On the other hand, the examination of Chinese witnesses, either in a civil or criminal case, is one of the most trying tests to which the forbearance of foreign officials is exposed in all the length and breadth of their intercourse with the slippery denizens of the middle kingdom.  Leaving out of the question the extreme difficulty of the language, now gradually yielding to methodical and persevering study, the peculiar bent of the Chinese mind, with all its prejudices and superstitions, is quite as much an obstacle in the way of eliciting truth as any offered by the fantastic, but still amenable, varieties of Chinese syntax.  We believe that native officials have the power, though it does not always harmonise with their interests to exercise it, of arriving at as just and equitable decisions in the majority of cases brought before them, as any English magistrate who knows “Taylor’s Law of Evidence” from beginning to end.  They accomplish this by a knowledge of character, unparalleled perhaps in any country on the globe, which enables them to distinguish readily, and without such constant recourse to torture as is generally supposed, between the false and honest witness.  The study of mankind in China is, beyond all doubt—­man and his motives for action on every possible occasion, and under every possible condition.  Thus it is, we may remark, that the Chinese fail to appreciate the efforts made for their good by missionaries and others, because the motives of such a course are utterly beyond the reach of native investigation and thought.  They are consequently suspicious of the Greeks—­et dona ferentes.  The self-denial of missionaries who come out to China to all the hardships of Oriental life—­though, as a facetious writer in the Shanghai Courier lately remarked, they live in the best houses, and seem to lead as jolly lives as anybody else out here—­to say nothing of gratuitous medical advice and the free distribution of all kinds of medicine—­all this is entirely incomprehensible to the narrow mind of the calculating native.  Their observations have been confined to the characters and habits of thought which distinguish their fellow-countrymen, and with the result above-mentioned; of the European mind they know absolutely nothing.

As regards the evidence of Chinese taken in a foreign court of justice, the first difficulty consists generally in swearing the witnesses.  Old books on China, which told great lies without much danger of conviction, mention cock-killing and saucer-breaking as among the most binding forms of Chinese oaths.  The common formula, however, which we consider should be adopted in preference to any hybrid expression invented for the occasion, is an invocation to heaven and earth to listen to the statements about to be made, and to punish the witness for any deviation from the truth.  This is sensible enough, and is moreover not without weight among a superstitious people like the Chinese.  The witness then expects the magistrate to ask him