Torture is commonly supposed to be practised by Chinese officials upon each and every occasion that a troublesome criminal is brought before them.  The known necessity they are under of having a prisoner’s confession before any “case” is considered complete, coupled with some few isolated instances of unusual barbarity which have come to the notice of foreigners, has probably tended to foster a belief that such scenes of brutality are daily enacted throughout the length and breadth of China as would harrow up the soul of any but a soulless native.  The curious part of it all is that Chinamen themselves regard their laws as the quintessence of leniency, and themselves as the mildest and most gentle people of all that the sun shines upon in his daily journey across the earth—­and back again under the sea.  The truth lies of course somewhere between these two extremes.  For just as people going up a mountain complain to those they meet coming down of the bitter cold, and are assured by the latter that the temperature is really excessively pleasant—­so, from a western point of view certain Chinese customs savour of a cruelty long since forgotten in Europe, while the Chinese enthusiast proudly compares the penal code of this the Great Pure dynasty with the scattered laws and unauthorised atrocities of distant and less civilised ages.

The Han dynasty which lasted from about B.C. 200 to A.D. 200 has been marked by the historian as the epoch of change.  Before that time punishments of all kinds appear to have been terribly severe, and the vengeance of the law pursued even the nearest and most distant relatives of a criminal devoted perhaps to death for some crime in which they could possibly have had no participation.  It was then determined that in future only rebellion should entail extirpation upon the families of such seditious offenders, and at the same time legal punishments were limited to five, viz.:  bambooing of two degrees of severity, banishment to a certain distance for a certain time or for life, and death.  These were, however, frequently exceeded by independent officers against whose acts it would have been vain to appeal, and it was not until the Sui dynasty (589-618 A.D.) that mutilation of the body was absolutely forbidden.  It may, indeed, be said to have survived to the present day in the form of the “lingering death” which is occasionally prescribed for parricides and matricides, but that we now know that this hideous fate exists only in words and form.  When it was first held to be inconsistent with reason to mete out the same punishment to a highway robber who kills a traveller for his purse, and to the villain who takes away life from the author of his being, a distinction was instituted accordingly, but we can only rest in astonishment that any executioner could be found to put such a horrible law into execution as was devised to meet the requirements of the case.  First an arm was chopped off, then the other; the two legs