From Egypt to Japan

To the objection that such methods may coerce the innocent as well as the guilty – that the pain may be so great that innocent men will confess crimes that they never committed, rather than suffer tortures worse than death – the answer is, that as guilt makes men cowards, the guilty will give up, while the innocent hold out. But this is simply trusting to the trial by lot. It is the old ordeal by fire. A better answer is, that the court has beforehand strong presumptive evidence of the crime, and that a prisoner is not put to the torture until it has been well ascertained by testimony obtained elsewhere that he is a great offender. When it is thus determined that he is a robber or a murderer, who ought not to live, then this last step is taken to compel him to acknowledge his guilt, and the justice of his condemnation.

But there are cases in which a man may be wrongfully accused; an enemy may bribe a witness to make a complaint against him, upon which he is arrested and cast into prison. Then, unless he can bring some powerful influence to rescue him, his case is hopeless. He denies his guilt, and is put to the rack for an offence of which he is wholly innocent. Such cases, no doubt, occur; and yet men who have lived here many years, such as Dr. Happer and Archdeacon Gray, tell me that they do not believe there is a country in the world where, on the whole, justice is more impartially administered than in China.

I was so painfully interested in this matter, that I went back to the Yamun the next day in company with Dr. Happer, to watch the proceedings further. As before, a number of prisoners were brought in, with chains around their necks, each of whom, when called, fell down on his knees before the judge and begged for mercy. They were not answered harshly or roughly, but listened to with patience and attention. Several whose cases were not capital, at once confessed their offence, and took the punishment. One young fellow, a mere overgrown boy of perhaps eighteen, was brought up, charged with disobedience to parents. He confessed his fault, and blubbered piteously for mercy, and was let off for this time with rather a mild punishment, which was to wear a chain with a heavy stone attached, which he was to drag about after him in the street before the prison, where he was exposed to the scorn of the people. The judge, however, warned him that if he repeated the disobedience, and was arrested again, he would be liable to be punished with death! Such is the rigor with which the laws of China enforce obedience to parents.

A man accused of theft confessed it, and was sentenced to wear the cangue– a board about three feet square – around his neck for a certain time, perhaps several weeks, on which his name was painted in large characters, with the crime of which he was guilty, that all who saw him might know that he was a thief!

These were petty cases, such as might be disposed of in any police court. But now appeared a greater offender. A man was led in with a chain around his neck, who had the reputation of being a noted malefactor. He was charged with both robbery and murder. The case had been pending a long time. The crime, or crimes, had been committed four years ago. The man had been brought up repeatedly, but as no amount of pressure could make him confess, he could not be executed. He was now to have another hearing. He knelt down on the hard stone floor, and heard the accusation, which he denied as he had done before, and loudly protested his innocence. The judge, who was a man of middle age, with a fine intellectual countenance, was in no haste to condemn, but listened patiently. He was in a mild, persuasive mood, perhaps the more so because he was refreshing himself as a Chinaman likes to do. As he sat listening, he took several small cups of tea. A boy in attendance brought him also his pipe, filled with tobacco, which he put in his mouth, and took two or three puffs, when he handed it back; and the boy cleaned it, filled it, and lighted it again. With such support to his physical weakness, who could not listen patiently to a man who was on his knees before him pleading for his life? But the case was a very bad one. It had been referred back to the village in which the man was born, and the "elders," who form the local government in every petty commune in China, had inquired into the facts, and reported that he was a notorious offender, accused of no less than seven crimes – five robberies, one murder, and one maiming. This was a pretty strong indictment. But the man protested that he had been made the victim of a conspiracy to destroy him. The judge replied that it might be that he should be wrongfully accused by one enemy, but it was hardly possible that a hundred people of his native village should combine to accuse him falsely. Their written report was read by the clerk, who then held it up before the man, that he might see it in white and black. Still he denied as before, and the judge, instead of putting him to the torture, simply remanded him to prison for further examination. In all these cases there was no eagerness to convict or to sentence the accused. They were listened to with patience, and apparently all proper force was allowed to what they had to say in their own defence.

