(3) Yen Ching-auing and his colleagues in the Board of Revenue furnish a report on the subject of the defalcations in the collection of the land tax to which the Censor Hu Chun-chang has called attention. The censor asserts that the only cases of defalcation now reported are those in which the defaulters are already dead or degraded, and that not one ten-thousandth part of the deficit is ever recovered, As a remedy, he recommends that the public chests in the Tuayistrate's oftlcas should be inspected throo times a year by the taotai and prefect, and that the total collection should be remitted tu the treasurer within a month after its receipt. Defaulters should be denounced by their immediate superiors, the taotai and prefect, and the higher' authorities should. be. held respousibte making gued all deficits. The memorialists observe that very stringent edicts, which had a good effect, were issued on this subject in the reigns of Yung Cheng and Ch'ien Lung. In those days the officials were clean-handed and nota cash of the public money was embezzled. During the last 20! or 30 years, however, the pressing import-military affairs has introduced an inferior stamp of men into the service, and the land tax has now come to be looked upon by a scheming class of officials as their private peryuisite. The confiscation of the property of deceased defaulters has become a pure farce, and the wholesale plunder of public funds is termed defalcation. The higher officials screen the lower, and either do not denounce them at all, or denounce them after they are dead, when all hope of recovering the money is gone. The memorialists thought that prevention was better than cure, and with this object in view they issued a set of regulations on the subject three years ayo, which anticipated to a great extent the suggestions now made by the Censor. As to the latter's recommendation that the superior authorities should be held responsible for making good the defalcations of their subordinates, there is an existing law to this effect. In the reign of Tao Kuang a Decree was issued to the effect that in all cases of defalcations by territorial authorities, where there was no for any hope of recovering from the original defaulters, the loss was to be made yood by the superior authorities in the following proportions—507, by the prefect or department magistrate for neglecting to report the deficit, 20% each by the treasurer and taotai for having failed to discover it, The instrueney, but they aren't energetically enforced. The frequent revisions which they have undergone have caused much confusion in the Board's Regulations, and the foregoing rules are so complete that they require little emendation, The Memorialists, therefore, request that a Decree be issued incorporating the pro-sions of the Edict of Tao Kuang's reign, own rules and the censor's sugsestiuns, with the follo addition. By the rules {of the Board of Office, "governors-general and governors who' neglect, in denouncing subordinate officers for defalcations, to add the proportions in which the loss is to be made good by the defaulters' superiors, are punished by transfer and deprived of three stops of commutative rank, and it is requested that this provision may be enforced in the case of the land tax collection.
DeaTtr o¥ st
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.