ins, we fear that even science, with all its resources, will
be powerless to do more than pave the way for that wished-for moment
when China and the West will shake hands over all the defeats
sustained by the one, and all the insults offered to the other.

[*] That is, local custom.

It is in the happily unfrequent cases of homicide where a native and a
foreigner play the principal parts, that certain discrepancies between
Chinese and Western law, rules of procedure and evidence, besides
several other minor points, stand out in the boldest and most
irreconcilable relief. To begin with, the Penal Code and all its
modifications of murder, answering in some respects to our distinction
between murder and manslaughter, is but little known to the people at
large. Nay, the very officials who administer these laws are generally
as grossly ignorant of them as it is possible to be, and in every
judge's yamen in the Empire there are one or two "law experts," who
are always prepared to give chapter and verse at a moment's
notice,--in fact, to guide the judge in delivering a proper verdict,
and one such as must meet with the approbation of his superiors. The
people, on the other hand, know but one leading principle in cases of
murder--a life for a life. Under extenuating circumstances cases of
homicide are compromised frequently enough by money payments, but if
the relatives should steadily refuse to forego their revenge, few
officials would risk their own position by failing to fix the guilt
somewhere. As a rule, it is not difficult to obtain the conviction and
capital punishment of any native, or his substitute, who has murdered
a foreigner, and we might succeed equally well in many instances of
justifiable homicide or manslaughter: it is when the case is reversed
that we call down upon our devoted heads all the indignation of the
Celestial Empire. Of course any European who could be proved to have
murdered a native would be hanged for it; but he may kill him in
self-defence or by accident, in both of which instances the Chinese
would clamour for the extreme penalty of the law. Further, _hearsay_
is evidence in a Chinese court of justice, and if several witnesses
appeared who could only say that some one else told them that the
accused had committed the murder, it would go just as far to
strangling or beheading him, as if they had said they saw the deed
themselves. The accused is, moreover, not only allowed to criminate
hims