FINANCE
a barrier, was required to pay seven and a half taels by way of toll and to accept a receipt for only four, the legal charge. Remonstrances and investigations elicited the fact that what the barrier officials had to exact was not four taels,.but such a sum as would enable them to lay down four taels of the standard weight and purity in Peking, and consequently they were obliged to include in the amount every contingent expense of whatsoever nature. "That," says Mr. Jamieson, "illustrates exactly what is going on all over the Empire. To every tael or picul of rice legally leviable there is added a number of petty charges of the above nature, - meltage fee, allowance for.waste, clerk's fees, etc., - till the sum is doubled or.more. But there is another and greater mischief, and that is the vicious plan of making every.magistrate and every collector a farmer of the revenue. All district magistrates receive about the same salaries and. allowances, but everybody knows there is all the difference in the world between one incumbency and another. Each district has a fixed quota which the magistrate.must produce by hook or by crook, but beyond that minimum all the rest is practically his own, not to keep exactly, because if he holds a lucrative.appointment he is expected to be extra-liberal in his presents to the governor, the literary chan- cellor, the provincial judge, the treasurer, and so on, not to mention still higher dignitaries, if he
wishes to get on. But there is no magistracy
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