Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/33

Rh province to another jurisdiction, would also conceal its serious character from Peking.

Reasons for such concealment lay in the fear of dismissal for incompetence in letting a disturbance spring up under one's very eyes, and in the fear of financial loss. Every official, civil or military, had to make heavy outlays in connection with appointment and investiture. Naturally he regarded this outlay as capital invested from which he must secure the profits during his term of office. Dismissal or heavy expenditures for emergencies endangered his financial career, sometimes beyond repair.

In the armies a favorite method of corruption among the commanders was to charge to the provincial government the wages and allowances of a full quota of soldiers and horses, whilst actually keeping but a fraction of this number in service, and scaling down the legal allowances of those who remained to the lowest possible point. The three kinds of troops were therefore constantly undermanned and were largely composed of elderly and incapable men. When an inspection drew near or if the necessities of the case required larger armies, strong countrymen or laborers would be recruited for the occasion. With insufficient drill they took their places in the ranks as the actual fighting force. Among the complaints raised by Chinese critics themselves, to show the central government why their soldiers could meet neither Taipings nor foreigners, the following counts appear. In the first place, the ranks are not kept full, officers reporting to their superiors only the numbers and not the names of the soldiers on their lists, thus making it impossible to check them. Pay was therefore drawn for soldiers who