Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/91

Rh population, there is little left for a government to glean, or, to use a Chinese simile, to squeeze, out of the already-exhausted pockets of the people. It is not unlikely, also, that the present peaceful state of the country, and the willingness with which the Chinese submit to the Tartar yoke, is to be ascribed mainly to the light and insignificant burthens pressing on the people, who would soon complain, and perhaps revolt, if more heavily taxed. But how can the government manage to maintain an immense establishment of civil and military officers, besides an army and navy of nearly a million of men, upon fifteen or even fifty-six millions of pounds sterling? To this it may be replied, that the pay of a Chinese soldier is only four pence a day; that the salary of the highest officer under government does not exceed £8,000 per annum, of which there are not many; that there is not more than one officer to ten thousand people; and, that most of these have not more than £50 per annum: thus it is quite possible for the government to manage a country so thinly officered and so poorly paid, upon a comparatively small sum of money. Besides which, there is no national debt in China, so that all that is gathered goes to the actual maintenance of the government, and is not expended in paying the interest on obligations formerly contracted, to be defrayed by future generations.

In the report of the Anglo-Chinese college, for 1829, there is an estimate of the amount of land-tax paid in different provinces, extracted from the Ta-tsing-hwuy-tëen, or "Collections of statutes of the Tartar dynasty," by which it appears that the average rate of land-tax per mow, (or Chinese acre, somewhat smaller than an