Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/103

Supreme Court (Talisz), it forms a high chamber for revising criminal cases and hearing appeals from the judgments of provincial tribunals, but its own special function is to oversee the public offices, to investigate their manner of performing their duties, and to impeach their officials in case of misconduct, the result of such impeachment being that the incriminated official is handed over to the Board of Punishments for examination and the determination of a penalty. There is no superior limit to such impeachments. They may be directed against the occupant of the throne himself, and, indeed, are not infrequently so directed. Many cases are on record of memorials addressed by censors to the sovereign, setting forth some fault in his administration or some blemish in his manner of life. Thus, after the return of the Court to Peking (1902) in the sequel of the Boxer troubles, when the Treasury had been emptied by the cost of the war, by the necessity of paying large indemnities to foreign nations, and by the interruption of trade, industry, and agriculture, a censor strongly condemned the Empress Dowager's extravagant arrangements for visiting the tombs of her ancestors. The Emperor, on receipt of the memorial, openly denounced the accusation as untrue, and challenged the people to judge between the Empress Dowager and the censor, whom, however, His Majesty refrained from punishing. A celebrated case is that of the Censor Sung who