METHODS OF PUBLISHING EDICTS.The orders of the court are usually transmitted in manuscript, except when some grand event or state ceremony requires a general proclamation, in which cases the document is printed on yellow paper and published in both the Chinese and Manchu languages, encircled with a border of dragons. The governors and their subordinates, imperial commissioners, and collectors of customs are the principal officers in the provinces who publish their orders to the people, consisting of admonitions, exhortations, regulations, laws, special ordinances, threatenings, and municipal requirements. Standing laws and local regulations are often superbly carved on tablets of black marble, and placed in the streets to be “held in everlasting remembrance,” so that no one can plead ignorance; a custom which recalls the mode of publishing the Twelve Tables at Rome. Several of these monuments, beautifully ornamented, are to be seen at Canton and Macao. The usual mode of publishing the commands of government is to print the document in large characters, and post copies at the door of the offices and in the streets in public places, with the seal of the officer attached to authenticate them. The sheets on which they are printed being common bamboo paper, and having no protection from the weather, are, however, soon destroyed; the people read them as they are thus exposed, and copy them if they wish, but it is not uncommon, too, for the magistrates to print important edicts in pamphlet form for circulation. These placards are written in an official style, differing from common writing as much as that does in English, but not involved or obscure. A single specimen of an edict issued at Canton will suffice to illustrate the form of such papers, and moreover show upon what subjects a Chinese ruler sometimes legislates, and the care he is expected to take of the people.EDICT FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF GRASSHOPPERS.“Sü and Hwang, by special appointment magistrates of the districts of Nanhai and Pwanyu, raised ten steps and recorded ten times, hereby distinctly publish important rules for the capture of grasshoppers, that it may be known how to guard against them in order to ward off injury and calamity. On the 7th day of the 8th month in the 13th year of Taukwang [September 20, 1833], we received a communication from the prefect of the [department of Kwangchau], transmitting a despatch from their excellencies the governor-general and governor, as follows:“‘During the fifth month of the present year flights of grasshoppers appeared in the limits of Kwangsí, in [the departments of] Liu, Tsin, Kwei, and Wu, and their vicinage, which have already, according to report, been clean destroyed and driven off. We have heard that in the department of Kauchau and its neighborhood, conterminous to Kwangsí, grasshoppers have appeared which multiply with extreme rapidity. At this time the second crop is in the blade (which if destroyed will endamage the people), and it is proper, therefore, immediately, wherever they are found, to capture and drive them off, marshalling the troops to advance and wholly exterminate them. But Kwangtung heretofore has never experienced this calamity, and we apprehend the officers and people do not understand the mode of capture; wherefore we now exhibit in order the most important rules for catching grasshoppers. Let the governor’s combined forces be immediately instructed to capture themsecundum artem; at the same time let orders be issued for the villagers and farmers at once to assemble and take them, and for the magistrate to establish storehouses for their reception and purchase, thus without fail sweeping them clean away. If you do not exert yourselves to catch the grasshoppers, your guilt will be very great; let it be done carefully, not clandestinely delaying, thus causing this misfortune to come upon yourselves, transgressing the laws, and causing us again, according to the exigencies of the case, to promulgate general orders and make thorough examination, etc., etc. Appended hereto are copies of the rules for catching grasshoppers, which from the lieutenant-governor must be sent to the treasurer, who will enjoin it upon the magistrates of the departments, and he again upon the district magistrates.’“Having received the preceding, besides respectfully transmitting it to the colonel of the department to be straightway forwarded to all the troops under his authority, and also to all the district justices, that they all with united purpose bend their energies to observe, at the proper time, that whenever the grasshoppers become numerous they join their forces and extirpate them, thus removing calamity from the people; we also enjoin upon whomsoever receives this that the grasshoppers be caught according to these several directions, which are therefore here arranged in order as follows:“‘1. When the grasshoppers first issue forth they are to be seen on the borders of large morasses, from whence they quickly multiply and fill large tracts of land; they produce their young in little hillocks of black earth, using the tail to bore into the ground, not quite an inch in depth, which still remain as open holes, the whole somewhat resembling a bee’s nest. One grasshopper drops ten or more pellets, in form like a pea, each one containing a hundred or more young. For the young grasshoppers fly and eat in swarms, and this laying of their young is done all at once and in the same spot; the place resembles a hive of bees, and therefore it is very easily sought and found.“‘2. When the grasshoppers are in the fields of wheat and tender rice and the thick grass, every day at early dawn they all alight on the leaves of the grass, and their bodies being covered with dew are heavy and they cannot fly or hop; at noon they begin to assemble for flight, and at evening they collect in one spot. Thus each day there are three periods when they can be caught, and the people and gentry will also have a short respite. The mode of catching them is to dig a trench before them, the broader and longer the better, on each side placing boards, doors, screens, and such like things, one stretched on after another, and spreading open each side. The whole multitude must then cry aloud, and, holding boards in their hands, drive them all into the trench; meanwhile those on the opposite side, provided with brooms and rakes, on seeing any leaping or crawling out, must sweep them back; then covering them with dry grass, burn them all up. Let the fire be first kindled in the trench, and then drive them into it; for if they are only buried up, then many of them will crawl out of the openings and so escape.“‘3. When the swarms of grasshoppers see a row of trees, or a close line of flags and streamers, they usually hover over and settle; and the farmers frequently suspend red and white clothes and petticoats on long poles, or make red and green paper flags, but they do not always settle with great rapidity. Moreover, they dread the noise of gongs, matchlocks, and guns, hearing which they fly away. If they come so as to obscure the heavens, you must let off the guns and clang the gongs, or fire the crackers; it will strike the front ranks with dread, and flying away, the rest will follow them and depart.“‘4. When the wings and legs of the grasshoppers are taken off, and [their bodies] dried in the sun, the taste is like dried prawns, and moreover, they can be kept a long time without spoiling. Ducks can also be reared upon the dried grasshoppers, and soon become large and fat. Moreover, the hill people catch them to feed pigs; these pigs, weighing at first only twenty catties or so, in ten days’ time grow to weigh more than fifty catties; and in rearing all domestic animals they are of use. Let all farmers exert themselves and catch them alive, giving rice or money according to the number taken. In order to remove this calamity from your grain, what fear is there that you will not perform this? Let all these rules for catching the grasshoppers be diligently carried into full effect.’“Wherefore these commands are transcribed that all you soldiers and people may be fully acquainted with them. Do you all then immediately in obedience to them, when you see the proper time has come, sound the gong; and when you see the grasshoppers and their young increasing, straightway get ready, on the one hand seizing them, and on the other announcing to the officers that they collect the troops, that with united strength you may at once catch them, without fail making an utter extermination of them; thus calamity will be removed from the people. We will also then confer rewards upon those of the farmers and people who first announce to the magistrates their approach. Let every one implicitly obey. A special command.“Promulgated Taukwang, 13th year, 8th month, and 15th day.”