certain man is paying too much or is paying nothing at all. It is undoubtedly true that a great deal of new land has been brought under cultivation since the Chinese land-tax registers were last revised, and that the cultivators are guilty of technical offences in not reporting such land to Government and getting it duly measured and valued for the assessment of land-tax: but these are offences which have been condoned by the Chinese authorities in this part of China for many years past, and it would be unjust or at least inexpedient for the British Government to show greater severity in such matters than is shown on the Chinese side of the frontier. The British Government has, indeed, by a stroke of the pen doubled the land-tax, that is, it takes twice as much from each village as it did six years ago, so it may at least congratulate itself on deriving a larger revenue from this source than used to come to the net of Chinese officialdom. The total amount of the doubled tax only amounts to about $24,000 (Mex.) a year, which is equivalent to not much more than £2,000 sterling. The whole of this is brought to the coffers of the Government without the aid of a single tax-collector and without the expenditure of a dollar. In the autumn of each year proclamations are issued stating the current rate of exchange as between the local currency and the Mexican dollar and announcing that the land-tax will be received, calculated according to that rate, upon certain specified days. The money is brought to the Government offices at Port Edward by the headmen, receipts are issued, and the matter is at an end until the following year. Litigation regarding land-tax payments is exceedingly rare and the whole system works without a hitch.
For administrative and magisterial purposes the Territory is divided into two Divisions, a North and a South. The North Division contains only nine of the twenty-six Districts, and is much smaller in both area and population than the South, but it includes the island of Liukung and the settlement of Port Edward. Its southern limits[60] extend from a point south of the village of Shuang-tao on the west to a short distance south of Ch'ang-fêng on the east. A glance at the map will show that it comprises the narrower or peninsular portion of the Territory. The headquarters of this Division are at Port Edward, where is also situated the office of the Commissioner. The North Division is under the charge of the North Division Magistrate, who is also Secretary to Government and holds a dormant commission to administer the government of the Territory in the Commissioner's absence. The South Division comprises all the rest of the leased Territory, including seventeen out of the twenty-six Districts, and is presided over by the South Division Magistrate, who is also District Officer. His headquarters are at Wen-ch'üan-t'ang[61] or Hot Springs, a picturesque locality near the old boundary-line between the Jung-ch'êng and Wên-têng districts and centrally situated with regard to the southern portion of the leased Territory. Separate courts, independent of one another and co-ordinate in powers, are held by the North and South Division Magistrates at their respective headquarters.
The District Officer controls a diminutive police force of a sergeant and seven men, all Chinese. His clerks, detectives and other persons connected with his staff, are also Chinese. Besides the District Officer himself there is no European Government servant resident in the South Division, which contains 231 out of the 315 villages of the Territory and a population estimated at 100,000. The whole of the land frontier, nearly forty miles long, lies within this Division.
Under the Commissioner, the Secretary to Government and Magistrate (North Division), and the District Officer and Magistrate (South Division), are the executive and judicial officers of the Government. There is also an Assistant Magistrate, who has temporarily acted as District Officer, and who, besides discharging magisterial work from time to time, carries out various departmental duties in the North Division. The functions of the North and South Division Magistrates are quite as miscellaneous as are those of the prefects and district-magistrates—the "father-and-mother" officials—of China. There are no posts in the civil services of the sister-colonies of Hongkong and Singapore which are in all respects analogous to those held by these officers; but on the whole a Weihaiwei magistrate may be regarded as combining the duties of Registrar-General (Protector of Chinese), Puisne Judge, Police Magistrate and Captain-Superintendent of Police. Most of the time of the Magistrates is, unfortunately, spent in the courts. Serious crime, indeed, is rare in Weihaiwei. There has not been a single case of murder in the Territory for seven years or more, and most of the piracies and burglaries have been committed by unwelcome visitors from the Chinese side of the frontier. But the Weihaiwei magistrates do not deal merely with criminal and police cases. They also exercise unlimited civil jurisdiction; and as litigation in Weihaiwei has shown a steady increase with every year of British administration, their duties in this respect are by no means light.
Beyond the Magisterial courts there are no other courts regularly sitting. There is indeed a nebulous body named in the Order-in-Council "His Majesty's High Court of Weihaiwei," but this Court very rarely sits. It consists of the Commissioner and a Judge, or of either Commissioner or Judge sitting separately. The Assistant Judge of the British Supreme Court at Shanghai is ex officio Judge of the High Court of Weihaiwei; but the total number of occasions on which his services have been requisitioned in connection with both civil and criminal cases during the last five or six years—that is, since his appointment—is less than ten. The Commissioner, sitting alone as High Court, has in a few instances imposed sentences in the case of offences "punishable with penal servitude for seven years or upwards,"[62] and the Judge has on three or four occasions visited Weihaiwei for the purpose of trying cases of manslaughter. The civil cases tried by the High Court—whether represented by Commissioner or by Judge—number only two, though the civil cases on which judgment is given in Weihaiwei (by the magistrates acting judicially) number from one thousand upwards in a year.
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