dination of the ruled to the ruler. The laws were
punitive and vindictive rather than reformatory or remedial, criminal
rather than civil. Punishments were cruel: branding, cutting off the
nose, the legs at the knees, castration, and death, the latter not
necessarily, or indeed ordinarily, for taking life. They included in
some cases punishment of the family, the clan, and the neighbours of
the offender. The _lex talionis_ was in full force.

Nevertheless, in spite of the harsh nature of the punishments, possibly
adapted, more or less, to a harsh state of society, though the "proper
end of punishments"--to "make an end of punishing"--was missed, the
Chinese evolved a series of excellent legal codes. This series began
with the revision of King Mu's _Punishments_ in 950 B.C., the first
regular code being issued in 650 B.C., and ended with the well-known
_Ta Ch'ing lue li_ (_Laws and Statutes of the Great Ch'ing Dynasty_),
issued in A.D. 1647. Of these codes the great exemplar was the _Law
Classic_ drawn up by Li K'uei (_Li K'uei fa ching_), a statesman
in the service of the first ruler of the Wei State, in the fourth
century B.C. The _Ta Ch'ing lue li_ has been highly praised by competent
judges. Originally it sanctioned only two kinds of punishment, death
and flogging, but others were in use, and the barbarous _ling ch'ih_,
'lingering death' or 'slicing to pieces,' invented about A.D. 1000
and abolished in 1905, was inflicted for high treason, parricide,
on women who killed their husbands, and murderers of three persons
of one family. In fact, until some first-hand knowledge of Western
systems and procedure was obtained, the vindictive as opposed to the
reformatory idea of punishments continued to obtain in China down to
quite recent years, and has not yet entirely disappeared. Though the
crueller forms of punishment had been legally abolished, they continued
to be used in many parts. Having been joint judge at Chinese trials
at which, in spite of my protests, prisoners were hung up by their
thumbs and made to kneel on chains in order to extort confession
(without which no accused person could be punished), I can testify
that the true meaning of the "proper end of punishments" had no more
entered into the Chinese mind at the close of the monarchical _regime_
than it had 4000 years before.

As a result of the reform movement into which China was forced as
an alternative to foreign domination toward the end of the Manchu