This relieves a good deal the apparent severity of the Chinese code. It does not condemn without hearing. But, on the other hand, it does not cover up with fine phrases or foolish sentiment the terrible reality of crime. It believes in crime as an awful fact in human society, and in punishment as a repressive force that must be applied to keep society from destruction.

Next to the Yamun is the prison, in which are confined those charged with capital offences. We were admitted by paying a small fee to the keepers, and were at once surrounded by forty or fifty wretched objects, some of whom had been subjected to torture, and who held up their limbs which had been racked, and showed their bodies all covered with wounds, as an appeal to pity. We gave them some money to buy tobacco, as that is the solace which they crave next to opium, and hurried away.

But there is a place more terrible than the prison; it is the execution-ground. Outside the walls of Canton, between the city gate and the river, is a spot which may well be called Golgotha, the place of a skull. It is simply a dirty vacant lot, partly covered with earthenware pots and pans, a few rods long, on one side of which is a dead wall; but within this narrow space has been shed more blood than on any other spot of the earth's surface. Here those sentenced to death are beheaded. Every few days a gloomy procession files into the lane, and the condemned are ranged against the wall on their knees, when an assistant pulls up their pinioned arms from behind, which forces their heads forward, and the executioner coming to one after another, cleaves the neck with a blow. A number of skulls were scattered about – of those whose bodies had been removed, but whose heads were left unburied. In the lane is the house of the executioner – a thick, short-set man, in a greasy frock, looking like a butcher fresh from the shambles. Though a coarse, ugly fellow, he did not look, as one might suppose, like a monster of cruelty, but was simply a dull, stolid creature, who undertook this as he would any other kind of business, and cut off human heads with as little feeling as he would those of so many sheep. He picks up a little money by exhibiting himself and his weapon of death. He brought out his sword to show it to us. It was short and heavy, like a butcher's cleaver. I took it in my hand, and felt of the blade. It was dull, and rusted with stains of blood. He apologized for its appearance, but explained that it had not been used recently, and added that whenever it was needed for service, he sharpened it. I asked him how many heads he had cut off. He did not know – had not kept count – but supposed some hundreds. Sometimes there were "two or three tens" – that is, twenty or thirty – at once. Rev. Mr. Preston told me he had seen forty cut off in one morning. Dr. Williams had such a horror of blood that he could never be present at an execution, but he one day saw nearly two hundred headless trunks lying here, with their heads, which had just been severed from the bodies, scattered over the ground. Mr. Preston had seen heads piled up six feet high. It ought to be said, however, that in ordinary times no criminal convicted of a capital offence can be executed anywhere in the province (which is a district of nearly eighty thousand square miles, with twenty millions of inhabitants) except in Canton, and with the cognizance of the governor.

The carnival of blood was during the Taiping rebellion in 1855. That rebellion invaded this province; it had possession of Whampoa, and even endangered Canton. When it was suppressed, it was stamped out in blood. There were executions by wholesale. All who had taken part in it were sentenced to death, and as the insurgents were numbered by tens of thousands, the work went on for days and weeks and months. The stream of blood never ceased to flow. The rebels were brought up the river in boat-loads. The magistrates in the villages of the province were supposed to have made an examination. It was enough that they were found with arms in their hands. There were no prisons which could hold such an army, and the only way to deal with them was to execute them. Accordingly every day a detachment was marched out to the execution ground, where forty or fifty men would be standing with coffins, to receive and carry off the bodies. They were taken out of the city by a certain gate, and here Dr. Williams engaged a man to count them as they passed, and thus he kept the fearful roll of the dead; and comparing it with the published lists he found the number executed in fourteen months to be eighty-one thousand! An Aceldama indeed! It is not, then, too much to say that taking the years together, within this narrow ground blood enough has been shed to float the Great Eastern.

