Peking, Dec. 1 Unless the Government is industriously hoisting signs about the landscape of officialdom to "Beware of the Dog," when there no biting canine to beware of, the days of the "Squeezer" are numbered. We have of late seen Presidential Mandates, _prosecutions and executions in connexion with corruption, and now regulations have been issued by the Minister of Finance to prevent petty peculation, or embezzlement on a large scale. These regulations require officials in charge of Government Funds to furnish security 8 & guarantee of their integrity.
What these regulations will mean if they are strictly enforced will appeal to the imaginative. The whole of the funds of the Republic are handled by officials, and their name is legion. They exist in every city, town, and village in the wide Republic. There are swarms of them. Through them every tax is collected, but by them every collected sum is not passed into the Government coffers.
What the Government Gets.
It has been estimated, or rather asserted, that if the Government could only secure fifty per cent. of the actual amount collected from the people throughout the country in the form of taxation li would be able comfortably to liqui date its national debt, and keep its administration financially lubricated in first class style without necessity for appeals to foreign financial markets. Supposing then that all the money collected could find its way to the Treasury; what a national Croesus we would see arise!
But there is another aspect of this proposed security which is more appealing to the speculative mind. It is concerned with the possibility of the Government securing the deposit with itself of the cash bonds of those who will be required to furnish such in order to obtain and hold positions. It is reasonable to suppose thet there are at least 100,-
Presto! Away flutters the financial embarrassment of the Government, and bankruptcy is transmuted at once into solvency. If necessary the Government could, by strict enforcement of a rigorous code, acquire unto itself large portions of this wealth, for by discharging those who failed to account for every cent stamp or cent of cash collected it would become the possessor of the bond deposited by the defaulter.
At once China would have a reserve of $200,000,000 dollars, and, in addition, would experience the distinct rapture of securing the major part, if not all, of the money collected from the people in the form of taxes, No charge is made for this suggestion the only stipulation being, if it adopted by a wise and progressive Minister of Finance, that the ter be protected against the in-fiction upon him of some class or other of the now notorious order of the Excellent Crop or the order of the Terrible Tiger.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.