Now stop for a moment and reflect _how_ any one of these several "reforms" is to be made a fact accomplished. The gently sloping banks will wash away with the first rise of the river; who is to repair them? Not the boatman, for "it is not the business of the corn-cutter to pull off the stockings of his customers." If the ferry is an "official" one, that only means that the local magistrate has a "squeeze" on the receipts, not that there are any corresponding obligations toward facilitating travel. Who is to provide those wide gang-planks over which the passage is to be so easy? Not the boatman. Not the passenger, whose only wish is to get safely over for that single time. Not the swarm of loafers whose interest it is not to have any gang-planks at all, or as nearly as possible none.
And even if the roads were made, and the gang-planks all provided by some benevolent despot, it would not be a week before the planks would be missing, and all things going on as they have been since the foundation of the Chinese world. The appointment of inspectors, police, etc., etc., would do no manner of good, unless it should be to their interest to further the reform, which would obviously never be the case.
Imagine an Anglo-Indian official, whose knowledge of Oriental races and traits is profound, in charge of the ferries for a single stretch, say of the Grand Canal. What would he do?--what could he do, even if backed up by a force theoretically irresistible? Nothing whatever to any lasting or good purpose until the need of some alteration in their system, or rather lack of system, forces itself upon the Chinese mind. How long in the ordinary process of human evolution it would take to bring this about, it is easy to conjecture. Think for an instant of the objections which would be made on every hand to the innovations. Who are these fellows? What are their motives? No Chinese can for a moment comprehend such a conception as is embodied in the phrase _Pro bono publico_. He never heard of such a thing, and what is more he never wants to hear of it.
We have wasted an undue amount of time in crossing a Chinese river, for it is a typical instance of flagrant abuses which the Chinese themselves do not mind, which would drive Occidentals to the verge of insanity--if not over the brink--and which it seems easy, but is really impossible to remedy. _Mutatis mutandis_, these things are a parable of the empire. The reform must come. It must be done from within. But the impulse can come only from without.