Mode of Exposure in the Cangue.
Most punishments are redeemable by the payment of money if the criminal is under fifteen or over seventy years of age, and a table is given in the code for the guidance of the magistrate in such cases. An act of grace enables a criminal condemned even to capital punishment to redeem himself, if the offence be not one of wilful malignity; but better legislation would have shown the good effects of not making the punishments so severe. It is also ordered in Section XVIII., that “any offender under sentence of death for a crime not excluded from the contingent benefit of an act of grace, who shall have infirm parents or grandparents alive over seventy years of age, and no other male child over sixteen to support them, shall be recommended to the mercy of his Majesty; and if only condemned to banishment, shall receive one hundred blows and redeem himself by a fine.” Many atrocious laws may be forgiven for one such exhibition of regard for the care of decrepid parents. Few governments exhibit such opposing principles of actions as the Chinese: a strange blending of cruelty to prisoners with a maudlin consideration of their condition, and a constant effort to coax the people to obedience while exercising great severity upon individuals, are everywhere manifest. One who has lived in the country long, however, knows well that they are not to be held in check by rope-yarn laws or whimpering justices, and unless the rulers are a terror to evil-doers, the latter will soon get the upper hand. Dr. Field well considers this point in his interesting notes describing his visit to a yamun at Canton.[267] The general prosperity of the Empire proves in some measure the equity of its administration.
CORRECTION OF MINOR OFFENCES.
Banishment and slavery are punishments for minor official delinquencies, and few officers who live long in the Emperor’s employ do not take an involuntary journey to Mongolia, Turkestan, or elsewhere, in the course of their lives. The fates and conduct of banished criminals are widely unlike; some doggedly serve out their time, others try to ingratiate themselves with their masters in order to alleviate or shorten the time of service, while hundreds contrive to escape and return to their homes, though this subjects them to increased punishment. Persons banished for treason are severely dealt with if they return without leave, and those convicted of crime in their place of banishment are increasingly punished; one man was sentenced to be outlawed for an offence at his place of banishment, but seeing that his aged mother had no other support than his labor, the Emperor ordered that a small sum should be paid for her living out of the public treasury. Whipping a man through the streets as a public example to others is frequently practised upon persons detected in robbery, assault, or some other minor offences. The man is manacled, and one policeman goes before him carrying a tablet, on which are written his name, crime, and punishment, accompanied by another holding a gong. In some cases little sticks bearing flags are thrust through his ears, and the lictor appointed to oversee the fulfilment of the sentence follows the executioner, who strikes the criminal with his whip or rattan as the rap on the gong denotes that the appointed number is not yet complete.
Publicly Whipping a Thief through the Streets.
MANNER OF PUBLIC EXECUTIONS.
Decapitation and strangling are the legal modes of executing criminals, though Kí Kung having taken several incendiaries at Canton, in 1843, who were convicted of firing the city for purposes of plunder, starved them to death in the public squares of the city. The least disgraceful mode of execution is strangulation, which is performed by tying a man to a post and tightening the cord which goes round his neck by a winch; the infliction is very speedy, and apparently less painful than hanging. The least crime for which death is awarded appears to be a third and aggravated theft, and defacing the branding inflicted for former offences. Decollation is considered more disgraceful than strangling, owing to the dislike the Chinese have of dissevering the bodies which their parents gave them entire. There are two modes of decapitation, that of simple decollation being considered, again, as less disgraceful than being “cut into ten thousand pieces,” as the phrase ling chih has been rendered. The military officer who superintends the execution is attended by a guard, to keep the populace from crowding upon the limits and prevent resistance on the part of the prisoners. The bodies are given up to the friends, except when the head is exposed as a warning in a cage where the crime was committed. If no one is present to claim the corpse it is buried in the public pit. The criminals are generally so far exhausted that they make no resistance, and submit to their fate without a groan—much more, without a dying speech to the spectators. In ordinary cases the executions are postponed until the autumnal assize, when the Emperor revises and confirms the sentences of the provincial governors; criminals guilty of extraordinary offences, as robbery attended with murder, arson, rape, breaking into fortifications, highway robbery, and piracy, may be immediately beheaded without reference to court, and as the expense of maintenance and want of prison room are both to be considered, it is the fact that criminals condemned for one or other of these crimes comprise the greater part of the unreferred executions in the provinces.