[255]CHARACTER AND PHRASEOLOGY OF THE EDICTS.The concluding part of an edict affords some room for displaying the character of the promulgator. Among other endings are such as these: “Hasten! hasten! a special edict.” “Tremble hereat intensely.” “Lay not up for yourselves future repentance by disobedience.” “I will by no means eat my words.” “Earnestly observe these things.” In their state papers Chinese officers are constantly referring to ultimate truths and axioms, and deducing arguments therefrom in a peculiarly national grandiloquent manner, though some of theirconclusions are preposterous non-sequiturs. Commissioner Lin addressed a letter to the Queen of England regarding the interdiction of opium, which began with the following preamble:“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 thousandlí, 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 theyamuns; and this checks their energy.It is not easy, without citing many examples accompaniedwith 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 thePeking 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 thebad 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 withoutmoney, 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.In the misappropriation of public funds, and peculation of all kinds in materials, government stores, rations, wages, and salaries, the Chinese officials are skilled experts, and are never surprised at any disclosures.Another common mode of plundering the people is for officers to collude with bands of thieves, and allow them to escape for a composition when arrested, or substitute other persons for the guilty party in case the real offenders are likely to be condemned. Sometimes these banditti are too strong even for an upright magistrate, and he is obliged to overlook what he cannot remedy; for, however much he may wish to arrest and bring them to justice, his policemen are too much afraid of their vengeance to venture upon attacking them. An instance of this occurred near Canton in 1839, when a boat, containing a clerk of the court and three or four police, came into the fleet of European opium-ships to hunt for some desperate opium smugglers who had taken refuge there. The fellows, hearing of the arrival of the boat, came in the night, and surrounding it took out the crew, bound their pursuers, and burned them alive with the boat in sight of the whole fleet, to whom the desperadoes looked for protection against their justly incensed countrymen.A censor in 1819, complaining of flagrant neglect in the administration of justice in Chihlí, says: “Among the magistrates are many who, without fear or shame, connive at robberyand deceit. Formerly, horse-stealers were wont to conceal themselves in some secret place, but now they openly bring their plunder to market for sale. When they perceive a person to be weak, they are in the habit of stealing his property and returning it to him for money, while the officers, on hearing it, treat it as a trivial matter, and blame the sufferer for not being more cautious. Thieves are apprehended with warrants on them, showing that when they were sent out to arrest thieves they availed of the opportunity to steal for themselves. And at a village near the imperial residence are very many plunderers concealed, who go out by night in companies of twenty or thirty persons, carrying weapons with them; they frequently call up the inhabitants, break open the doors, and having satisfied themselves with what food and wine they can obtain, they threaten and extort money, which if they cannot procure they seize their clothes, ornaments, or cattle, and depart. They also frequently go to shops, and having broken open the shutters impudently demand money, which if they do not get they set fire to the shop with the torches in their hands. If the master of the house lay hold on a few of them and sends them to the magistrate, he merely imprisons and beats them, and before half a month allows them to run away.”[258]VENALITY OF THE POLICE AND CLERKS.The unpaid retainers about theyamunsare very numerous, and are more dreaded than the police; one censor says they are looked upon by the people as tigers and wolves; he effected the discharge of nearly twenty-four thousand of them in the province of Chihlí alone. They are usually continued in their places by the head magistrate, who, when he arrives, being ignorant of the characters of those he must employ, re-engages such as are likely to serve. In cases of serious accusation the clerks frequently subpœna all who are likely to be implicated, and demand a fee for liberating them when their innocence is shown. These myrmidons still fear the anger of their superiors and a recoil of the people so far as to endeavor to save appearances by hushing up the matter, and liberating thoseunjustly apprehended, with great protestations of compassion. It may be added that, as life is not lightly taken, thieves are careful not to murder or maltreat their victims dangerously, nor do the magistrates venture to take life outright by torture, though their cruelties frequently result in death by neglect or starvation. Money and goods are what both policemen and officials want, not blood and revenge. Parties at strife with each other frequently resort to legal implication to gratify their ill-will, and take a pitiful revenge by egging on the police to pillage and vex their enemy, though they themselves profit nowise thereby.The evils resulting from a half-paid and venal magistracy are dreadful, and the prospects of their removal very slight. The governor of Chihlí, in 1829, memorialized the Emperor upon the state of the police, and pointed out a remedy for many abuses, one of which was to pay them fair salaries out of the public treasury; but it is plain that this remedy must begin with the monarch, for until an officer is released from sopping his superior he will not cease exacting from his inferiors. Experience has shown the authorities how far it can safely be carried; while many officers, seeing how useless it is to irritate the people, so far as ultimately enriching themselves is concerned, endeavor to restrain their policemen. One governor issued an edict, stating that none of his domestics were allowed to browbeat shopmen, and thus get goods or eatables below the market price, and permitted the seller to collar and bring them to him for punishment when they did so. When an officer of high rank, as a governor, treasurer, etc., takes the seals of his post, he ofttimes issues a proclamation, exhorting the subordinate ranks to do as he means to do—“to look up and embody the kindness of the high Emperor,” and attend to the faithful discharge of their duties. The lower officers, in their turn, join in the cry, and a series of proclamations, by turns hortative and mandatory, are echoed from mastiff, spaniel, and poodle, until the cry ends upon the police. Thus the prefect of Canton says: “There are hard-hearted soldiers and gnawing lictors who post themselves at ferries or markets, or rove about the streets, to extort money under various pretexts; or, being intoxicated, they disturb andannoy the people in a hundred ways. Since I came into office here I have repeatedly commanded the inferior magistrates to act faithfully and seize such persons, but the depraved spirit still continues.”A censor, speaking of the police, says: “They no sooner get a warrant to bring up witnesses than they assail both plaintiff and defendant for money to pay their expenses, from the amount of ten taels to several scores. Then the clerks must have double what the runners get; if their demands be not satisfied they contrive every species of annoyance. Then, again, if there are people of property in the neighborhood, they will implicate them. They plot also with pettifogging lawyers to get up accusations against people, and threaten and frighten them out of their money.”[259]One natural consequence of such a state of society and such a perversion of justice is to render the people afraid of all contact with the officers of government and exceedingly selfish in all their intercourse, though the latter trait needs no particular training to develop it in any heathen country. It also tends to an inhuman disregard of the life of others, and chills every emotion of kindness which might otherwise arise; for by making a man responsible for the acts of his neighbors, or by involving a whole village in the crimes of an individual, all sense of justice is violated. The terror of being implicated in any evil that takes place sometimes prevents the people from quenching fires until the superior authorities be first informed, and from relieving the distressed until it is often too late. Hence, too, it not unfrequently happens that a man who has had the ill fortune to be stabbed to death in the street, or who falls down from disease and dies, remains on the spot till the putrescence obliges the neighbors, for their own safety, to remove the corpse. A dead body floating down the river and washing ashore is likely to remain on the banks until it again drifts away or the authorities get it buried, for no unofficial person would voluntarily run the risk of being seen interring it. One censor reports that when he asked the people why they did not remove the loathsome object, they said: “We always let the bodies be either buried in the bellies of fishes or devoured by the dogs; for if we inform the magistrates they are sure to make the owner of the ground buy a coffin, and the clerks and assistants distress us in a hundred ways.” The usual end of these memorials and remonstrances is that the police are ordered to behave better, the clerks commanded to abstain from implicating innocent people and retarding the course