No crimes pass unpunished in China. The bastinado is the common punishment for
slight faults, and the number of blows is proportionable to the nature of the fault. This
is the punishment which the officers of war immediately inflict upon the soldiers who,
being placed as sentinels in the night time in the streets and public places of great
cities, are found asleep. When the number of blows does not exceed twenty, it is accounted
a fatherly correction, and not an infamous. The emperor himself sometimes commands it to
be inflicted on great persons, and afterwards sees them and treats them as usual. A very
small matter will incur this correction; as having taken a trifle, said opprobrious
things, given a few blows with the fist. If these things reach the mandarin's ears, he
immediately sets the battoon at work. After the correction is over, they are to kneel
before the judge, bow their bodies three times to the earth, and thank him for the care he
takes of their education.
The instrument wherewith he inflicts the bastinado is a thick cane, cloven in
two, and several feet long. The lower part is as broad as one's hand, and the upper is
smooth and small, that it may more easily be managed. It is made of the bamboo, which is a
wood that is hard, strong, and heavy. When the mandarin sits in judgment, he is placed
below a table upon which is a case full of small staves about half a foot long and two
fingers broad, and he is surrounded with tall footmen with battoons in their hands. At a
certain sign that he gives by taking out and throwing down these staves, they seize the
criminal and lay him down with his face towards the ground, and as many small staves as
the mandarin draws out of the case and throws on the ground, so many footmen succeed each
other, every one giving five blows with a battoon on the guilty person's bare skin.
However, it is observable that four blows are always reckoned as five, which they call
the grace of the emperor, who as a father has compassion on the people, always subtracting
something from the punishment. There is another method of mitigating the punishment, which
is to bribe those that apply it, for they have the art of managing in such a manner that
the blows shall fall very lightly and the punishment become almost insensible. It is not
only in his tribunal that the mandarin has power to give the bastinado; it is the same
thing in whatever place he is, even out of his district, for which reason when he goes
abroad he has always officers of justice in his train who carry the battoon.
As for one of the vulgar, it is sufficient not to have alighted if he was on horseback
when the mandarin passed by, or to have crossed the street in his presence, to receive
five or six blows by his order. The performance of it is so quick that it is often done
before those who are present perceive anything of the matter. Masters use the same
correction to their scholars, fathers to their children, and noblemen to punish their
domestics, with this difference that the battoon is every way less.
Another punishment, less painful, but more infamous, is the wooden collar which the
Portuguese have called cangue. This cangue is composed of two pieces of wood,
hollowed in the middle to place the neck of the criminal in. When he has been condemned by
the mandarin, they take these two pieces of wood, lay them on his shoulders, and join them
together in such a manner that there is room only for the neck. By this means, the person
can neither see his feet nor put his hand to his mouth, but is obliged to be fed by some
other person. He carries night and day this disagreeable load, which is heavier or lighter
according to the nature of the fault. Some cangues weigh two hundred pounds, and are so
troublesome to criminals that out of shame, confusion, pain, want of nourishment and
sleep, they die under them. Some are three feet square and five or six inches thick; the
common sort weigh fifty or sixty pounds.
The criminals find different ways to mitigate the punishment. Some walk in company with
their relations and friends, who support the four corners of the cangue that it may not
gall their shoulders. Others rest it on a table or on a bench; others have a chair made
proper to support the four corners, and so sit tolerably easy. When, in the presence of
the mandarin, they have joined the two pieces of wood about the neck of the criminal, they
paste on each side two long slips of paper about four fingers broad, on which they fix a
seal, that the two pieces which compose the cangue may not be separated without its being
perceived. Then they write in large characters the crime for which this punishment is
inflicted and the time that it ought to last; for instance, if it be a thief or seditious
person or a disturber of the peace of families, a gamester, etc., he must wear the cangue
for three months in a particular place. The place where they are exposed is generally at
the gate of a temple which is much frequented, or where two streets cross, or at the gate
of the city, or in a public square, or even at the principal gate of the mandarin's
tribunal.
Then the time of punishment is expired, the officers of the tribunal bring back the
criminal to the mandarin, who, after having exhorted him to amend his conduct, frees him
from the cangue, and to take his leave of him orders him twenty strokes of the battoon,
for it is the common custom of the Chinese justices not to inflict any punishment unless
it be a pecuniary one, which is not preceded and succeeded by the bastinado, inasmuch that
it may be said that the Chinese Government subsists by the exercise of the battoon.
Besides the punishment of the cangue, there are still others which are inflicted for
slight faults. A missionary entering into a tribunal found young people upon their knees.
Some bore on their heads a stone weighing seven or eight pounds; others held a book in
their hand and seemed to read diligently. Among these was a young married man about thirty
years old who loved gaming to excess. He had lost one part of the money with which his
father had furnished him to carry on his business; exhortations, reprimands, threatenings,
proved ineffectual to root out this passion, so that his father, being still desirous to
cure him of this disease, conducted him to the mandarin's tribunal. The mandarin, who was
a man of honor and probity, hearing the father's complaint, caused the young man to draw
near, and after a severe reprimand and proper advice, he was going to have him
bastinadoed, when his mother entered all of a sudden, and throwing herself at the
mandarin's feet, with tears in her eyes besought him to pardon her son.
The mandarin granted her petition, and ordered a book to be brought, composed by the
emperor for the instruction of the empire, and opening it chose the article which related
to filial obedience. "You promise me," he said to the young man, "to
renounce play and to listen to your father's directions. I therefore pardon you this time;
but go and kneel in the gallery on the side of the hall of audience, and learn by heart
this article of filial obedience. You shall not depart from the tribunal till you repeat
it and promise to observe it the remainder of your life." This order was exactly put
in execution. The young man remained three days in the gallery, learned the article, and
was dismissed.
There are some crimes for which the criminals are marked on the cheek, and the mark
which is impressed is a Chinese character signifying their crime. There are others for
which they are condemned to banishment or to draw the royal barques. This servitude lasts
no longer than three years. As for banishment, it is often perpetual, especially if
Tartary is the place of exile; but before they depart, they are sure to be bastinadoed;
and the number of blows is proportionable to their crime.
Unless in some extraordinary cases, which are mentioned in the body of the Chinese
laws, or for which the emperor permits immediate execution upon the spot, no mandarin or
superior tribunal can pronounce definitively the sentence of death. The judgments of all
crimes worthy of death are to be examined, decided, and subscribed by the emperor. The
mandarins send to court the account of the trials and their decision, mentioning the
particular law on which their sentence is founded; for instance, "Such a one is
guilty of a crime, and the law declares that those who are convicted of it shall be
strangled, for which reason I have condemned him to be strangled."
These informations being come to court, the superior tribunal of criminal affairs
examines the fact, the circumstances, and the decision. If the fact is not clearly proved
or the tribunal has need of fresh information, it presents a memorial to the emperor
containing the proof of the crime and the sentence of the inferior mandarin, and it adds,
"To give a just judgment it seems necessary that we should be informed of such a
circumstance; therefore we think it requisite to refer the matter to such a mandarin that
he may clear up the difficulty that lies in our way." The emperor gives what order he
pleases; but his clemency always inclines him to do what is desired, that a man's life may
not be taken away for a slight cause and without sufficient proof. When the superior has
received the information that it required, it presents a second time the deliberation to
the emperors. Then the emperor either confirms the sentence or diminishes the rigor of the
punishment. Sometimes he sends back the memorial, writing these words with his own hand,
"Let the tribunal deliberate further upon this matter and make their report to
me." Every part of the judicature is extremely scrupulous when a man's life is
concerned.
