gentry, transfers of land, posts, storage of official grain, purveyances, etc., which go to make up the magistrate's fortune; for it is an understood thing at Peking that "outside expenditure" requires "miscellaneous funds," while the provincial magnates in turn also understand that a magistrate who is bound by unwritten custom to repair and furnish their yâmens, keep all public buildings in order, forward their despatches, supply their transport, and (under breath be it said) grease their palms, must have something pecuniary wherewith to do it all. Besides, most viceroys have a son who is a hien, and "if you won't scratch my back, I won't scratch your back." Consequently there is a comfortable feeling all round that "the less said about insignificant details the better for all concerned."
It thus appears that the chain of responsibility has for its lowest link the chief officer of the hien, and that the links in ascending order run thus:———
(1) Hien magistrate (chih-bien).
(2) Chief officer of the fu (chib-fu).
(3) Chief officer of the tao (tao-tai).
(4) Provincial judge.
(5) Provincial treasurer.
(6) Provincial governor (fu-tai).
(7) Viceroy (tsung-tub).
To reach the working parts of the executive machine, the Throne gives its orders to a board in Peking; the board instructs the viceroy and governor; the viceroy and governor convey the
instruction to a treasurer and judge; the two latter pass it on to the tao-tai; the tao-tai transmits it to the head of the fu, and the fu makes it known to the hien magistrate. There are officials of similar status to the above and corresponding functions though having different titles; namely, the Chih-chou, who is practically a variety of Chih-fu, and the Fu-yin, or governor of a metropolitan fu (namely, Peking, Nanking, or Mukden). But these do not disturb the general sequence given above.
A strict rule of the civil service in China is that men must not serve in the province of their nativity; an absolutely necessary rule, since it would be almost impossible that any official should perform his duties quite independently of clan or family influence, under the circumstances existing in China, were his own home within the range of his administrative sphere. But the rule does not hold in the case of subordinate officials ap- pointed locally for the purpose of discharging minor duties. These "rats under the altar," as the Chinese call them, are the hereditary rogues referred to by Mr. Parker in the above extract.
Such in brief being the organisation of the administration, it remains now to examine the machinery of the central government in Peking. At the head of this stands the Emperor, who is styled the "son of heaven" and who rules by divine right, bequeathing his office to his eldest son, or nominating a successor from among his own children or blood relations, in which latter case the nomination is seldom made public during the sovereign's life. The Emperor is not a despot, for in a certain sense his tenure of sovereignty depends on his conforming with the principles of wise and benevolent administration. It is true that no recognised means exist for displacing him should he ignore those principles, nor any recognised machinery for giving expression to public opinion. But since the nation is permeated with a democratic conviction of its own right to remove an immoral or tyrannical ruler, and since that conviction insensibly begets forces to make it effective, no dynasty long survives its own conspicuous fall from grace, nor does any ruler regard himself as independent of his people's affection. There is this radical difference between the "son of heaven" who sits on the "dragon throne" in Peking and the "son of heaven who sways the sceptre in Japan, that whereas the former may be judged by the nation or may err in the sight of heaven, the latter can do no wrong. In China, when flood, drought, pestilence, or war harasses the country, the sovereign openly attributes these calamities to his own shortcomings, and the people believe in the efficacy and propriety of his self-abasement; but in Japan, although national achievements are always attributed to the illustrious virtues of the monarch, who in turn assigns them to the gracious assistance of his ancestors, no public misfortune is ever associated with his faults. The Japanese system is the more logical; the Chinese the more practical.
Nominally nearest to the Throne for administrative purposes is the Cabinet (nui-koh), to which some foreign writers give the name of "grand secretariat." It comprises four chief and two assistant Ministers (or Councillors), half of whom are Chinese and half Manchus. The Cabinet includes also ten 'scholars," of whom six are Manchus and four Chinese. It is not uncommon to speak of the six Ministers of the Cabinet as "elders" (koh-lao), a term constantly applied to officials occupying a similar position in Japan in the days of the Tokugawa administration. The Cabinet submits affairs of state to the Throne in writing, attaching to each document slips of paper on which are recorded the advice of the Ministers together with the reasons for tendering it. The time chosen for submitting these papers is daylight, and the duty of submitting them is entrusted to the "Ten Scholars," the Emperor's will being signified by a stroke in vermilion ink upon the suggestion he approves. The mass of affairs thus brought to imperial notice is enormous. It includes everything of a fiscal or finan- cial nature; all appointments, promotions, and dismissals of officials; naval and military matters; the affairs of the outlying dominions; criminal cases, and so on. There are twenty-five privy seals, having different forms, which are used for different purposes and are kept by the "Ten Scholars." There is also a translators' bureau in the Cabinet; a very necessary office in view of the many dialects spoken not merely in different provinces of the vast Chinese Empire, but also among the foreign or indigenous elements of its population. Altogether the staff of the Cabinet numbers about two hundred. The four " great councillors" divide between them the functions discharged by a prime minister in a western state, the first of them being, however, regarded as premier. The members of the Cabinet have functions other than the above, but they are chiefly of a ceremonial character.[3]
More influential, perhaps, than the Cabinet, though nominally of inferior rank, is the Privy Council (kiunki-chu), which consists generally of four "great Ministers" headed by a prince of the blood. There is no fixed rule as to the source whence members of this Council are taken; any high dignitary may be appointed, though an even balance between Chinese and Manchus is usually preserved. The sovereign is supposed to make the selection at his pleasure. The Privy Council assembles in the Palace every morning between five and six o'clock, and the Councillors, seated upon mats and low cushions, receive the Em-peror's commands and transcribe them for transmission to the executive. Every important deliberation, whether judicial, legislative, or administrative, is attended by this Council; it forms a committee of ways and means in time of war, and from lists kept in its possession the names of officials worthy of promotion or special appoint- ment are submitted to the Throne. It is not to be understood that the Council sits only once daily in the Emperor's presence: audiences are granted whenever necessary. Three bureaux are organised in the Privy Council: one is a historio-graphical office for compiling records of important events; the second performs duties of translation, and the third has to observe whether the edicts of the Throne are carried into effect.