But decapitation is a simple business compared with that which the executioner has sometimes to perform. I observed standing against the wall some half a dozen rude crosses, made of bamboo, which reminded me that death is sometimes inflicted by crucifixion. This mode of punishment is reserved for the worst malefactors. They are not nailed to the cross to die a lingering death, but lashed to it by ropes, and then slowly strangled or cut to pieces. The executioner explained coolly how he first cut out an eye, or sliced off a piece of the cheek or the breast, and so proceeded deliberately, till with one tremendous stroke the body was cleft in twain.

Thus Chinese law illustrates its idea of punishment, which is to inflict it with tremendous rigor. It not only holds to capital punishment, but sometimes makes a man in dying suffer a thousand deaths. A gentleman at Fuhchau told me that he had seen a criminal starved to death. A man who had robbed a woman, using violence, was put into a cage in a public place, with his head out of a hole, exposed to the sun, and his body extended, and there left to die by inches. The foreign community were horror-struck; the consuls protested against it, but in vain. He lingered four days before death came to put an end to his agony. There were about twenty so punished at Canton in 1843, for incendiarism.

We shudder at these harrowing tales of "man's inhumanity to man." But we must not take the pictures of these terrible scenes, as if they were things which stare in the eyes of all beholders, or which give the fairest impression of Chinese law; as if this were a country in which there is nothing but suffering and crime. On the contrary, it is pre-eminently a land of peace and order. The Chinese are a law-abiding people. Because a few hundred bad men are found in a city of a million inhabitants, and punished with severity, we must not suppose that this is a lawless community. Those who would charge this, may at least be called on to point out a better-governed city in Europe.

This fearful Draconian code can at least claim that it is successful in suppressing crime. The law is a terror to evil-doers. The proof of this is that order is so well preserved. This great city of Canton is as quiet, and life and property are as safe, as in London or New York. Yet it is done with no display of force. There is no obtrusion of the police or the military, as in Paris or Vienna. The gates of the city are shut at night, and the Tartar soldiers make their rounds; but the armed hand is not always held up before the public eye. The Chinese Government has learned to make its authority respected without the constant display of military power.

The Chinese are the most industrious people on the face of the earth, for only by constant and universal industry can a population of four hundred millions live. When such masses of human beings are crowded together, the struggle for existence is so great, that it is only by keeping the millions of hands busy that food can be obtained for the millions of mouths. The same necessity enforces peace with each other, and therefore from necessity, as well as from moral considerations, this has been the policy of China from the beginning. Its whole political economy, taught long since by Confucius, is contained in two words – Industry and Peace. By an adherence to these simple principles, the Empire has held together for thousands of years, while every other nation has gone to pieces. China has never been an aggressive nation, given to wars of conquest. It has indeed attempted to subdue the tribes of Central Asia, and holds a weak sway over Turkistan and Thibet; while Corea and Loochoo and Annam still acknowledge a kind of fealty, now long since repudiated by Burmah and Siam. But in almost all cases it has "stooped to conquer," and been satisfied with a sort of tribute, instead of attempting roughly to enforce its authority, which would lead to perpetual wars. Thus has China followed the lesson of Confucius, furnishing the most stupendous example on the face of the earth of the advantage to nations of industry and peace.

The reason for this general respect and obedience to law may be found in another fact, which is to the immortal honor of the Chinese. It is the respect and obedience to parents. In China the family is the foundation of the state; and the very first law of society, as well as of religion, is: "Honor thy father and mother." In no country in the world is this law so universally obeyed. The preservation of China amid the wreck of other kingdoms is largely due to its respect to the Fifth Commandment, which has proved literally "a commandment with promise;" – the promise, "that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee," having been fulfilled in the preservation of this country from age to age.

As a consequence of this respect to parents, which imposes an authority over children, and binds them together, the family feeling in China is very strong. This, however noble in itself, has some evil effects, as it often separates the people of a town or village by feuds and divisions, which are as distinct, and as jealous and hostile, as the old Highland clans in Scotland. This interferes with the administration of justice. If a crime is committed, all of one's clan are in league to screen and protect the offender, while the rival clan is as eager to pursue and destroy him. Woe to the man who is accused, and who has no friend! But the disposition to stand by each other manifests itself in many acts of mutual helpfulness, of devotion and personal sacrifice.

