THE MANDARIN
Mandarins' great power--Ambition of every father that son should be a
mandarin--A famous Prime Minister--Description of a mandarin of a
county--His three titles--Clever method of squeezing complainant and
defendant--A typical case--Crime not noticed until officially brought
before the notice of the mandarin--Violations of law by mandarins for
the purpose of squeezing--Methods of judicial procedure--Torture used
to cause confession--Mandarins allowed large discretionary powers in
their decisions--Two typical instances.
Any man who is in office under the Government is called a mandarin. It
must be understood, however, that he is actually in its service to get
this honourable title for whilst many, through courtesy, are addressed as
mandarins, it is only those who are in the _bona fide_ employment of the
country that really can be considered as such.
The mandarins as a class are the privileged men of the Empire. They have
large and extensive powers. In the exercise of their functions a wide
discretion is allowed them, and in their decisions as magistrates, whilst
they have to keep themselves within certain general laws recognized as the
statutes of the dynasty, they are left very much to their own wit and
common-sense as to how they shall reach the conclusions they may finally
come to. In addition to the above, the mandarins have almost unlimited
opportunities of making money and of enriching themselves and their
families.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE GATE (NANKIN).]
This latter has a fascination for the Chinaman, which explains the intense
longing that every youth, who has any ambitions for the future, has to
some day become a mandarin. I presume there is hardly a son born in this
wide Empire, about whom the father does not at once begin to have his
dreams. He pictures to himself the time when the little fellow whose
cries are awakening new echoes in the home shall have taken his degree and
have qualified himself for some Government appointment. His visions widen
and he sees him advanced from one post to another, and growing in power
and in wealth, until he finally returns to his ancestral home to build a
magnificent mansion and to enrich every member of it.
As the mandarins all spring from the people, without any reference to
class or social position, the dreams that the parents often have about
their sons are not the fairy creations of fancy like those of Aladdin's
wonderful lamp, but in countless instances are real romances that are more
marvellous than any writer of fiction has ever conceived. In one of my
travels in the interior of China in passing along a great thoroughfare, I
came upon a magnificent grave. I saw at once it was the tomb of a man that
had been a great mandarin, for only such could possibly have had such a
splendid monument erected in connection with his last resting place.
The tomb, that stood high and conspicuous far back from the highway along
which a constant stream of travellers passed to and fro, was situated at
the end of a great avenue flanked on both sides by huge stone figures
larger than life. The whole was intended to represent the official
residence and court of a high mandarin. There were stone lions guarding
the approaches to where the great official was supposed to be visiting,
and granite horses with their riders waiting patiently for the coming of
their lord, and stone footmen who had been standing for more than a
century for one whose footsteps would never again be heard by human ears.
There was quite a romantic story connected with this grave. Nearly two
hundred years ago, the ground occupied by it was a poor little farm,
cultivated by a family who could barely get enough out of it to keep body
and soul together. A son was born, and as the lad grew up, the parents
seeing that he was a child of uncommon natural abilities, determined that
he should be a scholar, and that he should retrieve the glories of his
house which tradition declared had in former years been most conspicuous,
and should bring back the good fortune which had been vanishing slowly
from their home.
He was accordingly kept at school when he should have been helping on the
farm or going out as a labourer to earn a few cash to ease the poverty
that held the family within its grip. To do this meant a struggle for them
all, and ceaseless self-denial both for the parents and for the young
scholar himself, but after years of a stern struggle to keep the wolf from
the door, the faith and patience of them all were rewarded by the success
of the son.
He passed his examinations with such brilliant success, that he was soon
made a mandarin, and he was appointed to the control of a rich county
where he had ample opportunities of showing the Government how well fitted
he was to rule. From this time the shadow that had rested on his home
lifted, for he was now in a position to send sufficient money to his
parents to enable them to live in luxury. The old house, battered by the
weather and falling into decay, was rebuilt and enlarged. Fresh fields
were bought and added to the farm, and servants and field hands were
employed to gather in the harvests that filled their home with abundance.
In the meanwhile the son had been advanced from one post to another, until
finally he was summoned to the capital by the Emperor and made Prime
Minister. During these years his wealth had been accumulating, until now
he had a large fortune at his command, which, true to Chinese nature and
to Chinese traditions, he had sent to his old home, and which he had spent
largely in the purchase of lands which he added to his own, and of farms
which he let out to farmers, who had lost their own, to cultivate for
him.
