Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/114

tended by Chinese publicists that since an edict or a statute is addressed to the learned as well as to the illiterate, it should appeal at once to the intelligence of the former and to the reverence of the latter.

Whatever excuse for official extortion may be furnished by the Chinese system of insufficient salaries, it is plainly a demoralising system. From the moment that "squeezing" is counted legitimate as a means of supplementing inadequate emoluments, the caprices of conscience become the sole limitations of the abuse. It is true that stringent regulations exist for preventing corruption and checking extortion, but they are practically inoperative. Opportunity alone sets the standard of morality. On the other hand, there is no monopoly of peculation. The financial potentialities of every post are familiar by experience or by tradition to those in higher positions, and if any official makes such haste to get rich himself that he forgets to share his gains with his superiors, his career is abruptly cut short. Further, the number of persons that qualify for office at the periodical examinations is so greatly in excess of the number of offices that competition for vacancies becomes a question of buying patronage, and thus while, on the one hand, the statesmen in Peking secure their share of the provincial spoils, on the other, a new necessity to "squeeze" is imposed upon the successful candidate: he has to recoup his initial outlay as well as to collect