of justice, and their masters, the magistrates, threatened with the Emperor’s displeasure in case the grievance is not remedied: after which all goes on as before, and will go on as long as both rulers and ruled are what they are.EFFECT OF MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY.The working out of the principle of responsibility accounts for many things in Chinese society and jurisprudence that otherwise appear completely at variance with even common humanity. It makes an officer careless of his duties if he can shift the responsibility of failure upon his inferiors, who, at the same time, he knows can never execute his orders; it renders the people dead to the impulses of relationship, lest they become involved in what they cannot possibly control and hardly know at the time of its commission. Mr. Lindsay states that when he was at Tsungming in 1832 the officers were very urgent that he should go out of the river, and in order to show him the effect of his non-compliance upon others a degraded subaltern was paraded in his sight. “His cap with its gold button was borne before him, and he marched about blindfolded in procession between two executioners, with a small flag on a bamboo pierced through each ear. Before him was a placard with the inscription, ‘By orders of the general of Su and Sung: for a breach of military discipline, his ears are pierced as a warning to the multitude.’ His offence was having allowed our boat to pass the fort without reporting it.”During the first war with England, fear of punishment induced many of the subordinates to commit suicide when unable to execute their orders, and the same motive impelled their superiors to avoid the wrath of the Emperor in like fashion. The hong-merchants and linguists at Canton, during the old regime, were constantly liable, from the operation of this principle, to exactions and punishments for the acts of their foreign customers. One of them, Sunshing, was put in prison and ruined because Lord Napier came to Canton from Whampoa in the boat of a ship which the unhappy merchant had “secured” several weeks before, and the linguist and pilot were banished for allowing what they could not possibly have hindered even if they had known it.Having examined in this general manner the various grades of official rank, we come to the people; and a close view will show that this great mass of human beings exhibits many equally objectionable traits, while oppression, want, clannish rivalry, and brigandage combine to keep it in a constant state of turmoil. The subdivisions into tithings and hundreds are better observed in rural districts than in cities, and the headmen of those communities, in their individual and collective character, possess great influence, from the fact that they represent the popular feeling. In all parts of the country this popular organization is found in some shape or other, though, as if everything was somehow perverted, it not unfrequently is an instrument of greater oppression than defence. The division of the people into clans is far more marked in the southern provinces than in those lying north of the Yangtsz’, and has had a depressing effect upon their good government. It resembles in general the arrangement of the Scottish clans, as do the evils arising from their dissensions and feuds those which history records as excited among the Highlanders by the rivalry between Campbells and Macgregors.VILLAGE ELDERS.The eldership of villages has no necessary connection with the clans, for the latter are unacknowledged by the government, but the clan having the majority in a village generally selects the elders from among their number. This system is of very ancient date; its elementary details are given in theChau-lí, one of the oldest works extant in China; Heeren furnishes the same details for India and Raffles for Java, reaching back in their duration to remote antiquity.[260]In the vicinity of Canton the elderis elected by a sort of town meeting, and holds his office during good behavior, receives such a salary as his fellow villagers give him, and may be removed to make way for another whenever the principal persons in the village are displeased with his conduct. His duties are limited to the supervision of the police and general oversight of what is done in the village, and to be a sort of agent or spokesman between the villagers and higher authorities; the duties, the power, and the rank of these officers vary almost indefinitely. The preponderance of one clan prevents much strife in the selection of the elder, but the degree of power reposed in his hand is so small that there is probably little competition to obtain the dignity. A village police is maintained by the inhabitants, under the authority of the elder; the Village of Whampoa, for instance, containing about eight thousand inhabitants, pays the elder $300 salary, and employs fourteen watchmen. His duties further consist in deciding upon the petty questions arising between the villagers and visiting the delinquents with chastisement, enforcing such regulations as are deemed necessary regarding festivals, markets, tanks, streets, collection of taxes, etc. The system of surveillance is, however, kept up by the superior officers, who appoint excise officers, grain agents, tide-waiters, or some other subordinate, as the case may require, to exercise a general oversight of the headmen.The district magistrate, with thesiunkienand their deputies over the hundred, are the officers to whom appeals are carried from the headmen; they also receive the reports of the elders respecting suspicious characters within their limits, or other matters which they deem worthy of reference or remonstrance. A similarity of interests leads the headmen of many villages to meet together at times in a public hall for secret consultation upon important matters, and their united resolutions are generally acted upon by themselves or by the magistrates, as the case may be. This system of eldership, and the influential position the headmen occupy, is an important safeguard the people possess against the extremity of oppressive extortion; while, too, it upholds the government in strengthening the loyalty of those who feel that the only security they possess against theft, and loss of all things from their seditious countrymen,is to uphold the institutions of the land, and that to suffer the evils of a bad magistracy is less dreadful than the horrors of a lawless brigandage.SOCIAL EVILS OF CLANSHIP.The customs and laws of clanship perpetuate a sad state of society, and render districts and villages, otherwise peaceful, the scenes of unceasing turmoil and trouble. There are only about four hundred clans in the whole of China, but inasmuch as all of the same surname do not live in the same place, the separation of a clan answers the same purpose as multiplying it. Clannish feelings and feuds are very much stronger in Kwangtung and Fuhkien than in other provinces. As an instance which may be mentioned, theGazettecontains the petition of a man from Chauchau fu, in Kwangtung, relating to a quarrel, stating that “four years before, his kindred having refused to assist two other clans in their feuds, had during that period suffered most shocking cruelties. Ten persons had been killed, and twenty men and women, taken captives, had had their eyes dug out, their ears cut off, their feet maimed, and so rendered useless for life. Thirty houses were laid in ruins and three hundred acres of land seized, ten thousand taels plundered, ancestral temples thrown down, graves dug up, dikes destroyed, and water cut off from the fields. The governor had offered a reward of a thousand taels to any one who would apprehend these persons, but for the ten murders no one had been executed, for the police dare not seize the offenders, whose numbers have largely increased, and who set the laws at defiance.” This region is notorious for the turbulence of its inhabitants; it adjoins the province of Fuhkien, and the people, known at Canton asHoklo, emigrate in large numbers to the Indian Archipelago or to other provinces. The laterGazettescontain still more dreadful accounts of the contests of the clans, and the great loss of life and property resulting from their forays, no less than one hundred and twenty villages having been attacked, and thousands of people killed. These battles are constantly occurring, and the authorities, feeling themselves too weak to put them down, are obliged to connive at them and let the clans fight it out.Ill will is kept up between the clans, and private revenges gratified, by every personal annoyance that malice can suggestor opportunity tempt. If an unfortunate individual of one clan is met alone by his enemy, he is sure to be robbed or beaten, or both; the boats or the houses of each party are plundered or burned, and legal redress is almost impossible. Graves are defaced and tombstones injured, and on the annual visit to the family sepulchre perhaps a putrid corpse is met, placed there by the hostile clan; this insult arouses all their ire, and they vow deadly revenge. The villagers sally out with such arms as they possess, and death and wounds are almost sure to result before they separate. In Shunteh (a district between Canton and Macao) upward of a thousand