Nothing that happens throughout the realm, nothing that concerns it, is supposed to be beyond the ken of these two bodies, the Cabinet and the Privy Council. With what degree of efficiency and intelligence the Ministers and Councillors discharge their functions may be gathered from facts patent to all, for although it is a common habit of foreign observers to denounce officials as universally venal and incompetent, or at least to admit only exceptions so rare as to prove the rule, the world has before it an object-lesson of unmistakable significance in the good order and tranquillity that used to reign throughout the vast regions governed from Peking before foreign intercourse became a widely disquieting factor. The articulation of the Empire is not compact. Events that would scarcely be deemed cardinal elsewhere sometimes shock it perceptibly, and in the presence of great emergencies its machinery breaks down. But under normal circumstances the nation is governed with scarcely any consciousness of being ruled, and the people's sense of fitness is not offended by administrative solecisms.
Under the Cabinet and the Council of State there are Six Boards (Lok-po), each having two presidents and four vice-presidents, in which offices the balance of power between Chinese and Manchus is strictly preserved. The first of these is the Board of Civil Office (Li-po), which manages everything relating to the civil service of the Empire, from suggesting promotions and degradations to recommending for ranks and rewards. The Board has no competence to make appointments or removals itself: it merely mits proposals to the Throne, and in the case of high appointments the Cabinet and the Privy Council act as advisory overseers. It is evident, however, that the business of such an extensive realm could not be discharged without frequent dislocations if every appointment or removal of an official had to receive preliminary consideration in the capital. Therefore the provincial authorities are empowered to fill up vacancies as soon as they occur from the ranks of " expectants who have duly qualified, and the Civil Office Board's operations are thus materially reduced. There are four bureaux in this Board, one of which is concerned solely with the distribution of titles, patents, and posthumous honours. This last class of distinctions has much importance in China, where ancestors are frequently ennobled for the merits of their descendants; an exceptional custom, due to the fact that the rites of ancestral worship are proportionate to the rank of the deceased, not to that of the worshipper. Hence, since it would be obviously contrary to the dictates of filial piety that a son holding the rank of a nobleman should pay to his ancestors the tribute of a commoner's worship only, this difficulty is solved by making titles retrospective.
The second of the Six Boards is that of Revenue (Hu-po). Its functions are very extensive, for they naturally include keeping the census, measuring and assessing lands, controlling privileges of transport, determining the revenues and mutual appropriations of the provinces, and receiving and distributing the various articles with which some taxes are paid, as grain, manufactured goods, and other kinds of produce. It is worth mention that a subordinate bureau of this Board compiles lists of Manchu girls from among whom the inmates of the imperial harem are selected. The connection between such a function and the duties of a board of revenue is derived from the fact that the allowances and outfits of these girls have to be controlled by the bureau.
The third Board is that of Rites (Li-po). Etiquette enters so largely into official and private life in China that the duties of this Board are wide and important. There are five kinds of ritual observance those of propitiation, of conciliation, of hospitality, of mourning, and of military matters which are all discussed and directed by the Board with due proclamation to the people at large. Questions of procedure, of literary distinctions, of religious honours, of tribute, of banquets, of bounties, of court etiquette, of official costumes, of equipages, of insignia of rank, of ceremonies connected with intercourse between men of title or high status, of forms of inter-state communication, of everything relat- ing to literary examination or to the establishment of Government schools and academies, all these lie within the Board's province. The Board includes a bureau which superintends the rites observed in worshipping deities and spirits of departed monarchs, sages, and worthies, and in "saving the sun and moon when eclipsed," which phenomena popular belief supposes to be due to a dragon that consumes the luminary. "The details of all the multifarious ritual duties of the Board occupy fourteen volumes of the Statutes,' for it may truly be said that so far as history tells, no nation ever paid such minute attention to etiquette and ritualism as the Chinese have paid during the past three thousand years. "Connected with the Board of Rites is a Board of Music, containing an indefinite number of officers whose duties are to study the principles of harmony and melody, to compose musical pieces and form instruments proper to play them, and then suit both to the various occasions on which they are required."[4]
The fourth Board is that of War (Ping-po). Its name explains its duties, but does not prepare the reader to learn that naval affairs also used to be under the control of this Board. The Board of War has a narrower range of duties than might be supposed, for it exercises no authority over the Twenty-four Banners (to be presently spoken of) and very little over the provincial troops. These two sections, together with bodies of "braves" or irregulars, raised from time to time as occasion requires and disbanded when the need for them ceases, constitute the army of China, about which it will be convenient to speak here in some detail.
The twenty-four Banners are divided into two groups of eight and sixteen respectively, the former consisting of pure Manchus, the latter of Mongols and Chinese descended from the men that aided the Manchu dynasty to conquer China. They are supposed to number about a quarter of a million men, and they furnish guards for the Palace as well as garrisons for important cities and fortresses. Their nominal pay is four taels (about twelve shillings) per month. The Tartar garrisons in great cities, like Canton, Fuchou, Hangchou, etc., are under a general of their own nationality and form a special caste, said to be in many cases little better than honourable prisoners confined within the limits of the city walls. They are supported out of the local revenues, but a special contribution is exacted from all the provinces for the maintenance of Banner-men in Peking. The Tartar general in a city nominally outranks even the viceroy within whose jurisdiction his command lies.
