As the claim of China to the abolition of extra-territoriality
is likely to be urged in the immediate future, the Times corre- spondent at Shanghai has done good service by emphasising the crying need of judicial reform throughout the Empire. How great that need is may be gathered from the statement of a native prisoner recently rescued by the united action of the Consular body and municipality of Shanghai from the tender mercies of the Shanghai City Magistrate. The man in question, who was arrested on the charge of illegally detaining a native title-deed—which he stoutly denied—was kept in prison for more than four months, during which time he was beaten with bamboos, receiving the first time seven hundred strokes, the second and third times two thousand, and the fourth time nine hundred. On three of these occasions he paid the lictors sums varying from 12 to 24 dollars to lay on their strokes lightly, but appears to have gained little from the outlay, and at his last beating fainted from the blows. Punishment by bamboo was solemnly abolished by Imperial Edict five years ago, but, according to the corre- spondent, it is as yet no man's business from end to end of the Empire to see that any laws or regulations are observed, and patriots and reformers, in spite of all their fine talk, are dumb when they are thus flagrantly violated. While these " methods of barbarism" are in use China must not be
surprised to find her path to independence from the foreigner long and difficult.
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