elf, but no case being complete without a full confession on the
part of the guilty man, torture might be brought into play to extort
from him the necessary acknowledgment. It is plain, therefore, that
Chinese officials prosecuting on behalf of their injured countrymen,
are quite at sea in an English court, and their case often falling
through for want of proper evidence, they return home cursing the
injustice done to them by the hated barbarians, and longing for the
day which will dawn upon their extermination from the Flowery Land.

On the other hand, the examination of Chinese witnesses, either in a
civil or criminal case, is one of the most trying tests to which the
forbearance of foreign officials is exposed in all the length and
breadth of their intercourse with the slippery denizens of the middle
kingdom. Leaving out of the question the extreme difficulty of the
language, now gradually yielding to methodical and persevering study,
the peculiar bent of the Chinese mind, with all its prejudices and
superstitions, is quite as much an obstacle in the way of eliciting
truth as any offered by the fantastic, but still amenable, varieties
of Chinese syntax. We believe that native officials have the power,
though it does not always harmonise with their interests to exercise
it, of arriving at as just and equitable decisions in the majority of
cases brought before them, as any English magistrate who knows
"Taylor's Law of Evidence" from beginning to end. They accomplish this
by a knowledge of character, unparalleled perhaps in any country on
the globe, which enables them to distinguish readily, and without such
constant recourse to torture as is generally supposed, between the
false and honest witness. The study of mankind in China is, beyond all
doubt--man and his motives for action on every possible occasion, and
under every possible condition. Thus it is, we may remark, that the
Chinese fail to appreciate the efforts made for their good by
missionaries and others, because the motives of such a course are
utterly beyond the reach of native investigation and thought. They are
consequently suspicious of the Greeks--_et dona ferentes_. The
self-denial of missionaries who come out to China to all the hardships
of Oriental life--though, as a facetious writer in the _Shanghai
Courier_ lately remarked, they live in the best houses, and seem to
lead as jolly lives as anybody else out here--to say nothing of
gratuitous medical ad