Soon after this the whole government was given the shape which it continued to have until A.D. 220, and which formed the point of departure for all later forms of government.  At the head of the state was the emperor, in theory the holder of absolute power in the state restricted only by his responsibility towards “Heaven”, i.e. he had to follow and to enforce the basic rules of morality, otherwise “Heaven” would withdraw its “mandate”, the legitimation of the emperor’s rule, and would indicate this withdrawal by sending natural catastrophes.  Time and again we find emperors publicly accusing themselves for their faults when such catastrophes occurred; and to draw the emperor’s attention to actual or made-up calamities or celestrial irregularities was one way to criticize an emperor and to force him to change his behaviour.  There are two other indications which show that Chinese emperors—­excepting a few individual cases—­at least in the first ten centuries of gentry society were not despots:  it can be proved that in some fields the responsibility for governmental action did not lie with the emperor but with some of his ministers.  Secondly, the emperor was bound by the law code:  he could not change it nor abolish it.  We know of cases in which the ruler disregarded the code, but then tried to “defend” his arbitrary action.  Each new dynasty developed a new law code, usually changing only details of the punishment, not the basic regulations.  Rulers could issue additional “regulations”, but these, too, had to be in the spirit of the general code and the existing moral norms.  This situation has some similarity to the situation in Muslim countries.  At the ruler’s side were three counsellors who had, however, no active functions.  The real conduct of policy lay in the hands of the “chancellor”, or of one of the “nine ministers”.  Unlike the practice with which we are familiar in the West, the activities of the ministries (one of them being the court secretariat) were concerned primarily with the imperial palace.  As, however, the court secretariat, one of the nine ministries, was at the same time a sort of imperial statistical office, in which all economic, financial, and military statistical material was assembled, decisions on issues of critical importance for the whole country could and did come from it.  The court, through the Ministry of Supplies, operated mines and workshops in the provinces and organized the labour service for public constructions.  The court also controlled centrally the conscription for the general military service.  Beside the ministries there was an extensive administration of the capital with its military guards.  The various parts of the country, including the lands given as fiefs to princes, had a local administration, entirely independent of the central government and more or less elaborated according to their size.  The regional administration was loosely associated with the central government through a sort of primitive