| Taels. | |
|---|---|
| Salary of civil and military officers, a tithe of the impost | |
| on lands | 7,773,500 |
| Pay of 600,000 infantry, three taels per month, half in money | |
| and half in rations | 21,600,000 |
| Pay of 242,000 cavalry, at four taels per month | 11,616,000 |
| Mounting the cavalry, twenty taels each | 4,840,000 |
| Uniforms for both arms of the service, four taels | 3,368,000 |
| Arms and ammunition | 842,000 |
| Navy, revenue cutters | 13,500,000 |
| Canals and transportation of revenue | 4,000,000 |
| Forts, artillery, and munitions of war | 3,800,000 |
| 71,339,500 |
This, according to his calculation, shows a surplus of nearly twenty millions of taels every year. But the outlays for quelling insurrections and transporting troops, deficiency from bad harvests, defalcation of officers, payments to the tribes and princes in Mongolia and Ílí, and other unusual demands, more than exceed this surplus. In 1833, the Peking Gazette contained an elaborate paper on the revenue, proposing various ways and means for increasing it. The author, named Na, says the income from land tax, the gabel, customs and transit duty, does not in all exceed forty millions of taels, while the expenditures should not much transcend thirty in years of peace.[166] This places the budget much lower than other authorities, but the censor perhaps includes only the imperial resources, though the estimate would then be too high. The pay and equipment of the troops is the largest item of expenditure, and it is probable that here the apparent force and pay are far too great, and that reductions are constantly made in this department by compelling the soldiers to depend more and more for support upon the plats of land belonging to them. It is considered the best evidence of good government on the part of an officer to render his account of the revenue satisfactorily, but from the injudicious system which exists of combining fiscal, legislative, and judicial functions and control in the same person, the temptations to defraud are strong, and the peculations proportionably great.
OFFICERS’ SALARIES AND THE LAND-TAX.
The salaries of officers, for some reasons, are placed so low as to prove that the legal allowances were really the nominal incomes, and the sums set against their names in the Red Book as yang tien, or anti-extortion perquisites (lit., ‘nourishing frugality’), are the salaries. That of a governor-general is from 15,000 to 25,000 taels for the latter, and only 180 or 200 taels for the legal salary; a governor gets 15,000 when he is alone, and 10,000 or 12,000 when under a governor-general; a treasurer from 4,500 to 10,000; a judge from 3,000 to 8,000; a prefect from 2,000 to 4,500; district magistrates from 700 to 1,000, according to the onerousness of the post; an intendant from 3,000 to 4,500; a literary chancellor from 2,000 to 5,000; and military men from 4,000 taels down to 100 or 150 per annum. The perquisites of the highest and lowest officers are disproportionate, for the people prefer to lay their important cases before the highest courts at once, in order to avoid the expense of passing through those of a lower grade. The personal disposition of the functionary modifies the exactions he makes upon the people so much, that no guess can be made as to the amount.
The land tax is the principal resource for the revenue in rural districts, and this is well understood by all parties, so that there is less room for exactions. The land tax is from 1½ to 10 cents a mao (or from 10 to 66 cents an acre), according to the quality of the land, and difficulty of tillage; taking the average at 25 cents an acre, the income from this source would be upward of 150 millions of dollars. The clerks, constables, lictors, and underlings of the courts and prisons, are the “claws” of their superiors, as the Chinese aptly call them, and perform most of their extortions, and are correspondingly odious to the people. In towns and trading places, it is easier for the officers to exact in various ways from wealthy people, than in the country, where rich people often hire bodies of retainers to defy the police, and practise extortion and robbery themselves. Like other Asiatic governments, China suffers from the consequences of bribery, peculation, extortion, and poorly paid officers, but she has no powerful aristocracy to retain the money thus squeezed out of the people, and ere long it finds its way out of the hands of emperors and ministers back into the mass of the people. The Chinese believe, however, that the Emperor annually remits such amounts as he is able to collect into Mukden, in time of extremity; but latterly he has not been able to do so at all, and probably never sent as much to that city as the popular ideas imagine. The sum applied to filling the granaries is much larger, but this popular provision in case of need is really a light draft upon the resources of the country, as it is usually managed. In Canton, there are only fourteen buildings appropriated to this purpose, few of them more than thirty feet square, and none of them full.
[CHAPTER VI.]
NATURAL HISTORY OF CHINA.
The succinct account of the natural history of China given by Sir John Davis in 1836, contained nearly all the popular notices of much value then known, and need not be repeated, while summarizing the items derived from other and later sources. Malte-Brun observed long ago, “That of even the more general, and, according to the usual estimate, the more important features of that vast sovereignty, we owe whatever knowledge we have obtained to some ambassadors who have seen the courts and the great roads—to certain merchants who have inhabited a suburb of a frontier town—and to several missionaries who, generally more credulous than discriminating, have contrived to penetrate in various directions into the interior.” The volumes upon China in the Edinburgh Cabinet Library contain the best digest of what was known forty years since on this subject. The botanical collections of Robert Fortune in 1844-1849, and those of Col. Champion at Hongkong, have been studied by Bentham, while the later researches of Hance, Bunge and Maximowitch have brought many new forms to notice. In geology, Pumpelly, Kingsmill, Bickmore, and Baron Richthofen have greatly enlarged and certified our knowledge by their travels and memoirs; while Père David, Col. Prejevalsky, Swinhoe, Stimpson, and Sir John Richardson have added hundreds of new species to the scientific fauna of the Empire.
GEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS.
Personal investigation is particularly necessary in all that relates to the geology and fossils of a country, and the knowledge possessed on these heads is, it must be conceded, still meagre, though now sufficient to convey a general idea of the formations, deposits, and contents of the mountains and mines, as well as the agencies at work in modifying the surface of this land. The descriptions and observed facts recorded in native books may furnish valuable hints when they can be compared with the places and productions, for at present the difficulty of explaining terms used, and understanding the processes described, render these treatises hard to translate. The empirical character of Chinese science compels a careful sifting of all its facts and speculations by comparisons with nature, while the amount of real information contained in medical, topographical, and itinerant works render them always worth examining. Large regions still await careful examination in every part of the Empire; and it will be well for the Chinese Government if no tempting metallic deposits are found to test its strength to protect and work them for its own benefit. But in mere science it cannot be doubted that so peculiar a part of the world as the plateau of Central Asia will, when thoroughly examined, solve many problems relating to geology, and disclose many important facts to illustrate the obscure phenomena of other parts of the world.