“Whereas, the ways of Heaven are without partiality, and no sanction is allowed to injure others in order to benefit one’s self, and that men’s natural feelings are not very diverse (for where is he who does not abhor death and love life?)—therefore your honorable nation, though beyond the wide ocean at a distance of twenty thousand lí, also acknowledges the same ways of Heaven, the same human nature, and has the like perceptions of the distinctions between life and death, benefit and injury. Our heavenly court has for its family all that is within the four seas; and as to the great Emperor’s heaven-like benevolence—there is none whom it does not overshadow; even regions remote, desert, and disconnected have a part in his general care of life and well-being.”
The edicts furnish almost the only exponents of the intentions of government. They present several characteristic features of the ignorant conceit and ridiculous assumptions of the Chinese, while they betray the real weakness of the authorities in the mixture of argument and command, coaxing and threatening, pervading every paragraph. According to their phraseology, there can possibly be no failure in the execution of every order; if they are once made known, the obedience of the people follows almost as a matter of course; while at the same time both the writer and the people know that most of them are not only perfunctory but nearly useless. The responsibility of the writer in a measure ceases with the promulgation of his orders, and when they reach the last in the series their efficiency has well nigh departed. Expediency is the usual guide for obedience; deceiving superiors and oppressing the people the rule of action on the part of many officials; and their orders do not more strikingly exhibit their weakness and ignorance than their mendacity and conceit. A large proportion of well-meaning officers are sensible too that all their efforts will be neutralized by the half-paid, unscrupulous retainers and clerks in the yamuns; and this checks their energy.
It is not easy, without citing many examples accompanied with particular explanations, to give a just idea of the actual execution of the laws, and show how far the people are secured in life and property by their rulers; and perhaps nothing has been the source of such differing views regarding the Chinese as the predominance writers give either to the theory or the practice of legislation. Old Magaillans has hit this point pretty well when he says: “It seems as if the legislators had omitted nothing, and that they had foreseen all inconveniences that were to be feared; so that I am persuaded no kingdom in the world could be better governed or more happy, if the conduct and probity of the officers were but answerable to the institution of the government. But in regard they have no knowledge of the true God, nor of the eternal rewards and punishments of the other world, they are subject to no remorses of conscience, they place all their happiness in pleasure, in dignity and riches; and therefore, to obtain these fading advantages, they violate all the laws of God and man, trampling under foot religion, reason, justice, honesty, and all the rights of consanguinity and friendship. The inferior officers mind nothing but how to defraud their superiors, they the supreme tribunals, and all together how to cheat the king; which they know how to do with so much cunning and address, making use in their memorials of words and expressions so soft, so honest, so respectful, so humble and full of adulation, and of reasons so plausible, that the deluded prince frequently takes the greatest falsehoods for solemn truths. So that the people, finding themselves continually oppressed and overwhelmed without any reason, murmur and raise seditions and revolts, which have caused so much ruin and so many changes in the Empire. Nevertheless, there is no reason that the excellency and perfection of the laws of China should suffer for the depravity and wickedness of the magistrates.”[256]
EXTORTIONS PRACTISED BY MAGISTRATES.
Magaillans resided in China nearly forty years, and his opinion may be considered on the whole as a fair judgment of the real condition of the people and the policy of their rulers. When one is living in the country itself, to hear the complaints of individuals against the extortion and cruelty of their rulers, and to read the reports of judicial murder, torture, and crime in the Peking Gazette, are enough to cause one to wonder how such atrocities and oppressions are endured from year to year, and why the sufferers do not rise and throw aside the tyrannous power which thus abuses them. But the people are generally conscious that their rulers are no better than themselves, and that they would really gain nothing by such a procedure, and their desire to maintain as great a degree of peace as possible leads them to submit to many evils, which in western countries would soon be remedied or cause a revolution. In order to restrain the officers in their misrule, Section CCX. of the code ordains that “If any officer of government, whose situation gives him power and control over the people, not only does not conciliate them by proper indulgence, but exercises his authority in a manner so inconsistent with the established laws and approved usages of the Empire, that the sentiments of the once loyal subjects being changed by his oppressive conduct, they assemble tumultuously and openly rebel, and drive him at length from the capital city and seat of his government; such officer shall suffer death.”
