The immediate result was the doubling of the rates this month and naturally a murmur of alarm has rin through the community ind residents are assuming something of their old attitude of pas sive resistance, It is not only' because Peking is desperately poor in the midst of a rich countryside, nor because the taxpayers doubt in their hearts that the police derive all th benefits. The residents feel that, through a play on their sympathies, they have been persuaded to: lower their guard and that the officials have established a precedent which they will now proceed to abuse ad infinitum, I the "tax enn be doubled at the and of two months, what is to prevent them doubling the rates ogum at the end of four months?
The unhappy police collectors are everywhere most apologetic and swear that there will not be any fature increases, They say they: have actually received some pay at Inst and are eating regularly if not well. They say:—"This pains us fas much as it does you. We know 4 does not look well and we do not enjoy being cursed on every door step, but we do not demand that you Pay this increase. We ask you to ay it this time, and if you do 20 we ourselves shall not hive the face to announce another Incren In the circumstances, most: persons are paying.
An Unaceustomed Luxury Poor as the city is, this tax is not a heavy burden, but there is. a premonition that, even if the funds fre spent in Peking, in one way or another, a time will come when the ever-desperate military ousting: about for new sources of revenue will note this neat little segregated sum and proceed to put their own collectors in police headquarters, Temarking among themselves that the police are not accustomed to such luxury as regular pay and are danger of being, atled 'Unfortunately for the pol Missda"trwaeds' them eto eh common. The modern organiza tion was created in Mancha days by Hsu Shih-chang and one of the fens behind the move was to give employment to indigent Bannermen potential Manchu who were never likely their Banners and were unfitted by tradition to look for other work. Similar recruits from the indigent Samurai formed the nucleus of the first police forces in Japan, and perhaps the idea was imported.
At any rate, the police foree'here, fa solemn, conscientious and reasonably efficient body of men, is Targely a Manchu force still, and, such, the city cannot quite shake off the iden that it is a body of pensioners and an object of charity. Police salaries are, therefore, not likely to be held as suered as they fought to be, though one had only to visit the enormous police graveyard, running along. a rounded-off section of the Lino Dynasty city—wall, anth of the present city, where lie the men whose families could not afford to bury them, to appreciate hhow badly they need their wretched salaries,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.