Chapter VIII: Administration of the Laws (2)

“‘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 their conclusions 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 thousand _lí_, also acknowledges the same ways of Heaven, the same human nature, and has the like perceptions of the distinctions between life and death, benefit and injury. Our heavenly court has for its family all that is within the four seas; and as to the great Emperor’s heaven-like benevolence--there is none whom it does not overshadow; even regions remote, desert, and disconnected have a part in his general care of life and well-being.”

The edicts furnish almost the only exponents of the intentions of government. They present several characteristic features of the ignorant conceit and ridiculous assumptions of the Chinese, while they betray the real weakness of the authorities in the mixture of argument and command, coaxing and threatening, pervading every paragraph. According to their phraseology, there can possibly be no failure in the execution of every order; if they are once made known, the obedience of the people follows almost as a matter of course; while at the same time both the writer and the people know that most of them are not only perfunctory but nearly useless. The responsibility of the writer in a measure ceases with the promulgation of his orders, and when they reach the last in the series their efficiency has well nigh departed. Expediency is the usual guide for obedience; deceiving superiors and oppressing the people the rule of action on the part of many officials; and their orders do not more strikingly exhibit their weakness and ignorance than their mendacity and conceit. A large proportion of well-meaning officers are sensible too that all their efforts will be neutralized by the half-paid, unscrupulous retainers and clerks in the _yamuns_; and this checks their energy.

It is not easy, without citing many examples accompanied with particular explanations, to give a just idea of the actual execution of the laws, and show how far the people are secured in life and property by their rulers; and perhaps nothing has been the source of such differing views regarding the Chinese as the predominance writers give either to the theory or the practice of legislation. Old Magaillans has hit this point pretty well when he says: “It seems as if the legislators had omitted nothing, and that they had foreseen all inconveniences that were to be feared; so that I am persuaded no kingdom in the world could be better governed or more happy, if the conduct and probity of the officers were but answerable to the institution of the government. But in regard they have no knowledge of the true God, nor of the eternal rewards and punishments of the other world, they are subject to no remorses of conscience, they place all their happiness in pleasure, in dignity and riches; and therefore, to obtain these fading advantages, they violate all the laws of God and man, trampling under foot religion, reason, justice, honesty, and all the rights of consanguinity and friendship. The inferior officers mind nothing but how to defraud their superiors, they the supreme tribunals, and all together how to cheat the king; which they know how to do with so much cunning and address, making use in their memorials of words and expressions so soft, so honest, so respectful, so humble and full of adulation, and of reasons so plausible, that the deluded prince frequently takes the greatest falsehoods for solemn truths. So that the people, finding themselves continually oppressed and overwhelmed without any reason, murmur and raise seditions and revolts, which have caused so much ruin and so many changes in the Empire. Nevertheless, there is no reason that the excellency and perfection of the laws of China should suffer for the depravity and wickedness of the magistrates.”[256]

~EXTORTIONS PRACTISED BY MAGISTRATES.~

Magaillans resided in China nearly forty years, and his opinion may be considered on the whole as a fair judgment of the real condition of the people and the policy of their rulers. When one is living in the country itself, to hear the complaints of individuals against the extortion and cruelty of their rulers, and to read the reports of judicial murder, torture, and crime in the _Peking Gazette_, are enough to cause one to wonder how such atrocities and oppressions are endured from year to year, and why the sufferers do not rise and throw aside the tyrannous power which thus abuses them. But the people are generally conscious that their rulers are no better than themselves, and that they would really gain nothing by such a procedure, and their desire to maintain as great a degree of peace as possible leads them to submit to many evils, which in western countries would soon be remedied or cause a revolution. In order to restrain the officers in their misrule, Section CCX. of the code ordains that “If any officer of government, whose situation gives him power and control over the people, not only does not conciliate them by proper indulgence, but exercises his authority in a manner so inconsistent with the established laws and approved usages of the Empire, that the sentiments of the once loyal subjects being changed by his oppressive conduct, they assemble tumultuously and openly rebel, and drive him at length from the capital city and seat of his government; such officer shall suffer death.”

By the laws of China, every officer of the nine ranks must be previously qualified for duty by a degree; in the ninth are included village magistrates, deputy treasurers, jailers, etc., but the police, local interpreters, clerks, and other attendants on the courts are not considered as having any rank, and most of them are natives of the place where they are employed. The only degradation they can feel is to turn them out of their stations, but this is hardly a palliative of the evils the people suffer from them; the new leech is more thirsty than the old. The cause of many of the extortions the people suffer from their rulers is found in the system of purchasing office, at all times practised in one shape or other, but occasionally resorted to by the government. As the counterpart of this system, that of receiving bribes must be expected therefore to prevail, and being in fact practised by all grades of dignitaries, and sometimes even upheld by them as a “necessary evil,” it adds still more to the bad consequences resulting from this mode of obtaining office. Indeed, so far is the practice of “covering the eyes” carried in China, that the people seldom approach their rulers without a gift to make way for them.

