Y. M. C. A’s. are being built in the treaty ports, largely through American endeavor. The Japanese sphere, Tientsin, etc., are provided for, and the Chicago Y. M. C. A. raised a large sum of money for a Y. M. C. A. in Hongkong. The sailors in Hongkong contribute the third largest amount to their missions (being exceeded only by Wellington and Liverpool) of any port in the world. I am not referring to amounts collected from passengers on steamers, but the support given by the sailors themselves. This shows that Jack Tar and John Celestial recognize the manly and godly worth of the “sky pilot”, even if they pivot many of their jokes on his solemn patience.
Since Morrison’s translation, there have been quite a number of translations into the official Mandarin, and even into Romanized letters expressing the dialects of the southern provinces. This latter Bible can only be understood by mission school pupils. In 1890 the missionary bodies met at Peking and determined to translate the whole Bible into approved characters which idiomatized better certain words which had been improperly understood in former translations. The committee meets once a year at different cities in China. By 1910 the New Testament and the Psalms had been completed, and the whole Bible will probably be completed by 1918. The head translator is the American Presbyterian educator, Doctor Mateer, the founder of Shangtung Union University at Wei Hsien and Tsinan, and the noted Doctor W. A. P. Martin, the author and educator of Peking, is another translator.
Shintoism (the Japanese adaptation of Confucianism) has been found lacking in Japan, as it raises no positive God-fearing sentiment in the masses, no national morality, no individual conscientiousness which can be relied on when the letter of the law fails. This is the rock strength which Christianity has given the West, and the Chinese republicans see what they have missed in not adopting Christianity. On February 9, 1912, the Japanese home minister called a conference of the Buddhist, Confucian (Shinto), and Christian religions, to see what could be done to strengthen Japan’s creeds, so that the state would benefit in that moral and God-fearing power which Christianity has given to the western masses. Christianity makes but one answer to China, and that is to take Christianity and the Bible as a religion and a revelation, and reduce Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism to the ethical and literary place which Socrates, Plato, Homer, Virgil, etc., occupy in western thought and practise. President Sun Yat Sen, of the Nanking Confederated Assemblies of South China, appreciates this, and has promised the Chinese Christians that he will do all he can in time to form a Chinese Christian church; not a Roman or Greek or American or British church, but a free Chinese Christian church. When China takes the Bible nearest of all books to her heart, and has her own head bishop in each denomination absolutely free, she will then have achieved greatness and glory, and found joy and truth.
The troublesome temperance question of the military canteen has been solved, I think, under severest tropical conditions at Hongkong, where there is a large garrison, and despite well meaning W. C. T. U’s. at home under different conditions, the canteen, where “vice is regulated”, has, I believe, come to stay for a while. At one time the soldier drifted into the slums. He sighed for company as only an alien among the heathen can sigh. He drank bad liquor and was robbed when drugged thereby. That he will drink liquor must be accepted, as he is the rougher sort of man, although worthy for all that. He committed offenses before the tender eye of the public, brought the service into ill repute, and cost the municipality money for trials and police. He endangered international peace, for in his “cups” he was always seeing differences instead of amenities when he met a soldier of another nation. He made himself unfit for real war. The Army and Navy Canteen, or Club, was adopted, I think, largely on Lord Roberts’ suggestion (and who will question “Bob’s” wisdom). The soldier was put on his honor and he rose fully to his opportunity. The sergeants on guard permitted sufficient indulgence, but regulated rows. Most of the men drank less, because they felt that they were drinking in “their own home”, but if they over-drank, their fellows were on hand to see that they were taken to barracks without being dragged through the public streets. Good liquor was supplied. Disease decreased, as the men were contented in barracks. Authority was respected, for it comes as second nature for even a drunken soldier to obey a soldier. The soldier is now never robbed; his life is safe; he saves money, and he drinks less because he drinks “as a gentleman what ’as ’is Club wi’ the best on ’em.” The W. C. T. U. is a necessary theory; the Soldiers’ Canteen of Hongkong, Manila, and Delhi, is a brilliant compromise which should be accepted as a solution until the world is so good that the brave and perhaps rough soldier is needed no more. Candy is sold to the soldiers, as it is found that the absorption of carbohydrates greatly decreases the appetite for alcohol. The Officers’ Army and Navy Cooperative Stores sell goods to men and their families at cost, and the American army is to adopt this method to reduce the cost of living at foreign army posts.
