Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/76

and intelligence the Ministers and Councillors discharge their functions may be gathered from facts patent to all, for although it is a common habit of foreign observers to denounce officials as universally venal and incompetent, or at least to admit only exceptions so rare as to prove the rule, the world has before it an object-lesson of unmistakable significance in the good order and tranquillity that used to reign throughout the vast regions governed from Peking before foreign intercourse became a widely disquieting factor. The articulation of the Empire is not compact. Events that would scarcely be deemed cardinal elsewhere sometimes shock it perceptibly, and in the presence of great emergencies its machinery breaks down. But under normal circumstances the nation is governed with scarcely any consciousness of being ruled, and the people's sense of fitness is not offended by administrative solecisms.

Under the Cabinet and the Council of State there are Six Boards (Lok-po), each having two presidents and four vice-presidents, in which offices the balance of power between Chinese and Manchus is strictly preserved. The first of these is the Board of Civil Office (Li-po), which manages everything relating to the civil service of the Empire, from suggesting promotions and degradations to recommending for ranks and rewards. The Board has no competence to make appointments or removals itself: it merely sub-