One mode taken by the highest ranks to obtain money is to notify inferiors that there are certain days on which presents are expected, and custom soon increases these as much as the case will admit. Subscriptions for objects of public charity or disbursements, such as an inundation, a bad harvest, bursting of dikes, and other similar things which the government must look after, are not unfrequently made a source of revenue to the incumbents by requiring much more than is needed; those who subscribe are rewarded by an empty title, a peacock’s feather, or employment in some insignificant formality. The sale of titular rank is a source of revenue, but the government never attempts to subvert or interfere with the well-known channel of attaining office by literary merit, and it seldom confers much real power for money when unconnected with some degree of fitness. The security of its own position is not to be risked for the sake of an easy means of filling its exchequer, yet it is impossible to say how far the sale of office and title is carried. The censors inveigh against it, and the Emperor almost apologizes for resorting to it, but it is nevertheless constantly practised. The government stocks of this description were opened during the late rebellions and foreign wars, as the necessities of the case were a sufficient excuse for the disreputable practice. In 1835 the sons of two of the leading hong-merchants were promoted, in consequence of their donations of $25,000 each to repair the ravages of an inundation; subscribers to the amount of $10,000 and upward were rewarded by an honorary title, whose only privilege is that it saves its possessor from a bambooing, it being the law that no one holding any office can be personally chastised.[257]

~AGENTS AND MODES OF OFFICIAL EXACTION.~

Besides the lower officers, the clerks in their employ and the police, who are often taken from the garrison soldiery, are the agents in the hands of the upper ranks to squeeze the people. There are many clerks of various duties and grades about all the offices who receive small salaries, and every application and petition to their superiors, going through their hands, is attended by a bribe to pass them up. The military police and servants connected with the offices are not paid any regular salary, and their number is great. In the large districts, like those of Nanhai and Pwanyu, which compose the city of Canton and suburbs, it is said there are about a thousand unpaid police; in the middle-sized ones between three and four hundred, and in the smallest from one to two hundred. This number is increased by the domestics attending high officers as part of their suite, and by their old acquaintances, who make themselves known when there is any likelihood of being employed. Among other abuses mentioned by the censors is that of magistrates appointing their own creatures to fill vacancies until those nominated by his Majesty arrive; like a poor man oppressing the poor, such officers are a sweeping rain. A similar abuse arises when country magistrates leave their posts to go to the provincial capital to dance attendance upon their superiors, and get nominated to a higher place or taken into their service as secretaries, because they will work for nothing; the duties of their vacated offices are meantime usually left undone, and underlings take advantage of their absence to make new exactions. The governor fills vacant offices with his own friends, and recommends them to his Majesty to be confirmed; but this has little effect in consolidating a system of oppression from the constant changes going on. In fact, it is hard to say which feature of the Chinese polity is the least disastrous to good government, these constant changes which neutralize all sympathy with the people on the part of rulers, or on the other hand make it useless for seditious men to try to foment rebellion.

The retinues of high provincial officers contain many dependents and expectant supernumeraries, all subservient to them; among them are the descendants of poor officers; the sons of bankrupt merchants who once possessed influence; dissipated, well bred, unscrupulous men, who lend themselves to everything flagitious; and lastly, fortune-seekers without money, but possessing talents of good order to be used by any one who will hire them. Such persons are not peculiar to China, and their employment is guarded against in the code, but no law is more of a dead letter. Officers of government, too, conscious of their delinquencies, and afraid their posts will soon be taken from them, of course endeavor to make the most of their opportunities, and by means of such persons, who are usually well acquainted with the leading inhabitants of the district, harass and threaten such as are likely to pay well for being left in quiet. It does them little or no good, however, for if they are not removed they must fee their superiors, and if they are punished for their misdeeds they are still more certain of losing their wicked exactions.