XXIV
LEGAL PRACTISE AND CRIME IN CHINA
Books and articles that have thrown light on this dark question include those of Wu Ting Fang, once minister to America; Mr. Jernigan’s China in Law; Sir G. T. Staunton’s Penal Code; Sir C. Alabaster’s Chinese Criminal and Property Law; Parker’s Chinese Family Law; Mayer’s Chinese Government; lengthy notes in the Middle Kingdom, by the learned American, S. Wells Williams; Dyer Ball’s Things Chinese; Professor Giles’ Historic China; Sir Henry Maine’s commentaries; and the old Chinese Repository. The Hebrew penal code, Leviticus, is antedated by the Chinese penal code of Shun’s reign nearly a thousand years. It can not compare, of course, in extent or in lofty principle with the Levitican code. Brutal punishments, such as branding, amputation of members, linchee, bambooing and torture made these early reigns so peaceful that it is said “money lost on the road would be left there until the owner returned to find it”. The truth probably is that this referred to the prince’s money, and that if injustice was done the common man, the inferior serf or slave, by the prince or the powerful, the weaker had to whistle for his judgment as long then as he has had to do in subsequent periods of history. Each change of dynasty brought in a revision of the code, not that it was made more humane, but that there were necessary items of lèse majesté to add. For instance, the Manchus required that when the emperor passed at night, every onlooker (all except the soldiers were kept indoors) was required to turn volte-face on pain of death. There was no procedure for revoking a statute. The judge could unexpectedly spring on the victim some precedent or law that was followed in the “year one”, and the prisoner could plead in vain that another law of the “year two” gave him a better chance. In other words, the mandarin practically said with one of Louis Fourteenth’s judges, to litigants: “La loi, c’est moi”, and he interpreted the code as he wished! United protest to the Peking censors, mobbing and refusal to pay taxes were in reality the only reprisals that the people could exert against the exactions of an unjust judge. Confucius, in rendering service as a ruler in two states, interpreted codes. One of the states, the Tsin (B. C. 246), shortly after Confucius, put in effect the Li Kwai code in six books. Codes of the following important dynasties exist: Han, Tsin, Tang, Sung, Yuan, Ming and Tsing (Manchu).
The Grecian Thebes, of which Sophocles wrote, was notorious for its torture of suspected criminals, and Herodotus relates that the ancient Medes exercised similar practises. The “third degree” is outrageously developed in China as in no other country, the law requiring confessions in every case before penalty is inflicted. “More Sinico”, the pepper is rubbed in the eyes, and the confession is forced out of whomsoever is made the victim. Crimes are often “planted”, and blackmail of the weaker by the stronger runs riot. The laws themselves have been noted for their conciseness and simplicity, the number of volumes signifying little as the Chinese ideograph-text is expansive. “It is prohibited to murder”; “It is prohibited to trespass”, etc. There is imperfect codification of precedents and decisions, so that the prisoner must rely on himself (or on money!) to explain that the homicide was in self-defense; the trespass to escape from a mad dog. The spirit is always above the letter; it alone makes perfect law possible. Where there is a will to do right, right generally prevails, and it may be said that many of the Chinese judges try to do right, get at the truth, and give a common-sense judgment, for they are not iron-bound as the Occident is under appeal, precedent, quibble and evasion; the letter above the spirit. If the case is an action within a clan, the “hsiang lao” (old man of the village) generally assists the judge in getting at the truth. If the action is between two clans of two villages, or between competing guilds, God help the judges in sifting the truth from the lies! Such situations arouse the sympathy of disinterested foreigners for Chinese judges. Sometimes the native is not at fault, as the Chinese viceroys and Foreign Boards have often complained that some of the Romanists and one legation have interfered to a greater or lesser degree when a nominal Christian, who had a suit at law, was trying to evade justice by enrolling himself as a “rice Christian”.