At length the time came for him to die, and with the strong passion for
his home where he was reared that supplies the place of patriotism to the
Chinese, he made arrangements that his body should be carried to the place
where he was born, and should be buried in one of the fields in sight of
his old home, where his grave could be cared for, and where his spirit
could be sacrificed to by the members of his own family.
This meant a journey of over a thousand miles, over great plains and up
and down hills and mountains, and across wide rivers, and months of steady
journeying for a large retinue that would have to follow the dead
statesman in a kind of triumphal march across the Empire.
At length the great procession reached the place where the illustrious
dead was to be laid. The whole country round had gathered to witness the
proceedings, for never before, in this region at least, had such a
magnificent funeral been witnessed by any one. There were civil mandarins
of various ranks, dressed in their official robes, with their retinues and
attendants and gorgeous sedan chairs. There were also the highest military
mandarins of the province, with long lines of soldiers, that had been
ordered by imperial edict to do honour to the dead by their presence.
And now the coffin was lowered into the grave amid the blare of trumpets
and the loud wailing of the mourners dressed in sackcloth, whilst crowds
gazed on the scene from every little rising ground, and the proud and
haughty officials pondered with solemn faces upon the honour that had been
done that day to a man who had risen from such a humble condition in life.
One would have imagined that as the mandarins, or rulers of the country,
are all recruited from the ranks of the people, they would naturally be
in sympathy with them, and would do their utmost to deliver them from the
tyranny and oppression from which they too often suffer, but this is not
the case. The fact is the mandarins, as a whole, are the great curse of
the nation. They are rapacious and exacting. They have no regard for
justice or mercy, when these conflict with their own self-interests, and
they are the bitter opponents of any plans of reform, knowing that the
carrying out of such would endanger their own vested interests, and
deprive them of the arbitrary powers they now possess.
In order to give the reader some practical idea of what are the duties and
responsibilities of a mandarin, I propose to select one and describe him
as graphically as I can, so that one may have a picture of him before the
mind's eye. For this purpose, I shall take the "County Mandarin," for
though there are many others that are superior to him in rank, there is
not one whose duties are so multifarious, or who is so responsible for the
order and good government of his district as he is.
He has three titles by which he is equally well known throughout the whole
of the Empire. The first of these is the "County Mandarin," because he is
the chief official in it, and his authority is the predominant one
throughout the whole of the county. Even in cases where his immediate
superior wishes any action to be carried out within his jurisdiction, he
has to request the county mandarin to see it executed. The second of his
titles is "The man that knows the County," from the fact that it is
assumed that he is so intimately acquainted with everything that goes on
within his district that nothing can possibly happen in it without his
being thoroughly cognizant of it. This assumption of course is an utterly
ridiculous one, as it would be manifestly absurd to suppose that any
mortal man could know what is happening by day or night throughout a
large county. The title, however, which has come down from the past, and
which the man accepted when he took office, serves to make him responsible
for all that goes on within his jurisdiction. The theory of the Chinese
Government that every one in some way or other is responsible for what may
take place in society, enables it to at once put its finger on the person
who has to be dealt with in the case of any infraction of the law, though
he himself may not be the individual who has committed the offence.
A murder, for example, is committed during the darkness of the night. It
was done in some alleyway and there is no trace of those who killed the
man. The bailiff of the ward is summoned to appear before the local
mandarin, and he is asked if he has apprehended the murderer. He makes the
excuse that the whole thing happened during the night when the whole city
was asleep, and therefore he could not possibly be cognizant of what all
the scamps and ruffians were doing when honest men were in their beds and
were fast asleep.
That excuse, which would at once be accepted in England, would be laughed
at in China, and the bailiff would be reminded that it was his business to
know everything that went on in his ward, and very likely he would receive
a hundred blows to refresh his memory, and the promise of as many more if
the culprit were not captured within a certain limited time. By this same
doctrine of responsibility, "The man that knows the County" is held by the
Government to be one that must bear on his shoulders the consequences of
whatever may happen in any part of the county over which he rules.
