As may readily be imagined, this corruption in high places has a most demoralizing effect on the people generally. Dishonesty prevails to a frightful extent, and with it, of course, untruthfulness. The Chinese set little or no value upon truth, and thus some slight excuse is afforded for the use of torture in their courts of justice; for it is argued that where the value of an oath is not understood, some other means must be resorted to to extract evidence, and the readiest means to hand is doubtless torture. The kind most commonly inflicted is flogging. The obdurate witness is laid flat on his face, and the executioner delivers his blows on the upper part of the thighs with the concave side of a split bamboo, the sharp edges of which mutilate the sufferer terribly. The punishment is continued until the man either supplies the evidence required or becomes insensible. Numberless other forms of torture are occasionally resorted to, such as tying the witness up to a beam by his thumbs and big toes, squeezing his fingers between pieces of bamboo, &c.; and these, of course, vary both in kind and severity, according to the disposition of the presiding mandarin. Theoretically every safeguard is adopted to secure for the public service only officers of enlightened and refined dispositions. The law ordains that every man who wishes to obtain Government employment must qualify himself for office by passing the prescribed competitive examinations; and as there is, speaking generally, no hereditary nobility nor any class equivalent to English country gentlemen, office supplies the only distinguishing rank in the empire. The consequence is that it is sought after by all except those who engage in trade. Thus the Government has the cream of the national talent at its disposal, and if posts were only given to the foremost men at the examinations as the law provides, no system could be better, and when it has been carried out China has reaped the benefits of it. Unfortunately, however, it has constantly happened that when the Government has been embarrassed by want of money, offices have been put up for sale, and thus the man who has the longest purse steps into the post of honour; and if, as must often happen, he should chance to be cruel as well as uncultured, unjust as well as ignorant, woe betide the people under him. One great defect in the competitive system in China is that there is no limit to the number of candidates, nor to the age when they may go up for examination, and the result is that, what with the surplus victors and the unsuccessful aspirants who go on trying year after year until they become grey-haired old men, there exists a large non-producing class in the community which acts as a dead weight on the national prosperity.
It is only natural to expect that in a country where the torture of witnesses is permitted, the punishments inflicted on the guilty should exceed in cruelty, and this is eminently the case in China. The Mongolian race is confessedly obtuse-nerved and insensible to suffering, and no doubt Chinese culprits do not suffer nearly as much as members of more sensitive races would under similar treatment. But even granting this, the refined cruelties perpetrated by Chinamen on Chinamen admit of no apology. Not long since, for instance, at one of the Treaty Ports, an offender was placed in a cage, through the top of which his head protruded, and which was just long enough to allow the tips of his toes to touch the ground. In this position, hanging as it were by his neck, with just enough support from his feet to prevent his neck dislocating, the wretched man remained for days, the object of the jeers and laughter of the passers by, until starvation and exhaustion put an end to his sufferings. As punishments for heinous offences such cruelties would be sufficiently shocking, but the fact that this and kindred tortures are not unfrequently inflicted for very insignificant crimes, and sometimes even to gratify the malice or the greed of the officiating mandarin, is significant of a strangely callous indifference in the Chinese nature to the sufferings of others. For capital offences the usual modes of inflicting the extreme penalty of the law are in bad cases, such as parricides, “cutting to pieces,” and for less aggravated crimes either strangulation or decapitation. The culprit who is condemned to be “cut to pieces” is fastened to a cross, and while thus suspended cuts are made by the executioner on the fleshy parts of the body, and he is then beheaded. Strangulation is reserved for offenders of high rank, it being considered a privilege to pass out of life with a whole body. When it has been granted to a criminal thus to meet his end, a silken cord is sent to him in prison. No explanatory message is considered necessary, and he is left to consummate his own doom. Sometimes, of course, the prisoner's nerve forsakes him at the supreme moment, as was the case with a prince of the blood, who in 1861 was presented with a silken cord for treason. This imperial personage could not make up his mind to be his own executioner, and it became necessary to call in the jailers to carry out the sentence of the law. Decapitation in China is a very speedy death, and were it not that popular sentiment regards it as a peculiarly disgraceful end, it would be a very merciful one. Constant practice makes the executioners wonderfully expert in the performance of their deadly office. No block or resting-place for the head is used. The neck is simply outstretched to its full length by the aid of an assistant, and one blow invariably leaves the body headless.
