391
Effective extradition is the obvious remedy to this there are but the familiar British objections, which become unusually inconvenient in a country where plunder and murders are sufficiently wholesale to affect the dignity of political offences; _ and unusually strong when the delivery of an alleged criminal signs his fate to trial and punishment by torture.
In fact we cannot properly repress crime without common action of British and Chinese Courts, but this common action is hardly possible while the procedure of Chinese Courts is so barbarous that we cannot invoke their assistance and our procedure is treated as defeated by technicalities as to be inadequate and practically ineffective for the repression of crime.
This is the state of things on which the Treaty of Tientsin has to act. Its provisions as to extradition and criminal jurisdiction are as follows: