The celebrated Sung, who was appointed commissioner to accompany Lord Macartney, once remonstrated with the Emperor Kiaking upon his attachment to play-actors and strong drink, which degraded him in the eyes of his people and incapacitated him from performing his duties. The Emperor, highly irritated, called him to his presence, and on his confessing to the authorship of the memorial, asked him what punishment he deserved. He answered, “Quartering.” He was told to select some other; “Let me be beheaded;” and on a third command, he chose to be strangled. He was then ordered to retire, and the next day the Emperor appointed him governor in Ílí, thus acknowledging his rectitude, though unable to bear his censure.
History records the reply of another censor in the reign of an Emperor of the Tang dynasty, who, when his Majesty once desired to inspect the archives of the historiographer’s office, in order to learn what had been recorded concerning himself, under the excuse that he must know his faults before he could well correct them, was answered: “It is true your Majesty has committed a number of errors, and it has been the painful duty of our employment to take notice of them; a duty which further obliges us to inform posterity of the conversation which your Majesty has this day, very improperly, held with us.”
The censors usually attend on all state occasions by the side of his Majesty, and are frequently allowed to express their opinions openly, but in a despotic government this is little else than a fiction of state, for the fear of offending the imperial ear, and consequent disgrace, will usually prove stronger than the consciousness of right or the desires of a public fame and martyrdom for the sake of principle. The usual mode of advising is to send in a remonstrance against a proposed act, as when one of the body in 1832 remonstrated against the Emperor paying attention to anonymous accusations; or to suggest a different procedure, as the memorials of Chu Tsun against legalizing opium. The number of these papers inserted in the Peking Gazette for the information of the Empire, in many of which the acts of officers are severely reprehended, shows that the censors are not altogether idle. In 1833 a censor named Sü requested the Emperor to interdict official persons at court from writing private letters concerning public persons and affairs in the provinces. He stated that when candidates left the capital for their provincial stations, private letters were sent by them from their friends to the provincial authorities, “sounding the voice of influence and interest,” by which means justice was perverted. The Emperor ordered the Cabinet to examine the censor and get his facts in proof of these statements, but on inquiry he either would not or could not bring forward any cases, and he himself consequently received a reprimand. “These censors are allowed,” says the Emperor, “to tell me the reports they hear, to inform me concerning courtiers and governors who pervert the laws, and to speak plainly about any defect or impropriety which 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 would only fill my mind with doubts and uncertainty, and I would not know what men to employ; were this spirit indulged, the detriment of government would be most serious. Let Sü be subjected to a court of inquiry.”
The suspension or disgrace of censors for their freedom of speech is a common occurrence, and among the forty or fifty persons who have this privilege a few are to be found who do not hesitate to lift up their voice against what they deem to be wrong; and there is reason for supposing that only a small portion of their remonstrances appears in the Gazette. With regard to this department of government, it is to be observed that although it may tend only in a partial degree to check oppression and reform abuses, and while a close examination of its real operations and influence and the character of its members may excite more contempt than respect, still the existence of such a body, and the publication of its memorials, can hardly fail to rectify misconduct to some degree, and check maladministration before it results in widespread evil. The Censorate is, however, only one of a number of checks upon the conduct of officers, and perhaps by no means the strongest.[236]
COURTS OF TRANSMISSION AND JUDICATURE.
11. The Tung-ching Sz’, which may be called a Court of Transmission, consists of a small body of six officers, whose duty is to receive memorials from the provincial authorities and appeals from their judgment by the people and present them to the Cabinet. Attached to this Court is an office for attending at the palace-gate to await the beating of a drum, which, in conformity with an ancient custom, is placed there that applicants may by striking it obtain a hearing. It is also the channel through which the people can directly appeal to his Majesty, and cases occur of individuals, even women and girls, travelling to the capital from remote places to present their petitions for redress before the throne. The feeling of blood revenge prevails among the Chinese, and impels many of these weak and unprotected persons to undergo great hardships to obtain legal redress, when the lives of their parents have been unjustly taken by powerful and rich enemies.
12. The Ta-lí Sz’, or Court of Judicature and Revision, has the duty of adjusting all the criminal courts in the Empire, and forms the nearest approach to a Supreme Court in the government, though the cases brought before it are mostly criminal. When the crimes involve life, this and the preceding unite with the Censorate to form one court, and if the judges are not unanimous in their decisions they must report their reasons to the Emperor, who will pass judgment upon them. In a despotic government no one can expect that the executive officers of courts will exercise their functions with that caution and equity required in Christian countries, but considerable care has been taken to obtain as great a degree of justice as possible.
THE HANLIN AND MINOR COURTS.
13. The Hanlin Yuen, or Imperial Academy, is entrusted “with the duty of drawing up governmental documents, histories, and other works; its chief officers take the lead of the various classes, and excite their exertions to advance in learning in order to prepare them for employments and fit them for attending upon the sovereign.” This body has, it is highly probable, some similarity to the collection of learned men to whom the King of Babylon entrusted the education of promising young men, for although the members of the Hanlin Yuen do not, to any great degree, educate persons, they are constantly referred to as the Chaldeans were by Belshazzar. Sir John Davis likens it to the Sorbonne, inasmuch as it expounds the sacred books of the Chinese. Its chief officers are two presidents or senior members, called chwang yuen hioh-sz’, who are usually appointed for life; they attend upon the Emperor, superintend the studies of graduates, and furnish semi-annual lists of persons to be “speakers” at the “classical feasts,” where the literary essays of his Majesty are translated from and into Manchu and read before him.
Subordinate to the two senior members are four grades of officers, five in each grade, together with an unlimited number of senior graduates, each forming a sort of college, whose duties are to prepare all works published under governmental sanction; these persons are subject from time to time to fresh examination, and are liable to lose their degrees or be altogether dismissed from office if found faulty or deficient. Subordinate to the Hanlin Yuen is an office consisting of twenty-two selected members, who in rotation attend on the Emperor and make a record of his words and actions. There is also an additional office for the preparation of national histories.