Apurrers of Chinese civilisation will be edified by a memorial in the Peking Gazette of the 12th July, reporting at Tength upon a ease of murder. There is an unrighteous prejudice against mothers-in-law in the West, though it is to sons-in-law rather than to daughters-in-law that they are especially disagreeable. Neither are they, we fancy, better liked in China; though, with the contradiction proverbial in Chinese matters, it is the daughters-in-Jaw who here suffer most from the whims of their new relations. According to Dr. Williams, "the motber-inlaw not infrequently demands from the young wife both the submission of a child and the labor of "slave, recom-pansing her not seldom by bitter railings." And, according to the greatness of the trial, so does submission seem to be accounted to the daughter for righteousness. A favourite feature in Chinese story is the patient submission of a model daughter-in-law to some old harridan's evil treatment, and the eventual conversion of the Intter by the girl's unvarying goodness. Mothers-in-law do not, however, always marry their sons to angels, and in the opposite cases retaliation is probably not altogether unknown. It is likely, if we could fathom the truth, that the tragedy described by Li Hung-chang bad its origin in exactions and ill-treatment that goaded Mrs. Sung-chang into 2 crime which is now ascribed to madness.
The scene is Chingchow, in the province of Chibli; the actors are Mr. and Mrs. Sung-chang the elder and their daughter-in-law. The latter bad been uniformly dutiful to her husband's parents, bat from the year 1871 had become subject to occasional fits of mudness. In February of the present year, Mrs. Sung-chang senior took ill, and Mrs. Sung-chang junior took it in turns with her sister-in-law, Mrs. Sung-pei, to sit up with ber. But at daylight on the morning of the 18th March, after having sab up all night accordingly, she was seized with one of her fits of Lunacy, and inflicted on her mother-in: wounds of which she died, also striking her father. in-law who attempted to _inter-fore. In England, a woman who did this would be confined in a lunatic asylum if really insane, or hung she were in her sober senses—unless, perhaps, an intelligent jury found sufficient motives for the crime to justify a recommendation to mercy. Let us see how the case stands in Ohina, In the first place, the relatives and neighbours have rendered themselves liable to flogging for not having had Mrs, Sung-chang junior chained up as a lunatic. In the next, lunacy is no mitigation of punishment; and the punishment by law, for a wife killing her husband's mother is "death by a slow and painful mode of execution," Mrs. Sung-chang accordingly was sentenced to death, and has been executed with the forms prescribed by law, and the whole Sung family apparently come in for fines or flogging.
Death by a slow and painful execu. tion" has a definite meaning in Chinese law. We quote the definition of the term as laid down in the Penal Code, in order to give our readers an idea of the scene which took place in the mar ket place of Chingchow, under the laws of this great and civilised Empire, "The process is to cut inch by inch until no flesh is left on the body; the entrails are to be taken out in order to cause death; in continuation, the limbs niust be dissevered joint by joint, and the matter be ended by breaking the bones."—And it is an alleged lunatic who is thus punished. Is it not a monstrous assumption on the part of outside barbarians, that they should claim equality with a nation which has reached this pitch of enlightenment? How can we claim that our Ministers should enter, without kowtowing, the presence of a Monarch whose ancestors have handed down to him as a snored beira Joom such a refined expression of civilised law How can our wretched officials claim to treat otherwise than as supplicants, with the mandarins whose glory it is to administer such a code? And yet there are to be found Foreigners who declare that Chinese civilization is imperfect.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.