Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/113

ignoble, desire to mitigate faults by acknowledging them.

Official edicts are usually printed in large ideographs and posted at the entrance of an office or in the streets. The Official Gazette is also used for this purpose. Sometimes tablets of black marble receive handsomely sculptured copies of laws or regulations and are set up in public positions, to be "held in everlasting remembrance." The eminently practical Chinese administrator or legislator takes care to couch all statutes or proclamations in simple language, easily intelligible; a method contrasting favourably with that adopted in Japan, where imperial rescripts and ordinances are composed in such an erudite style as to be in- comprehensible to any but the learned few. It is further characteristic of Chinese edicts that they not only require the obedience but also appeal to the reason of those they address. Un- like the sternly simple vetoes and injunctions of Mosaic Law, they seek to secure intelligent rather than blind observance. This, too, has been ridiculed by foreign critics, and construed as indicating weakness on the part of rulers who argue and command in the same breath. Yet it is strictly consistent with the paternal theory of government in China. As the son of heaven the sovereign receives administrative instruction not less than authority from the divine source, and as the father of the people his mandates inform while they command. Further, it is logically con-