Wuute the extension of the telegraph over China has done something to forward the centralisation of authority at Peking, it has by no means broken down the system of semi-independence of the provinces, which is really so effective in retarding the general progress of the empire. Each Viceroy as is well known is left pretty much to himself, as long as he sends regularly to the capital the sums at which he is assessed, and as long as his government is not so obnoxious to his people as to drive them into open rebellion. He can, as we have seen the Viceroy of Szechuan do in the matter of the opening of the Upper Yangtze to steam navigation, effectually thwart the cou-cessions made by the central government; he can tax his people up to the point of resistance, and he can rule his own province, if he chooses, without any regard to the effect of his rule on ueighbouriuy provinces. His wu province my be enjoying a magnificent harvest while in the next one the people through a food ora drought; but this does not oblige him to make an effort tu help his neighbour any more than if that neighbour were a foreign country, The solidarity and uniformity of this vast empire preserved through thousands of years are a constant wonder to the foreigner; but to the native the eighteen provinces are in some respects as much divided as the countries of Europe, and the Canton man is quite as much a foreigner in Yangchow as the Spaniard is in Berlin.
"Every one for himself and the yea for us all" might be the motto of the provincial authorities in China, and if we wanted a proof of this, we could not find a better one than given in the extract from the Peking Gazette of 17th August, a translation of which was published in these columns yesterday. The province of Fukien draws the greater part of its usual supplies of rice from the neighbouring province of Kiangsu. For some reason which has never been satisfactorily explained, though various hints have been thrown out, the export of rice was prohibited Jast autumn from Kiangsu, though there was no scarcity of rice at avy time in the provinces which make up Kiangnan, Itis intelligible enough, even if it is economically a mistake, that in the event ofa partial famine in Japan, for instance, the export of grain to China should be prohibited, or etce versd; but it is repugnant to our ideas of an empire, that the export of grain from one province to another should be prohibited. Tt was done, however, and the Viceroy at Foochow memorialises the throne on the steps he took in consequence. He mentions that the coming scarcity had been foreseen, and some preparations made to meet it; including the sale "at the usual rates" of 40,000 piculs purchased in the course of the winter. In the emergency the serious step was taken of opening the government gravaries, which had been illed twenty years bee fore. The Viceroy does not say anything, as he might, of the wastefulness of this system of storage; he does not stop to consider what the rice must have cost
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.