38o  THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE
a  tariff,  more  or  less  fixed  according  to  distance,  ranging
from  20  cash  (%d.)  to  200  cash  (5í¿.)  for  each  letter,  but  are
not  particular  to  an  ounce  or  two  in  the  weight  ;  and  these
rates  may  be  reduced  to  an  important  customer  or  commuted
for  an  annual  subsidy,  while  smaller  people  will  ordinarily
pay  more,  and  addressees  are  regularly  mulcted  in  extra
payments.  On  the  whole  the  system  has  suited  admirably
the  public  which  it  serves,  but  has  the  fatal  defect,  from  a
national  point  of  view,  that  it  does  not  encourage  postal
development  on  lines  not  immediately  profitable,  the  funds
for  this  purpose,  derived  from  the  more  profitable  routes,
being  diverted  to  private  pockets.
Any  national  and  general  postal  organisation  has  thus
two  strong  vested  interests  to  encounter  :  the  first,  the
official  interest  in  the  expenditure  of  Tls.3,000,000  annually
in  rendering  a  service  which  could  be  performed  by  other
hands  at  less  than  half  the  cost  ;  the  second,  the  com'
mercial  interest  in  a  profitable  business  enterprise,  under
a  government  which  never  coerces  the  people  but  acts
mainly  by  moral  suasion  and  on  the  principle  of  “  h ve
and  let  live."
The  Imperial  Post  was  established  by  Imperial  Decree
on  March  20th,  1896,  as  the  result  of  a  long  experiment
begun  as  far  back  as  1861  by  the  Inspector  General  of  the
Chinese  Maritime  Customs  Service,  Sir  Robert  Hart  &gt;
and  Mr.  T.  Piry  traces  the  development  in  his  report  011
the  Working  of  the  Post  Office  for  the  year  1904  :—
“  Early  in  the  ‘  sixties,’  during  the  first  few  winters
after  Foreign  Representatives  took  up  their  resident
at  Peking,  the  Legation  and  Customs  mails  we#
exchanged  between  Shanghai  and  Peking,  under  th e
auspices  of  the  Tsung-li  Y  âmen,  by  means  of  the  Govern
ment  couriers  employed  for  the  transmission  of  offi cia
despatches.  It  was  then  found  convenient  to  arrange
that  the  Customs  should  undertake  the  responsibility
of  making  up  and  distributing  these  mails,  a  practi#
which,  for  the  overland  service  during  the  win#
months,  involved  the  creation  of  Postal  Departmen