Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/159

Rh the second T'ienwang, Hung Fu-t'ien, captured after the fall of Nanking, who says: "I am sixteen years old and am the son of the second wife (named Lai) of the T'ienwang's 88 wives. At the age of nine I had four wives given to me. ..." The law of strict seclusion of women was evidently not intended to prevent polygamy, at least among the higher ranks. On the whole the impression is given that women were somewhat less repressed under them than under the regular régime; among other things foot-binding was abandoned.

One of the first acts of the new government in Nanking was to provide for a system of examinations based on the ancient models, for recruiting officials both civil and military. Regulations were drawn up and at least some examinations held. The classics having been discarded, together with all books of the Manchu era, they substituted themes from the Bible and the Taiping writings. In the first examination the subject prescribed for the essay was "The Heavenly Father on the seventh day had finished creating the mountains and seas." For the poem the following couplet was the theme:

The T'ienwang and the Tungwang with anxious hearts have labored;

In tranquillity sustaining the people of the world. How sublime their virtue!

From this creditable side of their activities it is not so easy to turn to the subject of their cruelty. If they were intent upon order and good morals in their ranks, they were stern enough to believe that their reforms could be accomplished only by terrible penalties. Death was prescribed for a large number of crimes and offences — beheading for less serious cases, while for those of a more heinous character beheading and throwing away the