Anonast the earliest results of a great National Revolution, we may always count on the appearance of a Code of Laws. The Government which assumed the direction of affairs in Japan nine years ago, lost little time in following the example set them by their European predecessors in change, aiid essayed the difficult task of remodelling the national laws. The author of a careful article on the sub-sion to schoolmasters to use the rod.
This perhaps goes without saying We have heard it said that China groans beneath the tyranny of the undertaker, but we did not know that this despotism extended to Japan. It is written, however, in the new code, that "Non-observance of the mourning for parents or husband, is requited by a year's penal servitude." It is a little strange, however, that the widower is not compelled to mourn for his deceased partner.—The position of the Press in Japan has aroused cousiderableattention, andis of course at present peculiar. The critic of the new code whom we have before quoted, notices a provision which might be stretched so as to include and to justify extremely oppressive action. Amongst serious improprieties, punishable with penal servitude for from 30 to 70 days, we find specially mentioned "'the publication of written matter that causes difficulties to the adminisject, in the Japan Mail, remarks that "as a piece of scientific legislation the new code cannot be said to rank high but there are many little points in it worthy of notice, as we can judge from the new laws to what extent New tration of Government,' etc., the last being an offence of such limitless application as to allow of any amount of tyrannical interference by the Government with thought, speech, and conduct."
Japan has broken away and separated itself from the Japan of the Daimios, and what connecting threads still exist binding the present on to \the past. 4 We seo a relic of the old feudal doctrines, in the mitigation of punish-mont according to the rank of the offender. A person in the lower ranks of life, for instance, is punished for certain offences, say, for robbery, by penal servitude. The same crime is punished by 20 days' domestic seclusion, if the offender belongs to the favoured class of the Samurai. The soldiers and sailors have very remarkable privileges. One especially strikes us. They are amenable to their own officers alone, even for civil offences, We fear that this exemption may someday be productive of very serious consequences. If at any time a Sovereign desired to maintain himself on the Throne in opposition to the wishes of the bulk of the people, he would unquestionably find in this independent army a very strong and important engine wherewithal to effect his parpose. This isa very remarkable provision, and we are surprised that it should appear in the code. If it would be possible, in some supple. mentary act of legislation, to repeal or at least to modify this provision, would be a good augury for the fature stability of the Island Empire.
The domestic laws are very interesting, and in many cases the provisions are curious, A husband may assault his wife as much as he pleases, so long as he abstains from inflicting a cutting wound. A wife assaulting a husband, There seems to be a doubt whether torture is or is not in use; it is apparently recognized as legal, We conceive, however, that even if it were to be abolished by law, the "investiga tion whip," or some similar instrument, would be resorted to to extort confessions from accused persons, We must always bear in mind in this connection that, though used in countless instances in England, the Judges declared in the case of Felton, the assassin of the Duke of Buckingham, that the criminal "ought not to be tortured by the rack, for no such punishment is known or allowed by our law." Thus the Judges condemned what the Government had constantly practised. It seems probable that even if the Japanese Code were to forbid the employment of torture, it would be used for sometime to come, as courts are apparently not yet thrown open to the public, and as the prosector (an official) sits on the same bench with the Judges, and the accused has no friends or experts to assist him. In fact, there is still opportunity for cruelty and injustice to disfigure the Japanese Trials; yet the Code appears in many particulars to meet the approval of persons qualified to judge, and it is undoubtedly <n improvement on the old system. If some traces of the political and social doctrines beld in feudal Japan are observable in its pages, we cannot be much surprised indeed, we may be thankful that it has not more numerous blemishes.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.