China is the land of shams and middle-men, and the official from the country sees all this, and, sore with the undue lightening of his own purse, goes home, having learnt his lesson to exact bribes himself, and himself rest satisfied with shams, and report all in order, when he knows that it is not so. Far from feeling ashamed of the state the roads in his own province have got into, he remembers those of Peking, that are so much worse. Indeed, through all the country, since the incoming of the Manchu Dynasty, it has been the deliberate official intention to neglect the roads, thus making it the more difficult for the people to assemble together and revolt against their alien rulers. Probably, too, he sees the Tsung-li Yamen, the office created of late years in order to transact business with European nations. Tsung-li Yamen sounds well, but the building is a dirty, dilapidated shed, that might pass muster for a cowhouse on an English gentleman's estate, _if_ it were cleaned and fresh painted. To the Chinese mind this building being set apart to hold interviews with the representatives of Foreign Powers sufficiently indicates in what esteem they are held by his Government, and what amount of courtesy he is intended to mete out to them.
The foreigner, on the other hand, travels away, having learnt his lesson too, if he be of a reflective mind, and that is, very briefly, that there is no hope for China under the present dynasty. The Manchus may have been a very fine people when they first entered China; but since then they have lived _like gentlemen_, according to the common saying, not earning their living, but as pensioners of the State, nominally ready to be called out to fight, if wanted, in time of war. They do not enter into business, they do not study, and they have lost their martial qualities and become as effeminate as Chinamen. The Chinese Empire has been decaying ever since it came into their hands; and ever since I have known China the Chinese have been saying the Manchu Dynasty has ruled its appointed number of years, and that it is now high time for what they call a Saviour of Society to appear, as so often in the past.
This Saviour of Society would probably have appeared long ago, but for the help the nations of Europe, and especially England, have given towards the centralisation of China. In the old days it is true the Viceroys were appointed from Peking; but each Viceroy ruled pretty well as he pleased in his own province, with his own exchequer, his own army, and his own navy. We found it inconvenient to deal with so heterogeneous a mass without any definite head, and threw our weight into the scale of the Chinese Empire. First we helped to crush the Taiping rebellion, which but for our intervention would probably have succeeded, and by force have made the Chinese people at least nominal Christians. Then through Sir Robert Hart the different Viceroys have been impoverished; the money that in former times would have gone to their private purses or to the administration of their provinces has been diverted to Peking. The theory was that it would be used for the good of the nation. But probably we shall some day know how much the Empress has used for her private pleasures, according to the recent indictment of her by the one great incorruptible Viceroy, Chang-chih-tung, and how much has been absorbed by Li Hung-chang, and all the army of Palace eunuchs and hangers-on.