To speak of this as a custom is to exaggerate the frequency of a class of incident which has undoubtedly been recorded in China and [pg 275]of which there has been mention in Imperial Decrees. I am sorry to say that I have not my file of the Peking Gazette here, for immediate reference, but I am writing to my friend Mr. Backhouse in Peking, and have no doubt but that he will be able to give chapter and verse of instances thus recorded. I had expected to find cases of the kind recorded in Mr. Werner's recently-published “Descriptive Sociology”of the Chinese (Spencerian publications), but have not been able to do so in the absence of an index to that voluminous work. More than one of the authors whom he quotes have certainly referred to cases of substitution for death-sentence prisoners. Parker, for instance (“China Past and Present,” page 378), asserts that substitutes were to be had in Canton at the reasonable price of fifty taels (say £10). Dr. Matignon (in “Superstition, Crime et Misère en Chine,” page 113) says that filial piety is a frequent motive. The negative opinion of Professors Giles and de Groot is entitled to consideration, but cannot be regarded as any more conclusive than the views expressed by Professor Giles on the question of infanticide which are outweighed by a mass of direct proof of eye-witnesses.
In a country where men submit voluntarily to mutilation and grave risk of death for a comparatively small gain to themselves and their relatives, where women commit suicide in hundreds to escape capture by invaders or strangers, where men and women alike habitually sacrifice their life for the most trivial motives of revenge or distress, it need not greatly surprise us that some should be found, especially among the wretchedly poor class, willing to give up their life in order to relieve their families of want or otherwise to “acquire merit.”
The most important thing, I think, in expressing any opinion about the Chinese, is to remember the great extent and heterogeneous elements of the country, and to abstain from any sweeping generalisations based on isolated acts or events.—Yours very truly,
J. O. P. Bland.
As the practice in question involves a grave miscarriage of justice, the discovery of which might entail serious consequences on the magistrate who connived at it, we need not wonder that it is generally hushed up, and that no instances of it should come to the ears of many Europeans resident in China. My friend Professor H. A. Giles of Cambridge in conversation expressed himself quite incredulous on the subject, and Professor J. J. M. de Groot of Leyden wrote to me (January 31, 1902) to the same effect. The Rev. Dr. W. T. A. Barber, Headmaster of the Leys School, Cambridge, and formerly a missionary in China, wrote to me (January 30, 1902): “As to the possibility that a man condemned to death may secure a substitute on payment of a moderate sum of money, we used to hear that this was the case; but I have no proof that would justify you in using the fact.” Another experienced missionary, the Rev. W. A. Cornaby, wrote to Dr. Barber: “I have heard of no such custom in capital crimes. The man in whose house a fire starts may, and often does, pay another to receive the blows and three [pg 276] days in a cangue. But unless where ‘foreign riots’ were the case, and a previously condemned criminal handy, I should hardly think it possible. Every precaution is taken that no one is beheaded but the man who cannot possibly be let off. The expense on the county mandarin is over £100 in ‘stationery expenses’ with higher courts.” On this I would observe that if every execution costs the local mandarin so dear, he must be under a strong temptation to get the expenses out of the prisoner whenever he can do so without being detected.
Substitutes for corporal punishment in China.
With regard to the custom, mentioned by Mr. Cornaby, of procuring substitutes for corporal punishment, we are told that in China there are men who earn a livelihood by being thrashed instead of the real culprits. But they bribe the executioner to lay on lightly; otherwise their constitution could not long resist the tear and wear of so exhausting a profession.[727] Thus the theory and practice of vicarious suffering are well understood in China.