If the offence take place during a period of mourning for parent or husband, an aggravated penalty of two degrees attaches.

If the offence be committed by an official upon one within his jurisdiction, a similar aggravated penalty attaches.

The offence is, despite the number of cases thereon, not extremely common; for Chinese women, contrary to the received opinion, are peculiarly particular, and will hang themselves without hesitation 情願自行吊死 if their reputation be aspersed, however slightly 一聞 穢語卽便輕生— of this several instances have been given. The offence is mostly important by reason of the incidental points, such as homicide and general responsibility, to which it often gives rise (v. especially Relationship Husband and Wife Justifiable Homicide, and Murder). Incest. The prohibited degrees of relationship include, not only the usual five degrees, but also relationships still more remote. The offence is throughout punished with great severity. So to hold criminal intercourse with relations in the fifth degree, is punishable with transportation for

three years and one hundred blows. If in such cases a rape is committed, decapitation is incurred. To hold criminal intercourse with a step-child is similarly punishable. To hold criminal intercourse with relations more remote than the fifth degree, is punishable with one hundred blows and if in such case a rape is committed decapitation is incurred.

PROCURATION

It is against the law to buy respectable people for improper purposes. A divorced wife cannot be considered altogether a respectable person (H. A. H. L. Supp. vol. XIV. p. 31).

PROCURING ABORTION

This is not capitally punishable, and a person actually administering the noxious thing is only liable to transportation for life even although the woman dies. If the share taken by the offender was merely to procure the noxious thing, and although fatal results ensue, the sentence of one hundred blows and three years' transportation will be imposed commutable in the case of a female offender by fine (H. A. H. L. vol. LI. p. 80).

To procure abortion by use of drugs is styled

death resulting from flooding is

This offence is complete once the woman has

been carried away from the spot where she was seized —— rescue or no rescue 業經拉走者雖 當時被獲俱照巳成科斷 (H. A. H. L. vol. VIII. p. 55). It is ordinarily punishable with military servitude, but if with great violence, in bodies, or followed by violation, capitally.

The character of the offence differs according to the circumstances under which the woman was carried off - such as the use of force (forcible abduction ), and the number of those engaged in the offence (the latter point of such importance as to need separate individual consideration) — and further according to additional

circumstances, such as violation. The position of the woman in the moral scale is also a consideration of great cogency. That well-known saying in Chinese law that "to abduct a woman is worse than “to kill her”是搶奪原較鬭殺爲重 is frequently laid down as a rule - and so treated it is not clearly explicable. It is submitted that it is simply a saying one of the merely moral oracular Chinese dicta: the position of an abducted maiden is morally so grave (and practically liable to such obnoxious public comment) that she ought not to find life worth living.

It is no excuse that the prisoner's intentions were honourable as, for instance, to relieve the woman's misery, where her former husband had beaten her and turned her out of doors (H. A. H. L. vol. VIII. p. 38). It is no excuse that the woman was seized as a deposit merely to induce the husband to pay salvage money due the abductor (v. the Life-boat case H. A. H. L. vol. VIII. p. 46). It is no excuse that the woman ran away with the prisoner, if he keeps her with him and passes her off as his wife even a mere mistress of another (v. case of

Liu Kên-cheng H. A. H. L. vol. XX. p. 27). And even if a woman runs away entirely of her own motion to another's house, the latter, if he allows her to stop with him, will get three years' transportation and one hundred blows (H. A. H. L. Supp. vol. VII. p. 21).

It is not permissible for a person to abduct his own wife after he has given her a bill of divorcement even though merely with a view to make the second husband pay up the marriage portion (H. A. H. L. vol. VIII. p. 44). It is not permissible to abduct the slave of a relation, although in a measure property (H. A. H. L. Supp. vol. III. p. 58); the offence is not so serious, however, as carrying off the slave of one not a relation (id.).

Even where the offender had in some sort a good right to carry off the woman, and was in simple ignorance of fact for which he was not responsible, the ordinary penalty is not much. mitigated. So in the case of Li Tzu, 李梓, wherein the offender had arranged to marry a widow, and had paid the marriage portion to