Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/62

tive system is that the governor of a province is the direct link between that province and the imperial metropolis; he reports direct to the central government in Peking, and he memorialises the Emperor when such a course seems necessary. He He is nominally inferior to the viceroy, but in practice neither official moves without the co-operation of the other: according to close observers, there is not even the degree of subor- dination that exists between the governors and the viceroy in India. Nevertheless, in the course of practical experience it has naturally resulted that some matters fall specially under the viceroy's purview while others are reserved entirely for the governor's. No general rule, however, can be laid down, different localities having different customs. Thus, though in some provinces the governor is supreme in the realm of civil promotion and of the land tax- the principal source of revenue while the direction of foreign affairs, general military control, and the management of the salt gabelle belong to the viceroy's special functions, in others no such hard and fast line can be dis- cerned. In short, it is not possible to formulate an accurate distinction between the functions of the two officials, and so ineffectual in practice is the interval of rank dividing them that not infrequently one of the governors in a viceroyalty is more powerful than the viceroy himself. The personal equation decides the question.

Two other local dignitaries of great importance