Part 19 (2/2)

That he can do, and in the great majority of cases actually does perform, such remarkable financial legerdemain is a fact that is entirely due to the vicious system on which the whole civil service in China is based. It is perfectly understood by the Government that when a mandarin is appointed to any official position under it, the squeezes he has to pay for it, and the inadequate salary he will receive for his services, are all to be met and supplemented by what he can wring out of the people.

This system is as old as the nation, and has become so inwrought and worked into its very fibre, that a new creation of national life would seem to be essential before it could be eradicated from the body politic.

When the mandarin arrives at his Yamen, which is his residence and the place where all the official business of the county is transacted, he is met by the whole staff of men who are to a.s.sist him in the arduous duties that fall to him as the chief magistrate in the large district he has been appointed to rule. These consist of a private secretary, an interpreter, a number of writers who write dispatches and conduct any correspondence that may arise, a large body of policemen, or runners as they are generally called in the East, and a dozen disreputable-looking men who form the retinue of the mandarin, when he is called out to settle disturbances in any part of his large field, or adjudicate on cases that have to be tried on the spot.

Nominally he is responsible for all the salaries that this great crowd of men receive, and one wonders how he manages to pay them all out of his three hundred a year. The real fact of the case is, the only man that receives any salary from him is his private secretary. All the rest purchase the privilege of being employed in his service, and give the whole of their time free simply for being permitted to extract out of the people who come to engage in lawsuits, or from those who have fallen within the grip of the law, fees and squeezes and perquisites enough to give them a very good permanent income.

It is very interesting to watch the way in which these gentry carry on their official work, and how as ministers of justice in executing the decisions of the mandarin their one aim seems to be to extract as much out of the pockets of the people they are operating on as it is possible for them to do.

A farmer, for example, comes one day into the Yamen to lay a complaint against a rich neighbour who has taken forcible possession of some of his fields. He produces the deeds of his lands, and shows how they have been in his family for several generations and that they have never been alienated either by sale or by mortgage. The rich man has simply taken forcible possession of them because he belongs to a formidable clan, he declares, and not because he has any right to the fields.

The runners are delighted with this case, for the fact that there is a rich man in it makes it certain that some of his dollars will be transferred to their pockets. The complaint is formally accepted by the mandarin, and the court fees having been paid, a warrant is issued for the arrest of the man who has been accused.

The runners or policemen start out on their journey with light and joyous hearts. The road that leads away from the main thoroughfare takes them through rice fields, and skirts the foothills, and runs through villages, until at last it brings them by a narrow pathway to the house of the rich man they have come to arrest.

The whole village is excited by the arrival of these messengers of the law, for they are always a sign of ill omen, and the only man that can face them without being terrified is the man who knows that he has the means to satisfy their cupidity and to thus avoid being roughly handled by them. A crowd as if by magic silently gathers round the open door through which the runners have entered, and the women from the neighbouring houses collect in excited knots, and with flushed faces discuss the wonderful news of their village life.

The rich man, with as calm and as indifferent a manner as he can a.s.sume, though his heart is beating fast, comes out into the courtyard where the runners are standing and politely asks them what is their business with him. They tell him they have a warrant for his arrest for seizing some fields that belong to one of his neighbours, and the mandarin has ordered them to bring him to his court to be tried for the offence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A POLICEMAN.

_To face p. 280._]

Whilst the warrant is being read, the accused has had time to collect his wits. He of course denies the accusation, and politely asks the men to be seated. At the same time he calls the cook, and declaring that they must be tired and hungry after their long walk, he orders him to at once get dinner ready for them, and in a whisper he gives him a hint that he does not wish him to spare any expense in providing such a meal as will put them in the best humour possible.

The runners freely protest that they have no time to delay, that their orders are imperative, and that the ”Father and Mother of his People” is impatiently awaiting their return. This of course is all put on, for dinner is just the one thing they have been looking forward to; so pretending to yield to the entreaties of their host, they at once make themselves at home. They smoke their pipes and then laugh and chat with the members of the household, just as though they had been invited guests, and not policemen who had come to carry off the head of it to prison.

