ey receive appeals made to the emperor, either by the people against
the officials or by subordinate officials against their superiors.
They exercise, in accord with the Board of Justice, an oversight over
all criminal cases and give their opinion whenever the death penalty
is to be pronounced. They superintend the working of the different
boards and are sometimes sent to various places as imperial
inspectors, hence they are called _erh mu kuan_ (the eyes and ears of
the emperor). The censors exercise their office at times with great
boldness;[35] their advice if unpalatable may be disregarded and the
censor in question degraded. The system of the censorate lends itself
to espionage and to bribery, and it is said to be more powerful for
mischief than for good. With the growth in influence of the native
press the institution appears to lose its _raison d'etre_.

The grand court of revision (_Ta-li sze_) or Court of Cassation
exercises, in conjunction with the Board of Justice and the Censorate,
a general supervision over the administration of the criminal law.
These bodies are styled collectively _San-fah sze_ (the Three High
Justices).

The Hanlin College (_Hanlin Yuen_, literally Forest of Pencils) is
composed of all the literate who have passed the palace examination
and obtained the title of _Hanlin_ or imperial academist. It has two
chancellors--a Manchu and a Chinese. Its functions are of a purely
literary character and it is of importance chiefly because the heads
of the college, who are presumably the most eminent scholars of the
empire, have the right of advising the throne on all public affairs,
and are eligible as members of the grand council or of the Wai-wu Pu.
The Chinese set fire to it during the fighting in Peking in June 1900
in the hope of burning out the adjoining British legation. The whole
of the library, containing some of the most valuable manuscripts in
the world, was destroyed.

Provincial government.

Each of the eighteen provinces of China proper, the three provinces of
Manchuria and the province of Sin-kiang are ruled by a viceroy placed
over one, two and in one instance three provinces, or by a governor
over a single province either under a viceroy or depending directly on
the central government, the viceroy or the governor being held
responsible to the emperor for the entire administration, political,
judicial,