issued in A.D. 1647. Of these codes the great exemplar was the _Law
Classic_ drawn up by Li K'uei (_Li K'uei fa ching_), a statesman
in the service of the first ruler of the Wei State, in the fourth
century B.C. The _Ta Ch'ing lü li_ has been highly praised by competent
judges. Originally it sanctioned only two kinds of punishment, death
and flogging, but others were in use, and the barbarous _ling ch'ih_,
'lingering death' or 'slicing to pieces,' invented about A.D. 1000
and abolished in 1905, was inflicted for high treason, parricide,
on women who killed their husbands, and murderers of three persons
of one family. In fact, until some first-hand knowledge of Western
systems and procedure was obtained, the vindictive as opposed to the
reformatory idea of punishments continued to obtain in China down to
quite recent years, and has not yet entirely disappeared. Though the
crueller forms of punishment had been legally abolished, they continued
to be used in many parts. Having been joint judge at Chinese trials
at which, in spite of my protests, prisoners were hung up by their
thumbs and made to kneel on chains in order to extort confession
(without which no accused person could be punished), I can testify
that the true meaning of the "proper end of punishments" had no more
entered into the Chinese mind at the close of the monarchical _régime_
than it had 4000 years before.

As a result of the reform movement into which China was forced as
an alternative to foreign domination toward the end of the Manchu
Period, but chiefly owing to the bait held out by Western Powers,
that extraterritoriality would be abolished when China had reformed
her judicial system, a new Provisional Criminal Code was published. It
substituted death by hanging or strangulation for decapitation, and
imprisonment for various lengths of time for bambooing. It was adopted
in large measure by the Republican _régime_, and is the chief legal