The Middle Kingdom, Volume 1 (of 2): A Survey of the Geography, Government, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire and its InhabitantsWilliams, S. Wells (Samuel Wells)
History
The Middle Kingdom, Volume 1 (of 2): A Survey of the Geography, Government, Literature, Social Life, Arts, and History of the Chinese Empire and its Inhabitants
Williams, S. Wells (Samuel Wells)
China
The law upon this subject is contained in Secs. LXXV. and LXXVI. of
the statutes. It enacts various penalties for not registering the
members of a family, and its provisions all go to show that the people
are desirous rather of evading the census than of exaggerating it.
When a family has omitted to make any entry, the head of it is liable
to be punished with one hundred blows if he is a freeholder, and with
eighty if he is not. If the master of a family has among his household
another distinct family whom he omits to register, the punishment is
the same as in the last clause, with a modification, according as the
unregistered persons and family are relatives or strangers. Persons
in government employ omitting to register their families, are less
severely punished. A master of family failing to register all the males
in his household who are liable to public service, shall be punished
with from sixty to one hundred blows, according to the demerits of
the offence; this clause was in effect repealed, when the land tax
was substituted for the capitation tax. Omissions, from neglect
or inadvertency to register all the individuals and families in a
village or town, on the part of the headmen or government clerks, are
punishable with different degrees of severity. All persons whatsoever
are to be registered according to their accustomed occupations or
professions, whether civil or military, whether couriers, artisans,
physicians, astrologers, laborers, musicians, or of any other
denomination whatever; and subterfuges in representing one’s self as
belonging to a profession not liable to public service, are visited
as usual with the bamboo; persons falsely describing themselves as
belonging to the army, in order to evade public service, are banished
as well as beaten.[160] From these clauses it is seen that the Manchus
have extended the enumeration to classes which were exempted in the
Han, Tang, and other dynasties, and thus come nearer to the actual
population.
~ITS PROBABLE ACCURACY.~
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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