The provincial troops, or Green Banners, as they are called, are an uncertain quantity. Chinese returns put them at 650,000 in round numbers, but by some authorities they are supposed not to exceed 400,000. The discrepancy is mainly due to the fact that official figures cannot be trusted in such matters. A commanding officer may draw pay and allowances for a thousand men, but not more than five or six hundred may be actually enrolled. A soldier of the provincial forces gets nominally three taels (nine shillings) per month, out of which he must buy his own rations. It is generally believed that the men do not receive nearly so much, a large percentage being appropriated by the officers, but beyond the established fact that the private's pay is often in arrears, nothing can be said with assurance on this subject. The men's uniform is very sensible, a loose tunic falling over loose trousers, drawn close round the ankles, and cloth boots with thick paper soles. The garments are of cotton; the tunic blue, brown, or yellow with facings of a different colour; the trousers generally blue, and on the breast or back a large circle enclosing ideographs that show the corps to which the wearer belongs. This uniform costs four taels (twelve shillings), and twenty taels are allowed for the purchase of a cavalry horse. Altogether the annual appropriations for the army now aggregate some forty million taels (seven millions sterling approximately), though less than a moiety of that amount used to suffice before contact with Occidental civilization imposed upon China the duty of squandering her resources upon machines for slaughtering human beings.
In every province there is a General, commander-in-chief of the Green Banner forces. Like the Tartar General, he outranks a viceroy. Under him are from two to six brigadier-generals, each in command of a brigade; there being also, as a matter of course, a regular establishment of junior officers from colonels to lieutenants, as well as of non-commissioned officers from sergeants-major to corporals.
The above figures show the state of affairs prior to changes consequent upon the import of new ideas from the West; changes which have not yet been sufficiently systematized to lend themselves to any accurate analysis. Their gist is that eminent viceroys and governors have organized forces on European lines, and equipped them with modern weapons. The doings of these forces have not yet furnished a cardinal answer to the question whether the Chinese not the Manchus or the Mongols, but the Chinese. can be moulded into efficient soldiers. It is frequently asserted as a historical fact that they ceased to be soldiers after a brief period of national existence - brief in comparison with the long life of the Empire. The lust of battle is declared to be unknown to them, and never to have been known to them. On the other hand, the most hostile critic cannot deny that their physique is excellent, and that civilian members of the population have frequently shown themselves possessed of courage and coolness in a marked degree. Mr. E. H. Parker, one of the most eminent sinologues of the era, who passed twenty-five years in China, says: "I have found my Chinese followers in all provinces invariably true and stanch to me in times of danger, and I should not hesitate to lead a Chinese force, properly armed and brought into shape under my own supervision, against any European troops in existence. The Chinese have not the fighting instinct that is to say, they do not relish coming to blows just for the fun of the thing' but they are not afraid of death, and they have no little honest pride, gratitude for kindness, and sympathy with brave and disinterested leaders such as Gordon. For all these reasons I do not hesitate to stick up' for the poor Chinaman and to assert that he has in him the makings of a soldier." Other competent judges have expressed similar opinions, and the writer of these pages has seen individual China-men behave with conspicuous gallantry, if he has also seen them conduct themselves in an essentially craven manner. The balance of testimony is in their favour, and when it is affirmed, on the one hand, that they have frequently gone down before foreign invaders, it must be remembered, on the other, that during many centuries of their early national existence they raised and maintained on their northern frontiers an effective barrier against the inflow of the militant tide that swept to and fro in central Asia, a tide including such elements as the Turks and the Huns whose onsets Europe found itself unable to resist successfully.
But whatever may be said of the Chinese themselves, it is certain that the Manchus and the Mongols when they marched to the conquest of the Middle Kingdom in the seventeenth century were men of prowess and pluck, and that they had not lost those qualities when they first came into collision with European troops. The defence of Chinkiang on the 21st of July, 1842, was a fine example of enduring courage when twenty-three hundred Manchus resisted, almost successfully, the assault of nine thousand well-equipped and highly disciplined English troops, to whose weapons and manner of fighting they were strangers, and finally, after having shown admirable bravery, chose suicide rather than surrender, their general perishing in flames kindled by his own direction. In recent times it has been insisted by some eminent writers that the Tartar and Mongol banner-men have not maintained their military virtues; that their robust simplicity and manliness are things of the past, and that they have "degenerated into idle, flabby, and too often opium-smoking parasites." But such assertions are difficult to reconcile with the proofs given at Chinkiang in 1842 and at Taku in i860. There has been nothing in the history of the past half-century to account for the degeneration so often predicated of Tartar and Mongol manhood. The men have not changed, and the most reasonable explanation of their inefficiency as fighting units in modern times is that the rapidity of the age's progress has rendered their old-fashioned ways more or less paralysing. Assuredly it is not accurate to describe the whole Chinese army as " simply a rabble, provided with bags of rice, gay flags, umbrellas, fans and (quite a secondary matter) rusty guns, jingalls, spears, heavy swords, and (very occasionally) fairly good rifles and cartridges of a date always behind the time." Such a description may have wide ap- plicability, but it must be qualified to the extent of admitting that there are sections of the army to-day which leave little if anything to be desired in the matter of equipment. Most conspicuous formerly among such sections were one organised by the great viceroy, the late Li Hung-chang, in Chili; others organised by the Yangtse viceroys. Chang and Liu in their respective administrations, and yet another organised by Governor Yuan in Shantung. It is estimated that there are now about a hundred thousand troops in the province of Chili, well armed and tolerably trained, but as to the Green Banner-men throughout the provinces, no competent critic attaches any importance to them as fighting forces. Nor indeed can any one venture to speak with even approximate assurance about the army in Chili. People have been taught by experience to refrain from prediction where China's forces are concerned. For if in her modern career occasions have repeated themselves when the outside world agreed to take a serious view of her military capacity, invariably these seasons of hopefulness were followed by practical demonstrations of her inefficiency.
