This is considered an injury to legitimate trade,

and the smuggler must therefore be held to

designedly injure the legitimate trader

有礙引鹽卽屬侵損於人(H. A. H. L. vol. X. p. 30). What is meant by this is an offence deleterious in the primary degree, not to the State, but to the public at large. It is a prevalent practice extremely agreeable to the Chinese constitution, and holding forth considerable pecuniary advantages. The established law on the point is rather meagre, and distinction is made between smuggling in general, and the smuggling of tea, alum, salt, opium, etc.

In regard of smuggling in general. Whosoever endeavours to defraud the revenue by paying less than the rated duty will be liable to a flogging and forfeiture of one-half the value of the goods concerned. To convey goods through a barrier or customs station without a proper pass renders the offender liable to all the ordinary penalties for smuggling: and, quaintly enough,

it is an offence within the law on this point to purchase cattle without a stamped contract therefor. Other provisions lay down penalties for the production of false manifests in the case of omissions, all goods so omitted being liable to confiscation.

In regard of the smuggling of salt, alum, and tea, there are special provisions. The salt trade is a monopoly carried on by a limited number of merchants under special Imperial license, and the supervision of the salt monopoly is the care of a special special department of the administration. To engage in the trade without a license is liable to be visited with a flogging and transportation: and distinctions are herein drawn as to whether or not such smuggler was armed. The salt itself, and the vessel, cart, etc., in which it was conveyed, are forfeited to the State. Furthermore, the pilot or guide, the agent, the harbourer, and the consignee, are also liable to transportation and a flogging. To purchase salt knowing it to have been clandestinely transported or prepared renders the purchaser liable to one hundred blows.

The clandestine sale of tea, and manufacture and sale of alum, are subject to the provisions relating to salt smuggling.

It may be well to add that these few selected points have in no way any connection with the administration of the Customs under the Foreign Inspectorate.

CHAPTER XVIII

MISCELLANEOUS OFFENCES AGAINST PUBLIC MORALITY AND HEALTH

SECTION I GENERAL CONSIDERATION

GENERAL CONSIDERATION

Under this head are included certain offences of a miscellaneous character considered to be injurious to the public morality or health. It is not proposed to give a disquisition upon Chinese metaphysics, but it may be pointed out, that the government of the country being founded upon moral agency in preference to physical force, the view adopted in connection with these offences has been merely to indicate transgression by legal provision, without insisting upon too stringent a construction or administration of the

latter. Accordingly, and for instance, gaming has been legally indicated as a transgression, but in practice is much tolerated.

None of the offences under this topic offer any peculiarly intricate reasoning. Of the various considerations, those touching bigamy are perhaps the most important it may indeed be news to many to know that there is in China such an offence at all. The law on the point is however rigid (cf. also Husband and Wife

p. 171). There is a curious assumption in this connection regarding the inference of a husband's death after absence for more than a given period, which closely resembles that wellknown rule of our Law of Evidence the presumption of death after seven years' absence. Of the other offences those touching gaming, the stage, and poisons are most noteworthy.

As regards the stage, the theatrical profession is at present in China in much the position that it held in Rome. An actor has not a perfect existimatio, and is as it were branded levis nota. Poisons are under judicious surveillance in theory but there is no Public Health Act