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 robbery and 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 the _yamuns_ are 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 those unjustly 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 and annoy 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 the _Chau-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 elder is 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 the _siunkien_ and 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, the _Gazette_ contains 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 as _Hoklo_, emigrate in large numbers to the Indian Archipelago or to other provinces. The later _Gazettes_ contain 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 suggest or 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 Macao in 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, named _Yeh_, 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, called _hakka_, 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 the privilege 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 the head 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 the _Ming-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:

~MANIFESTO ISSUED AGAINST THE ENGLISH.~

“We have been reverently consulting upon the Empire--a vast and
undivided whole! How can we permit it to be severed in order to give
it to others? Yet we, the rustic people, can learn to practise a rude
loyalty; we too know to destroy the banditti, and thus requite his
Majesty. Our Great Pure dynasty has cared for this country for more
than two hundred years, during which a succession of distinguished
monarchs, sage succeeding sage, has reigned; and we who eat the
herb of the field, and tread the soil, have for ages drank in the
dew of imperial goodness, and been imbued with its benevolence. The
people in wilds far remote beyond our influence have also felt this
goodness, comparable to the heavens for height, and been upheld by
this bounty, like the earth for thickness. Wherefore peace being now
settled in the country, ships of all lands come, distant though they
be from this for many a myriad of miles; and of all the foreigners
on the south and west there is not one but what enjoys the highest
peace and contentment, and entertains the profoundest respect and
submission.

“But there is that English nation, whose ruler is now a woman and
then a man, its people at one time like birds and then like beasts,
with dispositions more fierce and furious than the tiger or wolf,
and hearts more greedy than the snake or hog--this people has ever
stealthily devoured all the southern barbarians, and like the demon
of the night they now suddenly exalt themselves. During the reigns
of Kienlung and Kiaking these English barbarians humbly besought
entrance and permission to make a present; they also presumptuously
requested to have Chusan, but those divine personages, clearly
perceiving their traitorous designs, gave them a peremptory refusal.
From that time, linking themselves in with traitorous traders, they
have privily dwelt at Macao, trading largely in opium and poisoning
our brave people. They have ruined lives--how many millions none
can tell; and wasted property--how many thousands of millions who
can guess! They have dared again and again to murder Chinese, and
have secreted the murderers, whom they have refused to deliver up,
at which the hearts of all men grieved and their heads ached. Thus
it has been that for many years past the English, by their privily
watching for opportunities in the country, have gradually brought
things to the present crisis.

“In 1838, our great Emperor having fully learned all the crimes of
the English and the poisonous effects of opium, quickly wished to
restore the good condition of the country and compassionate the
people. In consequence of the memorial of Hwang Tsioh-sz’, and in
accordance to his request, he specially deputed the public-minded,
upright, and clear-headed minister, Lin Tseh-sü, to act as his
imperial commissioner with plenipotentiary powers, and go to Canton
to examine and regulate. He came and took all the stored-up opium
and stopped the trade, in order to cleanse the stream and cut off
the fountain; kindness was mixed with his severity, and virtue
was evident in his laws, yet still the English repented not of
their errors, and as the climax of their contumacy called troops
to their aid. The censor Hwang, by advising peace, threw down the
barriers, and bands of audacious robbers willingly did all kinds
of disreputable and villainous deeds. During the past three years
these rebels, depending upon their stout ships and effective cannon,
from Canton went to Fuhkien, thence to Chehkiang and on to Kiangsu,
seizing our territory, destroying our civil and military authorities,
ravishing our women, capturing our property, and bringing upon
the inhabitants of these four provinces intolerable miseries. His
Imperial Majesty was troubled and afflicted, and this added to his
grief and anxiety. If you wish to purify their crimes, all the fuel
in the Empire will not suffice, nor would the vast ocean be enough
to wash out our resentment. Gods and men are alike filled with
indignation, and Heaven and Earth cannot permit them to remain.

“Recently, those who have had the management of affairs in Kiangnan
have been imitating those who were in Canton, and at the gates of
the city they have willingly made an agreement, peeling off the fat
of the people to the tune of hundreds of myriads, and all to save
the precious lives of one or two useless officers; in doing which
they have exactly verified what Chancellor Kin Ying-lin had before
memorialized. Now these English rebels are barbarians dwelling in
a petty island beyond our domains; yet their coming throws myriads
of miles of country into turmoil, while their numbers do not exceed
a few myriads. What can be easier than for our celestial dynasty
to exert its fulness of power and exterminate these contemptible
sea-going imps, just as the blast bends the pliant bamboo? But our
highest officers and ministers cherish their precious lives, and
civil and military men both dread a dog as they would a tiger;
regardless of the enemies of their country or the griefs of the
people, they have actually sundered the Empire and granted its
wealth; acts more flagitious these than those of the traitors in
the days of the Southern Sung dynasty, and the reasons for which
are wholly beyond our comprehension. These English barbarians are
at bottom without ability, and yet we have all along seen in the
memorials that officers exalt and dilate upon their prowess and
obstinacy; our people are courageous and enthusiastic, but the
officers on the contrary say that they are dispirited and scattered:
this is for no other reason than to coerce our prince to make peace,
and then they will luckily avoid the penalty due for ‘deceiving the
prince and betraying the country.’ Do you doubt? Then look at the
memorial of Chancellor Kin Ying-lin, which says: ‘They take the
occasion of war to seek for self-aggrandizement;’ every word of which
directly points at such conduct as this.

