Nor had the old system, under which the inadequate salaries of officials had ordinarily to be supplemented by extraneous illicit gains, given way to a more efficient and business-like organization of the public service under which officials would be able to devote their undivided attention to the accomplishment of their regular allotted tasks without spending their energy in contriving additional means of obtaining income.
In the case of certain classes of officials, the Government had endeavoured to place their salaries at a figure sufficient to render them independent of these practices; but the resources of the Government were not adequate to enable it at once to place the entire public service upon a basis of individual independence. It was also true that certain among the closest advisers of the President were commonly believed to have used their positions for the purpose of accumulating vast private fortunes—a belief which, whether justified or not, must be counted with in determining the standing of the Government as enjoyed throughout the country.
Thus the old hostility and lack of confidence, which formerly characterized the relations between merchants and officials, continued under the new system.
Through the dissolution of the Parliament, the Government had destroyed an organ which might, in the course of time, have established relations of confidence between the great middle class of China and the Government.
As a statesman, the President emphasized in the first place the requirements of order and of authority. To him it seemed that Parliament, with its free discussion, with its opportunity for forming political factions, opposing the men in authority, stood in the way of the establishment of a lasting system of legal order. He, therefore, dissolved first the national parliament, then the assemblies of the provinces, and finally the local self-governing bodies.
In each case inefficiency was justly complained of. The men in the parliamentary bodies had often been self-seeking, factional, and unpractical. But the President seemed to have no perception of the true value of parliamentary action as a basis of public authority; he considered opposition to the Government synonymous with opposition to lawful authority. And in his ideas upon the reconstitution of Parliament, as far as they had been announced, two main principles dominated: first, that only men of mature experience and of conservative ideas should be selected; and secondly, that the activities of Parliament should be confined to discussing and giving advice upon policies already determined upon by the Administration.
CHINA OF MERCHANT-ADVENTURERS