Mr. Davis's Extracts from the Peking Gazettes. 8^ 



perhaps send a clerk into the town or village to compel the guilty person, 

 by the agency of money, to make it up with the relations of the deceased, 

 where it happens that these are very poor and needy. Again, the clerks 

 will sometimes frighten the deceased's relations into quiet submission, 

 which enables the magistrate to suppress the trial.* When it happens that 

 the relations will not consent to an accommodation, and the magistrates are 

 left without a choice, they then proceed to an inquest, after many days' 

 delay ; and when it happens that the weather is hot, the body becomes 

 so changed as to admit of no true inferences with respect to the cause of 

 death. Again, when the investigation is deferred, the criminal entertains 

 hopes of escape : he pleads guilty to a minor offence to escape the penalties 

 of a heavier J he bribes the official scrutineers (fVoo-tso) to slur over the 

 worst appearances of the body ; or he buys over the witnesses to support 

 his own statement. Those who conduct the trial are deceived by him, and 

 come to a wrong decision ; while the relations of the deceased, wearied with 

 vain endeavours, present an accusation to the higher powers, and a commis- 

 sion is sent to retry the case : but by this time there is little left of the body 

 but the bones, and when these are subjected to the prescribed test by boiling, 

 the hurts which extended to the bones may be ascertained ; but the others, 

 as those which might be caused by strangling or poison, it is impossible to 

 prove. Thus, perhaps, the matter is protracted to a whole year, and at 



• One very particular feature of the Chinese law of homicide (and certainly a very improper 

 one) is, that it seems instituted, not more for the satisfaction of public justice or the prevention 

 of crime, than for the gratification of private revenge; nay it even goes so far, in some particular 

 cases, as to encourage and justify a princi])le so subversive of the welfare of society, by awarding 

 a very mitigated punishment to the deliberate murder of any person, in revenge for the death of 

 a father or mother, and even of some inferior relations (Leu-Lee, sect, cccxxiii, page 352, of 

 Sir G. T. Staunton's Penal Code of China). In most Chinese trials for homicide, it is 

 evident that the relations are the real prosecutors : although among us it is treated purely 

 as an offence against the public. To this antiquated error in legislation, the considering 

 murder as a private virotig, and the possibility of compromising so great an offence against 

 society by a bribe to the relations of the deceased, may be attributed many of the evils com- 

 plained of in the above paper. We may learn from this, and indeed from the <)ctual expe- 

 rience of the past, to recognize the spirit in which cases of homicide are prosecuted against 

 Europeans at Canton. In nearly every instance where the point has been vehemently or obsti- 

 nately urged, the relations have spurred on the local government by threats of an appeal to 

 Peking if their revenge remained unsatisfied ; and we may rest assured, that an adequate com- 

 promise in money, if offered in time, would almost always be successful, though the policy and 

 propriety of such a measure in many cases might very fairly be questioned. 



