Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1895 — WHERE LIFE IS CHEAP. [ARTICLE]

WHERE LIFE IS CHEAP.

Proxy Plan of Executing Criminate in China. Three Chinamen were recently arrested m New York and ordered to be deported. It seems that they deserted from the Chinese army and came to this country, where they have succeeded in accumulating a considerable sum of money. Now, the penalty for desertion in China is death, but these three prisoners are not at all alarmed. They claim that under the laws of China a man of means is allowed to hire somebody to be executed in his place. This proxy plan of executing a criminal is worked in this way: When a well-to-do man is condemned to death he hunts up a poor coolie and makes a bargain with him. The substitute is allowed his liberty.4intil the day of execution, and his employer has him watched so that he cannot escape, for if the coolie should not turn up at the appointed time the principal would have to suffer the penalty. Of course this system is very convenient for rich criminals, and the poverty-stricken wretches who sell their lives seem to be perfectly satisfied. These people have no sense of the value of human life, and a poor man thinks that he has made a good trade when he binds himself to die for another man, and receives enough cash in hand to enable him to enjoy a frolic for a few weeks. A coolie who has sold himself in this manner buys fine clothes and plunges into all the dissipations that he is able to pay for. Oft the day of his execution he presents himself with a smiling face and leaps into eternity, congratulating himself upon having tasted all the sweets of good fortune and happiness at the close of his career. If the Chinese with their utter disregard of death ever become a well disciplined and warlike nation they will make splendid soldiers. All that handicaps them now is their backward civilization.—[Atlanta Constitution.