bunal, in great state,
and receives the petitions or complaints of the people; having an officer
called _Lieu_, who stands behind the tribunal, and indorses an answer upon
the petition, according to the order of the viceroy; for they null no
applications but what are in writing, and give all their decisions in the
same manner. Before parties can present their petitions to the viceroy,
they must be submitted to the proper officer for examination, who sends
them back if he discovers any error; and no person may draw up any of those
writings which are to be presented to the viceroy, except a clerk versant
in business, who must mark at the bottom that it is written by such a man,
the son of such a man: And if the clerk is guilty of any error or mistake,
he is punished with the bamboo. The viceroy never seats himself on his
tribunal until he has eaten and drank, lest he should be mistaken in some
things; and he receives his subsistence from the public treasury of the
city over which he presides. The emperor, who is above all these princes or
petty kings, never appears in public but once in ten months, under the idea
that the people would lose their veneration for him if he shewed himself
oftener; for they hold it as a maxim, that government can only subsist by
means of force, as the people are ignorant of the principles of justice,
and that constraint and violence are necessary to maintain among them the
majesty of empire.

There are no taxes imposed upon the lands, but all the men of the country
are subject to a poll-tax in proportion to their substance. When any
failure of crops makes necessaries dear, the king opens his store-houses to
the people, and soils all sorts of necessaries at much cheaper rates than
they can be had in the markets; by which means famine is prevented, and no
dearth is of any long continuance. The sums that are gathered by this
capitation tax are laid up in the public treasury, and I believe, that from
this tax, fifty thousand dinars are paid every day into the null of Canfu
alone, although that city is not one of the largest. The emperor reserves
to himself the revenues which arise from the salt mines, and those which
are derived from impositions upon a certain herb called _Tcha_, which they
drink with hot water, and of which vast quantities are sold in all the
cities in China. This is produced from a shrub more bushy than the
pomegranate tree, and of a more pleasant smell, but having a kind of a
bi