REVENUE  AND  EXPENDITURE  81
at  the  bottom,  the  Emperor’s  representatives,  the  officials
appointed  by  his  centralised  power,  forming  the  link  between ­
  the  two.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge  that
the  income  of  the  Chinese  official  is  not  in  any  degree
measured  by  his  official  salary,  that  the  annual  profit  of
his  office  may  be  Tls.100,000,  with  an  official  salary  not
exceeding  Tls.1,000.  This  sounds  terrible  to  us  ;  and  yet
we  do  not  have  to  go  very  far  back  to  find  a  condition
similar  in  kind,  though  perhaps  not  in  degree,  existing  in
Western  countries.
The  Chinese  official  is  nowadays  less  an  administrator
than  a  tax-collector  ;  but  an  infinitesimal  portion  of  his
revenues  is  wasted  on  such  heads  of  expenditure  as  police,
justice,  roads,  education,  fire  prevention,  sanitation,  or
others  of  the  numerous  expenses  falling  on  the  official
purse  in  the  West  ;  so  far  as  we,  with  our  limited  Occidental ­
  mind,  can  see,  he  exists  solely  for  his  own  maintenance ­
  and  that  of  his  fellow-officials,  his  superiors  and
his  subordinates.  This  principle  he,  with  his  superior
innate  capacity,  has  developed  further  than  was  ever
done  in  the  West  ;  but  the  West  can  furnish,  within
comparatively  modern  times,  some  similitudes  which  will
enable  present-day  readers  to  understand  more  clearly  the
system  as  it  is  to-day  in  China.  The  revenue  returnable
from  each  administrative  area  in  China,  town,  county,  or
province,  is  assessed  at  a  certain  fixed  sum,  which,  more
or  less,  is  the  minimum  which  must  be  accounted  for,  and  in
practice  this  minimum  constitutes  the  maximum  sum
which  is  returned  :  what  is  this  but  the  system  which,  in
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  furnished  the
bloated  fortunes  of  the  farmers-general  of  France  ?  The
administration  of  justice  in  China  creates  no  charge  upon
the  official  revenues,  but  maintains  itself  from  fees  and
exactions  :  Judge  Jeffreys  is  infamous  in  history,  but  he
furnished  no  exception  to  the  practice  of  his  day  in  swelling
the  revenues  of  his  King  and  his  country  from  the  fees
and  fines  of  his  court,  and  in  augmenting  his  official  income
from  the  same  source.  Every  Chinese  official  takes  for
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