33
i
10
the Viceroy had already telegraphed to the Consul-General through himself a message to the effect that the accused had acted as advisers of the "Ke Ming Chun rebels." He handed me a copy of the telegram, and said that he wished me to ask the Consul- General to allow this to be accepted as evidence in the case, which was urgent, on the understanding that the rule of the Court would be complied with in the future. I pointed out that it was precisely because this was the first of possibly a numerous series of requests for the surrender of revolutionaries that it was important that everything should be in order, but he persisted that he could not again telegraph to the Viceroy, so I left to carry his proposal to the Consul-General,
On reporting to the Consul-General, I was instructed to point out to the Taotai that the latter's proposal to depart on this occasion from the usual procedure of the Court was one which would require to be referred to the Consular Body, and that such a reference would entail considerable delay, whereas if he complied with the usual procedure and produced the necessary evidence there was little reason to doubt that the delay would merely correspond with the time required to get such evidence from Nanking.
On the morning of the 13th January Mr. Mao, the Taotai's Secretary, who had been present at the interview on the previous day, came to the Consulate at my request, and I delivered to him the Consul-General's reply to the Taotai's proposal. The same day a formal despatch in reply to the one received on the 11th January was sent in embodying the request for evidence.
On the 17th January a despatch was received from the Taotai forwarding the evidence against the accused as received by him telegraphically from Nanking, but in the ucantime the Consular Body at their weekly meeting on the 15th January had, on the matter being mentioned to them by the Consul-General, decided that the case must be referred to Peking for decision as to the course to be pursued, on the ground that the offence alleged was of a political nature.
By instruction of the Consul-General, I called on the Senior Consul on the 17th January, and handed to him translations of all the documents and correspondence, and explained the circumstances so far as they came within my knowledge as Assessor.
A despatch was sent the same day to the Taotai informing him of the decision of the Consular Body to refer the matter to Peking, which drew from him the somewhat querulous letter of the 18th January. The latter is inaccurate, in so far as it purports to give a correct account of my interview with the Taotai on the 13th January, as will be seen by a reference to my note of what passed, made in the interview book at the time. The letter contained a request that the Consul-General would telegraph to His Majesty's Minister with a view to expediting a decision on the matter, and a short reply was sent to the Taotai informing him that his request had been complied with.
The decision of the Diplomatic Body having been communicated on the 24th January, the adjourned preliminary hearing was fixed for the 28th January, to take place at the ordinary morning sitting of the Court. At my request Mr. Kuan, the Magistrate, sat in place of Mr. Sun, the Assistant Magistrate, whose day it was, and who had sat at the first bearing; my reason for securing the change being to minimize the risk of disagreement as to the conduct of the hearing, Mr. Sun's quick temper and rooted objection to lawyers sometimes rendering it difficult to discuss questions with him satisfactorily.
The accused on this occasion were defended by Mr. Musso, a British subject who practices law with Italian qualifications.
I handed to Mr. Musso an English translation of the evidence given at Nanking by the five "rebels" already captured, as received from the Viceroy and communi- cated officially to the Mixed Court Magistrate by the Taotai. No evidence was adduced on the charge of being concerned in the bomb outrage, which was therefore not proceeded with.
"Of the five criminals who at their trial implicated the accused, one--the Li Fu Tsai mentioned at the first hearing on the 9th January-was captured in November, and stated that he was originally leader of a gang of Yang-tsze river thieves, and was induced to join the "Ke Ming Chun "' by its founders, two Hunan men, named Liu Cheng and Li Chao Mei. He knew that the accused were among its leaders. The remaining four men, two of whom had been named by Li as leaders, were captured in December on their way to the scene of the rebellion in Kiangsi, and gave a list of the moving spirits of the Society, among which were the accused, whom they described as holding the office of "advisers." Four of the
11
five witnesses had already been executed, but one, named Fu, was being kept to confront with the accused and others not yet brought to trial.
Mr. Musso applied for a remand on the ground that he had only just been instructed, but this the Court refused to grant in view of the fact that during the three weeks the accused had been in custody they had known what the charges against them were, and had had every facility for seeing their friends and instructing counsel. The accused were then questioned at length by the Court, each man's statement being made separately in the absence of the other accused and of the witnesses for the defence. Mr. Musso objected to the exclusion of the other accused, but the practice is the usual one followed by the Court in dealing with co-defendants who may be expected to speak in collusion with one another.
The accused Chang Pao Ching, aged 41, stated that he had been seven years in Shanghac employed in Chinese hotels, in a printing-press, and in a shop for foreign clothes, but for the last few months he had been keeping a boarding-house for students on their way to and from Japan. He had known Huang, who came from the same part of Hunan as himself, for the last three or four years.
The accused Huang Yi, aged 40, stated that he was a student, practised as a doctor, and wrote medical books. He too had been in Shanghae for some seven years continuously, with the exception of a trip to his home in Hunan last year. ΠΟ contradicted Chang's evidence in some particulars, and also admitted that he had known a man named Yuan Yueh Seng (one of the late witnesses against him already executed). Both accused stated that they had never heard of the men alleged to be the beads of the "Ke Ming Chun" Society.
Mr. Musso proposed to call three witnesses to confirm the account of themselves given by the accused, but the Court replied that it accepted the account without confirmation.
Mr. Musso then addressed the Court on the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence for the prosecution, which he said had probably been obtained by torture; he also claimed for the defence the opportunity of cross-examining any witnesses brought against the accused, and asked that the surviving witness out of the five who had implicated his clients should be brought down from Nanking to give his evidence in person. He quoted the "Supao" case, alleging that the prisoner, who on that occasion was charged with a political offence committed at Hankow, was acquitted by the Court owing to the lack of oral evidence against him.
The Court replied that the "Supao" precedent did not apply, as in that case a special Tribunal was appointed to try the accused persons, whereas the proper authorities had decided that the accused in this case were to be treated in the usual way, the prosecution being required to show that their charges were founded, and that the identity of the accused was established, preparatory to the latter being handed over to the Chinese authorities for trial.
Mr. Musso said he intended to try through the proper channels to bave the decision of the Diplomatic Body altered. He urged that, in view of the extreme seriousness of the consequences to his clients, the evidence against them was not sufficient to justify their surrender. The Court held that the identity of the accused not having been questioned, and the evidence against them being such as was regularly admitted by the Court, and being sufficient to satisfy both the Magistrate and the Assessor that the charges against the accused were founded on reasonable grounds, the men taust be sent to Nanking for trial. The prisoners were accordingly handed over by the police to the custody of the Mixed Court runners for transference to the Taotai's yamen, and thence to Nanking.
February 4, 1907.
(Signed)
Inclosure 14 in No. 1.
S. BARTON, British Assessor.
Italian Chargé d'Affaires to Doyen of Diplomatic Body.
M. le Ministre,
La Légation d'Italie, Pechino, le 31 Janvier, 1907. APRES examen des documents annexés à la Circulaire No. 15, au sujet des criminels politiques Chinois à Shanghaï, j'ai l'honneur de me ranger à l'avis verbale- ment exposé dans la dernière séance par son Excellence le Chevalier de Kuczinsky, Ministre d'Autriche-Hongrie à Pékin.