C. MARTIN WILBUR
smallness, and the strong psychological carryover of the attributes of familism to the larger group. Secondly, these units already have a system of fixing responsibility in the hands of their own customary leaders, who do form an adequate and very convenient machinery of government. To treat the village as a unit, moreover, and to hold the leaders responsible for it, much simplifies the business of government by the state. It is cheaper, and because it is more agreeable to the people, is much more effective than any system of central control. It leaves plenty of room for differences of local practice. Finally, so far as the rulers of China were concerned, if the villages paid their taxes and remained law abiding and peaceful, there was distinctly no advantage to be gained from governing them more closely. Therefore the central authority has generally been glad to accept the customary village government as the base for a form of government which found its apex in the emperor.
This does not mean that the government delivered itself of the right to hold individuals, families or groups of neighbors responsible for the behavior of other individuals or groups. Indeed, one of the reasons for the tithing system was to enforce mutual responsibility as is definitely stated in the Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien: "The system of pao and chia has been established in order that the members may mutually make inquiry and know one another, to the end that traitors and evil doers may be put down and thieving and robbery repressed." The concept of mutual responsibility is especially noticeable in the idea of ken chieh (4) as explained by Jamieson.2 Whenever a respectable man is asked for evidence of his character, or whenever he wishes to do anything out of the ordinary, he will produce at once a kan chieh, the "frankpledge" of his neighbors in the same pao or chia. This is simply a document in which his neighbors voluntarily, freely and frankly pledge or bind themselves, because of their personal knowledge of the individual, for his respectability.
Mutual responsibility, which exists in all ranges of relationships and among all groups, is in the village integrated through the leaders of the several lesser groups and finally in the hands of the village elders. In the main it is only the village elders with whom the government deals when this trust is broken, as in the case of petty
1 Ta Ch'ing Hui Tien, chap. 134, trans. by Jamieson; op. cit., p. 69.
2 Ibid., p. 69 ff.