Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 November 1876 — A Chinese Way of Dealing With Corrupt Officers. [ARTICLE]

A Chinese Way of Dealing With Corrupt Officers.

The following extract from a China paper gives a picture of paternal government in that country, in which the precept of not sparing the rod is carried into practice in a way which ought to strike terror into the hearte of the official hierarchy. The bamboo has long been known as an effective instrument for governing the masses and the correction of offenders against the Chinese code, but there is something novel as well as startling in the idea of a degraded official being made to hold out his hands for a hundred blows to be administered on the palms as a preliminary castigation for malversation. If such a mode of dealing with official malpractices were to become general we might saon hope to see a notable improvement in the administrative departments which in China are so notoriously bad and

corrupt. “We learn that one of the mandarins here, who had swindled the Government of a large sum of money when making purchases of warlike materials at Hong Kong during the Formosan affair, was brought up for trial before the redoubtable Ting and the Fautal. On the 4th es August this uegraded official was subjected, as an introduction to something severe in store for him, to a flogging of one hundred blows on the palms of his hands. He was to have been bambooed in the usual way as other criminals on the back, but for his bitter crying and vehement entreaties, coupled with the fact of his not being in very good health. The defaulting official is sumamed Man, and is related to a Taoutai of that name who was degraded at the same time with the Vicerov Ying Han in the Waising affair.’’— PaU Mall Gc*ette.