Tas Police Magistrate of Hongkong has just passed a sentence which will move Chinese society in the Colony to its inmost recesses. He has imprisoned the wife of a Chinese merchant for three weeks, for cruelly maltreating a female slave; and we can imagine what dire commotion the news will excite in every household in the colony. It would be interesting to know what view the Chinese Courts would take of a similar case, if it could possibly come before them, Woe use the word "if" advisedly, for the approach to the Chinese judgment seat is hedged about with so many applicants for fees, so many secretaries and hangers-on who have to be propitiated in order to secure a chance of a favourable hearing, that we suspect a slave wishing to complain against a master would have small chance of obtaining justice. But if such a case were foreed on the Magistrate's attention, it would be curious to know at what point he would consider the right of the master to correct his servant ended, and undue cruelty began. The head of a household has great power in China over all the occupants of the house. When a man is allowed to sell his wife and children, the law is not likely to interfere very seriously in favour of a beaten slave. It is probably held, as was urged in the case of slavery in America, that a man will not go the length of damaging his property. And in the great majority of cases probably the rale holds good. The law, however, does not seem to have done very much for the protection of slaves, at any time, We are told of one Vedius Pollio, even in the polite age of Augustus, who used to fling such slaves as displeased him into his fishponds, to feed his lampreys; and on the matter being brought under the Emperor's notice he was visited with no severer punishment than the destruction of his ponds. And the only restriction upon cruelty seems to have been that, if the cruelty of a master was intolerable, he might be compelled to sell the slave. As a rule, domestic slaves in China have not so bad a time; the Chinese are not inconsiderate yeasters, and the bought servant takes her chance with the hired one. But, if kindly as a rule, they are liable to outbursts of passion when they are capable of great cruelty. Huc has drawn an amusing picture of a row between husband and wife in an inn where he was stopping in Mongolia "Whilst the whole company was busied, some in the preparation, and others in the consumption, of the viands, a loud cry was heard. It was from the hostess, who gave utterance thus to the pain she felt from a heavy blow of a shovel which her husband had just bestowed on her head. All the travellers started up, the woman ran screaming into s corner, and the innkeeper explained to the company that be had done quite right to correct this insolent end disobedient wife, who took no care of his house, and whose neglect would ruin the reputation of the inn. But before he had got to the end of his speech, the hostess commenced an animated reply from the corner where she was crouching. She declared that her husband was a lazy fellow, who did nothing but drink and smoke, while leaving her to attend to the customers, and that he would spend her week's earnings in the course of a day or two in liquor and tobacco, Daring this scene the audience remained quite calm and imperturbable, giving no sign of approbation, or the contrary, to either of the belligerent parties. The woman then issued from her corner, as if to present a kind of challenge to her lord and master. 'Since I am a wicked woman,' said she, you had better kill me! Come, kill me!' and she planted herself right before the wrathful landlord. He did not kill her, but he gave her a tremendous box of the ears, which sent her back, uttering doleful howlings, to her corner. The pit now seemed to find the piece rather amusing, for it burst into loud laugh; but the matter soon became serious enough; for after a good deal more of bitter abuse from one side, and fierce menaces from the other, the innkeeper tucked up his garments under his girdle, and rolled his long plaits of hair round his head: it was the signal that he was preparing for a coup de main, Very well, said he, since yon tell me to kill you, I will;' and with these words he snatched the tongs from one of the stoves and rashed with fury at his wife. The company ran towards them, with loud exclamations; some neigh-hours came running in; but they did not succeed in separating the combat ants till the hostess had her hair torn down and her face all bleeding."
This would probably be recognised as a perfectly legitimate exercise of marital authority, although perhaps more or less scandalous from the publicity of the row. For, to do the Chinese justice, they are not given to abusing the privileges in respect of wife-beating, which the law allows them. Still the privilegeisallowed, and it would probably no more occur to domestic slave to appeal against a master or mistress who had ill-used her, than it would to a wife to complain against a husband. It says much for the pro-density of the Chinese to abide by "old custom," and something for the lightness of the yoke, that domestic slavery should continue to exist to any extent in a British Colony, Cases are constantly brought before the Court, in which the practice is made evident; but when the girls are told that they may consider themselves free, they do not always seem anxious to avail themselves of the privilege. Nor is it from them that the action often comes, The Police bring to light some piece of iniquity or another, in which the conditions of purchase and slavery are made evident; and the announcement 80 often made from the bench in such cases that these conditions are contrary to English law, can hardly fail to be generally known among the Chinese population.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.