One of the great grievances of which the Chinese complained, in the time of the East India Company monopoly, and down to the Pottinger war, was the "oozing out" of the silver in China for the payment of a poisonous drug to the "outer barbarians." It was, however, then the fact, as it is the fact now, that the poppy is widely cultivated, and opium largely manufactured, by the Chinese themselves in several of the provinces of the empire. It used to be the belief in China that there alone was the pure metal produced, and that the coins brought from afar would in process of time be converted, by natural process, into base metal, or something worse. I recollect a person being charged with stealing his master's money; he did not deny having had the custody of the dollars, but swore they had been eaten by white ants. Keshen was directed to give his opinion to the emperor as to the quality of the silver brought to China by foreigners, and these are his words:
"The foreign money brought from these outer nations is all boiled and reduced by quicksilver. If you wrap it up and lay it aside for several years without touching it, it will be turned into moths and corroding insects, and the silver cups made from it by these strangers will change into feathers."
After stating that the coins show their impurity when submitted to the crucible, he adds:
"Yet we find that in Kiangnan and by the course of the river Hwac, and [{104}] all along the rivers to the south, foreign dollars are used in trade and circulated most abundantly; we even find them of more value than Sycee silver; this is really what I cannot understand!" Truly it passeth all understanding if the premises of the mandarin be correct. Some one suggests that Keshen had read in our sacred book of our treasures "that moth and rust do corrupt" (Matt. vi. 19), and of the "riches" which "make to themselves wings and fly away" (Prov. xxiii. 5).
As was said of old time, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," so the Chinese still recognize the principle that the penalty to be paid for crime need not be visited on the criminal himself, but that the substitution of an innocent for a guilty person to bear the award of the law may satisfy all the demands of justice. In the embarrassments of the imperial treasury during the last war, proclamations of the emperor frequently appeared in the Peking Gazette, authorizing the commutation of the judicial sentences which inflicted personal punishment by the payment of sums of money, to be estimated according to the gravity of the offence, and the rank or opulence of the offender. Men are to be found as candidates for the scaffold when a large remuneration is offered for the sacrifice of life—to such a sacrifice posthumous honor is frequently attached—a family is rescued from poverty, and enters on the possession of comparative wealth. The ordinary price paid for a man's life is a hundred ounces of pure silver, of the value of about £33 sterling. In the Buddhist code such an act of devotion and self-sacrifice ranks very high in the scale of merits, and would ensure a splendid recompense in the awards of the tribunal which is, after death, to strike the balance of good and evil, when every individual's mortal history is to be the subject of review.
Some illustrations may not be unwelcome. In the history of the intercourse of the East India Company with the Chinese, it will be found that the authorities were never satisfied with the averment that the individual charged with offences could not be found; they always insisted that some English subject could be found and delivered over to the penalties of the law. They invariably took high ground; asserted that the laws of China must be respected in China, and that those laws provided a certain and always applicable punishment by which the demands of justice might and ought to be satisfied. They turned a deaf ear to the representation that, according to European law, the individual who had committed a crime was the only proper person to be punished for that crime, and considered it a sort of "barbarian" notion that any crime should be passed over without being followed by the appropriate penalty visiting somebody or other. The theory fills the whole field of penal legislation. Households, villages, and even districts are made responsible for offences committed within their boundaries; and it is not unusual for high functionaries to be called upon to suffer for misdeeds not their own, which no vigilance could prevent and no sacrifices repair. There ought, say the sages, to be no wrong without a remedy, no sin without consequent suffering; and it is better that an innocent man should now and then be sacrificed than that guilt should not necessarily and inevitably be followed by penal consequences.
There is every reason to believe that on one occasion, to prevent the stoppage of trade, which was the menaced consequence of non-obedience, an innocent man was delivered over to the authorities (but not by the British), and executed at Canton. During the administration of Sir John Davis, six Englishmen were brutally murdered at Kwan Chuh Kei, a small village on the Pearl river. The English government insisted on the punishment of the murderers, and six men were publicly beheaded. It is quite certain they had nothing to do with [{105}] the crime; they were brought gagged to the place of execution, and English gentlemen, under the instructions of the consul, witnessed the decapitation; but everybody was satisfied that the criminals were allowed to escape, and that guiltless men were beheaded in their stead; and Lord Palmerston most properly directed that no British authority should be present at such executions, lest their presence might be deemed to imply approbation of the administration of justice in China.
