THE FIVE LEGAL PUNISHMENTS.The five kinds of punishment mentioned in the code are from ten to fifty blows with the lesser bamboo, from fifty toone hundred with the greater, transportation, perpetual banishment, and death, each of them modified in various ways. The small bamboo weighs about two pounds, the larger two and two-thirds pounds. Public exposure in thekia, or cangue, is considered rather as a kind of censure or reprimand than a punishment, and carries no disgrace with it, nor comparatively much bodily suffering if the person be fed and screened from the sun. The frame weighs between twenty and thirty pounds, and is so made as to rest upon the shoulders without chafing the neck, but so broad as to prevent the person feeding himself. The name, residence, and offence of the delinquent are written upon it for the information of every passer-by, and a policeman is stationed over him to prevent escape. Branding is applied to deserters and banished persons. Imprisonment and fines are not regarded as legal punishments, but rather correctives; and flogging, as Le Comte says, “is never wanting, there being no condemnation in China without this previous disposition, so that it is unnecessary to mention it in their condemnation; this being always understood to be their first dish.” When a man is arrested he is effectually prevented from breaking loose by putting a chain around his neck and tying his hands.Mode of Exposure in the Cangue.Most punishments are redeemable by the payment of money if the criminal is under fifteen or over seventy years of age, and a table is given in the code for the guidance of the magistrate in such cases. An act of grace enables a criminal condemned even to capital punishment to redeem himself, if the offence be not one of wilful malignity; but better legislation would have shown the good effects of not making the punishments so severe. It is also ordered in Section XVIII., that “any offender under sentence of death for a crime not excluded from the contingent benefit of an act of grace, who shall have infirm parents or grandparents alive over seventy years of age, and no other male child over sixteen to support them, shall be recommended to the mercy of his Majesty; and if only condemned to banishment, shall receive one hundred blows and redeem himself by a fine.” Many atrocious laws may be forgiven for one such exhibition of regard for the care of decrepid parents. Few governments exhibit such opposing principles of actions as the Chinese: a strange blending of cruelty to prisoners with a maudlin consideration of their condition, and a constant effort to coax the people to obedience while exercising great severity upon individuals, are everywhere manifest. One who has lived in the country long, however, knows well that they are not to be held in check by rope-yarn laws or whimpering justices, and unless the rulers are a terror to evil-doers, the latter will soon get the upper hand. Dr. Field well considers this point in his interesting notes describing his visit to ayamunat Canton.[267]The general prosperity of the Empire proves in some measure the equity of its administration.CORRECTION OF MINOR OFFENCES.Banishment and slavery are punishments for minor official delinquencies, and few officers who live long in the Emperor’s employ do not take an involuntary journey to Mongolia, Turkestan, or elsewhere, in the course of their lives. The fates and conduct of banished criminals are widely unlike; some doggedly serve out their time, others try to ingratiate themselves with their masters in order to alleviate or shorten the time of service, while hundreds contrive to escape and return to their homes, though this subjects them to increased punishment. Persons banished for treason are severely dealt with if they return without leave, and those convicted of crime in theirplace of banishment are increasingly punished; one man was sentenced to be outlawed for an offence at his place of banishment, but seeing that his aged mother had no other support than his labor, the Emperor ordered that a small sum should be paid for her living out of the public treasury. Whipping a man through the streets as a public example to others is frequently practised upon persons detected in robbery, assault, or some other minor offences. The man is manacled, and one policeman goes before him carrying a tablet, on which are written his name, crime, and punishment, accompanied by another holding a gong. In some cases little sticks bearing flags are thrust through his ears, and the lictor appointed to oversee the fulfilment of the sentence follows the executioner, who strikes the criminal with his whip or rattan as the rap on the gong denotes that the appointed number is not yet complete.Publicly Whipping a Thief through the Streets.MANNER OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS.Decapitation and strangling are the legal modes of executing criminals, though Kí Kung having taken several incendiaries at Canton, in 1843, who were convicted of firing the city for purposes of plunder, starved them to death in the public squares ofthe city. The least disgraceful mode of execution is strangulation, which is performed by tying a man to a post and tightening the cord which goes round his