t of
departure for all later forms of government. At the head of the state
was the emperor, in theory the holder of absolute power in the state
restricted only by his responsibility towards "Heaven", i.e. he had to
follow and to enforce the basic rules of morality, otherwise "Heaven"
would withdraw its "mandate", the legitimation of the emperor's rule,
and would indicate this withdrawal by sending natural catastrophes. Time
and again we find emperors publicly accusing themselves for their faults
when such catastrophes occurred; and to draw the emperor's attention to
actual or made-up calamities or celestrial irregularities was one way to
criticize an emperor and to force him to change his behaviour. There are
two other indications which show that Chinese emperors--excepting a few
individual cases--at least in the first ten centuries of gentry society
were not despots: it can be proved that in some fields the
responsibility for governmental action did not lie with the emperor but
with some of his ministers. Secondly, the emperor was bound by the law
code: he could not change it nor abolish it. We know of cases in which
the ruler disregarded the code, but then tried to "defend" his arbitrary
action. Each new dynasty developed a new law code, usually changing only
details of the punishment, not the basic regulations. Rulers could issue
additional "regulations", but these, too, had to be in the spirit of
the general code and the existing moral norms. This situation has some
similarity to the situation in Muslim countries. At the ruler's side
were three counsellors who had, however, no active functions. The real
conduct of policy lay in the hands of the "chancellor", or of one of the
"nine ministers". Unlike the practice with which we are familiar in the
West, the activities of the ministries (one of them being the court
secretariat) were concerned primarily with the imperial palace. As,
however, the court secretariat, one of the nine ministries, was at the
same time a sort of imperial statistical office, in which all economic,
financial, and military statistical material was assembled, decisions on
issues of critical importance for the whole country could and did come
from it. The court, through the Ministry of Supplies, operated mines and
workshops in the provinces and organized the labour service for public
constructions. The court also controlled centrally the conscription for
the general military service. Beside the minis