No. 4 Is A Very Old And Feeble Man, Also Kneeling, A
Claimant In An Ancient Civil Suit.
No.
6 indicates a motley group of
notaries, servants, attendants, lictors, alas! The table (No. 5) is of
dark wood, covered with a shabby red cloth. On it are keys, petitions,
note-books, pens and ink, an official seal, and some small cups
containing tallies, which are thrown down to indicate the number of
blows which a culprit is to receive. This was all.
In a high-backed ebony arm-chair, such as might be seen in any English
hall, sat the man who has the awful power of life and death in his
hands. It is almost needless to say that the judge, who was on the left
of the table, and who never once turned to the accused, or indeed to
anyone, was the only seated person. He was a young man, with fine
features, a good complexion, and a high intellectual brow, and had I
seen him under other circumstances, I should have thought him decidedly
prepossessing looking. He wore a black satin hat, a rich, blue brocade
robe, almost concealing his blue brocade trousers, and over this a
sleeved cloak of dark blue satin, lined with ermine fur. A look of
singular coldness and hauteur sat permanently on his face, over which a
flush of indescribable impatience sometimes passed. He is not of the
people, this lordly magistrate. He is one of the privileged literati.
His literary degrees are high and numerous. He has both place and
power. Little risk does he run of a review of his decisions or of an
appeal to the Emperor at Pekin. He spoke loud and with much rapidity
and emphasis, and often beat impatiently on the floor with his foot. He
used the mandarin tongue, and whether cognizant of the dialect of the
prisoners or not, he put all his questions through an interpreter, who
stood at his left, a handsomely dressed old man, who wore a gold chain
with a dependent ivory comb, with which while he spoke he frequently
combed a small and scanty gray mustache.
Notaries, attendants with scarlet-crowned hats, and a rabble of men and
boys, in front of whom we placed ourselves, stood down each side. The
open hall, though lofty, is shabby and extremely dirty, with an unswept
broken pavement, littered at one side with potsherds, and disfigured by
a number of more or less broken black pots as well as other rubbish,
making it look rather like a shed in an untidy nursery garden than an
imperial judgment-hall. On the pillars there are certain classical
inscriptions, one of which is said to be an exhortation to mercy.
Pieces of bamboo of different sizes are ranged against the south wall.
These are used for the bastinado, and there were various instruments
ranged against the same wall, at which I could only look fitfully and
with a shudder, for they are used in "The Question by Torture," which
rapid method of gaining a desired end appears to be practised on
witnesses as well as criminals.
The yard, or uncovered part of this place, has a pavement in the
middle, and on one side of this the most loathsome trench I ever
beheld, such a one as I think could not be found in the foulest slum of
the dirtiest city in Europe, not only loathsome to the eye, but
emitting a stench which even on that cool day might produce vertigo,
and this under the very eye of the magistrate, and not more than thirty
feet from the judgment-seat.
On the other side by which we entered, and which also has an entrance
direct from the prison, is a slimy, green ditch, at the back of which
some guards were lounging, with a heap of felons in chains attached to
heavy stones at their feet. Above, the sky was very blue, and the sun
of our Father which is in heaven shone upon "the just and the unjust."
The civil case took a long time, and was adjourned, and the aged
claimant was so exhausted with kneeling before the judge, that he was
obliged to be assisted away by two men. Then another man knelt and
presented a petition, which was taken to "avizandum." Then a guard led
in by a chain a prisoner, heavily manacled, and with a heavy stone
attached to his neck, who knelt with his forehead touching the ground.
After some speaking, a boy who was standing dangling a number of keys
came forward, and, after much ado, unlocked the rusty padlock which
fastened the chain round the man's neck, and he was led away, dragging
the stone after him with his hands. He had presented a formal petition
for this favor, and I welcomed the granting of it as a solitary gleam
of mercy, but I was informed that the mitigation of the sentence came
about through bribery on the part of the man's relatives, who had to
buy the good-will of four officials before the petition could reach
the magistrate's hands.
More than an hour and a half had passed since we entered, and for two
hours before that the four chained prisoners had been undergoing the
torture of kneeling on a coarsely sanded stone in an immovable and
unsupported position. I was standing so close to them that the dress of
one touched my feet. I could hear their breathing, which had been heavy
at first, become a series of gasps, and cool as the afternoon was, the
sweat of pain fell from their brows upon the dusty floor, and they were
so emaciated that, even through their clothing, I could see the
outlines of their bones. There were no counsel, and no witnesses, and
the judge asked but one question as he beat his foot impatiently on the
floor, "Are you guilty?" They were accused of an aggravated robbery,
and were told to confess, but they said that only two of them were
guilty.
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