ie BULLY.
(Continued.
In the numerous cases in which persons are imposed upon by a bully who is too much for them, their earliest thoughts are how it may be practicable to collect a band of men, expert in the ' fist-and-foot practices, and make an attack upon the aggressive party, by which means he may be suppressed. The writer has recently met man whose home is in a village noted as the headquarters of a daring and unscrupulous band of thieves. Havin, been robbed by them with no prospect of any redress through, legal channels, this man collected a band of athletes, and attacked the thieves in the vicinity of the village where they made their home, and so belaboured them, that the band removed its headquarters elsewhere.
It isa useful, but by no means a neces-qualification of the bully, that he should be a poor man, with nothing to lose.
Poverty in China is often a synonym for the most abject misery and want. The entire possessions of great numbers of the people would, not amount in value to five dollars, and thousands of persons never know whence the next meal is to come. Such persons would in European countries constitute what are called the dang classes." In Chiva, unless their distress is extreme, they do not mass themselves, and they seldom wage war against society as a whole. But individuals of this type may, if they have other requisite abilities become village kings,' and order the course of current events much according to their own will. Such persons, in the figurative language of the Chinese, are called bare-foot men," in allusion to their destitute condition, and it is a common saying that the barefoot man (otherwise Known as mud-legs") is not afraid of him who has stockings on his fect," fortheformer can at once retreat into the mud, where the latter dare not follow. In other words, the barefoot man is able to hold in terror the man who has property to lose, by an open or an implicit threat of vengeance against which the man of property can not safeguard himself. The forms which this vengeance will take vary according to circumstances. One of the most common is that of incendiary fires, which in a thickly inhabited village, where there is often a large accumulation of fuel stacked up, is a mode of attack particularly to be dreaded. It i always easy to seta fire, but dificult and frequently impossible to extinguish it. We hath known numberless oatenonn of this sort, in which despite all diligence, no one was ever detected in setting the fire. The terror which such fires inspire is so groat that the man who is thought to be specially liable to them, may be marked and avoided for that reason alone. It is sidered unsafe to have anything to do him, much less to aid him in extin-gushing his fires. Tu one case of this sort, the same individual was repeatedly visited with incendiary fires, and on the last occasion all his carts were totally destroyed, nothing remaining but the tires of the wheels, It was afterwards found that strong leather straps had been used to bind the wheels to the framework of the shed in which they were kept, so that any attempt to drag the carts out was certain to fail.
Another method by which the bully signifies his dissatisfaction with his enemy, is by injuring his crops. In a country where the farms are subdivided into mere fragments, every farmer's land is contiguous to that of a great number of other persons. A large farm will often consist of scores of different pieces of ground, which have been Sought ax opportunity offered. When the land is planted, and again when the harvest is gathered, excellent opportunity is afforded for disputes. The little. bushes which serve as boundaries of the fields of different owners, in regions where stone posts are too expensive, are readily destroyed or removed, and in any case the boundaries are more or less inexact, leaving room for uncertainty us to the precise point at which one piece of ground ends and another begins. It is in such situations as this that the bully is at his best. It is well understood that he will suffer no loss, and that whoever happens to be his neighbour, will literally 'a hard row to hoe.' ' There are sometimes sections of ground, such as those belonging to public uses, river embankments, the land of certain temples, and the like, which no one but a bully could cultivate at all, because the crops must be defended against invasion from all quarters, and only a bull can furnish the necessary skill and ferocity to protect himself. In'his essay ea Lord Clive, Macaulay mentions the circumstance which was still remembered in Shropshire, that in his boyish days the great Indian soldier formed all the idle lads of the town into a kind of predatory army, and compelled the shopkeepers to submit consideration of which, he guaranteed the to a tribute of apples and half-pence, in security of the windows." "Young Robert Clive had hit upon the precise principle by which the Chinese bully maintains himself in perpetual rule, a principle indeed as old us as the race That those should take who have The good old rule, the simple pi: he po wer, And those should keep who can."
The means of enforcing these exactions is always at hand, and is expressed in one fateful and compound noun, lar-suit. The bully who understands his business i acquainted with every one at the district yamen, and is in fact one of their best customers, or rather the m i them their custom. Themanéuisthe spider's web, and the bully is the lange insect which drives the flies into the net, where it will 0 ill with them, ere they escape. If
the plan of leaving a' bag of smuggled salt, his adversary i reh, the bully may adopt in the doorway of the rich man, at the same time taking care to have a "salt inspector" ready to seize the salt, and bring an accusation against the man of means, as are themselves smugglers, selected for their expertness in the art, and like all other underlings in Chinese official life, they are quite free from the trammels of any sort of conscience. From a suit of this kind no rich man would be likely to escape without the sacrifice of many thousand strings of cash, being not improbably forced to
for rebuilding a temple, or some other furnish the funds for repairing 'a city wall, public work. The capacity to conduct successfully a lawsuit is in China what in Bagdad during the time of the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid it must shave been to wear the Cap of Darkness and Shoes of Swiftmess. Such agencies defy all foes except those similarly equipped. And as in the Arabian Nights there are many stories of magicians warring with magicians who also did so with their enchantments," in like manner when Chinese bullies meet in a fight at a yumdén, it is a battle of giants. 4 The most expert of all this dreaded class is the bully who is also a literary man, perhaps a hwints'ai, and who thus has speci prestige of his own, securing him 'a hearing where others would fail of it, guaranteeing him immunity from beating in open court, to which others are liable, and enabling him to prepare accusations for himself or others, and to be certain of the bearing of these documents upon the case in hand. These advantages are great, that it is not uncommon to find persons who make no secret of the fact that their main. motive in submitting to the toils requisite to gain the lowest literary degree, is that they may be able during the rest of their lives, to make use of this leverage as a means Of raising themselves, and of harming their neighbours. Any Chinese bully is greatly to be feared, but none is so formidable as the literary bully. One other type of Chinese bully must not fail of mention, for it is in some respects the most unique of all, to wit the female bully. Her traits are, mutatis mutandis, the same as those of the: individuals already mentioned, but her mere existence is so great departure from our ordinary conceptions of Chinese social life, that it needs a word of explanation. She is simply an evolution of her surroundings. Skill in speech, physical violence in act, and an executive talent, are her endowments, and her usefulness to the perennially hungry "wolves and tigers" of the yamen is such, that she is called their draught-horse to draw victims. Like her male compatriots, she is able from her value to the underlings' of the yamen to conduct " lawsuit of her own, without any of those numberless and ' vexation expenses which suck out the life-blood 4 culinary victims. 'This makes her © tore Bible, if not an invulnerable foo, an? those who are wise will beware of her." a saying of a certain humorov', philoso pher, that one hornet can F peat? whole camp-meeting, when P ¢"feels well. How much mischief one Cb' inese bully can accomplish in-an average Yife-time, it is impossible to estimate.
While the governmen ¢ of China apyiears to have elements of © extreme stability, it is at the same time of en practically weak in the very pointe who re it most needs strength, undy in its capacity to put forth powerful and sudden efforts. Whenever any uprising of the people takes place, there is ¢ generally nothing to prevent its gainer. 4 great momentum, owing to the iv capacity of the local authorities to cope with it. The same phenomenon is seen in any personal affray between sinfte individuals. There are no police' te arrest the one who commits a breach of he peace, and it is only by the intervention of third parties, friendly to the principal, that order is restored. But if
force to bear upon the person whom he either of the parties is'able to bring a ange attacks, he is almost certain to be vietorious. It is at this point that the organisa-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.