The first of such occasions was the period immediately succeeding the Taiping rebellion of 1860. This involves a brief analysis. If Chinese institutions are often glaringly defective in foreign eyes, it does not by any means follow that their defects are always invisible to Chinese eyes. Sometimes they are purposely left in a state of partial inanition because to vitalise them might be to endow them with dangerous potentialities. That is the case with a large section of the army. China has owed much of her domestic tranquillity in the past to the weakness of her provincial troops. She has kept them just strong enough to cope with what may be called the normal in- cidents of local life, such as petty riots, fiscal dis-turbances, and raids of bandits, but she has never suffered them to grow so strong as to be a formidable factor of insurrection. Thus when the Taiping rebellion, an affair of quite abnormal dimensions, broke out, the first essential was to organise troops to quell it; and the ultimate suc- cess of these levies, together with the éclat attaching to the "Ever-victorious Army" led by a British officer, Gordon, suggested a respectful estimate of China's military capacities. Then, in the immediate sequel of these events, the great Viceroy Chang Chih-tung set up iron works at Hanyang and an arsenal at the Pagoda anchorage of Foochow; the still greater Li Hung-chang
founded naval and military colleges at Tientsin, and organised under foreign instructors in Chili an army which seemed to possess all the attributes of strength, while the Viceroy Liu Kun-yi at Nanking took similarly enlightened steps, having 
View of the Great Wall of China.
Naturally, after incurring such terrible disgrace, China pulled herself together, or seemed to do so. She saw plainly that the provincial troops, the Green Banners, were useless, and although she could not abolish them all since they performed police and excise duties of an extensive nature, she set about abolishing a large portion of them, and collecting in the metropolitan province an army which should have the advantage of centralisation. It is true that these reforms were rudely interrupted in 1899 by a conservative reaction, which restored Manchu authority under the Empress Dowager as against Chinese progressive ideas under the auspices of the young Emperor. Yet the organisation and equipment of a strong army was part of the Manchu programme also, and during the five years that separated the conclusion (1895) of the war with Japan from the Boxer outbreak of 1900—an outbreak having for its ultimate purpose the expulsion of all foreigners from China and the severing of foreign relations—China was supposed to have once more prepared herself to beat back any attempts against Peking, at all events. Indeed the defences of the metropolitan province still retained something of the prestige that attached to the whole military and naval machine of China before her war with Japan, for though the latter's troops had with little difficulty stormed the first-class fortresses of Talien, Port Arthur, and Wei-hai-wei, their attacks had been delivered from the rear, where facilities for resistance had not been largely provided, and consequently no certain inference could be drawn as to what might happen at places like Taku, Tientsin, and Peking, where the defenders would not be exposed to similarly irregular enterprises. Yet when the test of actual practice came to be applied, when Chili itself became the battle-field in 1900, the Chinese did not make a much better showing than they had done five years previously in Manchuria and Shantung. The same campaign fought at a somewhat earlier date might have been judged more leniently. But after the war in South Africa had demonstrated the enormous potentialities of the defence and the fatal futility of direct attacks upon strong fortresses held by troops using modern weapons of precision, the puny efforts of the Chinese to defend Taku, Tientsin, and Peking against the assaults of forces not better equipped than themselves and less numerous, constituted a fiasco as flagrant as the collapse of 1894-1895. After these two wars people set themselves to inquire seriously whether the Chinese were radically incapable of fighting or whether their capacity had been paralysed by some special and remediable causes. Many theories were advanced and many explanations offered, some suggesting the former conclusion, some the latter. It is worth while to consider these theories briefly in detail, since evidently the question of China's military potentiality has absorbing interest for the world at large.
The reason habitually put forward by Western critics to account for China's failures and defects in administrative and fiscal problems is also placed first in this context, namely, peculation. There is ground to think, it is true, that the effects of corruption in China are exaggerated by foreign observers, and even that much of what they call corruption, not being recognised as such by the Chinese themselves, does not exercise a demoralising effect. But in the matter of military equipment and organisation corruption, though on a small scale, may have fatal consequences by affecting the supply of arms and ammunition. Little of that kind of defect was observable, however, either in the war of 1894-1895 or in the Chili campaign of 1900. The Chinese carried weapons of the best description, had an ample supply of ammunition, and were furnished with large reserve stores of warlike material, as was proved on the capture of the arsenals near Tientsin. It is true that at the battle of the Yalu in 1894—the only great naval engagement in the China-Japan war—many of the Chinese shells were said to have carried bursting-charges of sand, and others are reported to have had dummy fuses. But if such defects really existed, they do not appear to have contributed materially to the result of the fight, and at any rate the defeat suffered by the Chinese squadron on that occasion cannot be classed among the fiascos of the war, nor can it be said to have reflected any dishonour upon the vanquished. It was on shore that the troops of the Middle Kingdom showed incapacity, and on shore they were even better armed than the men at whose hands they suffered such disastrous defeats. It does not seem reasonable, therefore, to attribute their weakness in battle to the influence of corruption.
