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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 8 > Issue 3 (1910)

 

Abstract

It has frequently been remarked that of all nations, China approaches most nearly the Jeffersonian ideal in being the least governed. To a greater extent than any other people, the Chinese manage their own affairs. The usages of trade are defined by the various commercial guilds-organizations which have acquired a prestige and influence without parallel in any other country. Commercial disputes are submitted to these bodies and by them are settled promptly, finally, and usually satisfactorily. Matters of currency and exchange are determined by the powerful bankers' guild. Physicians, fortune-tellers, geomancers and even mendicants, have their organizations through which the interests of the individual members are safe-guarded. In addition to this, each family constitutes to a large extent a self governing unit, presided over by the father or eldest son, or, where collateral branches of the same family are affected, by the family council. There are no police to exemplify our definition of law, for, by virtue of the principle of mutual responsibility, every man is to a large extent, his brother's keeper, and external guardianship is unnecessary. Asylums, hospitals, health departments, fire brigades, and the numerous other institutions which the advancing socialism of western countries finds necessary, are wanting. In fact, the government is limited to the exercise of the fewest possible functions consistent with the maintenance of society in its well defined, immemorial routine, and any attempt to extend its activity is viewed with jealousy and distrust. In all this, practice is in strict accord with theory. The emperor Han Kao Ti, upon his accession in 206 B. C., made what is known as the "Tripartite Bargain with the Elders of the People." In the terse style of the Chinese classics, this "bargain" is summarized as follows: (1) Death for homicide; (2) Compensation and imprisonment for wounds and robbery; (3) all else left to the people. This emperor, a prototype of our own King John, as gracious as was the latter recalcitrant, is revered to this day by the Chinese who delight to style themselves after his dynastic name "the sons of Han."

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