neck by a winch; the infliction is very speedy, and apparently less painful than hanging. The least crime for which death is awarded appears to be a third and aggravated theft, and defacing the branding inflicted for former offences. Decollation is considered more disgraceful than strangling, owing to the dislike the Chinese have of dissevering the bodies which their parents gave them entire. There are two modes of decapitation, that of simple decollation being considered, again, as less disgraceful than being “cut into ten thousand pieces,” as the phraseling chihhas been rendered. The military officer who superintends the execution is attended by a guard, to keep the populace from crowding upon the limits and prevent resistance on the part of the prisoners. The bodies are given up to the friends, except when the head is exposed as a warning in a cage where the crime was committed. If no one is present to claim the corpse it is buried in the public pit. The criminals are generally so far exhausted that they make no resistance, and submit to their fate without a groan—much more, without a dying speech to the spectators. In ordinary cases the executions are postponed until the autumnal assize, when the Emperor revises and confirms the sentences of the provincial governors; criminals guilty of extraordinary offences, as robbery attended with murder, arson, rape, breaking into fortifications, highway robbery, and piracy, may be immediately beheaded without reference to court, and as the expense of maintenance and want of prison room are both to be considered, it is the fact that criminals condemned for one or other of these crimes comprise the greater part of the unreferred executions in the provinces.It is impossible to ascertain the number of persons executed in China, for the life of a condemned criminal is thought little of; in the court circular it is merely reported that “the execution of the criminals was completed,” without mentioning their crimes, residences, or names. At the autumnal revises at Peking the number sentenced is given in theGazette; 935 were sentenced in 1817, of which 133 were from the province ofKwangtung; in 1826 there were 581; in 1828 the number was 789, and in the next year 579 names were marked off, none of whose crimes, it is inferrible, are included in the list of offences mentioned above. The condemnations are sent from the capital by express, and the executions take place immediately. Most of the persons condemned in a province are executed in its capital, and to hear of the death of a score or more of felons on a single day is no uncommon thing. The trials are more speedy than comports with our notions of justice, and the executions are performed in the most summary manner. It is reported on one occasion that the governor-general of Canton ascended his judgment-seat, examined three prisoners brought before him, and having found them guilty, condemned them, asked himself for the death-warrant (for he temporarily filled the office of governor), and, having received it, had the three men carried away in about two hours after they were first brought before him. A few days after he granted the warrant to execute a hundred bandits in prison. During the terrible rebellion in Kwangtung, in 1854-55, the prisoners taken by the Imperialists were usually transported to Canton for execution. In a space of fourteen months, up to January, 1856, about eighty-three thousand malefactors suffered death in that city alone, besides those who died in confinement; these men were arrested and delivered to execution by their countrymen, who had suffered untold miseries through their sedition and rapine.When taken to execution the prisoners are clothed in clean clothes.[268]A military officer is present, and the criminals are brought on the ground in hod-like baskets hanging from a pole borne of two, or in cages, and are obliged to kneel toward the Emperor’s residence, or toward the death-warrant, which indicates his presence, as if thanking their sovereign for his care. The list is read aloud and compared with the tickets on the prisoners; as they kneel, a lictor seizes their pinioned hands and jerks them upward so that the head is pushed down horizontally, and a single down stroke with the heavy hanger seversit from the neck. In the slow and ignominious execution, orling chih, the criminal is tied to a cross and hacked to pieces; the executioner is nevertheless often hired to give the coup-de-grace at the first blow. It is not uncommon for him to cut out the gall-bladder of notorious robbers and sell it, to be eaten as a specific for courage. There is an official executioner besides the real one, the latter being sometimes a criminal taken out of the prisons.ATROCIOUS MANAGEMENT OF PRISONS.Probably the number of persons who suffer by the sword of the executioner is not one-half of those who die from the effects of torture and privations in prisons. Not much is known of the internal arrangement of thehells, as prisons are called; they seem to be managed with a degree of kindness and attention to the comfort of the prisoners, so far as the intentions of government are concerned, but the cruelties of the turnkeys and older prisoners to exact money from the new comers are terrible. In