After a time, when they have got into a comfortable humour with each other, the rich man takes the head runner aside, and after a few minutes of earnest conversation and the slipping of a few dollars into his hand, an air of increased geniality seems to have suddenly sprung up between him and his uninvited guests. They are now most polite and deferential to him, and the swaggering, bullying manner natural to them is replaced by a childlike gentleness that is really most touching. Dinner over, instead of incontinently grabbing him by the tail and hauling him along the road as their instinct would prompt them in the case of any of the common people, they part from him with smiles and bows and high-flown compliments, whilst the culprit actually stands at his door, and ostentatiously, for the benefit of the man who has accused him of stealing his fields, entreats them not to leave him too soon, and a.s.sures them that his heart will be desolated if they do not come quickly and pay him another visit.

When they reach the Yamen, the ”Man that knows the County” demands of them where their prisoner is. They have their story all ready, and they explain that when they reached his home they could find no trace of him, and that without any explanation to his friends he had disappeared and they could not find him. They declare, however, that they are keeping an eye upon the family, who they are convinced are hiding his movements, and that before long they will be able to arrest him and bring him before the magistrate.

There is no doubt but that both the ”Man that knows the County” and these scamps whose faces are dyed with the opium hue, all had their tongues in their cheeks whilst this fable was being rehea.r.s.ed. Both sides know that the whole thing is a farce, but seeing that the original idea was devised by the thinkers and humorists that lived when the history of the nation was in twilight, it would not do for their far-off descendants to give the show away, and so with solemn faces they play out the thing, as though a tragedy and not a comedy were being enacted.

The runners have scarcely left the house, when the rich man hastens, as fast as he can hurry, to the city, and enters his reply to the accusation that has been laid against him. He denies that _in toto_, and produces deeds, that have been so deftly manufactured that they have the impress of a hundred years upon them, and which he declares prove decisively that the fields in question belong to him, and have come to him in proper legal succession from his forefathers.

He is careful, however, after he has put in his plea, to find out some relatives of the ”Father and Mother of the People” who have followed him from his distant home for occasions like this, with whom he confers. An earnest but not an unduly prolonged conversation takes place, when a certain sum of money changes hands, which is destined to find its way into the pocket of the mandarin, and whose purpose is to give him such a clear and profound grasp of the case that he will have no difficulty in deciding that the accusation against the rich man has been a trumped-up one.

Ten days go by and no further proceedings have been taken. The complainant, well aware of the cause of this, sc.r.a.pes together as large a sum as he can possibly afford, and by the same underground method sends it to the ”Man that knows the County,” with the hope that he will be able to see the justice of his case and give him back his fields. At the same time he enters what in legal phraseology is called a hurrying pet.i.tion, the object of which is to hasten the action of the mandarin so as to finish up the case without delay.

Upon the receipt of this, an order is issued to the runners to go and arrest the accused with all possible dispatch and bring him to the Yamen so that he may be tried. The previous farce such as I have already described is once more gone through. The runners are received with lavish hospitality and a certain number of dollars are transferred to their pockets, that put a smile on their features that lights them all up and that spreads away to the back of their necks, till it finally vanishes down their tails into thin air. On their return to the Yamen they report that the man is still away from home, and though they have made diligent inquiries they have not yet been able to trace his whereabouts.

And so the case goes on, bribes being paid by both sides that go to swell the gains of the ”Father and Mother of his People,” whilst fees also are squeezed out of them by the runners, who, as in some difficult cases in Chancery in England, grow fat upon the spoils that they extract out of both the complainant and defendant. Finally, after many months of vexatious delays, when the whole hungry tribe in the Yamen see that no more money can be got out of either side, the case is tried, when some compromise is suggested and the parties leave the court fully convinced that there is no such thing as justice in China.

The mandarins in this land take a very Oriental idea of what their duty is in regard to crime. They act upon the principle that unless it is legally brought before them, and a complaint is entered in their court, they will take no cognizance of it. Two large and wealthy villages have a quarrel, a very common thing in China. The feud grows and the pa.s.sions become excited till finally they determine to take up arms and settle the case by a fight. To get the aid of the supernatural on their behalf, each side appeals to the village G.o.d, that is the patron of the clan, to know whether it approves of the taking up of arms. Almost invariably the idol does so, and in addition promises to give their side victory in the coming struggle.

All the old rusty jingals are brought out and furbished up; gunpowder is bought, and spears and cruel-looking p.r.o.nged instruments that have been hidden away when there was no occasion for them, are thrown into the common stock and are served out to the young bloods who have been getting blue-mouldy for want of a beating.

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