The Grand Secretariat Archive and the Study of the Ch'ing Judicial Process

108 THE GRAND SECRETARIAT ARCHIVE AND THE STUDY OF THE CH'ING JUDICIAL PROCESS Wejen Chang Academia Sinica The Grand Secretariat And Its Archive The Grand Secretariat ( ffc] ftS ) was once the most important government office of the Ch'ing dynasty. All official communications to and from the emperor were processed there--memorials from all officials to the emperor were reviewed by the Grand Secretaries ( jX] Ra ^ |ä -jr ) ; imperial orders responding to the memorials or independently issued were drafted by them. They were thus direct participants in the highest decision-making process, sharing their power with only a few Manchu princes and Grand Counsellors ( ?|| J^ ^g). During the reign of Yungcheng emperor (1723-1736) much of this power was taken away from the Grand Secretariat and given to the Grand Council (ï-pfêiê ¦> created in 1729· The change was made because the Grand Secretariat had become too big a bureaucracy to keep state secrets and make guick decisions . In contrast, the Grand Council, composed of only a handful Grand Councillors ( F?*§7\.§ ) and some twenty aids, was better equipped to handle sensitive matters and act swiftly in fast changing situations. As it developed, the Grand Council became all powerful. But according to law, reports on many regular government 109 matters had to go through the Grand Secretariat and be reviewed by it --even though they would be reviewed by the Grand Council again. Such matters included collection of taxes, dispensation of government funds, maintenance of military preparedness , administration of criminal justice, appointment of officials, impeachments and discipline, etc. To report such a matter, the official concerned sent up a regular memorial to the emperor. After being properly reviewed and acted upon by the Grand Secretariat and the emperor, the memorial was sent to the Great Vault of the Grand Secretariat ( ft] M )\M> ) for deposit. More than 14,000 such memorials were brought to the Great Vault each year during the Ch'ing. They became the largest part of the Ch'ing central government archive . In 1899 and 1909 when the Great Vault needed repair, many of the archival materials, among them most of the memorials, were removed from it and began to be dispersed. A small part of the materials which were in poor physical condition were sold to a pulp factory but were eventually rescued by the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica. In 1929-36 the Institute processed them and discovered that over two- thirds of them were documents related to the Three Judicial Offices ( ^. I^ 5] ), i.e., the Board of Punishments (ff'J-gf )» the Censorate ( ^SÍ? (·=£ ) and the Temple of Justice ( 7\îf ^ )· They were considered of small historical value. So when the Institute moved to Taiwan, among the 100 crates to carry the archival 110 materials only one was for "the Three Judicial Offices archive," and that particular crate was probably not given as much care as the others were while in transit. In any event when it was finally opened in 1950 its contents were already ruined by water . The Legal Documents From The Grand Secretariat Archive And The Study Qf The Ch'ing Judicial Process Fortunately the Institute's initial sorting was not very systematic and thorough, and there were still many legal documents mixed in the remaining 99 crates. In 1970-75 my assistants and I examined some 90,000 documents and selected 2,561 of them relevant to the judicial system. Though only a very small fraction of the original archive, these selected documents are of a surprisingly great variety. Their time coverage is long — we have documents from every period of the Ch'ing dynasty except the last two (Kuang-hsu y^ ,SS and Hsuan-t'ung T S^, ) 5 their geographical distribution is wide -- we have documents from practically every province and region of the empire; and their subjects are diversified -- we have memorials, edicts and inter-office communications of many kinds, reporting and directing the handling of judicial matters at various stages . Because of its richness we have found it possible to use this collection to study the major features of the Ch'ing judicial process. Our procedure has been as follows: We read the...