Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/41

Rh 'appropriates to them.' Each province has its own army, navy, system of taxation and its own social customs. It is only in connection with the salt trade and the navy that mutual concessions have to be made under a certain modicum of imperial control. In nearly all other matters the viceroys or governors 'move' each other; and occasionally different provinces jointly interested in special questions, after thus 'moving' to a preliminary understanding, address the Emperor or the Board together." Under the necessities of the menacing foreign relations and of the needs of the navy, more unity was secured towards the end of the century than during the Taiping days.

While they possessed this amount of independence, the officials were checked in two directions. On the one hand, men from the central government were in the provinces keeping quiet watch over the higher officials, while they in turn had men similarly observing the lower officials in the districts. On the other hand, the gentry at the capital and in the larger towns, aided by the various popular organisations in villages and country districts, prevented the officials from becoming despotic or encroaching upon the customary rights of the people. None of the officials of the grade of district magistrate or above were permitted to serve in their own provinces. This rule, aimed to prevent the consolidation of official and popular interests to the detriment of the reigning house, carried out its purpose to some extent, but at the same time introduced into the civil government the same fatal weakness that characterised the military service, disunity and impotence. In times of great disturbance such as we are now studying, it effectually prevented the concentration of the national resources on the support of the armies in the field.

Within the province there was the same division of