uch
scenes of brutality are daily enacted throughout the length and
breadth of China as would harrow up the soul of any but a soulless
native. The curious part of it all is that Chinamen themselves regard
their laws as the quintessence of leniency, and themselves as the
mildest and most gentle people of all that the sun shines upon in his
daily journey across the earth--and back again under the sea. The
truth lies of course somewhere between these two extremes. For just as
people going up a mountain complain to those they meet coming down of
the bitter cold, and are assured by the latter that the temperature is
really excessively pleasant--so, from a western point of view certain
Chinese customs savour of a cruelty long since forgotten in Europe,
while the Chinese enthusiast proudly compares the penal code of this
the Great Pure dynasty with the scattered laws and unauthorised
atrocities of distant and less civilised ages.

The Han dynasty which lasted from about B.C. 200 to A.D. 200 has been
marked by the historian as the epoch of change. Before that time
punishments of all kinds appear to have been terribly severe, and the
vengeance of the law pursued even the nearest and most distant
relatives of a criminal devoted perhaps to death for some crime in
which they could possibly have had no participation. It was then
determined that in future only rebellion should entail extirpation
upon the families of such seditious offenders, and at the same time
legal punishments were limited to five, viz.: bambooing of two degrees
of severity, banishment to a certain distance for a certain time or
for life, and death. These were, however, frequently exceeded by
independent officers against whose acts it would have been vain to
appeal, and it was not until the Sui dynasty (589-618 A.D.) that
mutilation of the body was absolutely forbidden. It may, indeed, be
said to have survived to the present day in the form of the "lingering
death" which is occasionally prescribed for parricides and matricides,
but that we now know that this hideous fate exists only in words and
form. When it was first held to be inconsistent with reason to mete
out the same punishment to a highway robber who kills a traveller for
his purse, and to the villain who takes away life from the author of
his being, a distinction was instituted accordingly, but we can only
rest in astonishment that any executioner could be found to put such a
horrible law into execution