Canton there are jails in the city under the control of four different officers, the largest covering about an acre, and capable of holding upward of five hundred prisoners. Since it is the practice of distant magistrates to send their worst prisoners up to the capital, these jails are not large enough, and jail distempers arise from over-crowding; two hundred deaths were reported in 1826 from this and other causes, and one hundred and seventeen cases in 1831. Private jails were hired to accommodate the number, and one governor reports having found twenty-two such places in Canton where every kind of cruelty was practised. The witnesses and accusers concerned in appellate causes had, he says, also been brought up to the city and imprisoned along with the guilty party, where they were kept months without any just reason. In one case, where a defendant and plaintiff were imprisoned together, the accuser fell upon the other and murdered him. Sometimes the officer is unable from press of business to attend to a case, and confines all the principals and witnesses concerned until he can examine them, but the government takes no means to provide for them during the interval, and many of the poorer ones die. No security or bail is obtainable on the word of a witness or his friends, so that if unable to fee the jailers he is in nearly as bad a case as thecriminal. Extending bail to an accused criminal is nearly unknown, but female prisoners are put in charge of their husbands or parents, who are held responsible for their appearance. The constant succession of criminals in the provincial head prison renders the posts of jailers and turnkeys very lucrative. The letters of the Roman Catholic missionaries from China during the last century, found in theLettres ÉdifiantesandAnnales de la Foi, contain many sad pictures of the miseries of prison life there.The prisons are arranged somewhat on the plan of a large stable, having an open central court occupying nearly one-fourth of the area, and small cribs or stalls covered by a roof extending nearly around it, so contrived that each company of prisoners shall be separated from its neighbors on either side night and day, though more by night than by day. The prisoners cook for themselves in the court, and are secured by manacles and gyves, and a chain joining the hands to the neck; one hand is liberated in the daytime in order to allow them to take care of themselves. Heinous criminals are more heavily ironed, and those in the prisons attached to the judge’s office are worse treated than the others. Each criminal should receive a daily ration of two pounds of rice, and about two cents with which to buy fuel, but the jailer starves them on half this allowance if they are unable to fee him; clothing is also scantily provided, but those who have money can procure almost every convenience. Each crib full of criminals is under the control of a turnkey, who with a few old offenders spends much time torturing newly arrived persons to force money from them, by which many lose their lives, and all suffer far more in this manner than they do from the officers of government. Well may the people call their prisons hells, and say, when a man falls into the clutches of the jailers or police, “the flesh is under the cleaver.”There are many processes for the recovery of debts and fulfilment of contracts, some legal and others customary, the latter depending upon many circumstances irrelevant to the merits of the case. The law allows that debtors be punished by bambooing according to the amount of the debt. A creditor often resorts to illegal means to recover his claim, which give rise tomany excesses; sometimes he quarters himself upon the debtor’s family or premises, at others seizes him or some of his family and keeps them prisoners, and, in extreme cases, sells them. Unscrupulous debtors are equally skilful and violent in eluding, cheating, and resisting their incensed creditors, according as they have the power. They are liable, when three months have expired after the stipulated time of payment, to be bambooed, and their property attached. In most cases, however, disputes of this sort are settled without recourse to government, and if the debtor is really without property, he is not imprisoned till he can procure it. The effects of absconding debtors are seized and divided by those who can get them. Long experience, moreover, of each other’s characters has taught them, in contracting debts, to have some security at the outset, and therefore in settling up there is not so much loss as might be supposed considering the difficulty of collecting debts. Accusations for libel, slander, breach of marriage contract, and other civil or less criminal offences are not all brought before the authorities, but are settled by force or arbitration among the people themselves and their elders.The nominal salaries of Chinese officers have already been stated (p.294). It is a common opinion among the people that on an average they receive about ten times their salaries; in some cases they pay thirty, forty and more thousand dollars beforehand for the situation. One encouragement to the harassing vexations of the official secretaries and police is the dislike of the people to carry their