As compared with the procedure of oceidental courts of justice in criminal cases, that of Chinese courts is characterised by far greater severity in the method of eliciting evidence, as well asin the forms of punishment inflicted on convicted offenders. Torture is still employed by Chinese Magistrates to extort confessions from prisoners of justice. Blows with the bamboo to the number of thousands in some cases; scourge ings of hundreds of cuts; compressing of the temples with string till the head is on the verge of bursting; these are all considered useful means of obtaining evidence, "Put a man in the body," says the grim old adage, "and you will get answers to everything." (AZ F, MTRAB,). The tortures now employed to extort a confess sion ace by no means limited to the boot, One of the most severe is that of the t'ien-ping-kia (7B) a frame on which the sufferer is made to kneel for long periods with body and arms widely distended and all the weight coming on the knees; in some cases a pole being laid on the hamstrings on which men are ordered to stand, in order to increase the pain. The ankles are also sometimes broken by repeated blows of club.
The whole system is considered by foreigners as an enormity, and a reproach to a civilised nation; and its continued existence in China is one of the principal anevivals from the past to which they point as justifying the claims to superiority which they themselves put forward. No foreigner convicted and sentenced can ever complain wt he has been intimidated into confession of a misdemeanour or a crime which he never committed; for before the Western judge pronounces sentence, every point has been fought out by lawyers, every argument for the defence refuted, and every loop-hole for escape closed one by one.
There are, however, great difficulties in the way of introducing the foreign system of taking evidence in China. The country is so vast, that accused and witnesses have sometimes tobe brought toourtribunalsfrom scores of miles away; and if allowed to return to their homes for an adjourn it would be many days before they o all be collected again. In foreign countries, with their smaller population, and careful registration, it is comparatively easy to find a witness when he is wanted. Our pao kiel (ORB) system, good as it is in intention, has become effete and almost useless fur all practical purposes. The fi-pao is the person on whom the authorities now really rely to produce a witness; and there is so much danger of his taking bribes to allow a witness to abscond, that the officials prefer to keep witnesses safely locked up in the yik fang and lung fang (JAB, FEB), and to continue right on ith each case day after day with no adjouraments or remands. The witnesses, who carmot but detest this durance, although it is euphemistically called fan sie, (foud-and-rest, RA), are glad, as a general rule, to see the case concluded as soon as possible; and the judge, who has perhaps many other cases awaiting his attention, is glad to acquire a reputation with his superiors for promptitude in judgment, by a resort to The swift stern mode of the question forte et dwe with a criminal of whose guilt he is morally convinced. The Imperial Government, while far from approving of a system whose defects have been proved by some Iamentable examples, do not see their way, under the circumstances of the country, to substituting a better. It is to these causes, rather than to any fancied greater difficulty in eliciting true answers from Chinese than from foreign witnesses without resorting to such means, that the continuance of judicial torture before, and to obtain, conviction, in China, is to be ascribed.
As regards punishments inflicted after conviction, the present dynasty have introduced s far greater lenity in this respect than any of their predecessors, History tells of tearing to pieces by carts; of i der; of whole families and involved in the punishment of death for the offence of one of their members, Wretches were flayed alive, or pricked slowly to death with as many wounds as a fish has scales, The Ta Tsings swept away all these terrors, leaving only the ling hi, decapitation, and strangling as the three death punishments in descending scale, Foreigners have only hanging, which is something like the third of these; and practice neither beheading nor the ling exhi, otherwise called the six swords (luk tav, Yn punishments coming short of the death penalty, the Chinese criminal is hardly worse off than the foreigner, These punishments are in China, two forms of banishment, the ¢'x (SE) measured by time and the lin (HE) by distance; two forms of corporal punishment, the clit (4%) light bamboo, and the chang (#k) heavy bamboo, In the case of the two latter, the culprit receives a flogging more or lea painful, and is released. The tw ban ment lasts a year, two years, two and a half, or three years us the case may be, and'the burnishment is over. From the liu, exile to 2,000, 3,000, or 4,000 li away, return is rarely possible; but' if, as sometimes happens, an amnesty permits the exile to come back, he had, although his old neighbours may give him the cold shoulder, till the chance of leading a happy life in another part of the counts where no stigma attaches to him. Althoug! imprisonment is the only punishment in Western countries, the publicity given to it by the police reports in the newspapers, places the foreigner in even a worae position than the Chinaman, when the term of punishment-is over.' We think therefore that-foreigners have much stronger grounds for reproaching us with a lower civ than theirs, when they point to our of judicial torture to extort conte: when they base their claim to a higher on the greater mildness of their punishments of convicted criminals, To err on the side of severity was, moreover, considered by the ancients and is still considered in China, less juncus to society than to err on the side of clemency; a Government that would hold the balance straight, must never forgive."
—Leader in 20th March, 1890, FB.)
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.