The lighter punishments annexed to these and other crimes are banishment, the wooden collar or walking pillory, and the bamboo. Banishment is the expulsion for a time, or for life, from one province to another, or from China Proper into Tartary. The wooden collar is of a square figure, with a hole in the middle for the criminal's neck, and so broad that he cannot reach his mouth with his hand, but must be fed by another. It is from fifty to one hundred pounds weight, and so embarrassing either in sitting or standing-for lying down is impossible — that its wearer is sometimes relieved by death before his term of punishment expires.

But the bamboo is the national instrument of punishment, applicable in every case, from the murder of a son by his father down to a scolding match in the street, and to every person, from the prime minister down to the domestic slave. The paternal magistrate sits with the rods before him for the correction of filial China; and when the culprit has heard his sentence, kneeling, the lictors lay him prone upon the floor and chastise him with all their force, either with the larger or smaller bamboo, according to his deserts. The lower degree of punishment is from four to twenty blows, the higher from twenty to forty; but according to the letter of the law these numbers are from twenty to fifty, and from sixty to one hundred, the practical difference being set down to the clemency of the emperor.

Before this scene takes place, it must be said, the complainant has gained admission to the court by striking either upon a bason or drum hung at the door, according to the nature of his case; and he, together with the defendant and witnesses, is placed, kneeling, before the magistrate, with instruments of torture ready by their sides, the case of bamboos in front, and the lictors ranged

in dreadful array around. The prisoner is not defended by counsel, but a statement of the case is written out by a notary, and all the evidence in like manner recorded. In common cases the decision of the mandarin is final; but where the offence requires a heavier punishment than bambooing, the prisoner has the right of appeal through several successive courts till he reaches the imperial palace. If he will not acknowledge the justice of his sentence, however, the magistrate is at liberty to put the question by torture even a second time, which is done by squeezing the ankles or the fingers between pieces of wood. In cases of high treason, the criminal is tortured into the betrayal of his accomplices by having his skin torn down in strips by the executioner.

The prison is not, theoretically, a place of punishment, but merely of detention till sentence is pronounced; but in practice it is the same bloated nuisance, the disgrace of which is only now beginning to be wiped away from Europe. The treatment depends on the keeper's fees; and with accused persons who cannot bribe, hunger and every other extremity of wretchedness are added to the weight of their literal chains. The abuse is so obvious, that every now and then, when a public calamity occurs, it is attributed to the anger of Heaven aroused by this special cause, and an inquiry is instituted into the state of the prisons. The result is the punishment of the mandarins and gaolers, and the relief of some prisoners and release of others; but the system itself must be left untouched as a portion of the venerable constitution of the empire, so that a new crop of abuses springs gradually up, to be mowed down in due time as before.

Although the law permits a husband to chastise his wife, no female can be sent to prison but for murder

or adultery, the latter of which crimes is as deep in dye as the other; since it is a breach of conjugal allegiance— in fact a family sedition. Generally the softer sex, and the aged of both sexes, are treated with lenity; and even the son of an old widow is looked upon with indulgence by the law, for the sake of his mother. But the humanity of the Chinese legislators is still more strikingly exhibited in the case of a death-warrant, which cannot be executed till it has passed successively under the consideration of the provincial judges, the lieutenantgovernor, and governor, the criminal board, the judicial board, and finally the emperor himself. When it has at length reached the throne, it is then the subject of renewed consultation; and before the irrevocable fiat is given, the Son of Heaven must prepare himself for his high and melancholy duty by long fasting and sacrifices to the gods.

The Board of Public Works is not entirely architectural. It superintends likewise, in another department, the manufacture of government-stores, arms, and ammunition; in a third, the rivers, the dykes against the inroads of the sea, the high roads, the works for irrigation, the building of the grain-junks and men-of-war, and the imperial ice-cellars at Peking; and in a fourth the mausoleums, the public funerals of meritorious persons, the manufacture of trinkets and other articles of luxury for the emperor, and, in fine, the mint. The duty of this tribunal, like that of the rest, is to see that everything under its control is made or done according to established usage; as all articles, from a jewel to a junk, from a sedan to a palace, have their constitutional form; and that the tombs of the departed great encroach not an inch upon the space allotted to their rank by those universal laws which bring gods

and men, the living and the dead, within the same subjection.

Such are the six courts of Peking, which are the six fountains of government subordinate to the emperor and his ministers, and which might be supposed at a first glance to include all China within their precincts. But there is still another institution, beyond, above, around, and within all these; and it is remarkable that the very same expedient for controlling the abuses of power should have been hit upon by the Roman legislators, and that it should have contributed greatly, as Montesquieu observes, to the stability of the Republic. This is the Censorship; and the court, as originally constituted in China, might have been addressed almost in the very words of Decius to Valerian :-" Happy Valerian! happy in the general approbation of the senate and of the Roman republic! Accept the censorship of mankind, and judge of our manners. You will select those who deserve to continue members of the senate; you will restore the equestrian order to its ancient splendour; you will improve the revenue, yet moderate the public burthens. You will distinguish its regular classes, the various and infinite multitude of citizens, and accurately review the military strength, the wealth, the virtue, and the resources of Rome. Your decisions shall obtain the force of laws. The army, the palace, the ministers of justice, and the great officers of the empire, are all subject to your tribunal."

When the office of censor was usurped by the Cæsars its utility was lost; and it seems extraordinary to find it in China coexisting with a tyrannical government. But this is only one of many proofs that the Chinese tyranny was originally of a nature quite unknown in the western

world. In fact the progress or procession of government seems to have been entirely different in the two hemispheres. In Europe the empire was erected upon the ruins of former institutions, and in this new regime the censorship-the remnant of a free and virtuous agewould have been anomalous and ridiculous. It was refused by the noble Trajan and the Antonines as an honour far too high for their deserts, and fell into desuetude from its simple antagonism to the spirit of supreme monarchy. In China, on the other hand, the imperial system was merely a more perfect development of the original form of government. As a tribe was nothing more than an aggregate of families, so the nation was nothing more than an aggregate of tribes; with the authority of fathers and chiefs centring in one supreme lord. The people did not belong to the emperor, but the emperor to the people. He ruled for their benefit, he laboured for their subsistence, he studied for their good. The supremacy of the people is declared in every line of the ancient books; and it is not wonderful that legislators who defended regicide in the cause of freedom and virtue should have instituted a censorship over the actions of government.

But in China, still more frequently than elsewhere, we meet with discrepancies between theory and practice, between the real and the ideal. We have already given a remarkable specimen of Chinese censure, and of the philosophical spirit in which it is listened to by government;* and even from this alone may be collected the actual position and utility of the institution. It is, as regards its original purpose, a form or a shadow; and as regards its actual functions a mere conservative

* Page 203.