revenue. The third board is named Lee-poo. To it is entrusted the superintendence of all the ancient usages and religious rites of the people, and the preservation of all temples endowed by the imperial government. The fourth board is named Pingpoo. It has the care of all the naval and military establishments throughout the empire. The fifth is called King-poo. It has the supervision of all criminal proceedings. The sixth and last, which is termed Kung-poo, superintends all public works, such as mines, manufactures, highways, canals, bridges, &c. Over each of these tribunals presides a chief minister, or counsellor, whose duty it is to lay the decisions of his particular board before the cabinet council of four great ministers of state. When the decisions of the boards have been thoroughly discussed by the cabinet, they are submitted with becoming reverence to the notice of his imperial majesty. The power of these ministers, however, is almost nominal, as the emperor regards himself as responsible to none but the gods, whom he is supposed to represent. The people are thus in the hands of the emperor as children in the hands of a parent. But though there is outwardly a contempt manifested by the emperor for any or every suggestion which may be made to him by his ministers, there can be no doubt that, in private, much heed is given by his majesty to the advice of all confidential servants of the State. Very few, indeed, of the sovereigns of China have been sufficiently endued with the wisdom of this world to be able to rule without the counsel or advice. of others. The sanction of the emperor to all laws and edicts is conveyed by a seal, and all remarks made by his majesty are recorded in letters of red, by what is styled the vermilion pencil.

Besides the various councils there are two others-the Toocha-yun, and the Tsung-pin-fow. The former is a board of censors. The censors are supposed to attend the meetings of the board or councils already described, to ascertain whether or not intrigues or plots are being concocted to weaken the stability of the government. Members of this board are not unfrequently sent into the provinces to ascertain how matters of business are being conducted there. Spies are sometimes sent by the

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BOARDS OF GOVERNMENT.

censors to different parts of the Empire for the purpose of scrutinizing the public and private conduct of any official or officials upon whom suspicion may rest. Of these emissaries the local authorities and principal citizens of all large and influential cities stand in great awe. His Excellency An, a commissioner from this board, arrived at Canton in the autumn of the year 1862, and suddenly placed under arrest several unsuspecting officials and citizens of distinction; and in obedience to his orders some of them, including the notorious Chong Shun and Too Pat, were executed in a most summary manner.

In the Pekin Gazette of November 12th, 1871, a statement was published-translated in the China Mail of December 23rd, 1871-to the effect that a censor had brought to the imperial notice a case of triple murder, in which a native of Chekiang was the complainant. The petitioner stated that his brother was intercepted on his way from market to purchase peas, and was surrounded, on account of an old grudge, by a family of four brothers, with the assistance of two outsiders. Two men who were carrying the peas were killed on the spot. The murderers then carried off the petitioner's brother to their house, where they confined him, and afterwards put him to death by the sword. The matter was reported to the then district magistrate Ng, but, in consequence of the Taiping rebellion, it could not be investigated. Ng's successor in the magistracy, To by name, had the offenders arrested; but through the artful device of an underling who had been bribed, they were set at large. Emboldened by their liberation, the murderers disentombed the coffins, and mutilated the remains of the deceased, with a view to the destruction of all means of identification. For this offence another magistrate, Wong, sent out officers to arrest them, but the police were resisted. The successor of this magistrate ordered the military to assist in the apprehension of the murderers, but they managed to make their escape. The matter had been allowed to remain in abeyance for fourteen years, although three lives were concerned. The prefect had been petitioned twenty-five times, the intendant of the circuit nine times, the governor once, and the governor-general once, and yet the complainant had not been

able to obtain redress. Reference had invariably been made. to the magistrate to have the murderers arrested, but they were allowed to enjoy their ease at home.

The second of these two boards, the Tsung-pin-fow, consists of six high officials. These keep a register of the births, deaths, marriages, and relations of the princes of the blood royal, and report at times upon their conduct. The register in which the names of the lineal descendants of the imperial family are recorded is of yellow paper; that in which the names of the collateral branches are recorded is of red paper. These records are submitted to the emperor every ten years, on which occasions his majesty confers titles and rewards. These titles are divided into four classes, the first being hereditary, the second honorary, the third for services rendered to the State, and the fourth rewards due to literary attainments. It is imperative upon the ministers constituting the board of Tsung-pin-fow to furnish at frequent intervals the various tribunals styled Loopoo with reports as to which of the sons of the emperor possesses in the highest perfection the essential qualifications of a good sovereign. These reports, like all others, are submitted to the emperor. The emperor of China has the power of nominating his successor, whether indeed the person nominated be a member of the blood-royal family or not. The desire to perpetuate his dynasty scarcely ever admits of the emperor selecting one to fill the throne who is not a member of the reigning family. As a general rule each emperor is succeeded by his eldest son. Should the latter be regarded as incapable of administering the affairs of state, the second or third son is called upon to reign. When the emperor is childless, a selection is made from a collateral branch of the same dynasty. As in almost all Chinese families, or clans, the members of the imperial house are very numerous. At one time it was a practice to give official employment to each of these scions of royalty. The custom invariably entailed no ordinary degree of trouble and anxiety on the imperial government by giving rise to conspiracies and rebellions, and it was abandoned. Each prince has now to rest satisfied with the high-sounding, but empty title of king-a royal rank of which he may be deprived in the

