Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/39

Rh even lower officials, recruited their chief secretaries. While direction of civil matters rested chiefly on the viceroy there was a special military secretariat having charge of the purely military functions of the office.

One step below the viceroy in rank was the governor. At Peking he held honorary position as vice president of the Board of War ex officio, and a similar position in the Censorate. His actual duties are hard to distinguish from those of the viceroy. Where the two existed side by side in the same province they did not, apparently, stand in the relation of superior and subordinate, but rather in that of junior and senior partners. Like the viceroy, the governor had the power of life and death; he reviewed criminal cases. He was expected to oversee the conduct of the lower officials. All communications with the capital must be sent by lower officials through the governor, who with the viceroy, or separately, had the right to memorialise the throne.

As we have already noted above, a military official, the Tartar general, shared high rank with these two officers in some of the provinces. If he was present with the governor and viceroy the three formed a special provincial council which deliberated on matters arising in connection with the provincial administration, to which council subordinate officials might be summoned.

Below these highest officials were three, and in some cases four, provincial officials residing at the capital. They were the treasurer, judge, grain intendant, and salt controller.

Of these the treasurer ranked as a lieutenant governor, generally taking over the seals of office in case of a temporary vacancy. In the early part of the Ming Dynasty he