November 28, 1904.]
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
The advantages of environment secured by | BARBAROUS CHINESE PUNISH- the highly developed mating with the highly developed, like seeking like, have to he counted in. Professor WEISMANN'S
ment.
MENTS.
hypothesis of the continuous transmis-
: (Daily Press, 28th November.). sion of characteristics and tendencies via germ-cells does not ignore the in-
Perhaps China gives the most striking fluences of natural selection and environ-proofs of her backwardness and latent
i.. savagery Mr. May had his full complement
the punishments that still of ancestors all the time he was bowing disgrace her statute book. The retention before the Chinaman's opulence of progeni of that essentially barbarous and disgusting tors, but unlike the Chinaman, he was not punishment for parricides and others, the a collector. Fairly compared, we thinking chih, is one of these proofs. The Mr. May had ample reason to continue ling chih is perhaps the most demoralising
stiff necked and upright before this heir to a cemetery, because such an equitable com- parison would begin with the earliest parent. Then the point would be, which ancestor was the better man ? All we know of the history of the two races gres to show that there the Chinaman could claim a more
forward development, In that case, the lion's share of respect should go to the European, for he has gathered more moss, so to speak. He has done more with his
few ancestral talents than the Chinaman with his eighteen. In the parable, it was the man with one talent who buried it. The Chinaman had buried eighteen, nud was no richer than when he started. How ever, it is probable that Mr. MAY's respect for the Chinese is based on more than the
sentence that exists in any semi-civilised It is a recoguised punishment, country. and has degrees of barbarity. As its title implies, it is the slicing process, and the condemned person may, according to sen- tence or by arrangement with theexecutioner, be made to suffer torments or be despatched after a few strokes of the knife. But the cutting to pieces has to be effected, and when the operation is over the place of execution is a shambles. We have before us a photograph, in which the ground is littered with the limbs and fragments of the criminal who has undergone his sentence, a ring of deeply interested native spectators formed around the sanguinary spectacle. How demoralising such a scene must prove to Chinese youth is easily imaginable, and
389
has not entirely emerged from barbarism. There is indeed a monstrous field for reform in the Celestial Empire, and it is to be feared that the process of reform will correspond with the extent of the field. For our part, we have not much faith in such reform being anything but extremely gradual. The Chinese and their institutions are for all practical purposes just as and what they were in the days when our fore- fathers founded the Factories at Canton, with perhaps one great difference, viz. that Chinese arrogance has been lowered and their appreciation of the power of the
64
Western barbarian" has been increased by experience. There are some superficial improvements where the two races come most into contact, but in the main the Chinese people remain unaltered and their customs and habits and "laws are the same as they were in the days of the Ming Dynasty. It may be, as a Wu- chang correspondent of our Shanghai morn- ing contemporary says, that in some of the new schools, where Western science is being taught and a military training given, the seeds of reform and progress are being own, to bear fruit later on, and it is possible missionary effort may also have some effect in the future, but we confess to considerable incredulity when told that China will eventually go further than Japan.
one hollow qualification he referred to init is small marvel that a Chinese mob should | When sanguine friends of China venture on
his little story.
LA LIBERTE.
be callous to 'suffering and eager to witness the tortures or gloat over the woes of their fellow creatures. Various tortures are used in all the Courts in China, and prisoners are systematically put to the question under them until they frequently confess to crimes
innocent in order to of which they are obtain a cessation of the agonies to which they are subjected.
