孔子云:“听讼,吾犹人也,必也使无讼乎。”以儒学为尊的中国古代官方,也无时不将此思想传递给小民。但是在清代基层档案中,民众动辄将纠纷诉至官府的现象比比皆是,于是在“无讼”统治思想下,渐成“健讼”四起的局面。为减轻讼累,官府将自身一部分的司法职能以承认乡里长老调解权威的方式下放至基层,这种制度即为乡里调解制度。本文以巴县档案为素材,通过对清代乡里调解制度的剖析,探寻官府在解决民众纠纷时的标准与态度,及其权衡与考量,进而试图总结清代乡里调解的理性与经验。 Confucius said: “Listening to lawsuits, Utah still does not mean that people will not have any peace with them.” In ancient China, an Confucian-esteemed official also passed on this thought to small people. However, in the grass-roots files of the Qing Dynasty, the people frequently litigated the disputes to the government everywhere. Therefore, under the rule of “no lawsuits,” people gradually became “lawsuits”. In order to alleviate the lawsuits, the government decentralized some of its judicial functions to the grassroots by recognizing the mediation authority of the township elders. This system is the village mediation system. Based on the archives of Baxian County, through the analysis of the mediation system in the Qing dynasty, this paper explores the standards and attitudes of government officials in settling disputes among the people, and their trade-offs and considerations, and tries to summarize the rationality and experience of the mediation in the Qing dynasty.