“We have recently read in his Majesty’s lucid mandate that ‘There is
no other way, and what is requested must be granted;’ and that ‘We
have conferred extraordinary powers upon the ministers, and they have
done nothing but deceive us.’ Looking up we perceive his Majesty’s
clear discrimination and divine perception, and that he was fully
aware of the imbecility of his ministers; he remembers too the loyal
anger of his people. He has accordingly now temporarily settled all
the present difficulties, but it is that, having matured his plans,
he may hereafter manifest his indignation, and show to the Empire
that it had not fathomed the divine awe-inspiring counsels.

“The dispositions of these rebellious English are like that of the
dog or sheep, whose desires can never be satisfied; and therefore we
need not inquire whether the peace now made be real or pretended.
Remember that when they last year made disturbance at Canton they
seized the Square fort, and thereupon exhibited their audacity,
everywhere plundering and ravishing. If it had not been that the
patriotic inhabitants dwelling in Hwaitsing and other hamlets, and
those in Shingping, had not killed their leader and destroyed their
devilish soldiers, they would have scrupled at nothing, taking and
pillaging the city, and then firing it in order to gratify their
vengeance and greediness: can we imagine that for the paltry sum of
six millions of dollars they would, as they did, have raised the
siege and retired? How to be regretted! That when the fish was in the
frying-pan, the Kwangchau fu should come and pull away the firewood,
let loose the tiger to return to the mountains, and disarm the
people’s indignation. Letting the enemy thus escape on one occasion
has successively brought misery upon many provinces: whenever we
speak of it, it wounds the heart and causes the tears to flow.

“Last year, when the treaty of peace was made, it was agreed that
the English should withdraw from beyond Lankeet, that they should
give back the forts near there and dwell temporarily at Hongkong, and
that thenceforth all military operations were forever to cease. Who
would have supposed that before the time stipulated had passed away
they would have turned their backs upon this agreement, taken violent
possession of the forts at the Bogue with their ‘wooden dragons’
[_i.e._, ships of war]--and when they came upon the gates of the City
of Rams with their powerful forces, who was there to oppose them?
During these three years we have not been able to restore things as
at first, and their deceptive craftiness, then confined to these
regions, has rapidly extended itself to Kiangnan. But our high and
mighty Emperor, pre-eminently intelligent and discerning [_lit._
grasping the golden mirror and holding the gemmeous balances],
consents to demean himself to adopt soothing counsels of peace, and
therefore submissively accords with the decrees of Heaven. Having
a suspicion that these outlandish people intended to encroach upon
us, he has secretly arranged all things. We have respectfully read
through all his Majesty’s mandates, and they are as clear-sighted
as the sun and moon; but those who now manage affairs are like one
who, supposing the raging fire to be under, puts himself as much
at ease as swallows in a court, but who, if the calamity suddenly
reappears, would be as defenceless as a grampus in a fish-market. The
law adjudges the penalty of death for betraying the country, but how
can even death atone for their crimes? Those persons who have been
handed down to succeeding ages with honor, and those whose memories
have been execrated, are but little apart on the page of righteous
history; let our rulers but remember this, and we think they also
must exert themselves to recover their characters. We people have
had our day in times of great peace, and this age is one of abundant
prosperity; scholars are devising how to recompense the kindness of
the government, nor can husbandmen think of forgetting his Majesty’s
exertions for them. Our indignation was early excited to join battle
with the enemy, and we then all urged one another to the firmest
loyalty.

“We have heard the English intend to come into Pearl River and make
a settlement; this will not, however, stop at Chinese and foreigners
merely dwelling together, for men and beasts cannot endure each
other; it will be like opening the door and bowing in the thief, or
setting the gate ajar and letting the wolf in. While they were kept
outside there were many traitors within; how much more, when they
encroach even to our bedsides, will our troubles be augmented? We
cannot help fearing it will eventuate in something strange, which
words will be insufficient to express. If the rulers of other states
wish to imitate the English, with what can their demands be waived?
Consequently, the unreasonable demands of the English are going to
bring great calamity upon the people and deep sorrow to the country.
If we do not permit them to dwell with us under the same heaven, our
spirits will feel no shame; but if we willingly consent to live with
them, we may in truth be deemed insensate.