We have often commented upon the cambrons system of remitting the rice tribute to Peking in kind, and on the waste and peculation to which it gives rise, It is perhaps scarcely surprising that ® country which has made so little advance in the study of political economy, should have failed to get beyond this primitive conception, especially when the interests of so many influential mandarins are bound up in its continuance. We all know how many vested interests cluster round any official custom, and how bard it is to find the man of sufficient influence and integrity to carry through a reform. The squeezes incidental to the collection of the rice tribute and its transmission to Peking are a source of wealth to hundreds of officials and official underlings; and it is scarcely surprising that no official has yet been found to break through a system in which his brother officials are so greatly interested. Bat a memorial from the Censor She-tai, in the Gazette of the 10th November, suggests another curious feature in the business, which deserves a word of explanation. He recommends, as a means of lowering the market price of rice at the present emergency, that the proportion of grain issued to the bauner-men should be considerably increased. Most of the rice thus imported into Peking is intended ostensibly for the bauner-men of the garrison, but practically it finds its way into the Peking rice shops."
The system is concisely explained in Mr. Dick's reports on the trade of Tientsin for the year 1867.
is not only," he writes, "the expensiveness of the whole transport, by sea as well as by river, which is open to criticism," but the economical folly of these large Government importations is a very serious consideration. The rice is issued to the officers and men of the garrison by orders on the Granaries bye-the-bye, never obity named in his order, It is suid that he never gets more than seven-tenths, and that what he does get has been damaged by the watering to which much of the rice is subjected to cover abductions and make it appear unto the right quantity when placed in the Granaries. "The discount on the allowance represents the charge which the officials and lighterman engaged in carrying the rice, and those who manage the Granaries, think proper to extract from the business."—But what is to our point is that the soldiers do not usually consume the rice themselves, but sell their Orders on the Granaries to the Rice Shops, the proceeds being more than sufficient to buy a quantity of the coarser grain equal to the rice they have sold. "The Peking rice shops," says Mr. Dick, "'are almost entirely supplied in this way, as the soldier, provided ho gets something more than the price of the coarse grain, can exclude the mercantile importer by selling the rice for less than has been expended on its purchase in tle south and its transport to Peking. Tue tribute becomes thus to some extent simply a trade in rice carried on by the officials at great cost to the country."—These premises help us to under. stand the curious proposal in Censor She-tai's memorial, that the proper tion of grain allowance issued to the soldiery be augmented just now by some 10 or 20 per cent., as a means of loworing the market price of rice." The price of rice in Peking has, he says, gone up in consequence of the drought, and steps should be taken to mitigate the suffering consequently experienced by the crowded population of the capital. So the above is the step ho recommends, and the passages we have extracted from Mr. Dick's memorandum explain how it would operate, It would be difficult to find a better illustration of the clumsy and costly system of transmitting taxes in kind. Tustead of collecting the tribute in money, with which it could pay its dependents, and leave them to purchase their own food, the Government imports, at enormous cost, a grain which the men do not want and do not eat but proceed to convert into money directly it is issued to them. Not only does it persist in paying the China Merchants' Steamer Ca., for the carringo of this rice, at least double the market rate of freight, but even where the revenue has been collected in money, it requires the provincial authorities to buy rice instead of transmitting
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.