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Updated: May 3, 2025
As the Tchin plays an important part in Russia, not only in the official world, but also to some extent in social life, it may be well to explain its significance. All offices, civil and military, are, according to a scheme invented by Peter the Great, arranged in fourteen classes or ranks, and to each class or rank a particular name is attached.
The men who run ahead of the cars of Decency and Propriety, and make the jungle ways straight, cannot be judged in the same manner as the stay-at-home folk of the ranks of the regular Tchin. Not many months ago the Queen's Law stopped a few miles north of Thayetmyo on the Irrawaddy. There was no very strong Public Opinion up to that limit, but it existed to keep men in order.
The Russian aristocracy and plutocracy have few powers or privileges beyond that of serving their sovereign, and their position depends entirely on the will of the emperor. Official rank is the only distinction, and all ranks or "tchin," as it is called, is regulated according to the army grades. By this "tchin" alone is the right of being received at Court acquired.
Formerly the appointment to an office generally depended on the tchin; now there is a tendency to reverse the old order of things and make the tchin depend upon the office actually held. * In Russian the two words are quite different; the Council is called Gosudarstvenny sovet, and the title Statski sovetnik.
The negotiations, being of a delicate nature, were entrusted to an old lady who had a great reputation for diplomatic skill in such matters, and she accomplished her mission with such success that in the course of a few weeks the preliminaries were arranged and the day fixed for the wedding. Thus Ivan Ivan'itch won his bride as easily as he had won his tchin of "collegiate secretary."
The Conseiller d'Etat is so far from being a member of the Conseil d'Etat that he cannot possibly become a member till he receives a higher tchin.* As to the Privy Councillor, it is sufficient to say that the Privy Council, which had a very odious reputation in its lifetime, died more than a century ago, and has not since been resuscitated.
The step on which he is for the moment standing, or, in other words, the official rank or tchin which he possesses determines what offices he is competent to hold. Thus rank or tchin is a necessary condition for receiving an appointment, but it does not designate any actual office, and the names of the different ranks are extremely apt to mislead a foreigner.
We learn, however, that the provinces of the north were distinguished from those of the south; the former were called Cathay and Tehar Cathar, or Cathay, which produces tea: its capital was Cambalu: the provinces in the south were called Tchin or Sin. The appellation of Cathay was that under which alone China was long known to the Europeans.
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