Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/184

 Foreign writers have over and over again applauded the Chinese for resting all their rules of life on right reason, and bringing to the test of principle, rather than to that of material welfare or advantage, their general policy of action. In spite of this, China is one of the most miserably misgoverned countries in the whole world. There is, perhaps, no place where peculation is rifer, or more unblushingly carried on. Considering, for instance, the unrivalled estimation in which literature and education are held by both governors and governed, it is astounding to read in the official gazette the gross impositions which are practised every year at the public examinations. Then the innocent are being constantly plundered by the rich and powerful, and although false accusations, made with a view to extorting money, do sometimes recoil upon the guilty parties, it too often happens that the only recompense received by the victim takes the form of an honourable burial for his corpse. The high position accorded to agriculture in China might naturally lead us to look for corresponding results in the fruits and vegetables that are cultivated, and to some sound principles as actuating the Chinese farmer or market-gardener in his work. But what is the state of matters here? China scarcely produces a fruit worth eating. The apples are soft and woolly, the pears not nearly so toothsome as a good turnip, the peaches are full of worms, and all, fruits and vegetables alike, are inferior, tasteless, and poor. The Chinese labourer has no idea of manipulating the ground. He contents himself with scratching its surface, and then deluges it with liquid manure. Of what may be called agricultural chemistry he never heard; still, he fancies that he has no more to