Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/74

paper on which are recorded the advice of the Ministers together with the reasons for tendering it. The time chosen for submitting these papers is daylight, and the duty of submitting them is entrusted to the "Ten Scholars," the Emperor's will being signified by a stroke in vermilion ink upon the suggestion he approves. The mass of affairs thus brought to imperial notice is enormous. It includes everything of a fiscal or finan- cial nature; all appointments, promotions, and dismissals of officials; naval and military matters; the affairs of the outlying dominions; criminal cases, and so on. There are twenty-five privy seals, having different forms, which are used for different purposes and are kept by the "Ten Scholars." There is also a translators' bureau in the Cabinet; a very necessary office in view of the many dialects spoken not merely in different provinces of the vast Chinese Empire, but also among the foreign or indigenous elements of its population. Altogether the staff of the Cabinet numbers about two hundred. The four " great councillors" divide between them the functions discharged by a prime minister in a western state, the first of them being, however, regarded as premier. The members of the Cabinet have functions other than the above, but they are chiefly of a ceremonial character.^[1]

More influential, perhaps, than the Cabinet, though nominally of inferior rank, is the Privy