English and the Chinese, he had dispensed with the execution of the law.”
It should here be observed, that the Chinese have no idea of making a distinction between accidental and premeditated murder; as was fatally exemplified some years ago, in the case of a poor gunner belonging to an Indiaman, who was given up, because the wad of a gun, fired by the command of an officer, happened to strike a native in a boat at some distance, and occasioned his death.
By the Chinese laws, if the person survives the accident forty days, and after that period dies, even in consequence of the same accident, yet it is not considered as murder. When any case of this kind occurs, it is best to secure the wounded Chinaman, and have him under the care of Europeans during that space of time; for the Chinese would otherwise, perhaps, bring some man who had died a natural death in the interval, and swear that it was the person who died of the accident, in hopes of extorting a sum of money. The boy alluded to above, notwithstanding his seeming convalescence, lingered about fifty days, and then expired. In these cases, the sentence of death, by the laws of China, is generally commuted for that of banishment into the wilds of Tartary. This court, however, on the boy’s decease, sent a message to Captain Dilkes, intimating that he might punish the seaman according to the laws of his own country; and consequently a British subject was thus preserved from an ignominious and unjust death, by a proper mode of interference.
Captain Dilkes appears to have returned to Europe soon after the above affair, since in the spring of 1801, we find him commanding the Raisonable, of 64 guns, in the expedition against Copenhagen, under Sir Hyde Parker[1]. On the renewal of the war, in 1803, he was appointed to the Salvador del Mundo, bearing the flag of the Port Admiral at Plymouth; where he continued until the autumn of the following year, when he was nominated Resident Commissioner at Jamaica, which we believe to have been his last public employment. His advancement to the rank of Rear-Admiral took place
