for three years, and mitigated one degree becomes transportation for two years.

SECTION II

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

SELF-EXECUTION

IMPROPER EXECUTION

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Of this there are various kinds.

The most ignominious of all penalties is slicing to pieces and extinction of the family. Here the offender is tied to a cross, and, by a series of painful but not in themselves mortal cuts, his body is sliced beyond recognition. The head of the offender is subsequently exposed in a cage for a period.

This punishment, known to foreigners as 'lingering death' is not inflicted so much as a torture, but to destroy the future as well as the present life of the offender he is unworthy to exist longer either as a man or a recognizable spirit, and, as spirits to appear must assume their previous corporeal forms, he can only appear as a collection of little bits. It is not a lingering death, for it is

all over in a few seconds, and the coup de grâce is generally given the third cut; but it is very horrid, and the belief that the spirit will be in need of sewing up in a land where needles are not, must make the unfortunate victim's last moments most unhappy. In short, though the punishment is severe and revolting, it is not so painful as the half-hanging, disembowelling, and final quartering, practised in England not so very long ago. It should be added that if an offender sentenced to this penalty commits suicide to avoid it, or otherwise dies before it can be carried out, the corpse is cut and slashed as if alive. So in an instance wherein a son gave his mother a push, and killed her thereby; his elder brother thereon buried the offender alive, as some sort of satisfaction, but the authorities, deeming this inadequate, ordered the body to be dug up and sliced (H. A. H. L. Supp. vol. XII. p. 2).

Further, that a pernicious life may be utterly destroyed, and be doomed to starve in the spirit world without posterity to offer annually the tribute of wine and pork, on the smell of which spirits live, his sons and grandsons are also executed, or

if infants at the time of his offence, are emasculated, and so prevented from carrying on the race.

This punishment is inferior, considered artistically, to torturing a man to death, as for instance Damiens was tortured-burning the body and then scattering the ashes to the four winds. The destruction of the future comfort of the offender's ghost is, however, undoubtedly a refinement.

Simple slicing to pieces is a degree lower in severity than the foregoing.

Next in form of severity is decapitation and exposure of the head, and in cases of rebels, pirates, etc., this punishment may be carried out forthwith on the scene of the offence or in the public market place. The criminal does not lay his head upon a block to be chopped off by an axe, but is placed kneeling with his hands tied behind him. One assistant holds him in position by the rope with which his hands are tied, another pulls his head forward, and with one stroke of his sword the executioner whips it off. The body is given to his friends, if he has any, or otherwise, is buried by the Provincial Governor : the head is put in a cage, and hung up in a public

place, to afford a text for perambulating moralists. Simple decapitation without further formality comes next in severity. As has been before mentioned, in the case of ordinary capital offences, being sentenced to death does not by any means involve a certainty of a violent end; and so this punishment is of two classes, the one when the decapitation is certain 斬立決 the sentence

being carried out if the crime is rightly determined; the other where the decapitation is subject to the approval of the Board the circumstances being considered at the autumn assize, and the penalty being carried out or not according to the result of this consideration. The former class may be styled simple decapitation certain, and the latter, a degree lower in the scale of severity, simple decapitation subject to revision for though, as regards this latter designation, both classes (like nearly all death sentences) are sent to Peking for revision, in the former class, the subject of revision is not the facts of the case but the measure of punishment.

The punishment may, carried out forthwith

where necessary, be

but this, in fact,

comparatively seldom happens, then only in exceptional cases, and by way of example. Simple decapitation subject to revision at the Autumn Assize applies to a very large number of cases. The procedure has already been described. It remains to add that a comparatively small proportion of these sentences is carried out, though the offender has a very good chance of dying in prison while he is waiting for revision. The usual commutation of decapitation subject to revision is either to strangulation, or to military or ordinary penal servitude for a space of three years.

In view of the reason underlying a penalty which involves dismemberment, it is provided that this part of the sentence shall still be carried out, though the offender should have died in the interval (H. A. H. L. Vol. XLIV. p. 34) the sentence is supposed to be carried out whether the offender be dead or alive, and it appears from the reports, in some instances at least, actually to be so. Thus, if the offender's name should chance to have been placed on the fatal calendar and ticked off by the Emperor, the fact that the