"the authority of the master over his slave," with the person, and inasmuch as the person so transferred owes all the obedience and respect to the new pater familias that he did to the old, there is little resistance as

a slave.

In case there is, the law assists the master in enforcing obedience and respect; and, at the request of the master, will inflict punishment or assist in reclaiming fugitives; there is abundant proof of this in the penal code of China, before quoted, viz: section CXVI:

If a female slave deserts from her master's house she shall be punished with 80 blows; or with 100 blows if she contracts a marriage during such absence; and in both cases she shall be restored to her master.

Whoever harbors a fugitive wife or slave or marries them, knowing them to be fugitives, shall participate equally in their punishment, except in capital cases, when the punishment shall be reduced one degree.

The slave is bound under the severest penalties to be respectful and obedient to his master and his family.

Same code, section cccxxvii:

A slave guilty of addressing abusive language to his master shall suffer death by being strangled at the usual period. If to his master's relations in the first degree, he shall be punished with eighty blows and two years' banishment. If to his master's relations in the second degree, the punishment shall be eighty blows. If in the third degree, seventy blows. If in the fourth degree, sixty blows. In these cases, as well as in others, the abusive language must have been heard by the person to whom it was addressed, and such person must always be the complainant.

The master's right of property or interest in the slave seems to have been in view in this last paragraph, as he need not complain. If the slave is valuable, and he does not wish to lose him or his services for a time, he may, by virtue of the patria potestas, punish him to any degree. Same code, section cccxiv (part 8):

The master or the relations of the master of a guilty slave may, however, chastise sneh slave in any degree short of occasioning his death without being liable to punishment; nevertheless, if a master or his aforesaid relations, in order to correct a disobedient slave or hired servant, should chastise him in a lawful manner on the back of the thighs or on the posteriors, and such slave or hired servant happen to die, or if he is killed in any other manner accidentally, neither the master nor his aforesaid relations shall be liable to any punishment in consequence thereof.

The penalty for using violence to the master or his family is the severest known to the Chinese law. The first five paragraphs of the penal laws in section cccxiv read:

1. All slaves who are guilty of designedly striking their masters shall, without making any distinction between principals and accessories, be beheaded.

2. All slaves designedly killing, or designedly striking so as to kill, their masters, shall suffer death by a slow and painful execution.

3. If accidentally killing their masters, they shall suffer death by being strangled at the usual period.

4. If accidentally wounding, they shall suffer one hundred blows and perpetual banishment to the distance of 3,000 li; not being allowed, as under similar circumstances in ordinary cases, to redeem themselves from punishment by a fine.

5. Slaves who are guilty of striking their master's relations in the first degree, or their master's maternal grandfather or grandmother, shall be strangled at the usual period. If more than one are concerned the principal shall be strangled, and the rest Suffer the punishment next in degree. All slaves who strike so as to wound such persons shall, without distinction between principals and accessories, be beheaded at the usual period.

This slow and painful execution mentioned is better known as the slicing process" of execution, or "the 10,000 cuts." Foreigners have witnessed it, and the description is too horrible to recite.

Several sections of the penal code seem intended to separate the slave

and free classes, as far as possible. It provides severe penalties for inducing a free person to marry a slave, viz (section cxv):

If any master of a family solicits and obtains in marriage for his slave the daughter of a freeman, he shall be punished with 80 blows; the member of the family who gives away the female in marriage shall suffer the same punishment, if aware that the intended husband is a slave, but not otherwise.

A slave soliciting and obtaining a daughter of a freeman in marriage shall also be punished in the same manner, and if the master of the slave consents thereto, he shall suffer punishment less by two degrees; but if he moreover receives such freewoman into his family as a slave he shall be punished with 100 blows. Likewise whoever falsely represents a slave to be free and thereby procures such slave a free husband or wife, shall suffer 90 blows. In all these cases the marriage shall be null and void, and the parties replaced in the ranks they had respectively held in the community.

The master is protected against any breach of trust or confidence placed in the slave as a domestic.

Section ccclxx reads:

All slaves or hired servants who have been guilty of a criminal intercourse with their master's wife or daughter shall be beheaded immediately after conviction. When guilty of a criminal intercourse with their master's female relations in the first degree, or with the wives of the male relations of their masters in the same degree, they shall be strangled after remaining in prison the usual period. In the above cases the punishment of the woman, if consenting, shall be less only by one degree. When guilty of a criminal intercourse with their master's more distant female relations, or with the wives of his more distant male relations, they shall be punished with 100 blows and perpetual banishment to the distance of 2,000 li. If guilty of committing a rape upon the latter persons, they shall be beheaded after remaining in prison the usual period; except in the cases of rape, the punishment of a criminal intercourse with any of the inferior wives shall generally speaking be less than in the case of principal wives by one degree.