cases before officers who they know are almost compelled to fleece and peel them; they think it cheaper and safer to bear a small exaction from an underling than run the risk of a greater from his master.If the preventives against popular violence which the supreme government has placed around itself could be strengthened by an efficient military force, its power would be well secured indeed; but then, as in Russia, it would probably become, by degrees, an intolerable tyranny. The troops are, in fact, everywhere present, ostensibly to support the laws, protect the innocent, and punish the guilty; such of them as are employed by the authorities as guards and policemen are, on thewhole, efficient and courteous, though miserably paid, while the regiments in garrison are contemptible to both friend and foe.The efficacy of the system of checks upon the high courts and provincial officers is increased by their intrigues and conflicting ambition, and long experience has shown that the Emperor’s power has little to fear from proconsular rebellion. The inefficiency of the army is a serious evil to the people in one respect, for more power in that arm would repress banditti and pirates; while the sober part of the community would coöperate in a hearty effort to quell them. The greatest difficulty the Emperor finds in upholding his authority lies in the general want of integrity in the officers he employs; good laws may be made, but he has few upright agents to execute them. This has been abundantly manifested in the laws against opium and gambling; no one could be found to carry them into execution, though everybody assented to their propriety.LATENT INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION.The chief security on the side of the people against an unmitigated oppression such as now exists in Turkey, besides those already pointed out, lies as much as anywhere in their general intelligence of the true principles on which the government is founded and should be executed. With public opinion on its side the government is a strong one, but none is less able to execute its designs when it runs counter to that opinion, although those designs may be excellent and well intended. Elements of discord are found in the social system which would soon effect its ruin were they not counteracted by other influences, and the body politic goes on like a heavy, shackly, lumbering van, which every moment threatens a crashing, crumbling fall, yet goes on still tottering, owing to the original goodness of its construction. From the enormous population of this ancient van, it is evident that any attempt to remodel it must seriously affect one or the other of its parts, and that when once upset it may be impossible to reconstruct it in its original form. There is encouragement to hope that the general intelligence and shrewdness of the government and people of China, their language, institutions, industry, and love of peace, will all act as powerful conservative influences in working out the changes which cannot now be long delayed; and that she willmaintain her unity and industry while going through a thorough reform of her political, social, and religious systems.It is very difficult to convey to the reader a fair view of the administration of the laws in China. Notwithstanding the cruelty of officers to the criminals before them, they are not all to be considered as tyrants; because insurrections arise, attended with great loss of life, it must not be supposed that society is everywhere disorganized; the Chinese are so prone to falsify that it is difficult to ascertain the truth, yet it must not be inferred that every sentence is a lie; selfishness is a prime motive for their actions, yet charity, kindness, filial affection, and the unbought courtesies of life still exist among them. Although there is an appalling amount of evil and crime in every shape, it is mixed with some redeeming traits; and in China, as elsewhere, good and bad are intermingled. Some of the evils in the social system arise from the operation of the principles of mutual responsibility, while this very feature produces sundry good effects in restraining people who have no higher motive than the fear of injuring the innocent. We hear so much of the shocking cruelties of courts and prisons that the vast number of cases before the bench are all supposed to exhibit the same fatiguing reiteration of suffering, injustice, bribery, and cruelty. One must live in the country to see how the antagonistic principles found in Chinese society act and react upon each other, and are affected by the wicked passions of the heart. Officers and people are bad almost beyond belief to one conversant only with the courtesy, justice, purity, and sincerity of Christian governments and society; and yet we think they are not as bad as the old Greeks and Romans, and have no more injustice or torture in their courts, nor impurity or mendacity in their lives. As in our own land we are apt to forget that the recitals of crimes and outrages which the daily papers bring before our eyes furnish no index of the general condition of society, so in China, where that condition is immeasurably worse, we must be mindful that this is likewise true.
THE FIVE LEGAL PUNISHMENTS.