men engaged with spears and firearms on one of these occasions, and thirty-six lives were lost; the military were called in to quell the riot. In Tungkwan district, southeast of Canton, thirty-six ringleaders were apprehended, and in 1831 it was reported that four hundred persons had been killed in these raids; only twenty-seven of their kindred appealed to government for redress.When complaint is made to the prefect or governor, and investigation becomes inevitable, the villagers have a provision to meet the exigencies of the case, which puts the burden of the charges as equally as possible upon the whole clan. A band of “devoted men” are found—persons who volunteer to assume such crimes and run their chance for life—whose names are kept on a list, and they come forward and surrender themselves to government as the guilty persons. On the trial their friends employ witnesses to prove it a justifiable homicide, and magnify the provocation, and if there are several brought on the stand at once they try to get some of them clear by proving an alibi. It not unfrequently happens that the accused are acquitted—seldom that they are executed; transportation or a fine is the usual result. The inducement for persons to run this risk of their lives is security from the clan of a maintenance for their families in case of death, and a reward, sometimes as high as $300, in land or money when they return. This sum is raised by taxing the clan or village, and the imposition falls heavily on the poorer portion of it, who can neither avoid nor easily pay it. This system of substitution pervades all parts of society, and for all misdemeanors. A person was strangled in Macaoin 1838 for having been engaged in the opium trade, who had been hired by the real criminal to answer to his name. Another mode of escape, sometimes tried in such cases when the person has been condemned, is to bribe the jailers to report him dead and carry out his body in a coffin; but this device probably does not often answer the end, as the turnkeys require a larger bribe than can be raised. There can be little doubt of the prevalence of the practice, and for crimes of even minor penalty.To increase the social evils of clanship and systematized thieving, local tyrants occasionally spring up, persons who rob and maltreat the villagers by means of their armed retainers, who are in most cases, doubtless, members of the same clan. One of these tyrants, namedYeh, or Leaf, became quite notorious in the district of Tungkwan in 1833, setting at defiance all the power of the local authorities, and sending out his men to plunder and ravage whoever resisted his demands, destroying their graves and grain, and particularly molesting those who would not deliver up their wives or daughters to gratify him. He was arrested through craft by the district magistrate at Canton leaving his office and inducing him, for old acquaintance sake, to return with him to the provincial city; he was there tried and executed by the governor, although it was at the time reported that the Board of Punishments endeavored to save his life because he had been in office at the capital. In order that no attempt should be made to rescue him, he was left in ignorance of his sentence until he was put into the sedan to be carried to execution.BANDITTI AND TRAMPS.Clannish banditti often supply themselves with firearms, and prowling the country to revenge themselves on their enemies, soon proceed to pillage every one; in disarming them the government is sometimes obliged to resort to contemptible subterfuges, which conspicuously show its weakness and encourage a repetition of the evil. Parties of tramps, calledhakka, or ‘guests,’ roam over Kwangtung province, squatting on vacant places along the shores, away from the villages, and forming small clannish communities; as soon as they increase, occupying more and more of the land, they begin to commit petty depredations upon the crops of the inhabitants, and demand money for theprivilege of burying upon the unoccupied ground around them. The government is generally unwilling to drive them off by force, because there is the alternative of making them robbers thereby, and they are invited to settle in other waste lands, which they can have free of taxation, and leave those they have cultivated if strictly private property. This practice shows the populousness of the country in a conspicuous manner. To these evils must be also added the large bodies of floating banditti or dakoits, who rove up and down all the watercourses “like sneaking rats” and pounce upon defenceless boats. Hardly a river or estuary in the land is free from these miscreants, and lives and property are annually destroyed by them to a very great amount, especially on the Yangtsz’, the Pearl River, and other great thoroughfares.The popular associations in cities and towns are chiefly based upon a community of interests, resulting either from a similarity of occupation, when the leading persons of the same calling form themselves into guilds, or from the municipal regulations requiring the householders living in the same street to unite to maintain a police and keep the peace of their division. Each guild has an assembly-hall, where its members meet to hold the festival of their patron saint, to collect and appropriate the subscriptions of the members and settle the rent or storage on the rooms and goods in the hall, to discuss all public matters as well as the good cheer they get on such occasions, and to confer with other guilds. The members often go to a great expense in emulating each other in their processions, and some rivalry exists regarding their rights, over which the government keeps a watchful eye, for all popular assemblies are its horror. The shopkeepers and householders in the same street are required to have a headman to superintend the police, watchmen, and beggars within his limits. The rulers are sometimes thwarted in their designs by both these forms of popular assemblies, and they no doubt tend in many ways to keep up a degree of independence and of mutual acquaintance, which compels the respect of the government. The governor of Canton in 1838 endeavored to search all the shops in a particular street, to ascertain if there was opium in them; but the shopmen came in a body at thehead of the street, and told the policemen that they would on no account permit their shops to be searched. The governor deemed it best to retire. Those who will not join or agree to what the majority orders in these bodies occasionally experience petty tyranny, but in a city this must be comparatively trifling. Several of the leading men in the city are known to hold meetings for consultation in still more popular assemblies for different reasons of a public and pressing nature. There is a building at Canton called theMing-lun Tang, or “Free Discussion Hall,” where political matters are discussed under the knowledge of government, which rather tries to mould than put them down, for the assistance of such bodies, rightly managed, in carrying out their intentions, is considerable, while discontent would be roused if they were forcibly suppressed. In October, 1842, meetings were held in this hall, at one of which a public manifesto was issued, here quoted entire as a specimen of the public appeals of Chinese politicians and orators:
METHODS OF PUBLISHING EDICTS.
The orders of the court are usually transmitted in manuscript, except when some grand event or state ceremony requires a general proclamation, in which cases the document is printed on yellow paper and published in both the Chinese and Manchu languages, encircled with a border of dragons. The governors and their subordinates, imperial commissioners, and collectors of customs are the principal officers in the provinces who publish their orders to the people, consisting of admonitions, exhortations, regulations, laws, special ordinances, threatenings, and municipal requirements. Standing laws and local regulations are often superbly carved on tablets of black marble, and placed in the streets to be “held in everlasting remembrance,” so that no one can plead ignorance; a custom which recalls the mode of publishing the Twelve Tables at Rome. Several of these monuments, beautifully ornamented, are to be seen at Canton and Macao. The usual mode of publishing the commands of government is to print the document in large characters, and post copies at the door of the offices and in the streets in public places, with the seal of the officer attached to authenticate them. The sheets on which they are printed being common bamboo paper, and having no protection from the weather, are, however, soon destroyed; the people read them as they are thus exposed, and copy them if they wish, but it is not uncommon, too, for the magistrates to print important edicts in pamphlet form for circulation. These placards are written in an official style, differing from common writing as much as that does in English, but not involved or obscure. A single specimen of an edict issued at Canton will suffice to illustrate the form of such papers, and moreover show upon what subjects a Chinese ruler sometimes legislates, and the care he is expected to take of the people.
EDICT FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF GRASSHOPPERS.
