such cases as these.

Resort to the bamboo as a means of extorting the confession of a
prisoner is regarded by the people rather as the magistrate's confession
of his own incapacity. The education of the official, too easily and
too freely turned into ridicule, gives him an insight into human
nature which, coupled with a little experience, renders him extremely
formidable to the shifty criminal or the crafty litigant. As a rule,
he finds no need for the application of pain. There is a quaint story
illustrative of such judicial methods as would be sure to meet with
full approbation in China. A magistrate, who after several hearings had
failed to discover, among a gang accused of murder, what was essential
to the completion of the case, namely, the actual hand which struck
the fatal blow, notified the prisoners that he was about to invoke the
assistance of the spirits, with a view to elicit the truth. Accordingly,
he caused the accused men, dressed in the black clothes of criminals,
to be led into a large barn, and arranged around it, face to the wall.
Having then told them that an accusing angel would shortly come among
them, and mark the back of the guilty man, he went outside and had the
door shut, and the place darkened. After a short interval, when the door
was thrown open, and the men were summoned to come forth, it was seen
directly that one of the number had a white mark on his back. This
man, in order to make all secure, had turned his back to the wall, not
knowing, what the magistrate well knew, that the wall had been newly
white-washed.

As to the punishment of crime by flogging, a sentence of one or two
hundred--even more--blows would seem to be cruel and disgusting;
happily, it may be taken for granted that such ferocious sentences
are executed only in such cases as have been mentioned above. An acute