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PENAL CODE. 827
murder of mandarins and riots are so frequent in those districts. When any of
the richer classes are dissatisfied with the conduct of a mandarin, they are never
prevented from instigating the lower classes to make disturbances by the fear of
personal punishment. Some years ago a magistrate having been killed during an
outbreak in the east of Kwangtung, the provincial judge was sent from Canton
with a strong force to seize and punish the criminals. On his arrival, however, he
found a largo body of men assembled in arms to oppose him, and the matter was
disposed of by a secret compromise, as so frequently happens in such cases in China.
The wealthy members of the community, who had instigated the murder of the
district magistrate, awed by the force brought against them, bought about twenty
substitutes ready to personate the true criminals. They then bribed the son of the
murdered man with a large sum to allow these men to call themselves the
instigators, principals, and accomplices. The judge, on the other hand, being
obliged by the code of the Board of Civil Office to execute somebody, or see
himself involved in punishment, knowing also that if he attempted to bring the
real offenders to justice they would employ all their means of resistance, ending
possibly in the defeat of his force and his own death, gave way
to these
considerations, supported as they were by a bribe, and ordered the twenty innocent
substitutes to be put to death. This is one of the many instances in which the
pernicious effects of the practice of personating criminals make themselves
apparent. A system of falsehood and corruption has been engendered by it
that is perfectly appalling, and, as in this case, leads frequently to results which
cannot be contemplated without a feeling of horror.*
All capital sentences are submitted to the Emperor, and delayed till autumn,
when the final decision is made, and the names of the reprieved encircled by
a stroke of the vermilion pencil. But in times of disorder or political revolutions
the provincial governors are armed with absolute power, and move about attended
by bands of executioners, who are kept busily engaged at their sanguinary work.
When the English attacked Canton in 1855, the Viceroy boasted that he had
dispatched 70,000 of his subjects in seven months, about 330 a day. At present
the native tribunals in the European concessions at Shanghai and the other treaty
ports are assisted by foreign residents, whence the expression " mixed courts," by
which they are usually known. In these tribunals torture is never applied, at
least in the presence of the European judges, and in Hong Kong the English
have also abolished torture. There is even some hope that it may ere long
disappear from the penal code of the empire.
An interesting social feature of Shanghai are these Mixed Courts, where
"offences are tried before two judges, om> Chinese and one foreign. One
of the English judges took me with him one day, and I sat on the bench next to
the Chinese official, who had the rank of Chih-Fu.
"The room was fairly large, and the judges' table raised on a low platform.
The space in front was divided into three portions by railings ; the policemen,
witnesses, &c., were on the right, and the prisoner was brought in to the centre
* Meadows, up. cit. pp. 173, 174.