The five kinds of punishment mentioned in the code are from ten to fifty blows with the lesser bamboo, from fifty toone hundred with the greater, transportation, perpetual banishment, and death, each of them modified in various ways. The small bamboo weighs about two pounds, the larger two and two-thirds pounds. Public exposure in thekia, or cangue, is considered rather as a kind of censure or reprimand than a punishment, and carries no disgrace with it, nor comparatively much bodily suffering if the person be fed and screened from the sun. The frame weighs between twenty and thirty pounds, and is so made as to rest upon the shoulders without chafing the neck, but so broad as to prevent the person feeding himself. The name, residence, and offence of the delinquent are written upon it for the information of every passer-by, and a policeman is stationed over him to prevent escape. Branding is applied to deserters and banished persons. Imprisonment and fines are not regarded as legal punishments, but rather correctives; and flogging, as Le Comte says, “is never wanting, there being no condemnation in China without this previous disposition, so that it is unnecessary to mention it in their condemnation; this being always understood to be their first dish.” When a man is arrested he is effectually prevented from breaking loose by putting a chain around his neck and tying his hands.
Mode of Exposure in the Cangue.
Mode of Exposure in the Cangue.
Mode of Exposure in the Cangue.
Most punishments are redeemable by the payment of money if the criminal is under fifteen or over seventy years of age, and a table is given in the code for the guidance of the magistrate in such cases. An act of grace enables a criminal condemned even to capital punishment to redeem himself, if the offence be not one of wilful malignity; but better legislation would have shown the good effects of not making the punishments so severe. It is also ordered in Section XVIII., that “any offender under sentence of death for a crime not excluded from the contingent benefit of an act of grace, who shall have infirm parents or grandparents alive over seventy years of age, and no other male child over sixteen to support them, shall be recommended to the mercy of his Majesty; and if only condemned to banishment, shall receive one hundred blows and redeem himself by a fine.” Many atrocious laws may be forgiven for one such exhibition of regard for the care of decrepid parents. Few governments exhibit such opposing principles of actions as the Chinese: a strange blending of cruelty to prisoners with a maudlin consideration of their condition, and a constant effort to coax the people to obedience while exercising great severity upon individuals, are everywhere manifest. One who has lived in the country long, however, knows well that they are not to be held in check by rope-yarn laws or whimpering justices, and unless the rulers are a terror to evil-doers, the latter will soon get the upper hand. Dr. Field well considers this point in his interesting notes describing his visit to ayamunat Canton.[267]The general prosperity of the Empire proves in some measure the equity of its administration.
CORRECTION OF MINOR OFFENCES.
Banishment and slavery are punishments for minor official delinquencies, and few officers who live long in the Emperor’s employ do not take an involuntary journey to Mongolia, Turkestan, or elsewhere, in the course of their lives. The fates and conduct of banished criminals are widely unlike; some doggedly serve out their time, others try to ingratiate themselves with their masters in order to alleviate or shorten the time of service, while hundreds contrive to escape and return to their homes, though this subjects them to increased punishment. Persons banished for treason are severely dealt with if they return without leave, and those convicted of crime in theirplace of banishment are increasingly punished; one man was sentenced to be outlawed for an offence at his place of banishment, but seeing that his aged mother had no other support than his labor, the Emperor ordered that a small sum should be paid for her living out of the public treasury. Whipping a man through the streets as a public example to others is frequently practised upon persons detected in robbery, assault, or some other minor offences. The man is manacled, and one policeman goes before him carrying a tablet, on which are written his name, crime, and punishment, accompanied by another holding a gong. In some cases little sticks bearing flags are thrust through his ears, and the lictor appointed to oversee the fulfilment of the sentence follows the executioner, who strikes the criminal with his whip or rattan as the rap on the gong denotes that the appointed number is not yet complete.
Publicly Whipping a Thief through the Streets.
Publicly Whipping a Thief through the Streets.
Publicly Whipping a Thief through the Streets.
MANNER OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS.