Carrying out the same idea, the nation is only a larger family, and the government a patriarchal despotism. There is no representative government, no Congress or Parliament; and yet there is a kind of local government, like that of our New England towns. Every village is governed by "elders," who are responsible for its police, who look after rascals, and who also aid in assessing the taxes for the local and general governments. By this union of a great central power with local administration of local affairs, the government has managed to hold together hundreds of millions of human beings, and make its authority respected over a large part of Asia.

This family feeling moulds even the religion of China, which takes the form of a worship of ancestors. Those who have given them existence are not lost when they have ceased to breathe. They are still the links of being by which, and through which, the present living world came from the hand of the Creator, and are to be reverenced with a devotion next to that felt for the Author of being himself. Their memory is still cherished. Every household has its objects of devotion; every dwelling has its shrine sacred to the memory of the dead; and no temple or pagoda is more truly holy ground than the cemeteries, often laid out on hill-sides, where reposes the dust of former generations. To these they make frequent pilgrimages. Every year the Emperor of China goes in state to visit the tombs of his ancestors. The poor emigrant who leaves for America or Australia, gives a part of his earnings, so that, in case of death, his body shall be brought back to China to sleep in the soil that contains the dust of his ancestors. Thus the living are joined to the dead; and those who have vanished from the earth, from the silent hills where they sleep, still rule the most populous kingdom of the world.

One cannot leave China without a word in regard to its relations with other countries. In this respect a great change has taken place within this generation. The old exclusiveness is broken down. This has come by war, and war which had not always a justifiable origin, however good may have been its effects. The opium war in 1841 is not a thing to be remembered by England with pride. The cause of that war was an attempt by the Chinese government in 1839 to prevent the English importation of opium. Never did a government make a more determined effort to remove a terrible curse that was destroying its population. Seeing the evil in all its enormity, it roused itself like a strong man to shake it off. It imposed heavy penalties on the use of opium, even going so far as to put some to death. But what could it do so long as foreigners were selling opium in Canton, right before its eyes? It resolved to break up the trade, to stop the importation. As a last resort, it drew a cordon around the factories of the foreign merchants, and brought them to terms by a truly Eastern strategy. It did not attack them, nor touch a hair of their heads; but it assumed that it had at least the right to exercise its authority over its own people, by forbidding them to have any intercourse with foreigners. Immediately every Chinese servant left them. No man could be had, for love or money, to render them any service, or even to sell them food. Thus they were virtually prisoners. This state of siege lasted about six weeks. At the end of that time the British merchants surrendered all the opium, at the order of their consular chief, Charles Elliot, for him to hand it over to the Chinese; it amounted to 20,283 chests (nearly three million pounds in weight), mostly on board ship at the time. The Chinese received it at the mouth of the river, near the Bogue Forts, and there destroyed it, by throwing it overboard, as our fathers destroyed the tea in Boston harbor. To make sure work of it, lest it should be recovered and used, they broke open the chests and mixed it thoroughly with salt water. As it dissolved in the sea, it killed great quantities of fish, but that opium at least never killed any Chinamen.

This brought on war. Much has been said of other causes, but no one familiar with affairs in the East doubts that the controlling motive was a desire to force upon China the trade in opium which is one chief source of the revenue of India.

The war lasted two years, and ended in a complete victory for the foreigners. The Bogue Forts were bombarded, and foreign ships forced their way up the river. Canton was ransomed just as it was to have been attacked, but Amoy, Ningpo, Shanghai, and Chinkiang were assaulted and captured. The war was finally terminated in 1842 by a treaty, by the terms of which China paid to England six millions of dollars for the opium which had been destroyed, and opened five ports to foreign trade. This, though a gain to European and Indian commerce, was a heavy blow to Canton, which, instead of being the only open port, was but one of five. The trade, which before had been concentrated here, now spread along the coast to Amoy, Fuhchau, Ningpo, and Shanghai.

