maximum of sixty blows. But should the creditor be dissatisfied with this mild, vindictive sentence, and attempt to right his own wrong by forcibly seizing the cattle, furniture, or other property of the debtor, he becomes liable to a penalty of eighty blows (redeemable, however, by fine), or if the distress exceeds the value of the debt, to such further punishment, proportioned to the amount of the excess, as the law regarding pecuniary malversation provides. Further, if the creditor accepts the wives or children of the debtor in pledge for payment, he receives one hundred blows; and if he carries off such members of the debtor's family by force, the penalty is two degrees more severe, and the debt is cancelled. The repayment of a loan is the only kind of pecuniary liability which the Government attempts to enforce; and when the reluctance of the Chinese to appear in a police court even in the character of plaintiff is borne in mind, it will be seen that, even in this case, creditors are not likely to benefit much in practice by the protection which the law accords them. There is nothing in the Lu about the contemporary custom of collecting debts by the New Year; the absence of anything like a bankruptcy law and the predominance of small transactions must have contributed to make cash payments the rule; and where this is the case, and the systematic giving of credit is unknown, a custom would easily grow up of allowing accidental delays of payment to be overlooked if cash were forthcoming within the twelvemonth. The New Year is a holiday time, and the very poorest indulge in some kind of festivities. Nothing but the most abject poverty can prevent a Chinese family from having some provision for enjoyment made at this time of year; and as nothing but absolute inability can excuse the non-payment of debts to neighbours at that season, the Chinaman must either pay his debts or go without festivities under pain of passing for a swindler. Hence the most frantic efforts are made to borrow money, or goods which may be pawned for money, to pay whatever is left of the year's debts, though after the sun has risen on New Year's Day, there is no obligation to discharge them, and no allusion is permitted to be made to them by the creditor. CHAPTER XXXII. MISCELLANEOUS LAWS; ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. MOST of the directions to judges, contained in the code, as to circumstances to be considered in mitigation of sentences, and the judicial principles expressed or implied in the prescribed modes of estimating responsibility, are such as would approve themselves to humane and enlightened lawyers. The meaning and purpose of the statutes is always clear, and the precision with which they are drafted is sufficient for the purpose they have to serve. The magistrates are required to give equitable judgments, and decisions in accordance with the spirit and letter of the code; and as there are no professional lawyers, authorized to sustain inequitable claims by a strict interpretation of the letter of isolated clauses, it is unnecessary to multiply explanatory provisos, which themselves multiply the possibilities of dispute. By a counterpart to the English law of "Maintenance," it is illegal even for non-professional persons to assist or advise in the suits of others, and a penalty is imposed in the case of those who receive money or any other inducement for doing so. The only exception is that made in the case of a poor and ignorant person, who does not know how to state his case properly before the tribunals; any one who "advises and instructs such person rightly and truly how to act," or "draws up an information for him in the legal and customary manner" without misrepresenting the facts of the case, is exempt from blame or punishment.1 The code aims at obtaining a confession of the justice of the sentence in all serious cases before it is executed. If a prisoner sentenced to banishment or death refuses to admit his guilt, the protest "shall be made the ground of another and more particular investigation," 2 and the magistrate who refuses to receive such a protest is punished. The innocent can thus secure a second hearing, while the guilty are not likely to risk an aggravation of their sentence by a vexatious appeal. In several cases the li or statutes of the present dynasty mitigate the penalties laid down by the older law, while the blows imposed as punishment for all minor offences can be compounded for a small fine. Women are only allowed to be imprisoned upon capital charges, and remain otherwise in the custody of their relatives, and nearly all their offences are redeemable by fine. Ta Tsing lu li, sect. 341. 2 lb., sect. 416. One or two entirely civilized and humane provisions are, by a curious arrangement of the code, hidden away, under the head of miscellaneous offences, in the division devoted to criminal laws. It is melancholy to think of what art and science have lost in Egypt, which might all have been saved if the monuments of that country had been under the protection of the enlightened Chinese code, by which "Any person who is guilty of defacing or destroying any of the public monuments and buildings, which have been erected in honour and commemoration of particular individuals and events; and any person who defaces or destroys the inscribed tablets upon, or within the same, shall be punished with 100 blows and perpetual banishment to the distance of 3,000 li; the offender in these cases shall be moreover compelled to repair the damage"-a provision which the character of Chinese monuments renders less impossible than such atonement would be elsewhere. Even now, if one destructive tourist in Egypt were allowed to "eat stick " for his sins, the work of demolition might be arrested. The next clause carries us back to the days of Chow,2 and is only placed among offences because a penalty is attached to disregard of it. By this private soldiers attached to Government stations, and labourers employed in public works are entitled in illness and infirmity to receive medical assistance and treatment free from the local medical officer. It will be remembered that a system of Government dispensaries was introduced by the Mongols, and though it has unfortunately fallen into disuse, it is worthy of note that the Government feels itself responsible for the labourers temporarily employed in its service, as well as for the regular civil and military employees of the State. And as the liberality of the Government does not go beyond what is considered incumbent upon private employers, we may infer that it is usual for the latter also to give such assistance when necessary to their workpeople. - The section concerning public ways provides briefly for the maintenance and repair of roads, bridges, and embankments by the local authorities, and includes a law against encroachments, which shows how long China has been both a crowded country, and one with sound ideas of sanitation and decorum. "Any person who encroaches upon the spaces allotted to public streets, squares, highways, or passages of any kind,—that is to say, who appropriates a part of any such space to his own use, by cultivating it or building on it, shall be punished with sixty blows, and obliged to level and restore the ground to its original state. Any person who opens a passage through the wall of his house to carry off filth or ordure into the streets or highways, shall be punished with forty blows; but in the case of a passage being opened to carry off water only, no penalty or punishment shall be inflicted." China has no drains, but the demand for refuse of all kinds for use as manure causes the streets to be efficiently scavenged by private enterprise, and the immunity of the people from epidemics is no doubt largely due to the absence both of open drains and of sewer gas. Not the least curious or characteristic feature in the code is the juxta1 Ta Tsing lu li, cap. ccclxxvi. p. 411. 