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THE SONS OF THE EMPEROR.

23

event of any act on his part being deemed beneath the dignity of his family.

The people of China are taught to regard the emperor as the representative of heaven, and the empress as the representative of mother earth. In this position she is supposed to exert an influence over nature, and to possess a transforming power. One of her principal duties is to see that, at stated seasons of the year, worship is duly and reverently paid to the tutelary deity of silkworms. It is also her duty carefully to examine the weaving of the silk stuffs which the ladies of the imperial harem weave and make into garments for certain state idols. The empress is supposed to be profoundly ignorant of all political matters. There are instances on record, however, of empresses of China having manifested the greatest knowledge of these subjects. The present empress-dowager-the mother of the late sovereign, Tung-chee-succeeded, through her curious inquiries into state affairs, in bringing to light a conspiracy of certain members of the cabinet council to depose and murder her son. The principal conspirators were decapitated, whilst others, not so deeply implicated, were sent into perpetual banishment. But besides the empress, the emperor has other wives. These are eight in number, and have the rank and title of queens. These royal ladies are divided into two classes, the first of which consists of three, and the second of five queens. In addition to the wives there are, of course, several concubines.

The choice of an empress, and of queens, turns solely on the personal qualities or attractions of those selected, without any reference whatever to their connections or family reputation. They are selected in the following manner. The empress

dowager with her ladies, or, in her absence, a royal lady who has been invested with authority for the purpose, holds what may not inaptly be termed a "drawing-room," to attend which Tartar ladies and the daughters of bannermen are summoned from various parts of the empire. The lady pronounced to be the belle of the assembly is chosen to be in due time raised to the dignity of empress. Those who are placed next in personal attractions are selected for the rank of queens. The daughters of bannermen of the seventh, eighth, and ninth ranks, appear

before the empress-dowager, in order that a certain number of them may be appointed to fill the respective offices of "ladies and women of the bedchamber. This ceremony is, I believe, observed once a year. Queens were chosen for the ancient kings of Persia in a similar manner-to use the words of the book of Esther, in which we find evidence of the practice--"out of the choice of virgins." The young ladies admitted into the imperial zenana are, as a rule, daughters of noblemen and gentlemen; but as personal beauty is one of the chief qualifications for the seraglio, the inmates of the palace are, in some instances, women who have been raised from the humbler walks of life. Indeed, a woman of the lower orders of society was, it is said, the mother of the Emperor Hien-fung. She was the keeper of a fruit stall, and being exceedingly fair and beautiful, she on one occasion attracted the attention of the chief minister of state, whilst he was passing in procession through the street in which she resided. Being greatly pleased with her beauty, he obtained for her a home under the imperial roof of Taou-kwang, where in due course she became the mother of the ill-fated sovereign, Hien-fung. I was residing in China when a wife was selected in this way for the late emperor, Tung-chee. The name of their new Empress was made known to the Chinese people by the Pekin Gazette of the 11th of March, 1872. The proclamation issued in the names of the two empresses dowager, set forth that a lady named A-lut'ê had been selected to become the kind companion of the emperor, the sharer of his joys, and the partaker of his sorrows. The Gazette further informed the people that she was the daughter of Ch'ung Chi, a junior officer in the Hanlin College. His rank, as evidenced by his buttons, corresponded to that of a prefect or ruler of a department. Ch'ung Chi is, as a matter of course, of Mongolian blood. is also a bannerman of the plain blue banner. He is the son of one Saishanga, an officer of some notoriety in the early part of the previous reign, who lost the favour of his sovereign in 1853, owing to his inability to cope with the Taiping rebellion. In consequence of the defeats which he sustained at the hands of the rebels, he was degraded, and withdrew from public life. In

He