CHINESE MARRIAGES. 
159 
(1) According to the law of China a man can have only one 
lawful wife; 
(2) If the husband is of official rankl, she is entitled to official 
honour through her husband ; 
(3) The proofs of a legal marriage according to Chinese law 
are the three marriage documents, the six .stages of the 
marriage ceremonies, the go-between and the fetching 
of the bride from her guardian’s house in procession 
accompanied by a band ; 
(4) In addition to his wife a man can take as many con- 
cubines as he pleases ; 
(5) A concubine is only entitled to official honour through 
her sons but not through the father of her children who 
is not her husband but her lord and master ; 
(6) A concubine may be purchased with money without any 
ceremony at all. 
This seemed strong evidence that the Chinese are mono- 
gamous, but as Sir William Hyn diman- Jones in his judgment said 
“ however great the respect we may have for the opinions of the 
Chinese gentlemen who have given evidence upon the subject — all 
of them, excepting one, holding high official rank and one of them 
Mr. Lo Tseng Yao, being not only a high official of his own country 
and versed in its laws, but also, as 1 understand, a barrister-at- 
law of the Inner Temple 1 — T sav however great a. respect we may 
entertain for the views of these gentlemen, we cannot allow them 
to decide this question for us. On the contrary, it is our duty to 
consider the position which the law of China has given to these 
women so far as we can gather it from all the sources above indi- 
cated and in the light of that law and having regard to the posi- 
tion and being aided but not restricted by the evidence to which 
I have referred, decide for ourselves the question whether the 
Chinese as a race are monogamous or polygamous.” 
In addition to the oral evidence of the experts, a large mass 
of written evidence was used in the course of the case in the shape 
of books and treaties upon Chinese law and custom. 
It may be said at once that every Judge who has ever sat on 
the Bench of this Colony has, so far as is known, held the Chinese 
to be polygamous and so treated them. What these Chinese gentle- 
men who gave evidence overlooked was that the Chinese law gave 
to the women whom they called concubines 1 a very definite legal 
status, not as high as that of the t’sai or principal wife it is true 
but such as to show that they stood in a very different position to 
that of mere mistresses or the subjects of casual connections. 
There was, further, an even more important point which these 
gentlemen overlooked. The children of the t’ sip are legitimate 
according to Chinese law and share with the children of the t’sai 
in their father’s estate. How then are you to regard an union as 
R. A. Soc., No. 83, 1921. 
