Page:Inside Canton.djvu/94

Rh is obliged to keep his little army at a certain distance from the walled city.

"Now see how the authorities mutually watch each other. In the new city, by the side of the palace of the viceroy, rises the residence of the grand hoppo, whose political importance is much greater than the obscure functions of director of the customs would lead one to suppose. The grand hoppo is usually a man belonging to the household of the Emperor, either an old domestic, or one of those petty relations—parasite branches which spring numerously up from the imperial stock. The devotedness of this functionary is the more absolute as he is so nearly connected with the sovereign; he is a familiar spy so placed as to observe all the proceedings of the viceroy. In the Tartar city the fou-yuen, who is generally a learned Chinese, having obtained his high position by literary success, is superintended by the Tartar general, who is a soldier, and thus by brutal instinct averse to all which despises force and recognises only intellectual superiority. The antagonism of these two functionaries is still heightened by their difference of race, the one belonging to the conquering, and the other to the subjected nation. Nevertheless, as the spirit of rebellion breaks out more frequently in gross and ignorant natures than among persons of cultivated minds, the real interpreters of the law—the viceroy and the fou-yuen—have under their orders seven