(2) Over twenty years ago Ting Chén-ling, " salaried licentiate living in the Ning-yang. District in Chekiang, was stripped of his degree and sentenced to banishment for having been an habitual promoter of vexatious litigation. Having received the benefit of several Amnesty Acts, he was finally released in 1875, and no sooner returned to his native place than he resumed his old tricks and became the pest of the neighbourhood. The following are a few specimens of his doings, Aman called Shutsung, against whom he Inds spite, bought house from one Hit passed iumnds and. the transfer duty had ing-vii. "hough the title deeds had
en paid, Ting persuaded the seller to refuse delivery of the property unless he received $100as compensation for disturbance, The buyer, being a timid man, paid the money rather than run the risk of the legal proceedings with which ho was threatened. bition Mei-chao and Chriian Chil two men who lived in the dist members of the same cli but hid separate ancestral temples. The latter, however, put up a tablet in the ancestral tablet of the former with the object of advancing a claim toa share of the sucriticial propert A suit having been brought, Ch'iwwn Chil ts'an's interference was held to be wholly unwarrantable, and an injunction was issued against its continuance. Ting Chen-ling, however, threatened Ch'itan Mei-chao with further proceedings unless he paid him $150, and it was not until $84 of the amount riy that the matter was even-the intervention of some Ting Chen-ling was also proved taken possession of another anan's wife and to have continued to live with her thou ha Decree for their separation had been issued by the Court. A long list of separate charges had been filed against him, the last being one in which eleven persons, some of them of oficial rank, had presented a joint petition complaining that the accused, who Was as active as ever in prosecuting vexatious" litigations, should have been allowed to escape justice so long. The man had been Tre firmly persisted in refusing to nmtke a ed on his trial time after time, but as
confession of his guilt, no sentence could be pronounced. It has at last been decided that the case should be dealt with under the statue which provided that where prisoner obstinately declines to make confession, he may be convicted of the crime upon the clear and convincing testi-many of a number of witnesses who give evidence of the facts of the case. In the present instance, in addition to the cullective testimony of the plaintiffs in the various suits, there is documentary evidence of the which have been produced and funnd tu be most' positive kind in the legal petitions
in the handwriting of the accused. The punishment for champerty is banishment
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.