Last week an atrocious instance, not of divorce, but of wife-murder, occurred within bow-shot of my house. A man engaged in a coal-shop had left his wife with an aunt in the country. The aunt complained of her as being too stupid and clumsy to earn a living. Her brutal husband thereon took the poor girl to a lonely spot, where he killed her, and left her unburied. Returning to the coal-shop, he sent word to his aunt that he was ready to answer for what he had done, if called to account. "Has he been called to account?" I enquired this morning of one of his neighbours. "Oh no! was the reply; it's all settled; the woman is buried, and no inquiry is called for." Is not woman a slave, though called a wife, in a society where such things are allowed to go with impunity? Will not the new laws, from which so much is expected, limit the marriage relation to one woman, and make the man, to whom she is bound, a husband, not a master?
Confucius, we are told, resigned office in his native state when the prince accepted a bevy of singing girls sent from a neighbouring principality. The girls were slaves bought and trained for their shameful profession, and the traffic in girls for the same service constitutes the leading form of domestic slavery at this day—so little has been the progress in morals, so little advance toward a legislation that protects the life and virtue of the helpless!
But the slave traffic is not confined to women; any man may sell his son; and classes of both sexes are found in all the houses of the rich. Prædial servitude was practised in ancient times, as it was in Europe in the Middle Ages, and in Russia till a recent day. We read of lands and labourers being conferred on court favourites. How the system came to disappear we need not pause to inquire. It is certain, however, that no grand act of emancipation ever took place in China like that which cost Lincoln his life, or that for which the good Czar Alexander II. had to pay the same forfeit. Russia is to-day eating the bitter fruits of ages of serfdom; and the greatest peril ever encountered by the United States was a war brought on by negro slavery.
The form of slavery prevailing in China is not one that threatens war or revolutions; but in its social aspects it is worse than negro slavery. It depraves morals and corrupts the family, and as long as it exists, it carries the brand of barbarism. China has great men, who for the honour of their country would not be afraid to take the matter in hand. They would, if necessary, imitate Lincoln and the Czar Alexander to effect the removal of such a blot.
It is proposed, we are told, to limit slavery to minors—freedom ensuing on the attainment of majority. This would greatly ameliorate the evil, but the evil is so crying that it demands not amelioration, but extinction. Let the legislators of China take for their model the provisions of British law, which make it possible to boast that "as soon as a slave touches British soil his fetters fall." Let them also follow that lofty legislation which defines the rights and provides for the well-being of the humblest subject. Let the old system be uprooted before a new one is inaugurated, otherwise there is danger that the limiting of slavery to minors will leave those helpless creatures exposed to most of the wrongs that accompany a lifelong servitude.
The number and extent of the reforms decreed or effected are such as to make the present reign the most illustrious in the history of the Empire. May we not hope that in dealing with polygamy and domestic slavery, the action of China will be such as to lift her out of the class of Turkey and Morocco into full companionship with the most enlightened nations of Europe and America.
III.
A NEW OPIUM WAR
The fiat has gone forth—war is declared against an insidious enemy that has long been exhausting the resources of China and sapping the strength of her people. She has resolved to rid herself at once and forever of the curse of opium. The home production of the drug, and all the ramifications of the vice stand condemned by a decree from the throne, followed by a code of regulations designed not to limit, but to extirpate the monster evil.
In this bold stroke for social reform there can be no doubt that the Government is supported by the best sentiment of the whole country. Most Chinese look upon opium as the beginning of their national sorrows. In 1839 it involved them in their first war with the West; and that opened the way for a series of wars which issued in their capital being twice occupied by foreign forces.