Public Offices are filled by nominated Mandarins of various grades. They obtain their posts partly by proficiency in successive urban, provincial, metropolitan, and palace open competitive examinations in Chinese classical lore, and partly by purchase or judicious bribery.
The former literary tests were established twelve centuries ago, and at least 1100 years before merit or study had much place in European patronage.
The brilliant graduate of humble origin rarely lacks, moreover, the pecuniary support necessary for the prosecution of his studies, or for official recognition of his examination laurels. Localities, banks, and capitalists are usually ready to stand behind a man of promise, as an investment, to be liberally recouped by ulterior "squeeze,"—on his attaining place,—smally paid in itself, however exalted, but prolific in indirect sources of enrichment.
Influence of the Literati.
8.—Nothing is declared to press so heavily upon the social, political, and national progress of China, as the adverse influence of the "educated" classes. So it was even in the time of the great monarch who, 200 years before Christ, consolidated the Chinese Empire, and built the still-enduring Great Wall, in hopes of thereby defeating Tartar incursions. To overcome the opposition of the Literati, he ordered all their books to be destroyed. But the fact remains that the vigorous heads among the people, who, in other lands, have had to carve their forward path, by agitation and revolution, through the barriers of social rank, caste, and the privileges of wealth, have had for ages in China an open avenue to advancement.
Thus it is that the student tendency, instead of being, as in every other part of the world, in the direction of reform, is applied to the most absolute maintenance of the present system, and to the rejection alike of the methods and appliances of the Western world.
Students sent to Europe.
9.—It is true that a few youths have, from time to time, been sent to Europe and America, but their studies have been either cut short, or the palace circle has succeeded in relegating them, on return, to distant posts. Some also have gone back, not imbued, like the Japanese, with ardent enthusiasm for reforms, but apparently more embittered than ever against the foreigner.[3] How little influence they have had, and how little is really known of the West, may be illustrated by the belief said to have been expressed by a provincial functionary in high office, that foreigners came to China, from the barren rock of Europe, to obtain "rice" as a means of subsistence; and to the opinion of another, that we owed scientific progress, not to our own discoveries, but to having obtained a copy of the ancient Chinese classics, saved from the above-mentioned Imperial destruction.
National Result.