Year: 1875

Lessons nr0na the Chinese.


The Chinese are certainly wise and
witty people The march of European civ
ilization, although centuries behind their
own, having shown them the necessity of
representation at foreign courts, they at once
improve on European custom in this respect
by adopting the wonderful plan of sending
two ambassadors TO each country, instead OF
single one OF course, with q quiet sar-
donic appreciation of human nature, one OF
these is sent to watch the other.


In Rome the princes Of the Church-the
Pope, the cardinals and the bishops-are
each attended constantly by vicar, who
acts as shadow keeps him out of secret
scrapes and constitutes in some sort refer
ence for good character. In all deliberative
bodies an opposition watches the conduct OF
the majority. In connubial life the two
partners have watchful eye on each others
morals and behavior, while in social life is
not Mrs. Grundy ever invisibly present to
pounce upon whatever is irregular or
naughty, and if not to restrain the evil at
least to tell about it? Long before the
Chinese Empire beasts and men are said to
have walked into the ark by twos, which is
a precedent for the weakness of the indi-
vidual.


What a world of modification and disgrace
the people of this country might have been
spared if such q double had been sent out
with the present Minister to the Court Of st.
James to watch over his little pecuniary and
mining transactions And dual Executive,
such as was once proposed by Mr. Calhoun,
might have saved the President from suspicion
of interest in certain rings, especially if the
alternate President had been o member ofthe
Young Mems Christian Association or of the
Washington Temperance Society. There is
no better way of holding mischievous per-
son in check than by coupling him with
another, even of the same sort, and the
Siamese twins no doubt stood in each others
way in the perpetration of many little i'm
proprieties. Indeed, it is not certain that q
hereditary family of executives ought not to
have been bred from that peculiarly con-
structed pair.


But if this principle would work we'll in
politics what might not be effected if the
Chinese plan were introduced into the ad-
ministration of our railway corporations?
There it would seem that no one can be quite
trusted, and to get at the truth we are COM
PEELED to rely on the revelations of
such special detectives as Dunan in the
Erie or Barrett in the Michigan Central cor
poration. What an evident advantage it
would be to have our corporations governed
by two heads in an equal official position, or
what we might call q self-compensative ad-
ministration. If it should work little in
harmoniously it would at any rate arrest the
over great authority and concert of wrong
now practised; it would break up the de-
ceptive taciturnity of one great chief and it
would annul the voluble mendacity of an
other there would be an interesting conten-
tion which would disarm directors and ben
eft credulous public, who would learn the
truth from the disagreements of the two heads
of affairs with neither of whom it would
probably quite lie, and the half infamous
process of employing spies or paying for
'leaks" would drop out of custom.


There seems no better plan than this, un-
less it be modification of Carlyles plan
propounded to Jean Paul Richter of con-
fding the administration of affairs to a cast
metal king and which "made that philoso-
pher laugh louder than the neighing of all
!" the administration of cast
iron railway president would, if not able, be
at least impartial he could neither rob,
conceal, nor pervert while he would have
disability enough to prevent the customary
disastrous annual struggle for his place, and
we should have no more revelations of bor-
rowed dividends or stock-jobbing consolida-
tions to disgrace us abroad and fleece us at
home.