eight million, and the latter about two million taëls; a tax on merchandize of between four and five million taëls; and an impost upon shopkeepers—of which the pawnbrokers pay one half-four million taëls. Duties are not levied on teas consumed on the spot, but merely on those that leave the district either for exportation or consumption in other provinces.

This paltry revenue for so great a country is expended in the pensions of nobles and their daughters; the salaries of mandarins; the pay of the military; the expenses of charity schools and of numberless hospitals; the maintenance of the Buddhist as well as national temples; the travelling expenses of students, mandarins, Mongol kings, &c.; the repairs of the banks of rivers; the postoffice system; and, finally, the imperial household establishment. Mr. Medhurst says that the pay of a Chinese soldier averages only four pence a day; that the salary of the highest officer under government is 80007. a year, of which there are not many; that there is not more than one officer to ten thousand people; and that most of these have not more than 50l. a year. Very little is known of the difference between income and expenditure, but it is believed that of late years the balance has been pretty steadily against the government.

The Board of Rites is peculiarly Chinese. The constitution of the country is based upon a moral sentiment; but as moral sentiments are not amenable to laws, it was necessary to give form and body, as it were, to an abstraction. It would be absurd, for instance, to order a man, under a penalty, to love and honour his parents in his heart; and he is therefore compelled to pay them the external reverence which is supposed to imply the inward feeling. On this foundation stands the fantastic superstructure presided over by the Board of Rites. The senti

ment of filial piety, infinitely modified, runs throughout the whole frame of society, and in every modification the abstraction has to be represented by a modification of form or ceremony. All these are defined by the laws; they are subjects of grave discussion, and severe decision; the most trivial rule of etiquette belongs as much to the institutions of the Chinese as the ceremonial of sacrifices to the gods. The board is divided into four chambers, one devoted to the maintenance of etiquette in general; another to the sacrificial department; another to the duties of visitors and guests; and another to the rules of festivities and rejoicings. The ceremonial of coronations, &c., is not nearly so absurd and slavish as in England, if we take into account the general manners of the two nations, the individual dignity which exists in one country and in the other is merged in official dignity, and, above all, the peculiar sentiment which refines, we had almost said sublimes, the prostrations of the Chinese. The commonest village festival, however, in the most remote province, is regulated by rules as strict; and the rural barber would no more presume to take undue precedence than the court lady to have a single pearl in her head-dress, or a single thread in her fringe, more than is permitted by law.

Perhaps the most interesting ceremony is that of the classical symposion, held by the successful students in the imperial palace; but the most extraordinary belongs to the sacrifices, in which each deity has his rank and allowance as rigorously prescribed as if he were the slave, not the patron, of the worshippers. The national love of order and form extends even to heaven itself, and brings the gods and the genii into the system of the Celestial Empire.

The Military Board rules over the united service of

army and navy, between which no distinction is made. Fighting is the same thing, whether on land or sea; and even the war junks are rarely different from merchant vessels, except in carrying some iron guns, and being so crowded that the men have scarcely room to move. “Cedant arma togæ" is the rule in China. The whole military force is under civil command; and the ill-paid and unhonoured officers are at the mercy of the literary mandarins. The military are the police of the country, and they have also the charge of the government post establishment, which extends its continuous chains of relays and guards to the remotest confines of the empire. The Tartar troops are mustered under eight standards and form a standing army of eighty thousand men; nominally increased to seven hundred thousand by the Chinese troops and militia. The Tartars are the best paid; but the officers of both, even of the highest rank, are subject to corporal punishment with the bamboo, and to be exposed in the moveable pillory. Forts are built not only along the coast and the frontiers, but in the interior of the country there is hardly a commanding point that is not dominated by something which has at least the appearance of a stronghold. At sea the same odd anomalies present themselves as on land. So late as 1809 the pirates had blockaded the coast to such an extent that the Chinese fleet dared not show itself; while now, with scarcely a blow having been struck, there are far fewer outrages committed on the waters of China than in the Archipelago. The explanation is, that the pacific emperor bought the outlawed squadron, elevated its masters to rank, and thus converted open enemies into as open subjects and partisans.

The Board of Punishments presides over the judicial department of the whole empire. China is said to have had

written laws ever since the epoch of the Deluge, and every succeeding dynasty has added to, or improved upon, the code of the last. If we consider therefore that the decrees of the emperors become laws the moment they are promulgated, we shall be able to form some idea of the stupendous aggregate. Only a portion of the general code is known in England by Sir G. Staunton's translation; but the work has received high praise for its clearness, conciseness, and good sense. The same commendation, however, cannot be given to the Chinese collection of statutes and laws described by Mr. Gutzlaff, which, although of higher authority, appears to be one mass of confusion.

Under such a government treason is of course denounced as the greatest crime of which human nature can be guilty; and in order that no offender may escape, the meshes of the law are thrown as widely around as possible. The expression "traitorous natives," for instance, used so frequently in the imperial proclamations, may mean either conspirators against the government, or simply persons who have held intercourse with foreigners, or who have renounced their allegiance to their country by emigrating to another. Death is the penalty annexed to this crime, and sometimes it is inflicted in the manner popularly described as cutting into ten thousand pieces. The traitor is fastened to a post, and the executioner, after tearing the skin of his head over his eyes, mangles the rest of the body, or cuts off the limbs piecemeal. High treason is not visited merely upon the actual perpetrator, but upon all his relations in the first degree; for blood so poisonous must not be allowed to circulate in human veins. Akin to treason is sacrilege, which is not confined to offences against the property of the gods. That of the emperor is considered

as sacred; and both are protected by the penalty of decapitation, the most infamous of the capital punishments. The murder of relations is the next crime, and then common murder, of which the original contriver alone is beheaded, while the others concerned suffer by the less ignominious death of strangulation, in which the breast of the offender is compressed by a cord, drawn tighter and tighter till he expires. Accidental homicide is redeemable by a fine; but the law does not regard in this light the homicides that are the result of brutality or even carelessness, however unintentional they may be. In such cases the offenders suffer death. If a man, however, discovers his wife in the act of infidelity, he may slay both parties without rendering himself amenable even to the slightest law of homicide. Physicians have no right to jeopardize people's lives by trying experiments unknown to the wisdom of their ancestors; and the practitioner who loses a patient with whom he has been guilty of the innovation must redeem himself from the penalty of homicide. Rape and unnatural crimes, including sorcery, are capital.

Quarrelling and fighting in so dense a population, and where the government is comparatively so weak, are grave offences which, unless severely interdicted by the law, might lead to public commotions and rebellion. Hence the distinction between the kinds of accidental death, and hence also the punishment of a kick or a cuff as a public offence, and even of opprobrious language, as having a tendency to disturb the tranquillity of this cautious and pacific people. A man, however, may strike his wife with impunity; whereas if she makes a return in kind this domestic rebellion is punished with a hundred blows. Robbery with violence is capital; theft only nominally so in the more aggravated cases.