The frequent edicts of the throne, published in the Peking Gazette, at once became laws, such as: “It is prohibited to smoke opium;” “It is prohibited to bind feet,” etc. Law will now be enunciated as in America, by the central and provincial legislatures of the new republic. A sort of martial law now prevails, and the provinces, after a quick drum-head trial, are shooting or lopping off the heads of pirates and mutinous soldiers in great numbers. Decapitation, flogging, torture, strangling, stocks, cangue, etc., will all probably be retained, as the Chinese are stolid when it comes to bearing pain, and the criminal classes must be treated with severity. Linchee, or Ling Chih (cutting into a thousand pieces) may be discontinued and shooting substituted. If, however, Confucianism remains as the leading religion, decapitation will be continued. The Confucians loathe the severing of the head, and this punishment is a powerful deterrent of crime. Imprisonment in a modern jail is no punishment for a hard-working Chinese, and something else must be substituted, such as the state impressing the convict’s free labor, to offset the convict’s family becoming a charge on the clan or state. It has been found in Yunnan City, Kweilin City and elsewhere that a modern jail, with good food and sanitary conditions, induces the poor wretches to commit crimes so as to achieve permanent incarceration as quickly as possible! As in the French system, the old-style Chinese judge is also often the prosecutor, and witnesses and accused are made to fight it out in the hearing of the judge, so that as the frequent “lie” is passed, the truth may jump from the tossed bag! (Confronter les témoins à l’accusé.) The twenty-eight volumes of the Manchu code cover general, civil, finance, military, criminal and public works law.
The following, taken from the Shanghai Shen Pao, of August 29 and 30, 1911, the oldest and most reliable native paper of China, will illustrate the “third degree” methods used by the old literati judges of the Manchus, and incidentally the astonishing endurance of the Chinese, who from time immemorial have lived outdoor lives and whose hearts have incredible powers of recovery. “The murderer, Hsu, was brought before the assistant magistrate Chung on August 27th for a final trial. The magistrate ordered the clerk to read the confession of the murderer (procured by torture in the native walled city of Shanghai), who said it was incorrect in one statement. The assistant magistrate consented to the correction. When City Magistrate Tien learned of this, he ordered Hsu to be whipped. Up to three hundred strokes no groan escaped from Hsu. At this Tien was angered and called to the torturers to strike heavily. Hsu was now whipped so cruelly that his flesh was cut from his back, and some muffled groans were heard. When five hundred strokes had been administered, he was again asked to confess or suffer pain. As he was still obstinate the magistrate ordered him to receive eight hundred strokes of the bamboo. He was now subjected to the most inhuman kind of torture, that in which the prisoner kneels on an iron chain, while two yamen runners stand upon a wooden beam laid across the back of his legs. As Hsu stood even this torture, he was strung up by his fingers and queue on a scaffold. Hsu cried out that he would not be kicked by the runners. The magistrate was now very angry. He ordered Hsu to be stretched upon the weighing machine (which gradually pulls the victim apart). The man fainted, but when he recovered he would not confess. The scaffold was again requisitioned, and he was strung up again by fingers and queue. He struggled and his queue of hair parted from his head. Next day, he was made to kneel on the iron chain under two men for two hours. When he was about to faint, the two runners picked him up and ran him about to restore his heart action. Alternately they put him upon the chain and restored his circulation. He then cried out: ‘Why should I sign two confessions; I have but to die.’ He was ordered to receive four hundred strokes of the bamboo. The magistrate Tien threatened to persecute the victim’s wife and son. Hsu now relapsed into a fever which has been running two days.”