Nepotism is another often-repeated explanation. The units of each corps are taken, it is said, from one family or one clan. They are thus without territorial ties. Patriotism is not an effective motive of their actions. They will not be disciplined by men of another clan, and they are unsuited to form parts of a national organisation. But whatever force such a criticism may have in the case of the Chinese themselves, it certainly cannot apply to the Manchus or the Mongols. Theirs being essentially a national army, ought to be conspicuously free from the defects here enumerated. Further, if such defects exist now, it would seem that they ought to have existed still more powerfully in former times, when steamers, telegraphs, and newspapers had not yet brought the various sections of the Empire into moral contact and taught them to take a common survey of foreign politics. Here it is apposite to quote some of the statements made by British officers with reference to their experiences during China's first foreign war in 1839-1842:———
The Chinese showed more courage than skill. The English sailors pronounced both their guns and their powder to be excellent. (Engagement of November 3, 1839, off Chuen-pi).
The English officers described the Chinese defence of the Bogue Forts on January 7, 1841, as "obstinate and honourable."
"The batteries [at Amoy, 1841] were admirably constructed and, manned by Europeans, no force could have stood before them. They were never completely silenced by the ships' guns and, it is believed, they never would have been. Let the Chinese be trained, and well found with European implements and munitions, and depend upon it they will prove themselves no con- temptible foe."
"Many of the Chinese, seeing our new advance into the battery, quickly turned and a very smart affair followed. They assembled in great numbers close to some brass guns and then fought like Turks. Their conduct, in fact, was noble. Nothing could have surpassed it." (Tinghai, 1841.)
"The main body of the Chinese was routed without much difficulty, but 300 desperate men shut themselves up in a walled enclosure and made an obstinate resist- ance. They held out until three-quarters of them were slain, when the survivors, fifty wounded men, accepted the quarter offered them from the first." (Chefoo, 1841.)
"The Chinese were the worst equipped and the most innocent of military knowledge in the long list of Asiatic foes with whom the British had come into contact. Often they were no better than a badly armed mob, and even the Manchus had no more formidable weapons than their bows and spears. Yet not once did these badly armed and ignorant men evince cowardice. The English commanders always testified to their gallantry, even when hopeless, and to their devotion to duty when most other people would have thought only of their personal safety. Their defeat under all the circumstances was inevitable, but they knew how to save their reputation for courage and to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that men who would fight so manfully when victory was practically impossible could never be permanently conquered, and only needed the proper arms and knowledge to hold their own against Europeans."
Corruption and nepotism had prevailed among the Chinese during tens of cycles preceding the above events just as widely and forcibly as they prevailed during the few decades that separated those events from the wars of 1894-1895 and 1900. No evil or paralysing inferences operative now were inoperative then, and to attribute to innate defects of the race the military incompetence shown in recent wars is to forget the high qualities displayed in earlier fights. It must be assumed that the Chinese are just as capable of making good soldiers to-day as they were sixty years ago, and that the reasons of their latest failures are to be sought in accidents of their
system or in altered methods of warfare rather than in the nature of the men.
Two other factors of demoralisation are cited, and if they are correct, each of them acting alone would account for much of the trouble, while both acting in combination might explain the whole. One is that a Chinese army does not include any medical staff or hospital corps. Where a man falls, there he lies, condemned, as he supposes, to die a lingering death of agony, and hopeless of succour unless he can crawl off and find charitable shelter in some remote hamlet. Brave men going into action seldom pause to think how things will fare with them should they fall wounded, but the bravest man can scarcely escape demoralisation when he sees his comrades left to perish like dogs, and when he expects that such must be his own fate unless he escapes unscathed. That he should learn to dread wounds and to shrink from them seems inevitable under such circumstances. The second factor of demoralisation, evidently the more powerful factor of the two, is said to be the want of good officers. It is scarcely too much to affirm that the Chinese army is altogether without officers. A Chinese officer does not lead his men into battle; he fol- lows them; and the example he sets them is, not to face danger, but to fly from it. Therein lies the cardinal difference between China and Japan from a military point of view. The whole heart of the Japanese officer is in his profession. In time of peace he devotes himself with unflagging zeal to the instruction and organisation of his men. He has no purpose in life except to perfect himself in his own duties and to train his men for the efficient discharge of theirs. In war he shares their hardships; sets them an example of heroic bravery and is always at their head in moments of peril. The Chinese officer, on the contrary, seems to have no pride of "cloth." He regards his post mainly as a source of plunder, and himself as the possessor of an opportunity to get rich. Intelligent enough to know that defeat inevitable for troops such as he commands, he prepares for the contingency by holding himself always in readiness to run away. Such, at least, is the modern appreciation of his morale and his methods, and if it be a correct appreciation, the conclusion is plain that no army could fight stoutly under such leadership. But, on the other hand, it will be at once objected that these defects also - absence of medical organization and want of good officers — are not of modern development: they existed always in doubtless much the same degree as they exist now, yet they did not formerly prevent displays of conspicuous bravery. Altered methods of warfare resulting from the use of arms of precision and long range the loose formation, the necessity for highly intelligent recourse to cover, the futility of direct frontal attack and need of flanking movements. are all calculated to accentuate the consequences of bad training and defective leadership. But all these analyses expose nothing that is radical, nothing that is irremediable, and though it would appear that, other things being equal, the Chinaman, being deficient in the fighting instinct, is never likely to make as fine a soldier as the Turk, the Japanese, the Teuton, or the Anglo-Saxon, there is certainly no visible reason why with good training, good equipment, good leadership, and a good cause, he should not be able to hold his own for defensive purposes. But it is hard to carry imagination to the extent of picturing him as a successor of the Huns and the Goths, or of seeing his units combine to form that wave of yellow peril which, according to some eminent publicists, may yet sweep over Asia and Europe from the East.