But the Ruler of Nations brings good out of evil. Wrong as was the motive of the opium war, it cannot be doubted that sooner or later war must have come from the attitude of China toward European nations. For ages it had maintained a policy of exclusiveness. The rest of the world were "outside barbarians." It repelled their advances, not only with firmness, but almost with insult. While keeping this attitude of resistance, as foreign commerce was continually knocking at its doors, a collision was inevitable. Recognizing this, we cannot but regret that it should have occurred for a cause in which China was in the right, and England in the wrong.

In the wars of England and France with China, Europe has fought with Asia, and has gotten the victory. Will it be content with what it has gained, or will it press still further, and force China to the wall? This is the question which I heard asked everywhere in Eastern Asia. The English merchants find their interests thwarted by the obstinate conservatism of the Chinese, and would be glad of an opportunity for a naval or military demonstration – an occasion which the Chinese are very careful not to give. There is an English fleet at Hong Kong, a few hours' sail from Canton. The admiral who was to take command came out with us on the steamer from Singapore. He was a gallant seaman, and seemed like a man who would not willingly do injustice; and yet I think his English blood would rise at the prospect of glory, if he were to receive an order from London to transfer his fleet to the Canton River, and lay it abreast of the city, or to force his way up the Pei-ho. The English merchants would hail such an appearance in these waters. Not content with the fifteen ports which they have now, they want the whole of China opened to trade. But the Chinese think they have got enough of it, and to any further invasion oppose a quiet but steady resistance. The English are impatient. They want to force an entrance, and to introduce not only the goods of Manchester, but all the modern improvements – to have railroads all over China, as in India, and steamers on all the rivers; and they think it very unreasonable that the Chinese object. But there is another side to this question. Such changes would disturb the whole internal commerce of China. They would throw out of employment, not thousands nor tens of thousands, but millions, who would perish in such an economical and industrial revolution as surely as by the waters of a deluge. An English missionary at Canton told me that it would not be possible to make any sudden changes, such as would be involved in the general introduction of railroads, or of labor-saving machines in place of the labor of human hands, without inflicting immense suffering. There are millions of people who now keep their heads just above water, and that by standing on their toes and stretching their necks, who would be drowned if it should rise an inch higher. The least agitation of the waters, and they would be submerged. Can we wonder that they hesitate to be sacrificed, and beg their government to move slowly?

America has had no part in the wars with China, although it is said that in the attack on the forts at the mouth of the Pei-ho, when the English ships were hard pressed, American sailors went on board of one of them, and volunteered to serve at the guns, whether from pure love of the excitement of battle, or because they felt, as Commodore Tatnall expressed it, that "blood was thicker than water," is not recorded.12 American sailors and soldiers will never be wanting in any cause which concerns their country's interest and honor. But hitherto it has been our good fortune to come into no armed collision with the Chinese, and hence the American name is in favor along the coast. Our country is represented, not so much by ships of war as by merchants and missionaries. The latter, though few in number, by their wisdom as well as zeal, have done much to conciliate favor and command respect. They are not meddlers nor mischief-makers. They do not belong to the nation that has forced opium upon China, though often obliged to hear the taunt that is hurled against the whole of the English-speaking race. In their own quiet spheres, they have labored to diffuse knowledge and to exhibit practical Christianity. They have opened schools and hospitals, as well as churches. In Canton, a generation ago, Dr. Peter Parker opened a hospital, which is still continued, and which receives about nine hundred every year into its wards, besides some fifteen thousand who are treated at the doors. For twenty years it was in charge of Dr. Kerr, who nearly wore himself out in his duties; and is now succeeded by Dr. Carrow, a young physician who left a good practice in Jersey City to devote himself to this work. Hundreds undergo operation for the stone – a disease quite common in the South, but which Chinese surgery is incompetent to treat – and who are here rescued from a lingering death. That is the way American Christianity should be represented in China. In Calcutta I saw the great opium ships bound for Hong Kong. Let England have a monopoly of that trade, but let America come to China with healing in one hand and the Gospel in the other.