“Sü and Hwang, by special appointment magistrates of the districts of Nanhai and Pwanyu, raised ten steps and recorded ten times, hereby distinctly publish important rules for the capture of grasshoppers, that it may be known how to guard against them in order to ward off injury and calamity. On the 7th day of the 8th month in the 13th year of Taukwang [September 20, 1833], we received a communication from the prefect of the [department of Kwangchau], transmitting a despatch from their excellencies the governor-general and governor, as follows:“‘During the fifth month of the present year flights of grasshoppers appeared in the limits of Kwangsí, in [the departments of] Liu, Tsin, Kwei, and Wu, and their vicinage, which have already, according to report, been clean destroyed and driven off. We have heard that in the department of Kauchau and its neighborhood, conterminous to Kwangsí, grasshoppers have appeared which multiply with extreme rapidity. At this time the second crop is in the blade (which if destroyed will endamage the people), and it is proper, therefore, immediately, wherever they are found, to capture and drive them off, marshalling the troops to advance and wholly exterminate them. But Kwangtung heretofore has never experienced this calamity, and we apprehend the officers and people do not understand the mode of capture; wherefore we now exhibit in order the most important rules for catching grasshoppers. Let the governor’s combined forces be immediately instructed to capture themsecundum artem; at the same time let orders be issued for the villagers and farmers at once to assemble and take them, and for the magistrate to establish storehouses for their reception and purchase, thus without fail sweeping them clean away. If you do not exert yourselves to catch the grasshoppers, your guilt will be very great; let it be done carefully, not clandestinely delaying, thus causing this misfortune to come upon yourselves, transgressing the laws, and causing us again, according to the exigencies of the case, to promulgate general orders and make thorough examination, etc., etc. Appended hereto are copies of the rules for catching grasshoppers, which from the lieutenant-governor must be sent to the treasurer, who will enjoin it upon the magistrates of the departments, and he again upon the district magistrates.’“Having received the preceding, besides respectfully transmitting it to the colonel of the department to be straightway forwarded to all the troops under his authority, and also to all the district justices, that they all with united purpose bend their energies to observe, at the proper time, that whenever the grasshoppers become numerous they join their forces and extirpate them, thus removing calamity from the people; we also enjoin upon whomsoever receives this that the grasshoppers be caught according to these several directions, which are therefore here arranged in order as follows:“‘1. When the grasshoppers first issue forth they are to be seen on the borders of large morasses, from whence they quickly multiply and fill large tracts of land; they produce their young in little hillocks of black earth, using the tail to bore into the ground, not quite an inch in depth, which still remain as open holes, the whole somewhat resembling a bee’s nest. One grasshopper drops ten or more pellets, in form like a pea, each one containing a hundred or more young. For the young grasshoppers fly and eat in swarms, and this laying of their young is done all at once and in the same spot; the place resembles a hive of bees, and therefore it is very easily sought and found.“‘2. When the grasshoppers are in the fields of wheat and tender rice and the thick grass, every day at early dawn they all alight on the leaves of the grass, and their bodies being covered with dew are heavy and they cannot fly or hop; at noon they begin to assemble for flight, and at evening they collect in one spot. Thus each day there are three periods when they can be caught, and the people and gentry will also have a short respite. The mode of catching them is to dig a trench before them, the broader and longer the better, on each side placing boards, doors, screens, and such like things, one stretched on after another, and spreading open each side. The whole multitude must then cry aloud, and, holding boards in their hands, drive them all into the trench; meanwhile those on the opposite side, provided with brooms and rakes, on seeing any leaping or crawling out, must sweep them back; then covering them with dry grass, burn them all up. Let the fire be first kindled in the trench, and then drive them into it; for if they are only buried up, then many of them will crawl out of the openings and so escape.“‘3. When the swarms of grasshoppers see a row of trees, or a close line of flags and streamers, they usually hover over and settle; and the farmers frequently suspend red and white clothes and petticoats on long poles, or make red and green paper flags, but they do not always settle with great rapidity. Moreover, they dread the noise of gongs, matchlocks, and guns, hearing which they fly away. If they come so as to obscure the heavens, you must let off the guns and clang the gongs, or fire the crackers; it will strike the front ranks with dread, and flying away, the rest will follow them and depart.“‘4. When the wings and legs of the grasshoppers are taken off, and [their bodies] dried in the sun, the taste is like dried prawns, and moreover, they can be kept a long time without spoiling. Ducks can also be reared upon the dried grasshoppers, and soon become large and fat. Moreover, the hill people catch them to feed pigs; these pigs, weighing at first only twenty catties or so, in ten days’ time grow to weigh more than fifty catties; and in rearing all domestic animals they are of use. Let all farmers exert themselves and catch them alive, giving rice or money according to the number taken. In order to remove this calamity from your grain, what fear is there that you will not perform this? Let all these rules for catching the grasshoppers be diligently carried into full effect.’“Wherefore these commands are transcribed that all you soldiers and people may be fully acquainted with them. Do you all then immediately in obedience to them, when you see the proper time has come, sound the gong; and when you see the grasshoppers and their young increasing, straightway get ready, on the one hand seizing them, and on the other announcing to the officers that they collect the troops, that with united strength you may at once catch them, without fail making an utter extermination of them; thus calamity will be removed from the people. We will also then confer rewards upon those of the farmers and people who first announce to the magistrates their approach. Let every one implicitly obey. A special command.“Promulgated Taukwang, 13th year, 8th month, and 15th day.”[255]
“Sü and Hwang, by special appointment magistrates of the districts of Nanhai and Pwanyu, raised ten steps and recorded ten times, hereby distinctly publish important rules for the capture of grasshoppers, that it may be known how to guard against them in order to ward off injury and calamity. On the 7th day of the 8th month in the 13th year of Taukwang [September 20, 1833], we received a communication from the prefect of the [department of Kwangchau], transmitting a despatch from their excellencies the governor-general and governor, as follows:
“‘During the fifth month of the present year flights of grasshoppers appeared in the limits of Kwangsí, in [the departments of] Liu, Tsin, Kwei, and Wu, and their vicinage, which have already, according to report, been clean destroyed and driven off. We have heard that in the department of Kauchau and its neighborhood, conterminous to Kwangsí, grasshoppers have appeared which multiply with extreme rapidity. At this time the second crop is in the blade (which if destroyed will endamage the people), and it is proper, therefore, immediately, wherever they are found, to capture and drive them off, marshalling the troops to advance and wholly exterminate them. But Kwangtung heretofore has never experienced this calamity, and we apprehend the officers and people do not understand the mode of capture; wherefore we now exhibit in order the most important rules for catching grasshoppers. Let the governor’s combined forces be immediately instructed to capture themsecundum artem; at the same time let orders be issued for the villagers and farmers at once to assemble and take them, and for the magistrate to establish storehouses for their reception and purchase, thus without fail sweeping them clean away. If you do not exert yourselves to catch the grasshoppers, your guilt will be very great; let it be done carefully, not clandestinely delaying, thus causing this misfortune to come upon yourselves, transgressing the laws, and causing us again, according to the exigencies of the case, to promulgate general orders and make thorough examination, etc., etc. Appended hereto are copies of the rules for catching grasshoppers, which from the lieutenant-governor must be sent to the treasurer, who will enjoin it upon the magistrates of the departments, and he again upon the district magistrates.’
“Having received the preceding, besides respectfully transmitting it to the colonel of the department to be straightway forwarded to all the troops under his authority, and also to all the district justices, that they all with united purpose bend their energies to observe, at the proper time, that whenever the grasshoppers become numerous they join their forces and extirpate them, thus removing calamity from the people; we also enjoin upon whomsoever receives this that the grasshoppers be caught according to these several directions, which are therefore here arranged in order as follows:
“‘1. When the grasshoppers first issue forth they are to be seen on the borders of large morasses, from whence they quickly multiply and fill large tracts of land; they produce their young in little hillocks of black earth, using the tail to bore into the ground, not quite an inch in depth, which still remain as open holes, the whole somewhat resembling a bee’s nest. One grasshopper drops ten or more pellets, in form like a pea, each one containing a hundred or more young. For the young grasshoppers fly and eat in swarms, and this laying of their young is done all at once and in the same spot; the place resembles a hive of bees, and therefore it is very easily sought and found.
