of the killing taking place in affray, possessing strong individual features of its own. In premeditated fatal affrays, if the originator of the affair takes part in it and inflicts serious injury on the deceased he will be held principally responsible but if he has not done serious injury to the deceased, and the fatal wound can be traced to someone else, the latter will be held responsible as principal, and the originator only so in the second degree. The responsibility still attaches to the originator, if it if it cannot be ascertained who struck the fatal blow; and even though the originator be not capitally responsible, he will be sentenced to life transportation as against a term only for an accomplice (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 1). If the affray was unpremeditated, the person by whom it was commenced will be held to be the principal. Where several serious injuries are inflicted, and the victim dies on the spot, the person striking the last fatal blow may be held responsible (id.): but the mere fact of striking the last blow does not necessarily make the striker principal, if others can be shown to have inflicted the fatal injuries, and that done by the striker of the last blow was comparatively slight (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 7) for the rule only applies when it cannot really be distinguished who struck the most serious blow (H. A. H, L. vol. XXX. p. 8). For a person to say during an affray that he will do for a man is evidence of active participation (v. case of Yang Chèng-hsiang E H. A. H. L. vol. II. p. 23). It is an aggravation of the offence that an offender had no personal interest in the case; but it would seem, even though knives be used, that such person will merely be sentenced to strangulation subject to revision, if there was no deliberate intention to kill (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 1). It is an aggravation that a number of other people were asked to help, and the offence of the person so asking will be the more severely visited in ratio with the number of lives lost; and if two persons belonging to the same family are killed the sentence will be strangulation, and if three, decapitation without appeal the actual perpetrators of the homicide being sentenced to strangulation subject to revision (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 12). It is also an aggravation that a person kill three others in an affray, and although not the principal his sentence will be strangulation without revision (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 14). As regards mitigation, if the person killed was not the person the originator intended to beat or one of his relatives, and the friends of the originator killed him by mistake, the responsibility of the originator is reduced a degree (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 15). Again the capital sentence will be commuted to transportation for life, if the wound though in a dangerous spot is in itself insignificant, and the victim dies from taking cold in or through it ten days or more after the wound was inflicted. In a case, however, where a man was knocked on the head with a rolling-pin and the bone laid bare, the Board declared that the case did not come within the statute though the victim lingered fourteen days, and died of cold then (H. A. H. L. vol. XLIV. p. 90). The rule does not apply where the wound was in the first case severe. As regards the effect of relationship on the penalty in fatal affrays. If a relative of a person killed in a fight then and there beats to death the person responsible for the aforesaid homicide, the capital sentence will be commuted to military servitude but the relationship must be by blood and not simply by marriage (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 25). If in a fight between two families, the respective murderers on either side are relatives of the men killed upon their side, the capital sentence will be commuted to military servitude (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. pp. 19—20): but the killing must be in the same affray, and not on two fights arising, though it may be out of the same affair (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 36). (6) Secondly of the use of fire-arms in affray. If a person discharge a gun in the course of an affray, intent will be assumed, and the firer will be sentenced to decapitation if he kill anyone (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 43). And the discharge will be held to have occurred intentionally, though done in self-defence (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 46). And if any abuse has been exchanged, the case will be one of killing in affray, whether the weapon went off by the act of its possessor or his antagonist; as in the rather hard case of Tsêng Liang-ming , who interfering to stop a row, interchanged some angry words with one of the parties, who thereon struck the intervener with a stick, and the latter article touching a gun that the intervener was carrying, caused it to explode and kill the striker (H. A. H. L. vol. XXX. p. 48: v. also Homicide - Fire-arms). SECTION III SPECIAL TREATMENT SPECIAL TREATMENT CLAN FIGHTS CLAN FIGHTS IN SOUTH CHINA In the south of China special provision is made for the repression of the clan fights which flourish there, and care has to be taken in dealing with affrays to settle whether they come under these special clauses or not. That |