2 Ante, p. 224 and n. position of passages like the above, which suggest quite modern problems, and others which carry us back to the Shoo-King itself and to the most primitive arrangements for the care of the royal cattle. In the fourth book of the Hia Dynasty, the composition of which is attributed to that of Shang, the "statutes of government" are referred to as ordaining that if the State astronomers "anticipate the time" or fall behind it, they are to be put to death without mercy. From that day to this, no doubt the laws of the Middle Kingdom have always contained an article upon "Neglect to observe and note the celestial appearances,"1 such as eclipses, meteors, comets, and the like, and the astronomical board is still required to "mark the times" of these phenomena and report them to the emperor, though the penalty for neglect has been reduced, with the progress of humanity, from "death without mercy" to sixty blows. The section concerning responsibility for the care of Government cattle has been referred to already. One division of the code is devoted to what are called military laws, and one book in this division deals with military horses and cattle. "Every officer in charge of the rearing and feeding of the horses, horned cattle, camels, mules, asses, and sheep belonging to the government shall be responsible for an hundred head of animals; (i.e. the punishments are on the scale of such a charge of 100) and a strict and faithful report shall be made to government of the death, loss or partial injury which occurs to any of them," that those in charge may be punished unless proved not to be responsible for the damage. Under whatever circumstances the animal dies, the skin, tail and the bullock's tendons and horns shall be given to the proper officer. Rearers and feeders are "excused punishment" if it is shown that the death was from old age, but they have to make good loss or injury from other causes, and "the dead or maimed cattle shall be sold towards replacing the same with living and perfect animals." To "conceal the increase" is among the offences contemplated: a special regulation respecting the droves of brood mares requires that their keepers shall produce not less than 100 foals a year from three droves of 100 mares each. In the purchase of animals by contract for Government use, the officers are required under penalties to estimate every animal truly and justly; and failure to do so, whether to the detriment of the Government, or that of the vendor, are punished alike, as in the case of other Government purchases. Neglect of the animals, whereby they become lean, or bad management in harnessing or driving them, whereby sore backs or galled shoulders are produced, are punished, the degree of guilt being measured by the size of the sore or the number of unduly lean beasts. As the Chinese in general, like the Egyptians, are kind to their domestic animals, it seems likely that this law is prompted by genuine humanity, as well as by the desire to have the stock kept in good condition. The owner of dangerous animals is required to tie them up and mark them as such; 1 Sect. clxxvii. p. 187. 2 Ante, p. 52; and vol. i. p. 135. 8 Sect. ccxxvii. dogs are to be destroyed if they go mad. The curiously severe law against killing horses or cattle without a Government license is perhaps derived from a time when the Government attached some importance to the right of requisitioning such animals from private owners; and as China has never been a grazing country, the tendency of the people was always to diminish this available reserve. At present the law serves practically only as a tax upon butchers, with an incidental tendency to enable the magistrates to regulate and equalize the price of meat. There is no game preserving in China; any one is free to hunt wherever he can find birds or beasts, and this being so, the fact that game is not exterminated confirms what has been said already as to the general abundance of food. Tcheng-ki-tong gives the following list of animals available for sport partridges, woodcock, snipe, quails, wild duck and geese; roebuck, red and fallow deer, hares and rabbits, besides fox, wolf, bear, panther, and tiger in appropriate localities. As in the Chow Li, there are provisions in the code against danger to passers-by from traps or springes set by the hunters for wild animals, and they are required to put some visible sign as a warning to mankind, though at the risk of scaring the more cunning and intelligent beasts. It is not recorded even of Chou or Chieh that they attempted to preserve their hunting grounds against intrusion, by deliberately setting traps and springes to catch, not beasts, but human beings. The Chinese pay less than any other people for their Government, less absolutely and less per head, and the limitation of the Imperial revenues has the incidental advantage of keeping the number of Government officials at a minimum also. M. Simon estimates the total number for the whole empire at between twenty-five and thirty thousand, or perhaps one for every nineteen thousand of the population. Capital crimes and executions are rare, and even when allowance is made for the jurisdiction exercised by family and local tribunals, the proportion of the population who suffer any kind of restraint at the hands of authority is extraordinarily small. The extent to which the Government is constitutional and responsible has been indicated in the history of previous dynasties. Local droughts, inundations, or other national calamities serve, as well as any patent dereliction of duty, as a pretext for revising the personnel of the administration; but if the officer of the unfortunate district is popular, the people appeal on his behalf, and he is continued in office with a note in his favour rather than the reverse. If, on the contrary, an official makes himself intolerable to those under his jurisdiction, and is proof against all remonstrance, the townspeople shut up their shops, the country folk refuse their taxes, or, in M. Simon's words, "Plus d'affaires, rien ne va. Au bout de trois jours, si l'accord ne s'est pas retabli, destitué! C'est commode et cela se passe sans bruit." Archdeacon Gray tells an amusing story illustrative of this sort of local strike against unpopular government. In 1880 there was a struggle be1 Les Plaisirs en Chine, pp. 12, 3. 2 Sect. ccxcliii. |