“‘2. When the grasshoppers are in the fields of wheat and tender rice and the thick grass, every day at early dawn they all alight on the leaves of the grass, and their bodies being covered with dew are heavy and they cannot fly or hop; at noon they begin to assemble for flight, and at evening they collect in one spot. Thus each day there are three periods when they can be caught, and the people and gentry will also have a short respite. The mode of catching them is to dig a trench before them, the broader and longer the better, on each side placing boards, doors, screens, and such like things, one stretched on after another, and spreading open each side. The whole multitude must then cry aloud, and, holding boards in their hands, drive them all into the trench; meanwhile those on the opposite side, provided with brooms and rakes, on seeing any leaping or crawling out, must sweep them back; then covering them with dry grass, burn them all up. Let the fire be first kindled in the trench, and then drive them into it; for if they are only buried up, then many of them will crawl out of the openings and so escape.
“‘3. When the swarms of grasshoppers see a row of trees, or a close line of flags and streamers, they usually hover over and settle; and the farmers frequently suspend red and white clothes and petticoats on long poles, or make red and green paper flags, but they do not always settle with great rapidity. Moreover, they dread the noise of gongs, matchlocks, and guns, hearing which they fly away. If they come so as to obscure the heavens, you must let off the guns and clang the gongs, or fire the crackers; it will strike the front ranks with dread, and flying away, the rest will follow them and depart.
“‘4. When the wings and legs of the grasshoppers are taken off, and [their bodies] dried in the sun, the taste is like dried prawns, and moreover, they can be kept a long time without spoiling. Ducks can also be reared upon the dried grasshoppers, and soon become large and fat. Moreover, the hill people catch them to feed pigs; these pigs, weighing at first only twenty catties or so, in ten days’ time grow to weigh more than fifty catties; and in rearing all domestic animals they are of use. Let all farmers exert themselves and catch them alive, giving rice or money according to the number taken. In order to remove this calamity from your grain, what fear is there that you will not perform this? Let all these rules for catching the grasshoppers be diligently carried into full effect.’
“Wherefore these commands are transcribed that all you soldiers and people may be fully acquainted with them. Do you all then immediately in obedience to them, when you see the proper time has come, sound the gong; and when you see the grasshoppers and their young increasing, straightway get ready, on the one hand seizing them, and on the other announcing to the officers that they collect the troops, that with united strength you may at once catch them, without fail making an utter extermination of them; thus calamity will be removed from the people. We will also then confer rewards upon those of the farmers and people who first announce to the magistrates their approach. Let every one implicitly obey. A special command.
“Promulgated Taukwang, 13th year, 8th month, and 15th day.”[255]
CHARACTER AND PHRASEOLOGY OF THE EDICTS.
The concluding part of an edict affords some room for displaying the character of the promulgator. Among other endings are such as these: “Hasten! hasten! a special edict.” “Tremble hereat intensely.” “Lay not up for yourselves future repentance by disobedience.” “I will by no means eat my words.” “Earnestly observe these things.” In their state papers Chinese officers are constantly referring to ultimate truths and axioms, and deducing arguments therefrom in a peculiarly national grandiloquent manner, though some of theirconclusions are preposterous non-sequiturs. Commissioner Lin addressed a letter to the Queen of England regarding the interdiction of opium, which began with the following preamble:
“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 thousandlí, 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 theyamuns; and this checks their energy.
It is not easy, without citing many examples accompaniedwith 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 thePeking 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 thebad 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 withoutmoney, 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.
In the misappropriation of public funds, and peculation of all kinds in materials, government stores, rations, wages, and salaries, the Chinese officials are skilled experts, and are never surprised at any disclosures.
Another common mode of plundering the people is for officers to collude with bands of thieves, and allow them to escape for a composition when arrested, or substitute other persons for the guilty party in case the real offenders are likely to be condemned. Sometimes these banditti are too strong even for an upright magistrate, and he is obliged to overlook what he cannot remedy; for, however much he may wish to arrest and bring them to justice, his policemen are too much afraid of their vengeance to venture upon attacking them. An instance of this occurred near Canton in 1839, when a boat, containing a clerk of the court and three or four police, came into the fleet of European opium-ships to hunt for some desperate opium smugglers who had taken refuge there. The fellows, hearing of the arrival of the boat, came in the night, and surrounding it took out the crew, bound their pursuers, and burned them alive with the boat in sight of the whole fleet, to whom the desperadoes looked for protection against their justly incensed countrymen.
A censor in 1819, complaining of flagrant neglect in the administration of justice in Chihlí, says: “Among the magistrates are many who, without fear or shame, connive at robberyand deceit. Formerly, horse-stealers were wont to conceal themselves in some secret place, but now they openly bring their plunder to market for sale. When they perceive a person to be weak, they are in the habit of stealing his property and returning it to him for money, while the officers, on hearing it, treat it as a trivial matter, and blame the sufferer for not being more cautious. Thieves are apprehended with warrants on them, showing that when they were sent out to arrest thieves they availed of the opportunity to steal for themselves. And at a village near the imperial residence are very many plunderers concealed, who go out by night in companies of twenty or thirty persons, carrying weapons with them; they frequently call up the inhabitants, break open the doors, and having satisfied themselves with what food and wine they can obtain, they threaten and extort money, which if they cannot procure they seize their clothes, ornaments, or cattle, and depart. They also frequently go to shops, and having broken open the shutters impudently demand money, which if they do not get they set fire to the shop with the torches in their hands. If the master of the house lay hold on a few of them and sends them to the magistrate, he merely imprisons and beats them, and before half a month allows them to run away.”[258]
VENALITY OF THE POLICE AND CLERKS.
The unpaid retainers about theyamunsare very numerous, and are more dreaded than the police; one censor says they are looked upon by the people as tigers and wolves; he effected the discharge of nearly twenty-four thousand of them in the province of Chihlí alone. They are usually continued in their places by the head magistrate, who, when he arrives, being ignorant of the characters of those he must employ, re-engages such as are likely to serve. In cases of serious accusation the clerks frequently subpœna all who are likely to be implicated, and demand a fee for liberating them when their innocence is shown. These myrmidons still fear the anger of their superiors and a recoil of the people so far as to endeavor to save appearances by hushing up the matter, and liberating thoseunjustly apprehended, with great protestations of compassion. It may be added that, as life is not lightly taken, thieves are careful not to murder or maltreat their victims dangerously, nor do the magistrates venture to take life outright by torture, though their cruelties frequently result in death by neglect or starvation. Money and goods are what both policemen and officials want, not blood and revenge. Parties at strife with each other frequently resort to legal implication to gratify their ill-will, and take a pitiful revenge by egging on the police to pillage and vex their enemy, though they themselves profit nowise thereby.
The evils resulting from a half-paid and venal magistracy are dreadful, and the prospects of their removal very slight. The governor of Chihlí, in 1829, memorialized the Emperor upon the state of the police, and pointed out a remedy for many abuses, one of which was to pay them fair salaries out of the public treasury; but it is plain that this remedy must begin with the monarch, for until an officer is released from sopping his superior he will not cease exacting from his inferiors. Experience has shown the authorities how far it can safely be carried; while many officers, seeing how useless it is to irritate the people, so far as ultimately enriching themselves is concerned, endeavor to restrain their policemen. One governor issued an edict, stating that none of his domestics were allowed to browbeat shopmen, and thus get goods or eatables below the market price, and permitted the seller to collar and bring them to him for punishment when they did so. When an officer of high rank, as a governor, treasurer, etc., takes the seals of his post, he ofttimes issues a proclamation, exhorting the subordinate ranks to do as he means to do—“to look up and embody the kindness of the high Emperor,” and attend to the faithful discharge of their duties. The lower officers, in their turn, join in the cry, and a series of proclamations, by turns hortative and mandatory, are echoed from mastiff, spaniel, and poodle, until the cry ends upon the police. Thus the prefect of Canton says: “There are hard-hearted soldiers and gnawing lictors who post themselves at ferries or markets, or rove about the streets, to extort money under various pretexts; or, being intoxicated, they disturb andannoy the people in a hundred ways. Since I came into office here I have repeatedly commanded the inferior magistrates to act faithfully and seize such persons, but the depraved spirit still continues.”