A third title that is given to the official I am describing is, "The
mandarin that is the Father and Mother of the People." This term is a very
pretty one and is given to no other official. It is intended to indicate
the very intimate relationship that exists between him and his people,
and the tender concern that he ought to have for their welfare. As the
child runs to its mother in time of trouble and gets comfort from her
sympathy, so the people of a county turn to this mandarin, when they are
threatened with injustice or oppression, and so he, in the spirit of a
father when he sees his own son in distress, bends all his energies to
protect and comfort them. This is a beautiful theory, which the ancient
legislators of this country in some moment of inspiration conceived, but
the actual fact is that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, instead of
being a father or a mother, he is more like a hungry tiger that desires to
dig its claws into the flesh of a lamb, to satisfy its appetite upon it.
The mandarin whom I am describing has just received an appointment to the
county, say, of "Eternal Spring," for which he has paid the modest sum of
a thousand pounds to the high official who had the disposal of the office.
He is an ambitious man, and his great aim is not only speedily to recoup
himself this initial outlay, but also to lay by a considerable sum to
carry with him to his ancestral home and enable him to live in easy
circumstances for some years to come. As his term of office lasts only
three years and his salary is not more than three hundred a year, it would
seem that he would require to be a conjuror to accomplish these two
objects in the limited time at his command.
That he can do, and in the great majority of cases actually does perform,
such remarkable financial legerdemain is a fact that is entirely due to
the vicious system on which the whole civil service in China is based. It
is perfectly understood by the Government that when a mandarin is
appointed to any official position under it, the squeezes he has to pay
for it, and the inadequate salary he will receive for his services, are
all to be met and supplemented by what he can wring out of the people.
This system is as old as the nation, and has become so inwrought and
worked into its very fibre, that a new creation of national life would
seem to be essential before it could be eradicated from the body politic.
When the mandarin arrives at his Yamen, which is his residence and the
place where all the official business of the county is transacted, he is
met by the whole staff of men who are to assist him in the arduous duties
that fall to him as the chief magistrate in the large district he has been
appointed to rule. These consist of a private secretary, an interpreter, a
number of writers who write dispatches and conduct any correspondence that
may arise, a large body of policemen, or runners as they are generally
called in the East, and a dozen disreputable-looking men who form the
retinue of the mandarin, when he is called out to settle disturbances in
any part of his large field, or adjudicate on cases that have to be tried
on the spot.
Nominally he is responsible for all the salaries that this great crowd of
men receive, and one wonders how he manages to pay them all out of his
three hundred a year. The real fact of the case is, the only man that
receives any salary from him is his private secretary. All the rest
purchase the privilege of being employed in his service, and give the
whole of their time free simply for being permitted to extract out of the
people who come to engage in lawsuits, or from those who have fallen
within the grip of the law, fees and squeezes and perquisites enough to
give them a very good permanent income.
It is very interesting to watch the way in which these gentry carry on
their official work, and how as ministers of justice in executing the
decisions of the mandarin their one aim seems to be to extract as much out
of the pockets of the people they are operating on as it is possible for
them to do.
A farmer, for example, comes one day into the Yamen to lay a complaint
against a rich neighbour who has taken forcible possession of some of his
fields. He produces the deeds of his lands, and shows how they have been
in his family for several generations and that they have never been
alienated either by sale or by mortgage. The rich man has simply taken
forcible possession of them because he belongs to a formidable clan, he
declares, and not because he has any right to the fields.
The runners are delighted with this case, for the fact that there is a
rich man in it makes it certain that some of his dollars will be
transferred to their pockets. The complaint is formally accepted by the
mandarin, and the court fees having been paid, a warrant is issued for the
arrest of the man who has been accused.
The runners or policemen start out on their journey with light and joyous
hearts. The road that leads away from the main thoroughfare takes them
through rice fields, and skirts the foothills, and runs through villages,
until at last it brings them by a narrow pathway to the house of the rich
man they have come to arrest.
The whole village is excited by the arrival of these messengers of the
law, for they are always a sign of ill omen, and the only man that can
face them without being terrified is the man who knows that he has the
means to satisfy their cupidity and to thus avoid being roughly handled by
them. A crowd as if by magic silently gathers round the open door through
which the runners have entered, and the women from the neighbouring houses
collect in excited knots, and with flushed faces discuss the wonderful
news of their village life.
The rich man, with as calm and as indifferent a manner as he can assume,
though his heart is beating fast, comes out into the courtyard where the
runners are standing and politely asks them what is their business with
him. They tell him they have a warrant for his arrest for seizing some
fields that belong to one of his neighbours, and the mandarin has
ordered them to bring him to his court to be tried for the offence.
