II.
ORIGINAL PREFACE
TO
THE CHINESE PENAL CODE
BY
THE EMPEROR SHUN CHEE,
THE FIRST OF THE PRESENT DYNASTY.
WHEN we contemplate the progressive establishment of our dominions in the East[1], by our Royal Ancestors and immediate Predecessors, we observe that the simplicity of the people originally required but few laws and that, with the exception of crimes of extraordinary enormity, no punishments were inflicted besides those of the whip and the bamboo.
Since, however, the Divine Will has been graciously pleased to entrust us with the administration of the Empire of China, a multitude of judicial proceedings in civil and criminal cases, arising out of the various dispositions and irregular passions of mankind in a great and populous nation, have successively occupied our Royal attention. Hence we have suffered much inconvenience, from the necessity we have been almost constantly under of either aggravating or mitigating
- ↑ The princes of the family now on the throne of China, do not date their origin from any remote period. Their ancestors were not established at Mougden in Mantchoo or Eastern Tartary, before the year 1616; but they made a rapid progress from that period. In 1644, during the troubles and internal commotions which prevailed in China, under a declining dynasty, they obtained possession of the Chinese capital, and in the course of a few years completed the conquest of the whole empire.