And section ccclxxiii reads:

A slave who is in any way guilty of a criminal intercourse with the wife or daughter of a freeman, shall be punished at the least one degree more severely than a freeman would have been under the same circumstances. On the contrary, the punishment of a freeman for having criminal intercourse with a female slave shall be one degree less than in ordinary cases. When both parties are slaves, the criminal intercourse shall be punished in the same manner as in the case of free persons.

On the other hand, any offense against a slave by freemen is less severely punished than when it is committed against free persons. Doolittle, in "A Social Life among the Chinese," Vol. II, page 211, says:

The descendants of slaves are admitted to literary examination, which shows that it is not considered to be so degrading to be a slave as some other callings-that of actors, for instance, whose descendants for four generations are not allowed that privilege.

The same work and volume, pages 211 and 212, gives some prices for which persons were sold, which came under the observation of the author:

The sole reason in this part of China considered sufficient to justify the sale of a child to be the slave of another, or of a wife to be the wife of some other man, is the excessive poverty of parents or husband, without friends able and willing to aid. The price varies according to the age, sex, appearance of the child, the character and the age of the wife, the dearness of provisions, &c., from a few dollars to several tens or a hundred or two.

In the year 1858, a man at Fuchow sold his wife for about $20. Another man, about the same time, offered his only son, a bright lad of five or six years, for sale for $16; he was offered $10 by a man who wished to adopt him for his son; which offer he refused. Several years since, a lad who had been attending a missionary free school in this place (Fuchow) was sold by his mother to be play-actor. A friend saw a girl of about sixteen or seventeen years old, not a year ago, offered for sale for $100 by her parents, who had brought her from her native place, some eighty or one hundred miles to the south of this. A bright girl of about twelve years old was sold by her parents not long ago for about forty thousand cash ($40).

A writer it the China Review, vol. 2, page 55, says:

A female infant is worth but 100 cash or 10 cents, while a healthy boy two or three days old will fetch $15.

The 4th class-Prostitutes.

Of this class there is little to be said, as all the laws applicable to slaves generally apply with full force to them.

They are a numerous class, and are to be found anywhere in the small country villages as well as in the larger cities. They form no inconsiderable per cent. of the whole population. They are all at the commencement of their career slaves.

They are either rescued when exposed by their poor parents at birth, or bought later in life for the purposes of prostitution.

The law, or custom older than any existing law, permits such traffic. It only interferes to prevent a girl who has been bought for a wife, concubine, or labor slave, from being used for purposes of prostitution; and in violation of this prohibition the number of blows is no more than for a petty theft.

In the crowded streets of cities, and in the more thinly-settled country regions, fine-looking female children are kidnapped and carried to distant places, and sold to be raised for those vile purposes. Even grown women, wives and young mothers, are carried away and sold. Persons charged with the offense of kidnaping are often before the courts.

Children are bought by members of the prostitute class and reared with a view of making the most money out of them. They are consequently well fed, and many of the female accomplishments, such as vocal and instrumental music, taught them; they are not overworked in childhood, as that would make them coarse and masculine.

When from twelve to fourteen years of age the physical part of their occupation commences, the moral development having been going on from infancy from their daily surroundings. For years after the age of puberty they are a source of income to their owners, and when, from advancing age, they are no longer attractive, they are allowed to emancipate themselves at a small price, and they soon manage to buy two or three small girls and then rear them.

And so the system ever revolves-the bond-woman becoming free only to become the owners of the bound. Although the treatment of these little children is good so far as food and work is concerned, many of them are unmercifully beaten by their owners. The whole system is such as to develop all the worst traits of human character; hence it would be difficult to imagine a more depraved and vicious class of people.

NUMBER OF SLAVES.

Class No. 1. Eunuchs.-From the use of this class being confined to the imperial families, it is not believed that there are more than 20,000 in the empire.

Class No. 2. Concubines.-It is impossible to arrive at anything like an accurate estimate of the numbers of this class, as all the men of all the classes, who are able, have one or more concubines, and, as they can be purchased and maintained cheaply, it is within bounds to say that one head of a family in five practices concubinage, and a man with moderate wealth may have two or three or even more. I therefore conclude that there are one-fourth as many concubines as families. If the basis of calculating the number of familes be assumed to be the same as with us, and the population estimated at 300,000,000, there are 60,000,000 families in China. Therefore, from the above, there must be 15,000,000 concubines in the empire, all property-bought as such, held as such, and liable to be sold as such..

Class No. 3. Labor slaves.-I have no figures by which to arrive at the numbers of this class. I am compelled to rely entirely upon the opinions of the most intelligent natives whom I can reach. They estimate that one family in five hold slaves, and, as the richer people have several, I have concluded that the labor slaves are one-fourth as many as the number of families, or 15,000,000. It is very probable that those sold permanently and those mortgaged temporarily are many more than this number.

Class No. 4. Prostitutes.-In a recent decision of Sir John Smale, chief justice of the supreme court of the British colony of Hong-Kong, he says that in a population of 120,000 Chinese in that colony there are at least 10,000 slaves, and that some people estimate the number at 20,000.

