8 CHINESE GOVERNMENT AND LAWS. [Cuar. I. 
which keeps the country together is the quiet and 
inoffensive character of the people. Everybody, 
who has travelled in China, knows that, wherever 
the natives are enterprising and bold, they set the 
government at defiance whenever it suits their 
purpose to do so. For example, what can the 
government do if the natives on the coast of Fokien, 
—a bold and lawless race, choose to disobey its 
mandates ?— Positively nothing. Even further 
north, where the Mandarins are more powerful — 
in Shanghae for example —the Chinchew men, as 
they are called, often fight pitched battles with fire- 
arms, in the streets and in open day; and the 
Mandarins, with all their soldiers at their backs, 
dare not to interfere. Surely no government worth 
any thing would tolerate this state of things. The 
system of apprehension and punishment is so 
curious, and so characteristic of the Chinese go- 
vernment, that I must not omit to mention it. The 
belligerents are allowed to fight as long and as 
fiercely as they choose, and the soldiers never 
interfere: but when the weakest side is over- 
powered, and probably a number of lives lost in 
the affray, they come down in great force and seize 
and carry off to punishment the most defenceless :’ 
and, in circumstances of this kind, they are not 
over particular about seizing the most riotous, 
or those most implicated in the disturbances, pro- 
vided those they seize are the weakest and least able 
to resist. Such conduct in the Chinese government 
I have been an eye-witness to, again and again, in 