[Illustration: A POLICEMAN.
_To face p. 280._]
Whilst the warrant is being read, the accused has had time to collect his
wits. He of course denies the accusation, and politely asks the men to be
seated. At the same time he calls the cook, and declaring that they must
be tired and hungry after their long walk, he orders him to at once get
dinner ready for them, and in a whisper he gives him a hint that he does
not wish him to spare any expense in providing such a meal as will put
them in the best humour possible.
The runners freely protest that they have no time to delay, that their
orders are imperative, and that the "Father and Mother of his People" is
impatiently awaiting their return. This of course is all put on, for
dinner is just the one thing they have been looking forward to; so
pretending to yield to the entreaties of their host, they at once make
themselves at home. They smoke their pipes and then laugh and chat with
the members of the household, just as though they had been invited guests,
and not policemen who had come to carry off the head of it to prison.
After a time, when they have got into a comfortable humour with each
other, the rich man takes the head runner aside, and after a few minutes
of earnest conversation and the slipping of a few dollars into his hand,
an air of increased geniality seems to have suddenly sprung up between him
and his uninvited guests. They are now most polite and deferential to him,
and the swaggering, bullying manner natural to them is replaced by a
childlike gentleness that is really most touching. Dinner over, instead of
incontinently grabbing him by the tail and hauling him along the road as
their instinct would prompt them in the case of any of the common people,
they part from him with smiles and bows and high-flown compliments, whilst
the culprit actually stands at his door, and ostentatiously, for the
benefit of the man who has accused him of stealing his fields, entreats
them not to leave him too soon, and assures them that his heart will be
desolated if they do not come quickly and pay him another visit.
When they reach the Yamen, the "Man that knows the County" demands of them
where their prisoner is. They have their story all ready, and they explain
that when they reached his home they could find no trace of him, and that
without any explanation to his friends he had disappeared and they could
not find him. They declare, however, that they are keeping an eye upon the
family, who they are convinced are hiding his movements, and that before
long they will be able to arrest him and bring him before the magistrate.
There is no doubt but that both the "Man that knows the County" and these
scamps whose faces are dyed with the opium hue, all had their tongues in
their cheeks whilst this fable was being rehearsed. Both sides know that
the whole thing is a farce, but seeing that the original idea was devised
by the thinkers and humorists that lived when the history of the nation
was in twilight, it would not do for their far-off descendants to give the
show away, and so with solemn faces they play out the thing, as though a
tragedy and not a comedy were being enacted.
The runners have scarcely left the house, when the rich man hastens, as
fast as he can hurry, to the city, and enters his reply to the accusation
that has been laid against him. He denies that _in toto_, and produces
deeds, that have been so deftly manufactured that they have the impress of
a hundred years upon them, and which he declares prove decisively that the
fields in question belong to him, and have come to him in proper legal
succession from his forefathers.
He is careful, however, after he has put in his plea, to find out some
relatives of the "Father and Mother of the People" who have followed him
from his distant home for occasions like this, with whom he confers. An
earnest but not an unduly prolonged conversation takes place, when a
certain sum of money changes hands, which is destined to find its way into
the pocket of the mandarin, and whose purpose is to give him such a clear
and profound grasp of the case that he will have no difficulty in deciding
that the accusation against the rich man has been a trumped-up one.
Ten days go by and no further proceedings have been taken. The
complainant, well aware of the cause of this, scrapes together as large a
sum as he can possibly afford, and by the same underground method sends it
to the "Man that knows the County," with the hope that he will be able to
see the justice of his case and give him back his fields. At the same time
he enters what in legal phraseology is called a hurrying petition, the
object of which is to hasten the action of the mandarin so as to finish up
the case without delay.
Upon the receipt of this, an order is issued to the runners to go and
arrest the accused with all possible dispatch and bring him to the Yamen
so that he may be tried. The previous farce such as I have already
described is once more gone through. The runners are received with lavish
hospitality and a certain number of dollars are transferred to their
pockets, that put a smile on their features that lights them all up and
that spreads away to the back of their necks, till it finally vanishes
down their tails into thin air. On their return to the Yamen they report
that the man is still away from home, and though they have made diligent
inquiries they have not yet been able to trace his whereabouts.