Reverting from this lengthy digression to the machinery of administration in Peking, the fact, incidentally mentioned above, should be repeated here, namely, that a Naval Board (Haichun Yamên) was established in the capital in 1886, and that it had for its first President Prince Chun. This Board nominally controls all affairs relating to the Empire's sea-forces, but in practice the range of its authority has hitherto been limited to the northern section of the Navy, the business of the southern section being under the direction of the Viceroy at Nanking. At the present time, however, China can scarcely be said to possess any fleet. She certainly has no force that could make itself felt at sea against any of the foreign squadrons in the Pacific. Her Northern Fleet was annihilated by the Japanese in 1894–1895, and her Southern is almost a negligible quantity.
The fifth Board among the governing bodies in the capital is the Hing-po, or Board of Punishments. A measure of mystery attaches to the duties of this Board, for though its functions may be roughly described as those of a court of cassation and administration, the limits of its power are vague. Whenever high officials are guilty of any offence, the Throne directs that they be handed over to the Board of Punishments for the determination of a penalty. But although such committals are very numerous, they constitute only a small part of the Board's duties. Its principal business is to revise all the capital sentences pronounced by the tribunals throughout the Empire, for which purpose its officers combine with those of the Censorate and the Supreme Court—to be presently spoken of—to form the Three Law Chambers (San-fuh-sz), and these, again, with six other tribunals, organise a collegiate Court of Errors. As a matter of fact, this particular function of revision is, to a large extent, merely formal, since a majority of the persons capitally convicted in the provinces either die in prison or are executed before their cases reach the Court of Errors or the Three Chambers in the metropolis. Yet the organisation of such tribunals indicates the high value set upon life by Chinese legislators, in theory at all events, though in practice their system is conspicuously unsuccessful. It is part of the business of the Board of Punishments to provide for the publication of legislative enactments, to superintend jails and to receive moneys levied in commutation of punishments. But if this function of superintending jails be performed at all, its results are absolutely imperceptible. The sum of the matter is that while the machinery of government is admirably constructed, its working achievements are strikingly defective. "If," writes Dr. Wells Williams, "the administration of the law in China corresponded with the equity of most of its enactments, or with the caution taken to prevent collusion, malversation, and haste on the part of the judges, it would be incomparably the best governed country out of Christendom." A tribute of respect must at least be paid to the men who devised this system. It is one of the remnants of China's great past.
The Board of Works (Kung-po) is another illustration of Chinese capacity for organising administrative machinery. It has the direction and government of all public works throughout the Empire and the control of expenditures incurred on account of them. Among its bureaux there is one that superintends the manufacture of all war-like material; takes charge of arsenals, military stores, and camp equipage; regulates weights and measures, and, by a strange combination of duties, sorts and appraises the pearls obtained from fisheries, and furnishes death-warrants to governors and generals. Another bureau is responsible for the condition of city walls; of palaces, temples, altars, and other public edifices; for the furnishing of tents and utensils used on imperial progresses and for supplying ship-building timber as well as porcelain and glassware for use in the Palace. A third bureau is charged with the direction of matters relating to riverine conservation, to irrigation, to canals and bridges, to roads and sewers, and to the building of arsenals. A fourth attends to the condition of imperial mausolea, to the erection of sepulchres and memorial tablets for persons honoured with a state funeral, and to the interior decoration of temples and palaces. Finally, there is a special office for the management of the mint and another for the manufacture of gunpowder. This recital suggests a body of officials thoroughly efficient for all purposes of public works, but when the results are examined, it is seen that incompetence and perfunctoriness everywhere characterise this branch of state affairs. Rivers are not controlled, canals are not kept in a navigable condition, roads and bridges are not re- paired, sewage is not removed, and public edifices are left in a state of dilapidation and decay. Such is the common rule in China to-day: a system irreproachable in theory, but wretchedly defective in practice.
An important branch of the central government is commonly called the Censorate, but in reality, as its Chinese name (Tu-chah-yuen, or tribunal of general examination) signifies, it may be more correctly described as an administrative court having also functions of inspection. Combined with the Board of Punishments and the Supreme Court (Talisz), it forms a high chamber for revising criminal cases and hearing appeals from the judgments of provincial tribunals, but its own special function is to oversee the public offices, to investigate their manner of performing their duties, and to impeach their officials in case of misconduct, the result of such impeachment being that the incriminated official is handed over to the Board of Punishments for examination and the determination of a penalty. There is no superior limit to such impeachments. They may be directed against the occupant of the throne himself, and, indeed, are not infrequently so directed. Many cases are on record of memorials addressed by censors to the sovereign, setting forth some fault in his administration or some blemish in his manner of life. Thus, after the return of the Court to Peking (1902) in the sequel of the Boxer troubles, when the Treasury had been emptied by the cost of the war, by the necessity of paying large indemnities to foreign nations, and by the interruption of trade, industry, and agriculture, a censor strongly condemned the Empress Dowager's extravagant arrangements for visiting the tombs of her ancestors. The Emperor, on receipt of the memorial, openly denounced the accusation as untrue, and challenged the people to judge between the Empress Dowager and the censor, whom, however, His Majesty refrained from punishing. A celebrated case is that of the Censor Sung who addressed to the Emperor Kiaking (1766-1820) a remonstrance against his attachment to play-actors and strong drink. Kiaking, much incensed, summoned the official to his presence, and angrily demanded what penalty would be fitting for the author of such a document. Sung answered, "Death by the slicing process." Being ordered to select some other punishment, he said, "Let me be beheaded," and being again required to choose, he named "strangling." The Emperor ultimately appointed him to be Governor of Ili, thus rewarding his probity while placing him beyond the reach of exercising it inconveniently. Naturally the censors do not largely avail themselves of their liberty to reprove members of the imperial family, preferring rather criticisms of officials whose acts seem to call for public censure. Emperor Taou-kwang's (1820-1850) definition of a censor's functions is generally quoted as comprehensive and intelligent: "The Censors are allowed to tell me the reports they hear, to speak plainly about any defect or impropriety they may observe in the monarch himself. But they are not permitted to employ their pencils in writing memorials which are filled with vague surmises and mere probabilities or suppositions. This could only fill my mind with doubt and uncertainty, and I should not know what men to employ. Were such a spirit indulged the detriment to government would be serious." The Censorate is under two presidents, one a Manchu and one a Chinese; it has four deputies in the capital, and all governors and lieutenant-governors are ex-officio deputies. Its officers are sent on periodical visits of inspection to various parts of the Empire, and by the people they are often called the sovereign's "eyes and ears."
