as a rule the land represents their only capital—but will also produce the epidemics that inevitably follow in the wake of famine. That such disasters may be expected from time to time in the natural course of events the reader will have gathered from the lists of notable local events given in the last chapter. When they come, the people's faith in the fortune-controlling capacities of the foreigners may then suffer a painful shock, and the results may not be unattended by something like disaffection towards their alien rulers.
At the beginning of British rule in Weihaiwei many wild rumours passed current among certain sections of the people with reference to the intentions and practices of the foreigners. One such rumour was to the effect that the English wanted all the land for settlers of their own race and were going to remove the existing population by the simple expedient of poisoning all the village wells. In a few cases it was believed that the Government had actually succeeded in hiring natives to carry out this systematic murder; whereupon the villagers principally affected, growing wild with panic, seized and tortured the unhappy men whom they suspected of having taken British pay for this nefarious purpose. One man at least was buried alive and another was drowned. These cases did not come to the knowledge of the British authorities for some years afterwards, long after the well-poisoning story had ceased to be credited even by the most ignorant. One of them I discovered by chance as lately as the summer of 1909, though the incident occurred nine years earlier. An unlucky man who for some unknown reason was understood to be a secret emissary of the foreigners was seized by the infuriated villagers and drowned in the well which he was said to have poisoned. The well was then filled up with earth and stones and abandoned. The poor man's wife was sold by the ringleaders to some one who wanted a concubine, for a sum equivalent to about ten pounds.
No doubt the many horrible stories that were circulated about the foreigners were deliberately invented by people who, whether from some feeling akin to patriotism or from more selfish motives, were intensely anxious to arouse popular feeling against their alien rulers. Their plan failed, for popular fury was directed less against the English than against those of their own countrymen whom the English were supposed to have bribed.
It may be said that on the whole the chief fear of the people in the early days of British administration was not that they or their families would be slaughtered or dispossessed of their property, or personally ill-treated, but that they would be overtaxed; and the disturbances which arose at the time of the delimitation of the frontier in 1899 and 1900 were in part traceable to wild rumours as to the means to be adopted by the foreigners for the raising of revenue. It was thought, for example, that taxes were to be imposed on farmyard fowls. Taxation has been increased, as a matter of fact, under British rule. The land-tax (the principal source of revenue) has been doubled, and licence-fees and dues of various kinds have had the natural result of raising the price of certain commodities. But these unattractive features of British rule are on the whole counterbalanced, in the opinion of the majority of the people, by comparative (though by no means absolute) freedom from the petty extortions practised by official underlings in China, by the gradual development of a fairly brisk local trade, by the influx of money spent in the port by British sailors, by the facilities given by British merchant ships for the cheap and safe export of local produce, and by the useful public works undertaken by Government for direct public benefit.
The amount spent on public improvements is indeed minute compared with the enormous sums devoted to these purposes in Hongkong, Singapore, and Kiaochou, yet it forms a respectable proportion of the small local revenue. That the construction of metalled roads, in particular, is heartily welcomed throughout the Territory is proved by three significant facts: in the first place the owners of arable land through which the new roads pass hardly ever make any demand for pecuniary compensation, unless they happen to be almost desperately poor; in the second place, wheeled traffic, which a few years ago would have been a ludicrous impossibility in any part of the Territory, is rapidly becoming common; and in the third place the people, on their own initiative, are extending the road-system in various localities at their own expense. It may seem almost incredible that, in one case at least, certain houses that obstructed traffic in a new village road were voluntarily pulled down by their owners and built further back: yet not only did they receive no compensation from Government, but they did not even trouble to report what they had done. Very recently a petition was received praying the Weihaiwei Government to urge the Government of Shantung to extend the Weihaiwei road-system into Chinese territory, especially to the extent of enabling cart traffic to be opened up between the port of Weihaiwei and the neighbouring district-cities of Jung-ch'êng, Wên-têng and Ning-hai. The Shantung Government has been addressed on the subject by the Commissioner of Weihaiwei, and the Governor has smiled upon the project; though as he has since been transferred to another province it is doubtful whether anything will be done in the matter at present. So long as Weihaiwei remains in British hands the Provincial Government, naturally enough, has no desire to extend the trade facilities of that port to the possible disadvantage of the Chinese port of Chefoo.
On the whole, the more intelligent members of the native community in Weihaiwei may be said to be fully conscious of the advantages directly and indirectly conferred upon them by British rule, though this is far from implying that they wish that rule to be continued indefinitely. Some of them are even aware of the fact that they owe many of those advantages to a philanthropist whom they have never seen—the uncomplaining (or complaining) British taxpayer. The Territory is, in fact, so far from being self-supporting that a subsidy of several thousands of pounds from the British Exchequer is required to meet the annual deficit in the local budget.[59] The Government is conducted on extremely economical lines, indeed expenditure has been cut down to the point of parsimony, yet it is as well to remember that from the point of view of local resources the administration is costly in the extreme. A large increase of trade would no doubt soon enable the local Government to balance its books without assistance from England, but there are no indications at present that such an expansion is likely to take place.
British colonial methods do not, as a rule, tolerate a lavish expenditure on salaries or on needless multiplication of official posts. In these respects Weihaiwei is not exceptional. There are less than a dozen Europeans of all grades on the civil establishment, and of these only four exercise executive or magisterial authority. Since 1906 the whole Territory has been divided for administrative purposes into twenty-six districts: over each district, which contains on the average about a dozen villages, presides a native District Headman (Tsung-tung) whose chief duties are to supervise the collection of the land-tax, to distribute to the separate Village Headmen copies of all notices and proclamations issued by Government, to distribute deed-forms to purchasers and sellers of real property, and to use his influence generally in the interests of peace and good order and in the discouragement of litigation. For these services he is granted only five (Mexican) dollars a month from Government, but he is also allowed a small percentage on the sale of Government deed-forms (for which a fee is charged) and receives in less regular ways occasional presents, consisting chiefly of food-stuffs, of which the Government takes no notice unless it appears that he is using his position as a means of livelihood or for purposes of extortion.
The land-tax is based on the old land-registers handed over by the Chinese magistrates of Wên-têng and Jung-ch'êng, and as they had been badly kept up, or rather not kept up at all, for some scores of years previously, the present relations between the land under cultivation and the land subject to taxation are extremely indefinite. It is but very rarely that a man can point to his land-tax receipts as proof that he owns or has long cultivated any disputed area. Only by making a cadastral survey of the whole Territory would it be possible to place the land-tax system on a proper basis. At present the tax is in practice (with certain exceptions) levied on each village as a whole rather than on individual families. For many years past every village has paid through its headman or committee of headmen a certain sum of money which by courtesy is called land-tax. How that amount is assessed among the various families is a matter which the people decide for themselves, on the general understanding that no one should be called upon to pay more than his ancestors
