the former brands are to be obliterated only if the offence be specified in the Act as excused

otherwise the former brands are to be renewed. If, after the issue of an Act of Grace, an offender sentenced to a life penalty escapes, and incurs thereby the sentence of three year's transportation, the brands are to be obliterated (and the offence of escaping excused): but it such offender commit the offence of escape before the issue of an Act of Grace, though excused his escape, his brand is to be renewed. Again, if such offender commit one act of robbery before, and a second after, the issue of an Act of Grace, both cases coming to light at the same time, they are both to be taken into consideration, and, in the event of subsequent conviction, both cases are to be counted as previous offences and the offender will be so branded. Moreover, if such an offender has taken upon himself to obliterate his branding, or has resisted arrest, and has thereby incurred the aggravated penalty of transportation for a term or for life, the former brand is to be renewed.

It seems hard in some of these instances to discover any sequence of reasoning, but what has been already stated must be well borne in mind Acts of Grace and their interpretation proceed on no fixed system, and are the servants of circumstances.

CHAPTER IV

THE POSITION AND LIABILITIES OF
SUNDRY OFFICIALS EMPLOYED

IN THE ADMINISTRATION

Magistrates are under liability to receive and act on informations or complaints regularly presented or made, subject to penalties varying with the nature of the charge, and the effects, if any, of their neglect. So, if an information touching high treason be regularly presented, and the magistrate does not take the proper measures in regard therewith, if riotous results follow, the magistrate will be decapitated, and

if no results follow, he will receive 100 blows and transportation for three years. So, again, if a magistrate refuses to receive a regularly preferred charge touching parricide, he becomes liable to 100 blows, and for such neglect in the case of ordinary homicide or robbery, a liability to eighty blows is incurred.

If a magistrate allows an offender to escape the penalty due his offence, or if he convict him of a graver offence than that of which he is really guilty, and he does so wittingly, he is liable to the full penalty which, in the one case, he ought to have exacted, or which, in the other, he has wrongfully imposed. If the magistrate committed his error in ignorance, the sentence, in either instance, is commuted five degrees; while, in the former of the two instances given, if he can regain the criminal, an additional commutation of one degree is allowed (H. A. H. L. vol. LX. p. 4). Further, in regard of an error committed in ignorance, where the magistrate has subsequently discovered and rectified the same to the best of his

ability, he will be pardoned, although

the sentence has been executed, in the case of too lenient a sentence, and will receive a mitigation of three degrees in such case, in respect of too grave a sentence.

Carelessness which in England would subject an official to a civil action for damages, in China is considered as a criminal offence. A well-known instance is that wherein a man was left in prison for years, because the clerks omitted his name in copying the instructions regarding him (H. A. H. L. vol. LIX. p. 7). The remedy is however somewhat dangerous, and it is on points such as this, that the Chinese system contrasts disadvantageously with our own: cf. the position of a criminal in England before the invention of the Habeas Corpus Writ.

Magistrates are also naturally liable for the imprisonment of persons not implicated in an offence, that is, if the false imprisonment be with design, and out of private feeling and so also, but in less degree, where persons summoned to give evidence are so imprisoned though the imprisonment be inadvertent.

A magistrate is, furthermore, responsible for the