Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1886-08-06

past, is even better illustrated by their
laws and by their social customs,
which, as We have seen, have been the
slow and determinate outgrowth of the
nature of the people through unnum-
bered ages.
The intent of the Chinese law is to
strike the innocent as we'll as the
guilty, and to punish the offender by
inhicting suffering, not only upon him,
but on all connected with him. A
person convicted of high treason is
condemned to a SLOW death, death
preceded by torture many times re-
peated; for executioners are skilled
in reviving the victim for renewed tor
ments. Not only the criminal, but his
father, grandfather, sons, grandsons,
paternal uncles and their sons, are
condemned to death, while all the male
relations under sixteen are subjected
to treatment too gross to be men,
toned here, and given to the great
mandarins for slaves. The female rel
atives of all ages are consigned to slav-
cry, and all the property is confiscated.
Notwithstanding these terrible penal
ties, no trial, in the proper sense of the
term, is afforded the culprit; his case
is heard without jury before man.
DARN, who is at liberty to hear or re-
ject as much OF the testimony as he
pleases; and although a rehearing may
be had at the instance of relatives, yet
no counsel can be heard, and even the
argument of the relatives is matter
of favor and not of right. The debt
ors of the Emperor, if shown or
claimed to be guilty of fraud, are
stranglcd, but if the non-payment be
due merely to misfortune, the Imperial
creditor confiscates their property, and
sells their wives and children to slav-
cry. A slave who strikes his master is
beheaded; if he strike with intent to
kill, he suffers death by torture; if he
accidently kill his master, he is inn
prisoned for a certain time, and then
strangled; ii he accidentally wound
him, he is banished to the distance of
three hundred miles, but not until he
has received one hundred blows. If
a slave is impudent to his master, he
is strangled; if to any of the relatives
tof iis master in the first degree, he is
banished for two years and receive fif-
ty strokes with the bamboo. The ma
ture Of this common method of pun
ishment in China should be under
stood. The victim is suspended from
a beam by means of a rope tied to his
wrists and feet, leaving his body bent in
the form of bow his flesh is torn to
tatters by executioners standing be-
meath. 1t is the common custom, af-
ter the prisoner has tainted, to restore
his strength by remedies, in order to
admit a repetition of the operation.
The extent to which the law, in other
words, the bamboo, is brought to bear
in all the relations of life, is shown by
the fact that when trader deliberately
plans to undersell his neighbors so that
they cannot dispose of their goods, he
is punished with forty strokes. Chi
nese marriages are not arranged by
the parties directly interested, but by
their relatives. If one of the family
recalcitrates after a betrothal has been
agreed upon, the head thereof receives
fifty strokes with the bamboo, and un-
der this legal process the wedding GER
emony takes place perforce.
But the intent and practice of Chinese
legislation do not stop with even this,
for wherever person observes line of
conduct that may he alleged as offend
ing propriety, even if there be no spec
ial infraction of any established enact
ments, he is liable to receive from forty
to eighty blows. These peculiarities
of Chinese jurisprudence readily ac-
count for the fact that all the man
darins speedily grow rich. Where tor
ture is the mildest form of punish
men, a due gradation must render the
death penalty frequent for faults con-
sidered to be of graver kind. About
a hundred years ago a subject ven-
tured the advice that the Emperor de-
clare his successor, for which heinous
offence he was put to death.
The Ming dynasty declared that pa
per money should be considered the
same as copper coin, and that whoever
demurred to this should be beheaded.
Up to the beginning of the present
century, death was the punishment of
natives who taught Europeans the
Chinese language, or who revealed to
foreigners the methods of Chinese
manufacture. During the inception
of the opium trade, the penalty of
death was put into effect to deter the
native population from purchasing or
dealing in the article. Before the pow
er of the western nations had made
itself so effectually felt in China, for
eigners penetrating to the interior
were beaten, starved, and finally be-
headed for their temerity.
A people living under such institu-
tions must necessarily be given over
to all the vices that form the common
heritage of slaves, at the same time
that their peculiar structure of society
secures to them many of the strength
ening attributes OF freedom. Out of a
condition of continual subsection to
physical force, and the fear of bodily
oud cpopn;o1 borr, hoyo hoa, Jo,,ol