Decapitation and strangling are the legal modes of executing criminals, though Kí Kung having taken several incendiaries at Canton, in 1843, who were convicted of firing the city for purposes of plunder, starved them to death in the public squares ofthe city. The least disgraceful mode of execution is strangulation, which is performed by tying a man to a post and tightening the cord which goes round his neck by a winch; the infliction is very speedy, and apparently less painful than hanging. The least crime for which death is awarded appears to be a third and aggravated theft, and defacing the branding inflicted for former offences. Decollation is considered more disgraceful than strangling, owing to the dislike the Chinese have of dissevering the bodies which their parents gave them entire. There are two modes of decapitation, that of simple decollation being considered, again, as less disgraceful than being “cut into ten thousand pieces,” as the phraseling chihhas been rendered. The military officer who superintends the execution is attended by a guard, to keep the populace from crowding upon the limits and prevent resistance on the part of the prisoners. The bodies are given up to the friends, except when the head is exposed as a warning in a cage where the crime was committed. If no one is present to claim the corpse it is buried in the public pit. The criminals are generally so far exhausted that they make no resistance, and submit to their fate without a groan—much more, without a dying speech to the spectators. In ordinary cases the executions are postponed until the autumnal assize, when the Emperor revises and confirms the sentences of the provincial governors; criminals guilty of extraordinary offences, as robbery attended with murder, arson, rape, breaking into fortifications, highway robbery, and piracy, may be immediately beheaded without reference to court, and as the expense of maintenance and want of prison room are both to be considered, it is the fact that criminals condemned for one or other of these crimes comprise the greater part of the unreferred executions in the provinces.
It is impossible to ascertain the number of persons executed in China, for the life of a condemned criminal is thought little of; in the court circular it is merely reported that “the execution of the criminals was completed,” without mentioning their crimes, residences, or names. At the autumnal revises at Peking the number sentenced is given in theGazette; 935 were sentenced in 1817, of which 133 were from the province ofKwangtung; in 1826 there were 581; in 1828 the number was 789, and in the next year 579 names were marked off, none of whose crimes, it is inferrible, are included in the list of offences mentioned above. The condemnations are sent from the capital by express, and the executions take place immediately. Most of the persons condemned in a province are executed in its capital, and to hear of the death of a score or more of felons on a single day is no uncommon thing. The trials are more speedy than comports with our notions of justice, and the executions are performed in the most summary manner. It is reported on one occasion that the governor-general of Canton ascended his judgment-seat, examined three prisoners brought before him, and having found them guilty, condemned them, asked himself for the death-warrant (for he temporarily filled the office of governor), and, having received it, had the three men carried away in about two hours after they were first brought before him. A few days after he granted the warrant to execute a hundred bandits in prison. During the terrible rebellion in Kwangtung, in 1854-55, the prisoners taken by the Imperialists were usually transported to Canton for execution. In a space of fourteen months, up to January, 1856, about eighty-three thousand malefactors suffered death in that city alone, besides those who died in confinement; these men were arrested and delivered to execution by their countrymen, who had suffered untold miseries through their sedition and rapine.
When taken to execution the prisoners are clothed in clean clothes.[268]A military officer is present, and the criminals are brought on the ground in hod-like baskets hanging from a pole borne of two, or in cages, and are obliged to kneel toward the Emperor’s residence, or toward the death-warrant, which indicates his presence, as if thanking their sovereign for his care. The list is read aloud and compared with the tickets on the prisoners; as they kneel, a lictor seizes their pinioned hands and jerks them upward so that the head is pushed down horizontally, and a single down stroke with the heavy hanger seversit from the neck. In the slow and ignominious execution, orling chih, the criminal is tied to a cross and hacked to pieces; the executioner is nevertheless often hired to give the coup-de-grace at the first blow. It is not uncommon for him to cut out the gall-bladder of notorious robbers and sell it, to be eaten as a specific for courage. There is an official executioner besides the real one, the latter being sometimes a criminal taken out of the prisons.
ATROCIOUS MANAGEMENT OF PRISONS.
Probably the number of persons who suffer by the sword of the executioner is not one-half of those who die from the effects of torture and privations in prisons. Not much is known of the internal arrangement of thehells, as prisons are called; they seem to be managed with a degree of kindness and attention to the comfort of the prisoners, so far as the intentions of government are concerned, but the cruelties of the turnkeys and older prisoners to exact money from the new comers are terrible. In Canton there are jails in the city under the control of four different officers, the largest covering about an acre, and capable of holding upward of five hundred prisoners. Since it is the practice of distant magistrates to send their worst prisoners up to the capital, these jails are not large enough, and jail distempers arise from over-crowding; two hundred deaths were reported in 1826 from this and other causes, and one hundred and seventeen cases in 1831. Private jails were hired to accommodate the number, and one governor reports having found twenty-two such places in Canton where every kind of cruelty was practised. The witnesses and accusers concerned in appellate causes had, he says, also been brought up to the city and imprisoned along with the guilty party, where they were kept months without any just reason. In one case, where a defendant and plaintiff were imprisoned together, the accuser fell upon the other and murdered him. Sometimes the officer is unable from press of business to attend to a case, and confines all the principals and witnesses concerned until he can examine them, but the government takes no means to provide for them during the interval, and many of the poorer ones die. No security or bail is obtainable on the word of a witness or his friends, so that if unable to fee the jailers he is in nearly as bad a case as thecriminal. Extending bail to an accused criminal is nearly unknown, but female prisoners are put in charge of their husbands or parents, who are held responsible for their appearance. The constant succession of criminals in the provincial head prison renders the posts of jailers and turnkeys very lucrative. The letters of the Roman Catholic missionaries from China during the last century, found in theLettres ÉdifiantesandAnnales de la Foi, contain many sad pictures of the miseries of prison life there.
The prisons are arranged somewhat on the plan of a large stable, having an open central court occupying nearly one-fourth of the area, and small cribs or stalls covered by a roof extending nearly around it, so contrived that each company of prisoners shall be separated from its neighbors on either side night and day, though more by night than by day. The prisoners cook for themselves in the court, and are secured by manacles and gyves, and a chain joining the hands to the neck; one hand is liberated in the daytime in order to allow them to take care of themselves. Heinous criminals are more heavily ironed, and those in the prisons attached to the judge’s office are worse treated than the others. Each criminal should receive a daily ration of two pounds of rice, and about two cents with which to buy fuel, but the jailer starves them on half this allowance if they are unable to fee him; clothing is also scantily provided, but those who have money can procure almost every convenience. Each crib full of criminals is under the control of a turnkey, who with a few old offenders spends much time torturing newly arrived persons to force money from them, by which many lose their lives, and all suffer far more in this manner than they do from the officers of government. Well may the people call their prisons hells, and say, when a man falls into the clutches of the jailers or police, “the flesh is under the cleaver.”
There are many processes for the recovery of debts and fulfilment of contracts, some legal and others customary, the latter depending upon many circumstances irrelevant to the merits of the case. The law allows that debtors be punished by bambooing according to the amount of the debt. A creditor often resorts to illegal means to recover his claim, which give rise tomany excesses; sometimes he quarters himself upon the debtor’s family or premises, at others seizes him or some of his family and keeps them prisoners, and, in extreme cases, sells them. Unscrupulous debtors are equally skilful and violent in eluding, cheating, and resisting their incensed creditors, according as they have the power. They are liable, when three months have expired after the stipulated time of payment, to be bambooed, and their property attached. In most cases, however, disputes of this sort are settled without recourse to government, and if the debtor is really without property, he is not imprisoned till he can procure it. The effects of absconding debtors are seized and divided by those who can get them. Long experience, moreover, of each other’s characters has taught them, in contracting debts, to have some security at the outset, and therefore in settling up there is not so much loss as might be supposed considering the difficulty of collecting debts. Accusations for libel, slander, breach of marriage contract, and other civil or less criminal offences are not all brought before the authorities, but are settled by force or arbitration among the people themselves and their elders.
The nominal salaries of Chinese officers have already been stated (p.294). It is a common opinion among the people that on an average they receive about ten times their salaries; in some cases they pay thirty, forty and more thousand dollars beforehand for the situation. One encouragement to the harassing vexations of the official secretaries and police is the dislike of the people to carry their cases before officers who they know are almost compelled to fleece and peel them; they think it cheaper and safer to bear a small exaction from an underling than run the risk of a greater from his master.
If the preventives against popular violence which the supreme government has placed around itself could be strengthened by an efficient military force, its power would be well secured indeed; but then, as in Russia, it would probably become, by degrees, an intolerable tyranny. The troops are, in fact, everywhere present, ostensibly to support the laws, protect the innocent, and punish the guilty; such of them as are employed by the authorities as guards and policemen are, on thewhole, efficient and courteous, though miserably paid, while the regiments in garrison are contemptible to both friend and foe.
The efficacy of the system of checks upon the high courts and provincial officers is increased by their intrigues and conflicting ambition, and long experience has shown that the Emperor’s power has little to fear from proconsular rebellion. The inefficiency of the army is a serious evil to the people in one respect, for more power in that arm would repress banditti and pirates; while the sober part of the community would coöperate in a hearty effort to quell them. The greatest difficulty the Emperor finds in upholding his authority lies in the general want of integrity in the officers he employs; good laws may be made, but he has few upright agents to execute them. This has been abundantly manifested in the laws against opium and gambling; no one could be found to carry them into execution, though everybody assented to their propriety.
LATENT INFLUENCE OF PUBLIC OPINION.
The chief security on the side of the people against an unmitigated oppression such as now exists in Turkey, besides those already pointed out, lies as much as anywhere in their general intelligence of the true principles on which the government is founded and should be executed. With public opinion on its side the government is a strong one, but none is less able to execute its designs when it runs counter to that opinion, although those designs may be excellent and well intended. Elements of discord are found in the social system which would soon effect its ruin were they not counteracted by other influences, and the body politic goes on like a heavy, shackly, lumbering van, which every moment threatens a crashing, crumbling fall, yet goes on still tottering, owing to the original goodness of its construction. From the enormous population of this ancient van, it is evident that any attempt to remodel it must seriously affect one or the other of its parts, and that when once upset it may be impossible to reconstruct it in its original form. There is encouragement to hope that the general intelligence and shrewdness of the government and people of China, their language, institutions, industry, and love of peace, will all act as powerful conservative influences in working out the changes which cannot now be long delayed; and that she willmaintain her unity and industry while going through a thorough reform of her political, social, and religious systems.
It is very difficult to convey to the reader a fair view of the administration of the laws in China. Notwithstanding the cruelty of officers to the criminals before them, they are not all to be considered as tyrants; because insurrections arise, attended with great loss of life, it must not be supposed that society is everywhere disorganized; the Chinese are so prone to falsify that it is difficult to ascertain the truth, yet it must not be inferred that every sentence is a lie; selfishness is a prime motive for their actions, yet charity, kindness, filial affection, and the unbought courtesies of life still exist among them. Although there is an appalling amount of evil and crime in every shape, it is mixed with some redeeming traits; and in China, as elsewhere, good and bad are intermingled. Some of the evils in the social system arise from the operation of the principles of mutual responsibility, while this very feature produces sundry good effects in restraining people who have no higher motive than the fear of injuring the innocent. We hear so much of the shocking cruelties of courts and prisons that the vast number of cases before the bench are all supposed to exhibit the same fatiguing reiteration of suffering, injustice, bribery, and cruelty. One must live in the country to see how the antagonistic principles found in Chinese society act and react upon each other, and are affected by the wicked passions of the heart. Officers and people are bad almost beyond belief to one conversant only with the courtesy, justice, purity, and sincerity of Christian governments and society; and yet we think they are not as bad as the old Greeks and Romans, and have no more injustice or torture in their courts, nor impurity or mendacity in their lives. As in our own land we are apt to forget that the recitals of crimes and outrages which the daily papers bring before our eyes furnish no index of the general condition of society, so in China, where that condition is immeasurably worse, we must be mindful that this is likewise true.