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 himself, but no case being complete without a full confession on the part of the guilty man, torture might be brought into play to extort from him the necessary acknowledgment.  It is plain, therefore, that Chinese officials prosecuting on behalf of their injured countrymen, are quite at sea in an English court, and their case often falling through for want of proper evidence, they return home cursing the injustice done to them by the hated barbarians, and longing for the day which will dawn upon their extermination from the Flowery Land.