prisoner was dead when the lid was removed. It should be borne in mind, however, that notwithstanding the shameful indignities sometimes practised in Chinese courts of law, Persia and Turkey are much more culpable in this respect. The legal punishments — imprisonment and torture are not accounted punishments at all! — will be named in the outline of the Penal Code. All the laws of the Chinese Empire are to be found in the remarkably simple and con cise Ta Tiing Leu Li,— " Statutes and Re scripts of the Great Pure Dynasty." There are dozens of volumes of the compact char acters. This is not a sealed book; every body who will take the trouble may refer to it. To each statute clauses are attached hav ing a force equal with that of the statute it self. But no authorized reports of cases and decisions, whether of the Supreme Court or of the Provincial Courts, are published for general use, although record of all such cases and decisions is kept in the courts where they are decided. Sir George Staunton's monu mental translated selections from the Laws is an encyclopaedic-looking volume which appeared at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Says the author in his preface : "When we turn from the ravings of the Zendavesta or the Puranas to the tone of sense and business in this Chinese collection, it is like passing from darkness to light; from the drivelings of dotage to the exercise of an improved understanding; and redundant and minute as these laws are in many particulars, we scarcely know an European code that is at once so copious and so consistent, or is nearly so freed from intricacy, bigotry and fiction. . . . The laws are divided into the hit, or fundamental laws, and lai, supplementary laws; the former are permanent; the latter, which are liable to revision every five years, are the ' modifications, extensions, and re strictions of the fundamental laws.'"
The main defects of the Penal Code appear to be that the subject has no specific liberty or rights. There are many vague and obso lete statutes for the mandarins to puzzle over or to construe broadly; and in the Code, too, there is plenty of opportunity for relief for people who want to get even with their neighbors. It is a bad policy for responsi bility to be laid on the officers of justice. In China there is a tendency to cover up crime; but it goes on, just the same. Wfiwgn so often prisoners are starved to death, the public naturally grows more and more callous. There is the case of a wretch who vas allowed to starve in his cangue, or wooden collar, while the citizens of Peking looked oh. Book I. of the Penal Code1 states that pres ent punishments are confined to flogging with the bamboo, banishment, and death by decapitation or strangulation. The ordinary instruments of punishment are the flat, pol ished piece of bamboo, the cangue or square wooden collar of thirty pounds' weight, the iron chain, seven feet long, of seven pounds' weight, manacles of wood for males only, and iron fetters. Great responsibility is laid upon the presiding magistrate. People think that a judge should be able to read the heart of the culprit; therefore confession is re garded as an understood thing. There is practically no more severe torture in China. There is much lenity in the Code, for the constructions put upon it are not always lit eral. Punishments are light during the ex cessive heat of summer. There is full and free pardon for prompt surrender and con fession. Of two or more offences, only the principal one draws down punishment. Ten heinous crimes are excepted from any gen eral act of grace : rebellion, destruction of imperial tombs, treachery to the State, par ricide, murder of three persons in one family, ' There is here given an abridgment from Giles's outline in his Historic China, and Other Sketches.
