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824
EAST ASIA.
mandarins as a natural consequence take advantage of a system thus endured as
a necessary evil, to enforce arbitrary extortions, and oblige people to offer bribes.
Hence in the whole country corruption and injustice are rife. In fact, all
mandarins without exception take money over and above their salary, and even
beyond their anti-extortion allowances. The great difference between what the
Chinese call the " good " and the " bad" mandarin is, that while the former makes
people pay for justice, as indeed is largely the case everywhere,
the latter sells
justice to the highest bidder.
This irregular state of things, moreover, renders the mandarins themselves
dependent on their clerks and police officers, and obliges them to wink at
infringements of the law by which they personally gain nothing. Thus some of
the lower functionaries continue to serve after the legal period of five years, and
in fact maintain permanent possession of their posts, merely by changing their
names, although the mandarin is liable to a heavy punishment for permitting it.
Were he to attempt to enforce the law, these officers would resist in a body ; and
as it requires great experience and tact to levy the illegal fees without getting into
trouble, the new functionaries would find it very difficult to transact public
business and raise the irregular revenue, which is, of course, the main object of the
mandarins. A case occurred some time ago in Canton, in which a new superintendent
of finances, who had at a previous period held a lower post and then
been insulted by the underlings, in revenge immediately forced them to leave on
being made . superintendent himself . But he was eventually obliged to receive
them all back again after putting himself to much trouble, and making what
practically amounted to an apology.*
At once military commanders, administrators, and judges, it is in the latter
capacity that the mandarins are most dreaded by their subjects.
Notwithstanding
the stringent measures taken against venality, the bribes of suitors still continue to
compensate for the low rate of their salaries, originally fixed according to the
income they might earn as artisans. The old edicts decree the penalty of death
against unrighteous judges, but there is practically no appeal from their sentences.
"
It is well," said the "
Emperor Kang-hi, that all men should have a wholesome
fear of the tribunals. I desire that all having recourse to the magistrates be
treated mercilessly, so that all may dread to appear before them. Let good
citizens settle their disputes like brothers, submitting to the arbitration of the
elders and mayors of the communes. Let all obstinate and incorrigible litigants be
crushed by the judges, for such is their desert." In many places differences are
still settled by the heads of families according to the unwritten code, and the
lex talionis is everywhere respected.
Private vengeance is also often carried out by
suicide. Debtors pursued by their creditors, farmers oppressed by their landlords,
the artisan injured by his employer, the wife harassed by her mother-in-law, can
always adopt the expedient of hanging themselves in order to obtain redress. The
whole community then takes up their cause and avenges them symbolicallv. A
moved to the
broom is placed in the hand of the victim, and this broom, being
* Meadows, op. at. p. 168, 169.