And so the case goes on, bribes being paid by both sides that go to swell
the gains of the "Father and Mother of his People," whilst fees also are
squeezed out of them by the runners, who, as in some difficult cases in
Chancery in England, grow fat upon the spoils that they extract out of
both the complainant and defendant. Finally, after many months of
vexatious delays, when the whole hungry tribe in the Yamen see that no
more money can be got out of either side, the case is tried, when some
compromise is suggested and the parties leave the court fully convinced
that there is no such thing as justice in China.
The mandarins in this land take a very Oriental idea of what their duty is
in regard to crime. They act upon the principle that unless it is legally
brought before them, and a complaint is entered in their court, they will
take no cognizance of it. Two large and wealthy villages have a quarrel, a
very common thing in China. The feud grows and the passions become excited
till finally they determine to take up arms and settle the case by a
fight. To get the aid of the supernatural on their behalf, each side
appeals to the village god, that is the patron of the clan, to know
whether it approves of the taking up of arms. Almost invariably the idol
does so, and in addition promises to give their side victory in the coming
struggle.
All the old rusty jingals are brought out and furbished up; gunpowder is
bought, and spears and cruel-looking pronged instruments that have been
hidden away when there was no occasion for them, are thrown into the
common stock and are served out to the young bloods who have been getting
blue-mouldy for want of a beating.
Fighting now goes on every day, and other villages round about take sides
with one of the parties, till sometimes as many as thirty, divided into
different camps, are at open war with each other. Fields are desolated,
and crops are ruthlessly destroyed. All this time the "Father and Mother
of his People" knows exactly what is going on, but as he has never been
officially informed of it, he acts on the assumption that the district
where men are being murdered is at absolute peace. Not a soldier is sent
to apprehend the lawbreakers, and no notice whatever is taken of the fact
that combatants are being seized and subjected to the most horrible
tortures, whilst they can get no redress from the constituted authorities
who ought to protect them.
The fact of the matter is the mandarin is simply waiting his time, and
when that arrives he will come in force and rake in the golden harvest
that awaits him. In these clan fights it invariably happens that after a
time both sides become tired of the whole business, and mediators are
appointed to bring the two sides to terms with each other. This process
goes on smoothly until the question as to how much blood-money should be
paid for those who have been killed on each side arises. Where an even
number have fallen in the struggle the solution of the difficulty is an
easy one, but when the number of the slain is greater on one side than on
the other, it is in nearly every case necessary to appeal to the mandarin
to get him to use his authority to settle the matter. It is then that he
finds his opportunity of making a lot of money out of both the belligerent
parties. They have broken the law, he tells them, by carrying on war in
his Majesty's dominions, and he must fine them for daring to take this
liberty. In many cases he has been known to return to his Yamen thousands
of dollars richer than when he left it.
In the question of crime, the democracy is allowed a much larger liberty
than is the case in the West. With the exception of rebellion, or any
overt act against the Government, a Chinaman may commit the most atrocious
misdemeanours without being held responsible to the authorities, unless,
indeed, some formal complaint has been made against him. Murder, for
example, is a crime that in nine cases out of ten is always settled by the
families concerned, by a payment of blood-money. They will fight and
wrangle, and discuss for days together as to the compensation that is
demanded, but when once the amount has been settled and paid the whole
thing is finished, and society never dreams that the murderer owes
anything to it, or that he ought to atone to it for the injury he has done
it in killing one of the members of it.
It is interesting to observe how the mandarin, with his impecunious staff,
who all represent the majesty of law in this Empire, systematically assist
certain classes of people to evade the law of the land, in consideration
of a regular payment being made to allow them to do so. Take gambling, for
instance. The gambling instinct is one of the strongest passions by which
the whole of the Chinese race may be said to be moved. There is no class
exempt from it. The rich and the poor, the men of learning in common with
the coolie who earns his living on the streets, refined ladies and the
wives and daughters of the labouring classes, all have this passion in
their blood. This is so well recognized by their rulers that gambling is
strictly forbidden throughout the Empire. There are standing laws against
it which forbid the indulgence of it in any form whatsoever. There is only
one exception to this, and that is during the first three days in the new
year. Then the nation gambles openly, and tables are placed on the
streets, around which crowds of men gather; and in the homes the women,
forgetful of their duties, are so absorbed over their cards and dice that
until the fourth day, when the gambling must stop, they seem to be driven
with as mad a passion for gain as are the men on the streets.
