s. Trade disputes, petty and great alike,
are never carried into court, there being no recognised civil law in
China beyond custom; they are settled by the guilds or trades-unions,
as a rule to the satisfaction of all parties. Many criminal cases are
equally settled out of court, and the offender is punished by agreement
of the clan-elders or heads of families, and nothing is said; for
compounding a felony is not a crime, but a virtue, in the eyes of the
Chinese, who look on all litigation with aversion and contempt.

In the case of murder, however, and some forms of manslaughter, the
ingrained conviction that a life should always be given for a life often
outweighs any money value that could be offered, and the majesty of the
law is upheld at any sacrifice.

It is not uncommon for an accused person to challenge his accuser to a
kind of trial by ordeal, at the local temple.

Kneeling before the altar, at midnight, in the presence of a crowd of
witnesses, the accused man will solemnly burn a sheet of paper, on which
he has written, or caused to be written, an oath, totally denying his
guilt, and calling upon the gods to strike him dead upon the spot, or
his accuser, if either one is deviating in the slightest degree from the
actual truth.

This is indeed a severe ordeal to a superstitious people, whatever it
may seem to us. Even the mandarins avail themselves of similar devices
in cases where they are unable to clear up a mystery in the ordinary
way.

In a well-known case of a murder by a gang of ruffians, the magistrate,
being unable to fix the guilt of the fatal blow upon any one of the
gang, told them that he was going to apply to the gods. He then caused
them all to be dressed in black coats, as is usual with condemned
criminals, and arranged them in a dark shed, with their faces to the
wall, saying that, in response to his prayers, a demon would be sent to
mark the back of the guilty man. When at length the accused were brought
out of the shed, one of them actually had a white mark on his back, and
he at once confessed. In order to outwit the demon he had slily placed
his back against the wall, which by the magistrate's secret orders had
previously received a coat of whitewash.

I will conclude with a case which came under my own personal
observation, and which first set me definitely on the track of
democratic government in China.

In 1882 I was vice-consul at Pagoda Anchorage, a port near the famous
Fooch