A censor, speaking of the police, says: “They no sooner get a warrant to bring up witnesses than they assail both plaintiff and defendant for money to pay their expenses, from the amount of ten taels to several scores. Then the clerks must have double what the runners get; if their demands be not satisfied they contrive every species of annoyance. Then, again, if there are people of property in the neighborhood, they will implicate them. They plot also with pettifogging lawyers to get up accusations against people, and threaten and frighten them out of their money.”[259]
One natural consequence of such a state of society and such a perversion of justice is to render the people afraid of all contact with the officers of government and exceedingly selfish in all their intercourse, though the latter trait needs no particular training to develop it in any heathen country. It also tends to an inhuman disregard of the life of others, and chills every emotion of kindness which might otherwise arise; for by making a man responsible for the acts of his neighbors, or by involving a whole village in the crimes of an individual, all sense of justice is violated. The terror of being implicated in any evil that takes place sometimes prevents the people from quenching fires until the superior authorities be first informed, and from relieving the distressed until it is often too late. Hence, too, it not unfrequently happens that a man who has had the ill fortune to be stabbed to death in the street, or who falls down from disease and dies, remains on the spot till the putrescence obliges the neighbors, for their own safety, to remove the corpse. A dead body floating down the river and washing ashore is likely to remain on the banks until it again drifts away or the authorities get it buried, for no unofficial person would voluntarily run the risk of being seen interring it. One censor reports that when he asked the people why they did not remove the loathsome object, they said: “We always let the bodies be either buried in the bellies of fishes or devoured by the dogs; for if we inform the magistrates they are sure to make the owner of the ground buy a coffin, and the clerks and assistants distress us in a hundred ways.” The usual end of these memorials and remonstrances is that the police are ordered to behave better, the clerks commanded to abstain from implicating innocent people and retarding the course of justice, and their masters, the magistrates, threatened with the Emperor’s displeasure in case the grievance is not remedied: after which all goes on as before, and will go on as long as both rulers and ruled are what they are.
EFFECT OF MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY.
The working out of the principle of responsibility accounts for many things in Chinese society and jurisprudence that otherwise appear completely at variance with even common humanity. It makes an officer careless of his duties if he can shift the responsibility of failure upon his inferiors, who, at the same time, he knows can never execute his orders; it renders the people dead to the impulses of relationship, lest they become involved in what they cannot possibly control and hardly know at the time of its commission. Mr. Lindsay states that when he was at Tsungming in 1832 the officers were very urgent that he should go out of the river, and in order to show him the effect of his non-compliance upon others a degraded subaltern was paraded in his sight. “His cap with its gold button was borne before him, and he marched about blindfolded in procession between two executioners, with a small flag on a bamboo pierced through each ear. Before him was a placard with the inscription, ‘By orders of the general of Su and Sung: for a breach of military discipline, his ears are pierced as a warning to the multitude.’ His offence was having allowed our boat to pass the fort without reporting it.”
During the first war with England, fear of punishment induced many of the subordinates to commit suicide when unable to execute their orders, and the same motive impelled their superiors to avoid the wrath of the Emperor in like fashion. The hong-merchants and linguists at Canton, during the old regime, were constantly liable, from the operation of this principle, to exactions and punishments for the acts of their foreign customers. One of them, Sunshing, was put in prison and ruined because Lord Napier came to Canton from Whampoa in the boat of a ship which the unhappy merchant had “secured” several weeks before, and the linguist and pilot were banished for allowing what they could not possibly have hindered even if they had known it.
Having examined in this general manner the various grades of official rank, we come to the people; and a close view will show that this great mass of human beings exhibits many equally objectionable traits, while oppression, want, clannish rivalry, and brigandage combine to keep it in a constant state of turmoil. The subdivisions into tithings and hundreds are better observed in rural districts than in cities, and the headmen of those communities, in their individual and collective character, possess great influence, from the fact that they represent the popular feeling. In all parts of the country this popular organization is found in some shape or other, though, as if everything was somehow perverted, it not unfrequently is an instrument of greater oppression than defence. The division of the people into clans is far more marked in the southern provinces than in those lying north of the Yangtsz’, and has had a depressing effect upon their good government. It resembles in general the arrangement of the Scottish clans, as do the evils arising from their dissensions and feuds those which history records as excited among the Highlanders by the rivalry between Campbells and Macgregors.
VILLAGE ELDERS.
The eldership of villages has no necessary connection with the clans, for the latter are unacknowledged by the government, but the clan having the majority in a village generally selects the elders from among their number. This system is of very ancient date; its elementary details are given in theChau-lí, one of the oldest works extant in China; Heeren furnishes the same details for India and Raffles for Java, reaching back in their duration to remote antiquity.[260]In the vicinity of Canton the elderis elected by a sort of town meeting, and holds his office during good behavior, receives such a salary as his fellow villagers give him, and may be removed to make way for another whenever the principal persons in the village are displeased with his conduct. His duties are limited to the supervision of the police and general oversight of what is done in the village, and to be a sort of agent or spokesman between the villagers and higher authorities; the duties, the power, and the rank of these officers vary almost indefinitely. The preponderance of one clan prevents much strife in the selection of the elder, but the degree of power reposed in his hand is so small that there is probably little competition to obtain the dignity. A village police is maintained by the inhabitants, under the authority of the elder; the Village of Whampoa, for instance, containing about eight thousand inhabitants, pays the elder $300 salary, and employs fourteen watchmen. His duties further consist in deciding upon the petty questions arising between the villagers and visiting the delinquents with chastisement, enforcing such regulations as are deemed necessary regarding festivals, markets, tanks, streets, collection of taxes, etc. The system of surveillance is, however, kept up by the superior officers, who appoint excise officers, grain agents, tide-waiters, or some other subordinate, as the case may require, to exercise a general oversight of the headmen.
The district magistrate, with thesiunkienand their deputies over the hundred, are the officers to whom appeals are carried from the headmen; they also receive the reports of the elders respecting suspicious characters within their limits, or other matters which they deem worthy of reference or remonstrance. A similarity of interests leads the headmen of many villages to meet together at times in a public hall for secret consultation upon important matters, and their united resolutions are generally acted upon by themselves or by the magistrates, as the case may be. This system of eldership, and the influential position the headmen occupy, is an important safeguard the people possess against the extremity of oppressive extortion; while, too, it upholds the government in strengthening the loyalty of those who feel that the only security they possess against theft, and loss of all things from their seditious countrymen,is to uphold the institutions of the land, and that to suffer the evils of a bad magistracy is less dreadful than the horrors of a lawless brigandage.
SOCIAL EVILS OF CLANSHIP.