Now the mandarin and his low-class, opium-dyed gang of followers take
advantage of this terrible weakness of the people to make money out of it;
and so a stranger to the ways of China would be immensely astonished to
find that in the market towns, and especially in those where regular fairs
are held, gambling shops where games of chance are played openly before
the public everywhere exist, and crowds of country bumpkins, drawn by the
universal passion, gather round the tables and, forgetful of time, lose
all sense of everything else, and become absorbed in the changing figures
of the board that bring them either fortune or despair.
You naturally ask how it is that in a country where gambling is so
strictly forbidden, that here is a shop entirely given up to that vice,
and that openly and in sight of the crowds that usually flock to a fair,
the place is packed with men who make no attempt at disguising what they
are engaged in. You will soon discover that the owner of the place pays a
certain settled sum into the Yamen that is divided amongst the "Man that
knows the County" and his disreputable set of underlings; and should any
policeman happen to have official business in the fair, and were passing
along the street and saw the eager, noisy gamblers gathered round the
tables, he would profess the utmost ignorance as to what was going on in
that disreputable place. Should any of the more respectable inhabitants
make a formal complaint against the betting and gambling fraternity, the
magistrate would appear to be filled with indignation, and runners would
be sent to apprehend the lawbreakers to bring them before him to be
punished according to law. They would find, however, when they arrived
that every trace of gambling had been removed, and only perhaps a young
lad would be found, with an innocent-looking face, selling peanuts and
candies. The fact is, before they started with their warrant from the
mandarin, they sent on a swift-footed messenger ahead of them to warn the
men they were coming, and telling them to clear out.
China is a country full of lofty ideas. These are found in the writings of
the sages. They are pasted up in crimson strips of paper on the doorposts
of the houses and shops in every city in the Empire. They are found
staring at one over the temples of the gods, and on the lofty doors of
the Yamens, so that one would suppose that these latter were churches
where the highest morality and the profoundest of theological teachings
were being daily expounded. There is no place indeed that is considered so
bad that a public sense of decency would demand that they should be
excluded from it. Low, miserable opium dens, and houses of ill-fame, and
gambling hells, and homes that are the abode of thieves are adorned with
the most exquisite sentences full of the highest morality, and seemingly
culled with the greatest care from the vast repertory that the language
contains, as if to condemn the very vices that are rampant within.
One would imagine that these beautiful and choice epitomes of all the
virtues would have made the Chinese a highly moral and virtuous people,
but they have not done so. The exquisite sentences that give you a thrill
as you read them for the first time, stare down upon the inmates and upon
the passers-by without the remotest apparent effect upon any one. The
opium-hued runner, and the mandarin whose sole aim is to enrich himself,
pass in and out of the Yamen with sentences that extol righteousness and
benevolences as the highest virtues, but the Yamen remains unchanged, and
continues to be the abode of the greatest villainies. It is an undoubted
fact that it has the worst reputation for roguery and cheating and
chicanery, and the violation of all justice, of any other place throughout
the kingdom.
This is no new development of modern times, but has been in existence from
ages immemorial.[4] It is not, moreover, the result of any class
legislation, for all the mandarins spring from the masses, and therefore
all their vices and defects are inherited from them. There needs a
renovation of the whole social fabric to make men honest in life, and to
cause them to refrain from the practice of things that would never be
tolerated in the common life of the Englishman of to-day. The methods of
judicial procedure in China are entirely different from those in the West.
There is no jury, no summoning and questioning of witnesses, and no
lawyers to defend their clients or to expound the law, so as to deliver
them from any penalties they might have incurred. Everything is left in
the hands of the judge, who takes whatever view may seem to him to be the
best in the case, and to decide without any reference to law books or
statutes or to legal precedents.
A case, for example, is going to be tried. A man is accused of robbing a
grave, one of the most heinous crimes of which a Chinaman can be guilty.
As it is one of the axioms of Chinese law that an accused person is
assumed to be guilty, he is brought in forcibly and with brutal roughness
by some of the runners, wildly declaring that he is absolutely guiltless
of the offence with which he is charged.
