0th April. Tae Mixed Court magistrate passed sentence yesterday on Sou Kwei-too, the tailor who wilfully caused the burning of his own shop on the morning of the 22nd instant, with the intention of securing the excessive sum for which he had insured his stock in trade, and. the sentence was twelve months' imprisonment with hard labour. A more grossly inadequate sentence was seldom given. There are many cases of arson in Shanghai which go unpunished because proof is so difficult, but. this case was clearly proved to the satisfaction of the magistrate and the assessor, and it was also clearly proved that what little stock there was.in the shop was enormously over-insured, The prisoner absented himself on the night of the fire, but left his servants and assistants to their fate. As it happened, there was no loss of life, but the prisoner did nothing to prevent any possible fatality. It is a significant fact, that though the tailors of Shanghai generally took up his case at. first, they repudiated him altogether as soon as they had made enquiries about him, nor was any reason shown why a severe sentence should not have been passed on him; such a sentence as might have operated asa deterrent. Arson often includes murder, and where no lives are lost it is as a crime only second to murder in heinousness, and to visit it with one year's imprisonment is a mockery of justice. By Chinese law a man convicted of arson has all his property confiscated to indemnify his neighbours who have suffered by his actions, and is banished to a distance of three thousand li, while if any lives have been lost in the fire, he is decapitated. It is reported that the prisoner in this case being a Ningpo man, some of the prominent Ningpo men in Shanghai interceded successfully for him with the Taotai, by whose directions the sentence was reduced to one year; if this be so, it isa scandal which ought to be enquired into.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.