But I shall silent stand and see his grace
Diffusing blessings like the genial spring.
Ílípu, Kí Kung, the late governor-general of Kwangtung, and Shu, the prefect of Ningpo in 1842, are other officers who have been popular in late years. When Lin passed through Macao in 1839, the Chinese had in several places erected honorary portals adorned with festoons of silk and laudatory scrolls; and when he passed the doors of their houses and shops they set out tables decorated with vases of flowers, “in order to manifest their profound gratitude for his coming to save them from a deadly vice, and for removing from them a dire calamity by the destruction and severe interdiction of opium.” Alas, that his efforts and intentions should have been so fruitless!
OFFICIAL PETITIONS AND CONFESSIONS.
The Peking Gazette frequently contains petitions from old officers describing their ailments, their fear lest they shall not be able to perform their duties, the length of their official service, and requesting leave of absence or permission to retire. It is impossible to regard all the expressions of loyalty in these papers, coming as they do from every class of officers, as heartless and made out according to a prescribed form; but we are too ready to measure them by our own standard and fashion, forgetting that it is not the defects of a system which give the best standard of its value and efficiency. Let us rather, as an honest expression of feeling, quote a few lines from a memorial of Shí, a censor in 1824: “Reflecting within myself that, notwithstanding the decay of my strength, it has still pleased the imperial goodness to employ me in a high office instead of rejecting and discarding me at once, I have been most anxious to effect a cure, in order that, a weak old horse as I am, it might be still in my power, by the exertion of my whole strength, to recompense a ten-thousandth part of the benevolence which restored me to life.”[252]
Connected with the triennial schedule of official merits and demerits is the necessity the high officers of state are under of confessing their faults of government; and the two form a peculiar and somewhat stringent check upon their intrigues and malversation, making them, as Le Comte observes, “exceeding circumspect and careful, and sometimes even virtuous against their own inclinations.” The confessions reported in the Peking Gazette are, however, by no means satisfactory as to the real extent or nature of these acts; most of the confessors are censors, and perhaps it is in virtue of their office that they thus sit in judgment upon themselves. Examples of the crimes mentioned are not wanting. The governor-general of Chihlí requested severe punishment in 1832 for not having discovered a plotting demagogue who had collected several thousand adherents in his and the next provinces; his request was granted. An admiral in the same province demands punishment for not having properly educated his son, as thereby he went mad and wounded several people. Another calls for judgment upon himself because the Empress-dowager had been kept waiting at the palace gate by the porters when she paid her Majesty a visit. One officer accused himself for not being able to control the Yellow River; and his Majesty’s cook in 1830 requested punishment for being too late in presenting his bill of fare, but was graciously forgiven. The rarity of these confessions, compared with the actual sins, shows either that they are, like a partridge’s doublings, made to draw off attention from the real nest of malversation, or that few officers are willing to undergo the mortification.
The Emperor, in his character of vicegerent of heaven, occasionally imposes the duty of self-confession upon himself. Kiaking issued several public confessions during his reign, but the Gazette has not contained many such papers within the last thirty years. These confessions are drawn from him more by natural calamities, such as drought, freshets, epidemics, etc., than by political causes, though insurrections, fires, ominous portents, etc., sometimes induce them. The personal character of the monarch has much to do with their frequency and phraseology. On occasion of a drought in 1817 the Emperor Kiaking said: “The remissness and sloth of the officers of government constitute an evil which has long been accumulating. It is not the evil of a day; for several years I have given the most pressing admonitions on the subject, and have punished many cases which have been discovered, so that recently there appears a little improvement, and for several seasons the weather has been favorable. The drought this season is not perhaps entirely on their (the officers’) account. I have meditated upon it, and am persuaded that the reason why the azure Heavens above manifest disapprobation by withholding rain for a few hundred miles only around the capital, is that the fifty and more rebels who escaped are secreted somewhere near Peking. Hence it is that fertile vapors are fast bound, and the felicitous harmony of the seasons interrupted.” On the 14th of May, 1818, between five and six o’clock in the evening, a sudden darkness enveloped the capital, attended by a violent wind from the southeast and much rain. During its action two intervals occurred when the sky became a lurid red and the air offensive, terrible claps of thunder startling the people and frightening the monarch. His astrologers could not relieve his forebodings of evil, and he issued a manifesto to explain the matter to his subjects and discharge his own conscience. One sentence is worth quoting: “Calumnious accusations cause the ruin and death of a multitude of innocent people; they alone are capable of provoking a sign as terrible as this one just seen. The wind coming from the southeast is proof enough that some great crime has been committed in that region, which the officials, by neglecting their duties, have ignored, and thereby excited the ire of Heaven.”[253]
PRAYER FOR RAIN OF TAUKWANG.
One of the most remarkable specimens of these papers is a prayer for rain issued by Taukwang, July 24, 1832, on occasion of a severe drought at the capital. Before publishing this paper he had endeavored to mollify the anger and heat of heaven by ordering all suspected and accused persons in the prisons of the metropolis to be tried, and their guilt or innocence established, in order that the course of justice might not be delayed, and witnesses be released from confinement. But these vicarious corrections did not avail, and the drought continuing, he was obliged, as high-priest of the Empire, to show the people that he was mindful of their sufferings, and would relieve them, if possible, by presenting the following memorial:
“Kneeling, a memorial is hereby presented, to cause affairs to be heard.