This protestation is, of course, taken as a kind of joke that every
prisoner is accustomed to make, so he is forcibly bumped down on to his
knees, whilst his head is made to strike the ground with a sound that is
heard throughout the court. The judge looks on him with a stern and solemn
visage, and enlarges on the enormity of his crime. He must be guilty, for
how otherwise would he be here charged with this offence? The mandarin
calls upon him to confess, but as he refuses to do this, but, on the
contrary, adheres to his statement that he is innocent, a signal is given
to the runners, who proceed to beat him most unmercifully, till his cries
ring throughout the building, and he calls in the most piteous tones to
all present to bear witness that he never committed the crime with which
he is charged. After a time, seeing that he remains obstinate, the
castigation is stopped, and the man, bleeding and wounded, is dragged out
by his tail by the runners and thrown into a dismal dungeon, with some
dirty straw in a corner, and where he can consider whether he will confess
as the mandarin commands him, or whether he will consent to endure the
barbarous treatment he will receive till he does.
A few days pass by, and he is again dragged into the court and the same
process is repeated, until at last, exhausted by his sufferings and unable
to endure the horrible tortures to which he is subjected, he finally
confesses that he did rob the grave. This is exactly what the mandarin has
been manoeuvring for, for according to Chinese common law procedure, no
prisoner can be condemned, and there can be no execution of his sentence,
until he has signed with his own hand his confession that he is guilty. It
would seem to the unsophisticated mind of the Barbarian that has never
been enlightened by the civilizing influences of the sages, that criminal
law would find itself at a complete standstill, seeing that no man would
be willing to sign his own condemnation.
This, however, is an utter mistake. The mandarin has ways and means of
persuading a refractory prisoner to make just the very confession that
will justify him in punishing him to the full extent that he believes he
deserves. There is the prison where a man may be slowly starved, and
chains and manacles, and stout bamboo rods wielded by sturdy brawny arms
that no touch of pity ever weakens. These can be used with such steady,
unfaltering perseverance that life becomes intolerable, and the poor
fellow would be ready to sign a hundred criminating documents rather than
continue to endure the tortures that are inflicted upon him.
In the above accounts of the methods of judicial procedure in China, I
have selected cases that are of constant occurrence throughout the Empire.
How a nation with such a system of judicature has managed not only to
exist, but also to retain a vitality such as China has to-day, is a marvel
that testifies to the law-abiding character of the Chinese race. The
mandarin of to-day is about as mean and as ignoble a specimen of a ruler
as can be conceived, but he has always been the same. He is a product of
the ages. All the teachings of the sages in which he is an adept, have
never been able to produce a better. The people universally hate and
loathe him. He is the synonym for oppression, injustice, and cupidity, and
yet when a man rises from the ranks and is numbered amongst this
aristocracy of power, he never remembers the loathing of the people for
this class, whose name is distasteful to all honest men. It is quite true
that one does occasionally meet with a high-minded and honourable
mandarin, but he is simply an exception that proves the rule. The love and
devotion that the people manifest to such an exceptional character as this
only shows what a longing men have for those to rule over them who shall
exhibit in their lives some of the higher virtues by which human life is
adorned.
The mandarin being untrammelled by juries or by precedents or by statute
books, and often having to depend upon his own mother wit to find out the
truth in some intricate case that comes before him, is accustomed to use
independent and original methods that would shock the legal mind of our
judges in England. Not so in this land, where they are applauded by those
who hear of them as being exceedingly ingenious and as showing the subtle
character of the minds of those who devised them. A description of some of
these may be interesting to the reader.
On one occasion a farmer was going to market with two huge bundles of
firewood that balanced on a bamboo pole he was to carry on his shoulder
from his farm to the neighbouring market town. Just before leaving, his
wife thrust some yards of cotton cloth that she had woven into one of the
bundles, and asked him to take them to the draper's and dispose of them
for her at the best price he could get for them.
Arriving at the town, he applied at the house of a rich scholar to whom he
had been accustomed to sell, and asked if he wanted to buy any firewood.
Finding that he did, he saw that the bundles were duly weighed and paid
for; when, walking down the narrow, ill-paved street and congratulating
himself that he had disposed of his wood so easily, he suddenly remembered
that he had forgotten all about the cloth that had been hidden in one of
them. Hastily retracing his steps, he explained to the purchaser that
there was some cotton cloth belonging to his wife concealed amongst the
wood, and he would be infinitely obliged to him if he would kindly take it
out and give it to him.
The man protested that it was quite a mistake to say that there was any
cloth in either of the bundles. They had both been taken to pieces, but
nothing of the kind was found in them. He must have dropped it by the way,
or his wife may at the last have forgotten to put it in.