(Daily Press, 25th November.) Since the commencement of hostilities between Japan and Russin, the circulation of newspapers printed in Chinese characters has been strictly forbidden in the French The above remarks are the oute ine of Colony of Indo-China, thereby causing some rather naïve comments by a corres- serious injury to Chinese newspaper in pondent of the Iv.-C. Daily News. Writing terests and a quite natural irritation on the from Kashing on the 3rd inst. he says:- part of the large numbers of Chinese living" China has not yet entirely emerged from in the French Colony who had been sub-barbarism "'! In proof of what he seems scribers to newspapers published in Hong- to consider a somewhat daring assertion, kong, Cruton, and elsewhere. The excuse this writer goes on to add:-"If anyone for such action is that the publication of war news in the Chinese papers-that is, we suppose, such news as the papers have had to chronicle of the unbroken series of disastrous defents suffered by the Russian army at the hands of Asiatic forces whom they had previously despised-coustituted when read by the Aunamite population a dauger to the peace and security of French interests in the Colony. We think the suppression of this news is likely to be attended with worse resul's than its publication, for while the French Colonial press is free to publish all the war news it receives, and while letters written in Chinese characters are presumably not detained or destroyed like newspapers at the French Post Offices without notice to the senders, the news of the Russian disas ters in the field must find its way to the bazaars and possibly in the narration be unduly magnified. The unrestricted publica- tion of the news in the vernacular press would, we should think, tend to check cxaggeration; while the total suppression of these newspapers can only result in weakening the confidence of the people in the administration, and breeding in them a spirit of suspicion aud hostility. The sup- pression of the Chinese press is an overt act of sympathy that the ally of France doubt less appreciates, but that an enlightened, democratic, liberty-loving people like the French should adopt even more drastic methods of censorship than the autocratic, not to say barbarous and brutal Govern- ment of Russia, is simply amazing.
is inclined to doubt this statement his doubts could soon be dispelled by a visit to one of the yamêns in this city this morning At the gate you will find a large crowd of people drawn by idle curiosity to see two poor fellows who are being starved and tor- tured to death in wooden cages." He then describes the purishment as follows:-The victim stands in the cage, his head pro- truding through the top, a wooden collar encircling his neck, and bricks being placed beneath his feet. The latter are removed one at a time until his toes barely touch, and he is practically supported by his neck. The hands aud feet are chained and locked. No food is sup- plied to the sufferer, on whom the hot sun pours its burning rays and engenders a horrible thirst. This torture often endures for three days before death gives a merciful release from the vengeance of the law. The correspondent mentions that one of the poor wretches thus treated was a fratricide, the other a mere rubber, but doubtless guilty of many crimes, possibly several murders. But however infan.ous the criminal, the punishment, like that of ling chih, is barbarous and demoralising, far more calculated to breed callousness to suffering in the minds of the spectators than to deter
from crime. At any rate, it is noticeable that crimes of the kind so punished are not infrequent in China, and human life is held very cheaply by. Chinese banditti and criminals.
It is, as the Kashing correspondent in genuously remarks, quite clear that China
predictions of this sort, they lose sight of the inherent difference of race, and of the from China, and hence the greater readiness fact that Japan's civilisation was borrowel in the Island Empire to accept a bigher civilisation when presented, whereas the national egotism of the Chinese prompts them to reject anything foreign as inferior
will, we hold, be a very slow process indeed. and contemptible. Real reform in China
HONGKONG JOTTINGS.
21st November."
This is not the time of year when the public expect water famines, but it has to be
recorded that the residents on the level above Robinson Road were without water from Thurs--
suppose
day night to Saturday morning, due I to work proceeding somewhere on the mains. In most well-ordered communities the Water Authority, when it contemplates inconvenien- cing the public in this way, gives a polite intimation to the householders of the date on which their water supply will temporarily cease, so that they are able to make due pro- vi-ion. Perhaps one of the Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council will kindly inquirs why this cannot be done in Hongkong. While· we have a Sanitary Department spending money lavishly in a laudable effort to obriate epidemics, the Water Authority by want of a little foresight fosters typhoid, for when ser- vants find the water supply cut off they hie with buckets to the streams on the hillside and bring home water for potable and other purposes which to say the least is not as pure as it might be.
Besides, the "powers that be" should have some thought for the morals of the community. When a man gets up in the morning and his Celestial greets him in the bathroom with a finger pointing to an empty tab and the words
No got water" on his lips, an avalanche of words is apt to fall like lava from a volcano, until someone within earshot breaks in, as the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table used to do in like circumstances, and says—“ Hush ! What will the Divinity Student say?" Verily the
P.W.D. have much to answer for.
2
There is great jubilation in Macao over
the as there was in Hongkong when the Chinese Government granted the concession for a line from Kowloon to Canton. Six years have been
confirmation of the railway concession, just
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