Oxe of the minor difficulties" connected with' our daily Chinese. iteroourse with' the. when their testimony Courts of Haw. Wo speak of it asia minor. difficulty, because it is: one of comparatively rare ooourrence.; but iti: is obvious to occur in which the testimony Cliitiese ander such oiroumstatioes miny be. of the: most. vital importance—- literally vital, as determining, perhaps, question of life or death, IV Las-beer that..the for engaged in the dangerous position, and that whew they carry the forts and gain posses ference; thoy'lie'in their: bistorien, they: lio in their booké on science:' Evon'to put it more mildly, we fully onddrae the statement. that.a without sufficient troops to hold the place, out off. from reinforcements, and surrounded by: hoate of Chinese soldiery, fate and the fate' of the whole adoue. We ud more troops ready to. sail for. 'Tonquin at any: moment. 'That they will be: required does not admit of an instant's doubt in fact, if they are to do' any good they ought to be there now. It is impossible to recognise in the apparently reluctant doling-out of these Laudfuls of men by the French Government any serious prep war. If Franco bel minence: of a band. with Chiua—not mere campaign in Tonquin, but a big, should hear-of very different arrange. ments being made in Paris, At pre: game of poker wob side bluffing, and neither particularly anxious to pay heavily for seeing the other: he heart of Frazco is not in the business; "whatever Paris newspapers may write, and even if matters are pushed to extremities a dens e-maching -willarise-.at. the last not the slightest shame at Jout in a falsehood, and that~ lying generally is regarded as being, 90 very venial an offence as scarcely to amount to at offenco.at-all, It the Chinese do' not study: lying: as an-art, as the'
may be said to have atid neoessaty where there natural talent.
Mondax: nascitur, non: fit; while here; even detection dies'not' in the world,.and therefore from saying that there is: abaolutely no proverb in China which condemns lying: a6 & vice; but we have no ing that we have'met with none, and: that in no work of morality-or fiction that we ever rea across a catalogue of claded the sin of lying.
Under these circumstances, joint that the national failing of Chim assumes a very serious spect' when 8 Chinaman gives evidence in Court; The abstract fact that-a Chinaman.is a born liar is: exemplified in a concrete form mbén he comes before a mixed or foreign tribunal-and deliber maki talao assertion.affeoting.the. property, or life
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.