It once occurred to me to have to make representations to the governor of Kiangsoo in consequence of some Chinese troops having fired upon the British settlement of Shanghai. No injury was done, but the act was of a character which might have led to serious consequences. An interview was asked, and, accompanied by the British admiral, I went to the tent of the great mandarin. On being introduced, we found six soldiers kneeling by his side. Close at hand was an executioner, and we saw as we passed the huge heavy swords which are employed by him in his wonted work. "It was quite right to complain," said the mandarin; "it was quite fit those who had committed the outrage should be visited with the punishment. Inquiries had been made, and it was very likely the men present were guilty; at all events, they had been in the neighborhood. Utter the word, and their heads shall fall at your feet." We informed his excellency that such abrupt and sudden action did not accord with our notions of justice, and we requested that the men might be relieved of their terrors and released on the spot This was done, and the governor, who was also the military commander-in-chief, merely told the trembling soldiers that they owed their lives to our clemency—a clemency they little anticipated from "outside barbarians."
Baron Gros informed me that when the French embassy was going up the Peiho—which, by the way, is not the real name of the river, and only means a river in the north, by which the Tientsing stream is usually designated in the south—an outrage was committed on a French sailor by a Chinaman, who was arrested and condemned to death. A deputation waited on the ambassador from the offender's native village, bringing with them an old man whom they wished to be hanged instead of him who had committed the offence. They represented that the condemned man was young, that his mother was dependent upon his labor, and would have no means of support if deprived of her son; that it would be very hard if she were made the victim. And, moreover, it could make no difference to his excellency (the minister) whether the old man or the young were executed. The death of either would show that punishment would assuredly follow injuries done to the subjects of "the great man's nation." They were informed that European usages demanded that the criminal should suffer for the crime. They returned next day to offer "a better bargain" to the ambassador. They brought down two men to suffer in expiation of the offence of one. Surely two Chinamen might be accepted for the wrong committed upon the stranger. The mission, of course, failed; the delegates departed sorely disappointed, and greatly wondering at the strange notions which the "red-haired outer men" had of what is right and what is wrong.
There is a Chinese aphorism, Puh tá, puh chaou ("No blows, no truth"), whose universal recognition will best illustrate the general character of the administration of justice. Torture is not employed on criminals alone in order to elicit confession, but constantly to witnesses when their evidence does not suit the foregone conclusions of the judge, who, in very many cases, is bribed beforehand, and desirous that the statements made should be such as to warrant his predetermined verdict. Truth is a virtue little appreciated among Orientals, and especially among the Chinese. They are afraid [{106}] of truth. It gives the authorities accurate information as to their whereabouts which may involve them in difficulties. They do not know what may have happened in a particular locality, and therefore prefer saying where they were not than where they were, in order to avoid compromising themselves by putting the runners upon a true scent. Then again, habits of mendacity and a constant disregard of truth lead to inaccuracy of observation. I remember a case in which three sets of witnesses gave three separate versions as to the time of the day on which an important event had occurred—that it was in bright daylight; that it was in utter darkness; that it was neither light nor dark; and in that case I had reason to believe there was no intended perjury. Against perjury there is really no protection but in the dread of punishment. We tried in Hong Kong different usages which were expected to give some security for obtaining the "truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Cocks' heads were cut off by or in the presence of the witnesses, and they pronounced denunciations and consented to have their blood shed if there was falsehood in their testimony. Sometimes an earthenware plate was broken, and the parties offered themselves to be shattered and broken to bits as was the plate if they did not tell the truth. Others favored the writing of an aphorism of the sages on a piece of paper, burning it at a lamp, and requiring the witness to swear that as he hoped not to be burned and tormented he would say all that was true. But every experiment failed. Oaths, however enforced, with whatever forms invested, were discovered to be utterly worthless; and it was wisely decided that the penalties of perjury should attach equally to the sworn and the unsworn man. It occurred to me to consult a person of some eminence as to the possibility of administering any form of an oath which would be held binding. He said that there was one temple within the city which was held sacred to truth, and that promises made and contracts entered into within that particular sanctuary were deemed better guaranteed than any other. But he said the place was inaccessible to Europeans; and he thought that nothing but the dread of punishment for falsehood gave any security, and even that security was most insufficient, for the elucidation of truth.