362 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



Police Some writers speak of police as non-existent in China. But 

 this does not seem to be the case. " Towns are divided into 

 wards and country districts into parishes, each having a headman 

 and a constable who are appointed by the people with the con- 

 currence of the magistrate." 1 Over every ten families is a 

 tithing man. 2 The essence of the system is that the law does 

 not deal directly with the individual but through a family or 

 group of families, or a district. Crime brings disgrace not only 

 on the criminal but upon his relations and even his neighbours. 

 It is this system of mutual responsibility that makes it possible 

 to carry on government with very few officials. M. Simon 

 estimates that there is only one to 400,000 citizens. No wonder 

 this strikes a Frenchman when he contrasts it with his own 

 official-infested country ! And the result of the system is that 

 there is but little crime, what there is consisting mainly of petty 

 larceny. 3 Chinese punishments are frightfully severe and yet 

 the number of death sentences, according to M. Simon, is very 

 small when the number of the population is considered. 

 Unimpor- Thus law, as emanating from the State, plays a very small 



tanceofthe . -~, . ,. r . ,., . 



state P art m Chinese lire. 1 he tax-collector, like the magistrate and 

 judge, is of much less consequence than in Europe. The taxes 

 are very small in amount only three francs per head, M. Simon 

 tells us. All the importance of the family is so much with- 

 drawn from that of government officials. The state is a com- 

 paratively unimportant institution and the rottenness of the 

 government does not mean, to the same extent as it would with 

 us, a rottenness of the national life. Within families the tone of 

 thought must rise and fall. Within a particular family a great 

 reformer may arise, a Confucius whose influence is limited to 

 the circle of his own near kith and kin. In the little channels of 

 life there must be variation in the flow, floods and droughts, 

 but in the great channels the stream is uniform. There are no 

 great legislative efforts, no great movements against social evils, 

 because the evils when they arise are checked within the family. 

 And the family life is perpetually reinvigorated by reference to 

 the standard of the ancient moralists. 



1 John Chinaman, p. 150. 2 Ib. ' A Intimate China, p. 205. 