The farmer, perfectly certain that the cloth was in the possession of the
rich man, and seeing no way of obtaining redress, wended his way to the
Yamen of the mandarin to ask his advice on the matter. This man happened
to be one whose reputation for ferreting out crime was the admiration of
all the country round. He listened to the farmer's story very attentively,
and after a few pertinent questions he sent one of his runners and ordered
the suspected man to come and see him at once. When he came he vigorously
denied that the cloth was amongst the wood he had bought, and he declared
that the farmer had trumped up this false charge against him and ought to
be severely punished. "The Man that knows the County" seemed to sympathize
with all that he said, and rather inclined to side with him against the
poor farmer. "Is it at all likely, your Excellency," he said, "that I, a
wealthy man, would do such a mean and dishonourable act as to rob a man of
an article only worth two or three shillings in value?"
In reply to this, the mandarin begged to be excused for a moment, and
going into a side room he called one of his runners, and told him to go to
the wife of the rich man and tell her that her husband had confessed that
they had the piece of cloth in their possession, and that she was to hand
it over to the runner, who would bring it to the mandarin. Fully believing
this story, she brought the stolen cloth out of the hiding place where it
had been placed for concealment, and handed it over to the policeman. It
may be easily understood how utterly dumfounded the culprit was when the
runner walked in with the stolen cloth in his hand, and how delighted the
farmer was when it was handed over to him by the "Father and Mother of his
People." Turning to the rich man, the mandarin addressed him in very stern
language upon the meanness of his offence. "I do not like to send you to
prison," he continued, "for that would degrade you in the sight of the
people and the members of your family. My Yamen is out of repair, and if
you will call a builder and have it thoroughly overhauled, I shall be
willing to let you off any further punishment." As this would cost him
fully a hundred pounds, it will be quite evident that he paid dearly for
trying to rob the farmer of his cloth.
One day a mandarin was being carried along a certain road in his sedan
chair, when a man who had been having a quarrel with another appealed to
him to defend him against an attempt that was being made to wrong him. He
explained that as he was walking along the road, it began to rain, and
seeing a stranger who had no umbrella he offered to share his with him as
far as they went together. Now when they were about to part, the man
claimed that the umbrella was his, and had forcibly taken it away from
him. "The Man who knows the County" declared that it was rather a
difficult case to settle, because there was no outside evidence to be got
to help him to a decision. There was simply one man's word against the
other, so he decided that the umbrella should be cut in two and a half
given to each.
There was no appeal against this action of the mandarin, and so the men
went off, with the hacked and mangled pieces of the umbrella, much to the
amusement of the crowd that had gathered to witness this impromptu trial
on the road. They had not gone many yards ahead when the official called
one of his runners, and ordered him to follow the two men, listen to their
conversation, and mark which one of them was most severe in his
condemnation of his judgment. He was then to apprehend them both and bring
them to his Yamen, where he would give his final decision on the matter.
In a short time both men were brought into court, when the runner reported
that the man that claimed that the umbrella was originally his, and that
out of good nature had shared it with the other, was most indignant at
what he called the unjust decision of the judge. The other individual, on
the other hand, treated the whole thing as a joke, and highly applauded
the conduct of the mandarin. "The Father and Mother of his People"
addressed the latter in the severest terms. He spoke of his ingratitude
and baseness of heart in returning a kindness in such a dastardly way as
he had done, and he ordered him to buy a new umbrella and give it to the
man he had wronged as a punishment for his offence. He issued also an
order that he should be made to wear the cangue[5] for a fortnight, and
that he should be made to parade up and down in front of the house of the
man he had maligned during the day, and be shut up in prison during the
night. This decision gave great satisfaction to every one excepting the
man who was so seriously affected by it.
If money could only be eliminated out of the life of a mandarin he would
cease to be the despicable character he often is. In their private life
they are kind and hospitable and have the courtly manners of gentlemen. In
their public capacity, when a bribe is not in view, they have a desire as
a rule to do justice in the cases that are brought before them. In some
respects they are much to be pitied. As no man may be a higher official in
his own province, it follows that he has to live far away from his home
and his friends, amongst people strange to him, who often speak a
different language from his own. It is true that his wife and children
accompany him to his new position, but they never cease to long to be back
again at the place where their kindred dwell. To be a mandarin means power
and the facility for acquiring a fortune, but it means also exile for the
time being from the ancestral home, and constant danger of being involved
with the higher authorities should any of his mistakes or his misdeeds be
brought to light.