By the laws of China, every officer of the nine ranks must be previously qualified for duty by a degree; in the ninth are included village magistrates, deputy treasurers, jailers, etc., but the police, local interpreters, clerks, and other attendants on the courts are not considered as having any rank, and most of them are natives of the place where they are employed. The only degradation they can feel is to turn them out of their stations, but this is hardly a palliative of the evils the people suffer from them; the new leech is more thirsty than the old. The cause of many of the extortions the people suffer from their rulers is found in the system of purchasing office, at all times practised in one shape or other, but occasionally resorted to by the government. As the counterpart of this system, that of receiving bribes must be expected therefore to prevail, and being in fact practised by all grades of dignitaries, and sometimes even upheld by them as a “necessary evil,” it adds still more to the bad consequences resulting from this mode of obtaining office. Indeed, so far is the practice of “covering the eyes” carried in China, that the people seldom approach their rulers without a gift to make way for them.
One mode taken by the highest ranks to obtain money is to notify inferiors that there are certain days on which presents are expected, and custom soon increases these as much as the case will admit. Subscriptions for objects of public charity or disbursements, such as an inundation, a bad harvest, bursting of dikes, and other similar things which the government must look after, are not unfrequently made a source of revenue to the incumbents by requiring much more than is needed; those who subscribe are rewarded by an empty title, a peacock’s feather, or employment in some insignificant formality. The sale of titular rank is a source of revenue, but the government never attempts to subvert or interfere with the well-known channel of attaining office by literary merit, and it seldom confers much real power for money when unconnected with some degree of fitness. The security of its own position is not to be risked for the sake of an easy means of filling its exchequer, yet it is impossible to say how far the sale of office and title is carried. The censors inveigh against it, and the Emperor almost apologizes for resorting to it, but it is nevertheless constantly practised. The government stocks of this description were opened during the late rebellions and foreign wars, as the necessities of the case were a sufficient excuse for the disreputable practice. In 1835 the sons of two of the leading hong-merchants were promoted, in consequence of their donations of $25,000 each to repair the ravages of an inundation; subscribers to the amount of $10,000 and upward were rewarded by an honorary title, whose only privilege is that it saves its possessor from a bambooing, it being the law that no one holding any office can be personally chastised.[257]
AGENTS AND MODES OF OFFICIAL EXACTION.
Besides the lower officers, the clerks in their employ and the police, who are often taken from the garrison soldiery, are the agents in the hands of the upper ranks to squeeze the people. There are many clerks of various duties and grades about all the offices who receive small salaries, and every application and petition to their superiors, going through their hands, is attended by a bribe to pass them up. The military police and servants connected with the offices are not paid any regular salary, and their number is great. In the large districts, like those of Nanhai and Pwanyu, which compose the city of Canton and suburbs, it is said there are about a thousand unpaid police; in the middle-sized ones between three and four hundred, and in the smallest from one to two hundred. This number is increased by the domestics attending high officers as part of their suite, and by their old acquaintances, who make themselves known when there is any likelihood of being employed. Among other abuses mentioned by the censors is that of magistrates appointing their own creatures to fill vacancies until those nominated by his Majesty arrive; like a poor man oppressing the poor, such officers are a sweeping rain. A similar abuse arises when country magistrates leave their posts to go to the provincial capital to dance attendance upon their superiors, and get nominated to a higher place or taken into their service as secretaries, because they will work for nothing; the duties of their vacated offices are meantime usually left undone, and underlings take advantage of their absence to make new exactions. The governor fills vacant offices with his own friends, and recommends them to his Majesty to be confirmed; but this has little effect in consolidating a system of oppression from the constant changes going on. In fact, it is hard to say which feature of the Chinese polity is the least disastrous to good government, these constant changes which neutralize all sympathy with the people on the part of rulers, or on the other hand make it useless for seditious men to try to foment rebellion.
The retinues of high provincial officers contain many dependents and expectant supernumeraries, all subservient to them; among them are the descendants of poor officers; the sons of bankrupt merchants who once possessed influence; dissipated, well bred, unscrupulous men, who lend themselves to everything flagitious; and lastly, fortune-seekers without money, but possessing talents of good order to be used by any one who will hire them. Such persons are not peculiar to China, and their employment is guarded against in the code, but no law is more of a dead letter. Officers of government, too, conscious of their delinquencies, and afraid their posts will soon be taken from them, of course endeavor to make the most of their opportunities, and by means of such persons, who are usually well acquainted with the leading inhabitants of the district, harass and threaten such as are likely to pay well for being left in quiet. It does them little or no good, however, for if they are not removed they must fee their superiors, and if they are punished for their misdeeds they are still more certain of losing their wicked exactions.