The side-lights that legal proceedings throw upon the moral and intellectual qualities of the people are inexhaustible in their variety. Under the stress of a burning sense of wrong or dread of disaster, or in the intensity of his anxiety to win a lawsuit on which he has staked his happiness, the Chinese, though he still refrains from what he considers the vulgarity of gesturing, casts to the winds the reserve and ceremonious decorum of speech that on more placid occasions often seem to be part of his personality. He can tell lies with audacity, though his lies indeed are not always rightly so called, and he has the most extraordinary aptitude for simulating strong emotions with the object of enlisting judicial sympathy; but, in spite of these drawbacks, it is during the prosecution of a lawsuit that the strong and weak elements in his character stand out in strongest relief.
If the litigant can write (though comparatively few of the people of Weihaiwei can do so) he is allowed to state his case in the form of a written petition. A typical Chinese petition may be said to be divided into three parts: firstly, the "case" of the petitioner is stated in full, strong emphasis being laid on his innate love of right and his horror of people who disobey the law; secondly, his opponent, the defendant, is held up to obloquy as a rogue and a hatcher of villainies; thirdly, the magistrate himself, to whom the petition is addressed, is cunningly described as having a marvellous faculty for separating right from wrong, a highly developed sense of justice, and a peculiarly strong love for law-abiding people. The defendant, when summoned, will of course adopt similar tactics. If his case is weak and he has nothing very definite to urge in his own favour, he will try to prejudice the magistrate against the plaintiff by describing him as quarrelsome and fond of lawsuits—no small offence in China. His petition may then run somewhat in these words, which I translate from a petition recently received: "Plaintiff is an audacious fellow and cares not how often he goes to law. He is not afraid of officials and loves litigation. When he comes home from the courts he uses boastful words and says, 'What fun it is to go to law.'"[67]
Both plaintiff and defendant consider it a good plan to assume an attitude of weakness, docility, and a constitutional inability to contend with the woes thrust upon them by a wicked world. "For several years," says one, "I bore my miseries in silence and dared not take action, but now things are different, for I have heard the glad news that the Great Man[68] settles cases as if he were a Spirit."[69] One of the commonest expressions in a Chinese petition has an odd look when it is literally translated: "I the Little Man am the Great Man's baby."
When a lawsuit arises out of complicated family disputes, such as those concerned with inheritance and adoption, there are sometimes representatives of four generations in the court at the same time. Babes and small children, if their rights or interests are in any way involved, are brought into court by their mothers, not with any idea that the evidence of infants would be accepted, even if it could be intelligibly given, but merely in order that the magistrate may see that the children really exist and have not been invented for the occasion. Sometimes they appear in the court for the practical reason that all the adults of the family have come to prosecute their lawsuit and that no one is left at home to take care of them. The presence of young boys of twelve or fourteen is very useful, as they are often able to express themselves and even to state the material points of a case far more briefly and intelligibly than their garrulous elders. If the case is an important one the court is often filled by cousins and aunts and interested neighbours of the litigants, and these people are all ready to swear that plaintiff or defendant, as the case may be, is a man of pre-eminent virtue who has never committed a wrong action or entertained an unrighteous thought in his life, while his opponent is a noted scoundrel who is the terror and bully of the whole countryside. These exaggerations are merely resorted to as a method of emphasising one view of the matter in dispute, and are not, as a rule, seriously intended to mislead the magistrate so much as to give a gentle bias to his mind. If, as very frequently happens, the magistrate has occasion to ask a witness why he has made a number of obvious and unnecessary misstatements, he merely replies with childlike blandness: Ta jên mien-ch'ien hsiao-ti pu kan sa huang—"In the Great Man's presence the Little One would not dare to tell a lie."
When arguing out their cases in court litigants seldom lose their temper—always a sign of very "bad form" in China—but they often assail each other in very vigorous language. Men of some education often make a show of leaving it to the magistrate to unmask the evil nature of their opponent. "If the magistrate will only look at that man's face," they say, "he will see that the fellow is a rogue." The remark of course implies, and is intended to imply, that the magistrate is a man of consummate perspicacity who cannot be deceived.
What constitutes one of the gravest difficulties from a European point of view in settling civil disputes between Chinese is that the plain unvarnished truth is seldom presented, even when a recital of the bare facts would be strong enough to ensure a favourable judgment. Yet I am far from wishing to imply that the Chinese are naturally liars. An inaccurate statement unaccompanied by an intention to deceive does not constitute a lie; and many such statements habitually made by Chinese do not and are not intended to deceive other Chinese to whom they are addressed. That they often deceive a European is no doubt a fact; but the fault lies with the European's want of knowledge and experience of the Chinese character, not with the Chinese, who are merely using forms of speech customary in their country. Why should a Chinese be expected to alter his traditional way of saying things merely because it differs from the foreign way? I am not convinced that a Chinese intentionally deceives or tries to deceive his own countrymen—that is, lies to them—much oftener than the average European deceives or tells a lie to his neighbour. Before we say of a Chinese, "This man has told me a lie," it would perhaps be well to ask ourselves, "Is the statement made by this man intended to deceive me? Is it such that it would deceive one of his own people?"
Perhaps it should not be necessary to labour this point, but there is no doubt that missionaries and others who feel irresistibly impelled to emphasise the darker sides of the Chinese character are apt to make the most of the supposed national predisposition to falsehood. For instance, the Rev. J. Macgowan in Sidelights on Chinese Life[70] says, much too strongly, "It may be laid down as a general and axiomatic truth, that it is impossible from hearing what a Chinaman says to be quite certain of what he actually means." On the other hand, I have known missionaries accept the word of their own Chinese converts, as against that of non-Christians, with a most astonishing and sometimes unjustifiable readiness. Some go so far as to imply that a non-Christian Chinese who speaks the truth is a person to be marvelled at. "Albeit he is a Confucianist," wrote a missionary to me, "this man may be relied on to speak the truth."