The foreign affairs of the Empire, in which are included matters relating to Mongolia, Ili, Thibet, and other outlying regions, are managed by the Lifan-yuen, or Colonial Office. By this department the inhabitants of the territories beyond the eighteen provinces are distinguished as waifan, or "outside foreigners," while the various non-Chinese tribes still inhabiting parts of the provinces, are called nuifan, or "inside foreigners." Wai-i, or "external barbarians," used to be the epithet applied by them to the inhabitants of all foreign countries not acknowledging the supremacy and enjoying the protection of China, but the incongruity of such a term has been reluctantly recognised of late years. There are six bureaux in this Colonial Department. Their functions are carefully and intelligently prescribed, not the least important being the overseeing of the Lama hierarchs in Mongolia and Thibet; of the Mohammedan Beys in Nanlu, and of the inner and outer Mongol tribes. Diplomatic relations with treaty Powers are not, however, in the hands of the Lifan-yuen. They were removed from its control in 1862, after the capture of Peking by an Anglo-French army, when a foreign office—Tsungli Yamên, or general managing bureau—was organised specially for that purpose; organised in such a manner as to be capable of offering a maximum of obstruction to the progress of business when occasion suggested delay. For its members elaborated an adroit system of service routine such that whenever the demands of a Foreign Representative began to be inconveniently urgent, he found himself confronted by a new Minister of the Tsungli Yamên with whom the whole question had to be discussed de novo. Before such a round of repetition the most zealous diplomacy ultimately grew exhausted and the Tsungli Yamên obtained a high reputation for the art of inaction. Therefore, when the capture of Peking in 1900 by an allied force of all the treaty Powers and the consequent flight of the Court to the ancient capital of Hsiang in Shensi, created an opportunity for wresting reforms from China at the mouth of the cannon, one of the demands made and acceded to was that the Tsungli Yamên should be replaced by a foreign office of Occidental type, presided over by a minister who would not be unable to elude his responsibilities by a perpetual process of substitution.
In addition to the Six Boards and other bodies enumerated above, the governmental machinery in Peking includes also a Sacrificial Court for directing religious observances, an Imperial Steed Court, a Banqueting Court, and a Ceremonial Court. These, though not forming parts of the ordinary administrative body, call for mention as indicating the degree of elaboration to which official organisation has been carried in China.
From what has been written thus far it will have been gathered that the administrative posts are distributed so as to preserve a balance of power between the Manchus and the Chinese. But the division is by no means equal. Thus, out of a total of twenty thousand officials in Peking-in round numbers - the Manchus and Mongols combined do not aggregate one-fifth, and among two thousand officials of and above the grade of Chih-hien in the provinces, the proportion of Manchus and Mongols is still smaller. Nevertheless, owing to the antipathy that exists between Chinese and Manchus, this intermingling of the two, though in unequal proportions, sets up an automatically checking action between the parts of the machine. "In the mutual relations of the great departments of the Chinese Government," says Dr. Williams, "the principles of responsibility and surveillance among the officers are plainly exhibited, while regard has been paid to such a division and ap- portionment of labour as would secure great efficiency and care, if every member of the machine faithfully did his duty. Two presidents are stationed over each Board to assist and watch each other, while the two presidents oversee the four vice-presidents; the president of one Board
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within the past thirty years, afford proof enough that he has attached his subordinates to his ser- vice by some other principle than fear. . . . In order to enable the superior officers to exercise greater vigilance over their inferiors, they have the privilege of sending special messengers, invested with full power, to every part of their jurisdiction. The Emperor himself never visits the provinces judicially, nor has an Emperor been south of the capital during the past hundred years; he, therefore, constantly sends commissioners or legates, called Kinchai, to all parts of the Empire, ostensibly entrusted with the management of a particular business, but required also to take a general surveillance of what is going on. . .Governors in like manner send their deputies
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It has already been mentioned that no civil official above a certain rank may serve in the province of his nativity, and it may be here added that an official is forbidden to own land in the district under his control or to have any near relative serving under him, neither is he continued in the same locality for more than three or four years, as a general rule. There is also a system of espionage which, though its ultimate effects are demoralising, imposes a temporary restraint upon vicious practices. Another notable feature is that a triennial catalogue, showing the merits and defects of every official in the Empire, from a Chih-hien upwards, is compiled and submitted forimperial inspection by the Board of Civil Office. In order to obtain material for this catalogue, all officials have to report upon the character and qualifications of their subordinates, and also to act as self-accusers when occasion requires. It is a fact that very few officials have ever risen to high position in China without suffering occasional degradations en route, not only because of this system of minute reports, but also because the functions nominally assigned to each public servant are so multitudinous that failure at some points is almost inevitable. Such degradations, when they involve only one or two steps of rank, do not carry with them any disgrace or constitute any bar to subsequent promotion. The degree of an offence, not the moral guilt, is primarily considered. If a man has been guilty of bribery, his punishment is in proportion to the amount of the bribe, and whether he has committed a crime, or erred in judgment, or been deficient in zeal, he is liable to be sentenced to a beating with the bamboo, commuted, of course, to a fine in the case of an aged or exalted official. Moral guilt, in short, is of less importance than its effects. On the other hand, though oppression, extortion, venality, and corruption are freely and almost universally charged against Chinese officials by the foreign critic, it is too often forgotten that none of these men are fully paid agents of their employer, the Government. They are expected to eke out their wholly insufficient stipends by levying commissions upon the business that passes through their hands, and if their license is large, their responsibilities are proportionately heavy. The people, too, are tolerably happy and contented under their sway. As a general rule, so long as a man avoids collision with the law, he
