Inquests in China serve, unfortunately, but to illustrate one more
phase of the folly and ignorance which hopelessly overshadow the vast
area of its Empire. For although the Chinese justly regard such
investigations as matters of paramount importance, and the office of
coroner devolves upon a high functionary--the district magistrate--yet
the backward state of science on the one hand, and the necessity the
ruling classes have been under of supplying this deficiency on the
other, have combined to produce at once the most deplorable and the
most laughable results. Two good-sized volumes of "Instructions to
Coroners," beautifully printed on white paper and altogether
handsomely got up, are published under the authority of the
Government, and copies of this book are to be found in the offices of
every magistrate throughout the Empire. It is carefully studied even
by the underlings who play only subordinate parts on such occasions,
and the coroner himself generally carries his private copy with him in
his sedan-chair to the very scene of the inquest. From this work the
following sketch has been compiled, for though it has been our fate to
be present at more than one of the lamentable exhibitions thus
dignified by the name of inquest, and to have had ocular demonstration
of the absurdities there perpetrated, it will be more satisfactory to
stick closely to the text of an officially-recognised book, the
translation of which helped to while away many a leisure hour.