"The Censor Chang Chao-lan denounces the practice now current amongst the department and district magistrates of the various provinces of the Empire of speculating on their own responsibility in the stores of reserve grain which are deposited in the emergency granaries of every walled city of the country, resulting frequently in the bankruptcy of the magistrates in question, who thereby become unable to make good their accounts to the provincial treasury when suddenly superseded or transferred to other posts. This is n most serious defect in the present day administration of local governments and steps should be taken to prevent the recurrence of such delinquencies. The officials ought to bear in mind that each walled city is bound to retain in the local granaries an amount of grain proportionate to the size of the "epulation, to be used in times of drought, famine, wat, or pestilence as an emergency reserve for the protection of the inhabitants from want and starvation, the officials, however, being allowed of the old grain when replaced by the to sell at their discretion a certain portion
addition of new grain received each year. Instead, of doing this in accordance with the regulations governing such sales, the said Censor charges the local magistrates above-named with leaving the old grain to rot in the emergency granaries while the newly received grain is manipulated in the markets. naturally at enhanced prices, to the benefit of the exploiters. The old grain in the raid granaries in time, of course, become utterly useless, and the result may be easily imagined whenever the occasion calls for the distribution of emergency
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.