Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/69

would evidently bring the man back to his native village, after twenty years of work, with a handsome fortune. But he does not get all this for himself; many superiors have to be squared in a fixed, decorous, and it may even be said imperially-recognised way.

Then there is the administration of justice. Every hien magistrate, bad or good, must keep an army (usually hereditary rogues) of runners, collectors, lictors, and police; and in only very few cases can he afford to pay them anything, even for food, should his integrity be so unusual as to awaken within him the desire to do So. The smallest district needs thirty, the largest 300 or more of these ruffians. In practice these men, invariably the riff-raff of the town, live on their "warrants," and no man who is "wanted under a warrant," be he witness, criminal, or plaintiff, can as a general rule get off without payments to them of some sort. Moreover, every yâmen has hovering in the vicinity a vulture-like multitude of champerty and maintenance men, who live by sowing ill-will, and run "hand-in-glove" with the police. The amount of tyranny and villany varies in each district with each magistrate. I have myself seen enough with my own eyes, and had innumerable free- and-easy conversations with both magistrates and runners, to enable me to state with absolute certainty that a downright bad magistrate, succeeding to a post dominated by a nest of evil-minded runners with a long-established tyrannical habit ingrained in their hearts, and practising amongst a stupid, timid, or malignant population, can with impunity assassinate anyone he likes in his own gaol, accept any bribe, commit or condone any injustice, make his fortune, and even preserve his reputation in spite of all this. On the other hand, I have seen completely honest, simple-minded, benevolent magistrates, perfectly clean-handed (subject to custom), anxious to do right, loyal to their superiors, beloved of