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observers, who have enjoyed opportunities of judging, is that the statesmen they encountered in Peking and in the Provinces commanded respect for shrewdness, skill, and loyalty. Public testimony also is not wanting. There is no nominal system of popular representation, but the people have provided a means of making their views felt in official circles by posting up pasqui- nades which are regarded, not as mere vulgar lampoons, but as sober expressions of opinion,
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features which the customs of his own country should have made familiar are distorted by prejudice when observed in an alien land. Thus the Chinese Emperor's habit of making public confession of his own faults and attributing to them the responsibility for some natural calamity, such as drought, inundation, or pestilence, has often been ridiculed by European writers and called a flagrant example of Oriental insincerity. They forget that in thus acting the sovereign merely humbles himself before heaven, precisely after the manner prescribed by Christianity. So, too, when officials accuse themselves of offences and ask for punishment, as not infrequently happens, the foreign comment is that these confessions are merely intended to divert attention from really serious misdeeds. Yet the Chinese offer an altogether rational and credible explanation, namely, that apart from the hypothesis of sincere regret, there may be a less noble, but still not
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Official edicts are usually printed in large ideographs and posted at the entrance of an office or in the streets. The Official Gazette is also used for this purpose. Sometimes tablets of black marble receive handsomely sculptured copies of laws or regulations and are set up in public positions, to be "held in everlasting remembrance." The eminently practical Chinese administrator or legislator takes care to couch all statutes or proclamations in simple language, easily intelligible; a method contrasting favourably with that adopted in Japan, where imperial rescripts and ordinances are composed in such an erudite style as to be in- comprehensible to any but the learned few. It is further characteristic of Chinese edicts that they not only require the obedience but also appeal to the reason of those they address. Un- like the sternly simple vetoes and injunctions of Mosaic Law, they seek to secure intelligent rather than blind observance. This, too, has been ridiculed by foreign critics, and construed as indicating weakness on the part of rulers who argue and command in the same breath. Yet it is strictly consistent with the paternal theory of government in China. As the son of heaven the sovereign receives administrative instruction not less than authority from the divine source, and as the father of the people his mandates inform while they command. Further, it is logically con-
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Whatever excuse for official extortion may be furnished by the Chinese system of insufficient salaries, it is plainly a demoralising system. From the moment that "squeezing" is counted legitimate as a means of supplementing inadequate emoluments, the caprices of conscience become the sole limitations of the abuse. It is true that stringent regulations exist for preventing corruption and checking extortion, but they are practically inoperative. Opportunity alone sets the standard of morality. On the other hand, there is no monopoly of peculation. The financial potentialities of every post are familiar by experience or by tradition to those in higher positions, and if any official makes such haste to get rich himself that he forgets to share his gains with his superiors, his career is abruptly cut short. Further, the number of persons that qualify for office at the periodical examinations is so greatly in excess of the number of offices that competition for vacancies becomes a question of buying patronage, and thus while, on the one hand, the statesmen in Peking secure their share of the provincial spoils, on the other, a new necessity to "squeeze" is imposed upon the successful candidate: he has to recoup his initial outlay as well as to collect
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demned, the honourable fact that many escape its demoralising effects should not be forgotten.
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- ↑ See Appendix, note 6.
Note 6.—Similar divisions exist in Japan, namely, the ken, or prefecture; the fu, or urban prefecture, and the do, or circuit. But the fu does not include several ken, being in fact merely a metropolitan prefecture (Tōkyō, Kyōtō, or Ōsaka), neither does the do enter into the present administrative scheme, being merely a geographical term, as Hokkai-do (northern-sea circuit), Nakesan-do (mid-mountain circuit), etc.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 7.
Note 7.—The distinction between the chou and the hien need not be considered by foreign students desiring to form only a general idea of the Chinese system. Some writers, however, call the fu a town of the first order, the chou a town of the second order, and the hien a town of the third order; though, in fact, the word "town" does not properly describe any of these divisions, since each comprises not only a town but also the district surrounding it.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 8.
Note 8.—The term "Mandarin," commonly applied by foreigners to Chinese officials, is derived from the Portuguese word mandar, "to command," and is quite unknown to the Chinese language.
- ↑ See Appendix, Note 9.