There is therefore at least one slave to every eleven freemen in that British colony in spite of laws prohibiting slavery.

I have no other data from which to estimate the numbers of this fourth class. I am of opinion, however, that this class considerably outnumbers the second class through the whole empire, and, in summing up these estimates, I conclude that in all there are from forty to fifty million slaves of all classes in China.

The first and second classes are composed of persons of some intelligence and moral character, judged by the Chinese standard.

The third and fourth classes are illiterate, immoral, and miserable creatures.

It would be difficult to imagine people more hopelessly situated than the 30,000,000 of these two classes. They are so inextricably bound, that usually the only hope for release from their misery and degradation is in death.

To recapitulate:

1. Slavery does now and has prevailed extensively in China through her whole historic period.

2. That the present slavery of China has grown out of the patriarchal family organization.

3. That the law of the Chinese family gives the pater familias absolute power and control over the members of the family.

4. That this power and authority are transferrible by mortgage or sale, and can be exercised when so transferred as by the original head of the family.

5. That the slaves of China are divided into four classes, and that these four classes comprise one-sixth of the whole population of the empire.

6. That, judging from the result of thirty-seven years' experience by the British authorities in Hong-Kong, there is vitality and strength enough in the Chinese family law and in the system of Chinese slavery to enable them to defy foreign laws and courts even in foreign countries. DAVID H. BAILEY, Consul-General.

SECTION CXV.

If any master of a family solicits and obtains in marriage for his slave the daughter of a freeman, he shall be punished with 80 blows; the member of the family who gives away the female in marriage shall suffer the same punishment, if aware that the intended husband is a slave, but not otherwise.

A slave soliciting and obtaining a daughter of a freeman in marriage shall also be punished in the same manner, and if the master of the slave consents thereto, he shall

suffer punishment less by two degrees; but if he moreover receives such free woman into his family as a slave, he shall be punished with 100 blows. Likewise, whoever falsely represents a slave to be free and thereby procures such slave a free husband or wife, shall suffer '90 blows.

In all these cases the marriage shall be null and void, and the parties replaced in the ranks they had respectively held in the community.

SECTION CXVI.

If a female slave deserts from her master's house, she shall be punished with 80 blows, or with 100 blows if she contracts a marriage during such absence, and in both cases she shall be restored to her master.

Whoever harbors a fugitive wife or slave or marries them, knowing them to be fugitives, shall participate equally in their punishment except in capital cases, when the punishment shall be reduced one degree. The marriage present in all such cases is forteited to government.

When, however, the person harboring or marrying the fugitive is really ignorant of her criminality, he shall not be subject to any punishment and shall even be entitled to demand the return of the marriage present.

SECTION CCLXXII.

If hired servants or slaves steal from their masters or from each other, the punishment shall be one degree less severe than in ordinary cases of theft, and the thief shall not be branded.

NOTE. Notwithstanding the tenor of this article, it is provided in one of the supplementary clauses that the punishment of slaves guilty of theft shall be at the least equal to that of thieves in general, and one degree more severe when the offense is committed by them in combination with strangers.

SECTION CCXCIV.

Whoever is guilty of killing his son, his grandson, or his slave, and attributing the crime to another person, shall be punished with 70 blows and one and a half year's banishment.

And slave attributing, previous to burial, the death of his master to a person innocent thereof, shall, if aware of the falsehood of the imputation, be punished with 100 blows and three years' banishment.

SECTION CCCXIII.

A slave striking a freeman shall, proportionally to the consequences, be punished one degree more severely than is by law provided in similar cases between equals. If the blow produces entire disability and incurable infirmity, the offender shall be strangled. If death ensues, the offender shall be beheaded.

A freeman striking a slave shall in like manner be punished less severely by one degree than in the ordinary cases of the same offense; but in the case of the death of a slave in consequence of the injury received, and in the case of a slave having been killed designedly, the offender shall be strangled. Slaves striking, wounding, or killing one another shall be punished as already provided in ordinary cases between equals.

In cases of stealing and other similar offenses between free persons and slaves, the law of diminution and aggravation of punishment shall not take effect.

Striking the slave of a relation in the third or fourth degree, but without producing a cutting wound, shall not be punishable. If the blow produces any greater injury short of occasioning death, the punishment shall be two degrees less severe than in ordinary cases.

Striking the slave of a relation in the second degree shall be punished three degrees less severely than in ordinary cases. If in either case the blow occasion death, the offender shall be punished with 100 blows and three years' banishment; if the blow prove mortal and has likewise been struck with an intention to kill, the offender shall suffer death by being strangled.

In the case of killing accidentally, no punishment shall be required.

Striking the hired servant of a relation in the third degree, withou' pradacing a entting wound, shall not be punished.

All slaves who are

SECTION CCCXIV.

uilty of designedly striking their master shall, without maklag any distinction between principal and accessories, be beheaded.