The customs and laws of clanship perpetuate a sad state of society, and render districts and villages, otherwise peaceful, the scenes of unceasing turmoil and trouble. There are only about four hundred clans in the whole of China, but inasmuch as all of the same surname do not live in the same place, the separation of a clan answers the same purpose as multiplying it. Clannish feelings and feuds are very much stronger in Kwangtung and Fuhkien than in other provinces. As an instance which may be mentioned, theGazettecontains the petition of a man from Chauchau fu, in Kwangtung, relating to a quarrel, stating that “four years before, his kindred having refused to assist two other clans in their feuds, had during that period suffered most shocking cruelties. Ten persons had been killed, and twenty men and women, taken captives, had had their eyes dug out, their ears cut off, their feet maimed, and so rendered useless for life. Thirty houses were laid in ruins and three hundred acres of land seized, ten thousand taels plundered, ancestral temples thrown down, graves dug up, dikes destroyed, and water cut off from the fields. The governor had offered a reward of a thousand taels to any one who would apprehend these persons, but for the ten murders no one had been executed, for the police dare not seize the offenders, whose numbers have largely increased, and who set the laws at defiance.” This region is notorious for the turbulence of its inhabitants; it adjoins the province of Fuhkien, and the people, known at Canton asHoklo, emigrate in large numbers to the Indian Archipelago or to other provinces. The laterGazettescontain still more dreadful accounts of the contests of the clans, and the great loss of life and property resulting from their forays, no less than one hundred and twenty villages having been attacked, and thousands of people killed. These battles are constantly occurring, and the authorities, feeling themselves too weak to put them down, are obliged to connive at them and let the clans fight it out.
Ill will is kept up between the clans, and private revenges gratified, by every personal annoyance that malice can suggestor opportunity tempt. If an unfortunate individual of one clan is met alone by his enemy, he is sure to be robbed or beaten, or both; the boats or the houses of each party are plundered or burned, and legal redress is almost impossible. Graves are defaced and tombstones injured, and on the annual visit to the family sepulchre perhaps a putrid corpse is met, placed there by the hostile clan; this insult arouses all their ire, and they vow deadly revenge. The villagers sally out with such arms as they possess, and death and wounds are almost sure to result before they separate. In Shunteh (a district between Canton and Macao) upward of a thousand men engaged with spears and firearms on one of these occasions, and thirty-six lives were lost; the military were called in to quell the riot. In Tungkwan district, southeast of Canton, thirty-six ringleaders were apprehended, and in 1831 it was reported that four hundred persons had been killed in these raids; only twenty-seven of their kindred appealed to government for redress.
When complaint is made to the prefect or governor, and investigation becomes inevitable, the villagers have a provision to meet the exigencies of the case, which puts the burden of the charges as equally as possible upon the whole clan. A band of “devoted men” are found—persons who volunteer to assume such crimes and run their chance for life—whose names are kept on a list, and they come forward and surrender themselves to government as the guilty persons. On the trial their friends employ witnesses to prove it a justifiable homicide, and magnify the provocation, and if there are several brought on the stand at once they try to get some of them clear by proving an alibi. It not unfrequently happens that the accused are acquitted—seldom that they are executed; transportation or a fine is the usual result. The inducement for persons to run this risk of their lives is security from the clan of a maintenance for their families in case of death, and a reward, sometimes as high as $300, in land or money when they return. This sum is raised by taxing the clan or village, and the imposition falls heavily on the poorer portion of it, who can neither avoid nor easily pay it. This system of substitution pervades all parts of society, and for all misdemeanors. A person was strangled in Macaoin 1838 for having been engaged in the opium trade, who had been hired by the real criminal to answer to his name. Another mode of escape, sometimes tried in such cases when the person has been condemned, is to bribe the jailers to report him dead and carry out his body in a coffin; but this device probably does not often answer the end, as the turnkeys require a larger bribe than can be raised. There can be little doubt of the prevalence of the practice, and for crimes of even minor penalty.
To increase the social evils of clanship and systematized thieving, local tyrants occasionally spring up, persons who rob and maltreat the villagers by means of their armed retainers, who are in most cases, doubtless, members of the same clan. One of these tyrants, namedYeh, or Leaf, became quite notorious in the district of Tungkwan in 1833, setting at defiance all the power of the local authorities, and sending out his men to plunder and ravage whoever resisted his demands, destroying their graves and grain, and particularly molesting those who would not deliver up their wives or daughters to gratify him. He was arrested through craft by the district magistrate at Canton leaving his office and inducing him, for old acquaintance sake, to return with him to the provincial city; he was there tried and executed by the governor, although it was at the time reported that the Board of Punishments endeavored to save his life because he had been in office at the capital. In order that no attempt should be made to rescue him, he was left in ignorance of his sentence until he was put into the sedan to be carried to execution.
BANDITTI AND TRAMPS.
Clannish banditti often supply themselves with firearms, and prowling the country to revenge themselves on their enemies, soon proceed to pillage every one; in disarming them the government is sometimes obliged to resort to contemptible subterfuges, which conspicuously show its weakness and encourage a repetition of the evil. Parties of tramps, calledhakka, or ‘guests,’ roam over Kwangtung province, squatting on vacant places along the shores, away from the villages, and forming small clannish communities; as soon as they increase, occupying more and more of the land, they begin to commit petty depredations upon the crops of the inhabitants, and demand money for theprivilege of burying upon the unoccupied ground around them. The government is generally unwilling to drive them off by force, because there is the alternative of making them robbers thereby, and they are invited to settle in other waste lands, which they can have free of taxation, and leave those they have cultivated if strictly private property. This practice shows the populousness of the country in a conspicuous manner. To these evils must be also added the large bodies of floating banditti or dakoits, who rove up and down all the watercourses “like sneaking rats” and pounce upon defenceless boats. Hardly a river or estuary in the land is free from these miscreants, and lives and property are annually destroyed by them to a very great amount, especially on the Yangtsz’, the Pearl River, and other great thoroughfares.
The popular associations in cities and towns are chiefly based upon a community of interests, resulting either from a similarity of occupation, when the leading persons of the same calling form themselves into guilds, or from the municipal regulations requiring the householders living in the same street to unite to maintain a police and keep the peace of their division. Each guild has an assembly-hall, where its members meet to hold the festival of their patron saint, to collect and appropriate the subscriptions of the members and settle the rent or storage on the rooms and goods in the hall, to discuss all public matters as well as the good cheer they get on such occasions, and to confer with other guilds. The members often go to a great expense in emulating each other in their processions, and some rivalry exists regarding their rights, over which the government keeps a watchful eye, for all popular assemblies are its horror. The shopkeepers and householders in the same street are required to have a headman to superintend the police, watchmen, and beggars within his limits. The rulers are sometimes thwarted in their designs by both these forms of popular assemblies, and they no doubt tend in many ways to keep up a degree of independence and of mutual acquaintance, which compels the respect of the government. The governor of Canton in 1838 endeavored to search all the shops in a particular street, to ascertain if there was opium in them; but the shopmen came in a body at thehead of the street, and told the policemen that they would on no account permit their shops to be searched. The governor deemed it best to retire. Those who will not join or agree to what the majority orders in these bodies occasionally experience petty tyranny, but in a city this must be comparatively trifling. Several of the leading men in the city are known to hold meetings for consultation in still more popular assemblies for different reasons of a public and pressing nature. There is a building at Canton called theMing-lun Tang, or “Free Discussion Hall,” where political matters are discussed under the knowledge of government, which rather tries to mould than put them down, for the assistance of such bodies, rightly managed, in carrying out their intentions, is considerable, while discontent would be roused if they were forcibly suppressed. In October, 1842, meetings were held in this hall, at one of which a public manifesto was issued, here quoted entire as a specimen of the public appeals of Chinese politicians and orators: