Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/458

 The Law of the Chinaman. out delay; and the unwary scion who is even hoodwinked into helping the dread motherin-law to end her days will incur the extreme penalty of slicing to pieces. " A life for a life " is a stern principle in Chinese law, and if a father murders a whole family his inno cent children may have to suffer. In grave cases of treason male relations are either decapitated or mutilated to prevent continu ance of the family. It is interesting to learn that biting to death and burying alive are by no means the worst forms of murder; in fact, one solicitions husband who cheerfully buried his wife alive at her request because she suffered so with her corns—no doubt an aggravated complaint among Celestials—re ceived a very mild sentence. Even a Celes tial Bluebeard who drove three wives to suicide, burnt a fourth with red hot irons, and cut a steak from a fifth to eat with his wine, was legally only liable to strangulation subject to revision; so a special decree had to be issued for his immediate decapitation. Why not slicing to pieces, we wonder. A good deal depends upon the kind of weapon used. A sharp instrument is worse than a ten-pound club, but " eye-outscooping," as yEschylus terms it, takes prece dence of either. To butt your enemy on the nose is an assault only, but it may involve bambooing and a year's hard labour. Punishments to fit the crimes arc very carefully arranged and classified. The se verest capital punishment is slicing to pieces and extinction of the family. It is called "lingering death," but in reality the third or fourth cut is made fatal. The punishment is really aimed at the offender's existence in the spirit world. In common with all Orientals, the Chinese believe that they in habit an ethereal body after death, and that this tenement can be injured by a sharp in strument. Hence the chopping up of the physical body so injures the doppcl-gängcr that he is unrecognizable even beyond the grave. This is a subtle refinement our crimi

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nal law has not yet attained to. The offender does not escape his posthumous disgrace by committing suicide; his corpse is sliced up just the same. When a merciful brother buried a matricide alive to evade the penalty, the court had him dug up and sliced. The feelings of departed spirits are also con sidered. Mrs. Wang slew a virtuous son who expressed his disapproval of her im proper tastes. Clearly the son could not wish his mother to be hanged, and so, out of respect for his feelings she was merely sent to Tartar slavery. It is further believed that the departed spirits subsist on the aroma of wine and pork offered by the sorrowing relatives. Hence, in order to stamp out a very perni cious entity, not only is the body sliced, but the relations, whose duty it is to sustain the spirit's life with these offerings, are exe cuted, or, if under age, emasculated. As a torture : the only legal instruments are a kind of " Boot " and a finger screw; their use is strictly regulated. Some illegal tortures are occasionally used as deterrents in cases of exceptional atrocity. In spite of the evils of the " responsible" system, the complications and injustices caused by fine distinctions, relationship, etc., and some undoubted absurdities, there is much to admire in the system as a whole. Mr. Alabaster declares that the Code is "infinitely more exact and satisfactory than our own system, and very far from being the barbarous, cruel abomination it is generally supposed to be;" it is inherently consistent, and capital sentences are, in the majority of cases commuted by the process of revision described. The cases quoted will certainly not convey the impression of even-handed justice, but some of the worst in the book have purposely been selected. It is in the very effort to combine law and justice that the immense number of distinctions are drawn which in many cases defeat the end in view. It is in the broad results, however, that the value of a system is proved, and we