Tue Chinese official is in many ways a much misrepresented man. There can be no doubt that the system of Government in this country is theoretically extremely perfect. We are often led to forgot that two of the great improvements and reforms which have been constantly urged upon the English nation, viz., Life Peerages and Competitive Examinations, have been estab-Tished customs in China for many centuries. But it is also certain that the country which has in full bloom these two great liberal panaces, is not in any sense a model of perfection but is deficient in the very elements of pure and satisfactory representative Government. We look in vain for high-minded class amongst the great chiefs of important departments, and for that healthy and constantly stimulated activity which is met with in countries where there it play given to the Examination Boards, and where men are chosen to fill Inorative and influential posts who have worked their way up from the lowest step of the ladder, and are placed in positions of trust, not because they are sons or nephews of good men, but because they are good men themselves. It is a popular argu. ment against the Chinese system (if invective is argument) to say that, in the national character, and indeed in all Oriental character, there is such a marked deficiency and weakness that we can hope for no good thing. In a word, that the people are incapable of appreciating or carrying out with integrity or perseverance any system, never mind how lofty and excellent it be on paper, Wo confess on: unable to subscribe at once to this view. The nation had a very good system once, and it was apparently once administered with parity and intelligence. The case now is lamentably the reverse of this. There is very much to blame in the working of the system, and we have plenty of opportunities of detecting shortcomings and failures and miscarriages of justice, The high ideal which existed once is lowered and obscured, and blackened by numerous faults and blunders and dark spots; but unquestionably an ideal exists. Directly any magistrate is found who does his duty fearlessly well, be is noted and honoured by the approval of the masses of the people and by the recognition of his Sovereign. The degradations and punishments which are constantly announced in the Peking Garetto exhibit the efforts made by the Government to bring the system up toa standard of purity and ficiency. Just as it is in the nature of religions systems to become after awhile encrusted with abuses and to develope superstitions observances and unnecessary forms of ceremonial once significant, but now mechanical, so a complicated system of officialdom, and a very intricate apparatus of Govern. ment after a time pass into an arti. ficial state and lose the breath of life which animated it at the time when it was originated. China is now or has been for centuries working in old and rusty grooves. The inherent fault of the people—their love of precedent and form, of routine and ceremonial—has been expanded, and at first we seo little save the complicated organization without lofty motive in the individual. Still the country is not by any means to be despaired of, as it would be if it bad a despot at the head of affairs and the forms of a centralized tyranny, The Viceroys of the great provinces
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.