e other.

Above the magistrate, and in control of several magistracies, comes the
prefect, who has to satisfy his superiors in the same way. He has the
general supervision of all civil business in his prefecture, and to him
must be referred every appeal case from the magistracies under his
jurisdiction, before it can be filed in a higher court.

Above him comes the intendant of circuit, or _Tao-t'ai_, in control of
several prefectures, to whom the same rule applies as to satisfying
demands of superiors; and above him come the governor and viceroy, who
must also satisfy the demands of the state departments in Peking.

It would now appear, from what has been already stated, that all a
viceroy or governor has to do is to exact sufficient revenue from
immediate subordinates, and leave them to exact the amounts necessary
from _their_ subordinates, and so on down the scale until we reach the
people. The whole question therefore resolves itself into this, What can
the people be made to pay?

The answer to that question will be somewhat of a staggerer to those who
from distance, or from want of close observation, regard the Chinese as
a down-trodden people, on a level with the Fellahin of Egypt in past
times. For the answer, so far as my own experience goes, is that only so
much can be got out of the Chinese people as the people themselves are
ready and willing to pay. In other words, with all their show of an
autocratic ruler and a paternal government, the people of China tax
themselves.

I am now about to do more than state this opinion; I am going to try to
prove it.

The philosopher Mencius, who flourished about one hundred years after
Confucius, and who is mainly responsible for the final triumph of the
Confucian doctrine, was himself not so much a teacher of ethics as
a teacher of political science. He spent a great part of his life
wandering from feudal state to feudal state, advising the various vassal
nobles how to order their dominions with the maximum of peace and
prosperity and the minimum of misery and bloodshed.

One of these nobles, Duke Wen, asked Mencius concerning the proper way
to govern a state.

"The affairs of the people," replied the philosopher, "must not be
neglected. For the way of the people is thus: If they have a fixed
livelihood, their hearts will also be fixed; but if they have not a
fixed livelihood, neither will their hearts be fixed. And if they have
not fixed hearts, there is nothing