No. 177.
Mr. Denby
to Mr. Bayard.
Peking, February 24, 1888. (Received April 21.)
Sir: As some discussion has lately taken place in the United States touching slavery in China I submit the following observations thereon:
The origin of slavery in China is given in an ancient writing, the Fong-fou-ting, in substance as follows: In antiquity there were no slaves, neither male nor female. The first slaves were felons who lost their liberty by reason of their crimes. But they were slaves simply in the sense that their labor belonged to the public. Prisoners and captives taken in war introduced a second species of slavery. Finally, in the troubles and misfortunes of the third dynasty, the poor who were without resources gave themselves with their families to the great and rich who were willing to support them. These last two forms of slavery caused the condition to be regarded rather as a misfortune than a shame.
In the memoirs prepared by the early Catholic missionaries, and printed in 1777, there are treatises on slavery. Marriage of slaves was encouraged for the sake of the increase.
Slaves were usually treated with kindness, and were supported by their masters in their old age. Manumission was common, and instances are recorded wherein slaves refused the tender of their freedom. The [Page 264] missionaries wax eloquent in defense of slavery, and regard the institution as developing “a mode of thought and sentiment worthy of the authors of Telemachus and of the Friend of Man.” The traditional Chinese patriarch’s idea of the family, they say, modifies and tempers slavery so that masters and slaves become one great family.
Slaves were never numerous in China, and of late years they have decreased in numbers. Ail China knows, says one writer, that an edict of the Emperor was necessary to oblige his Tartars on duty to have slaves for domestic servants, and that this edict is hardly observed.
All modern writers agree that slavery still exists. Every native may purchase slaves, and the condition is hereditary. Freedom is forfeited by crimes or mortgaged for debt. Slaves are so few that they attract little attention. At Peking girls bring higher prices than boys, varying, according to age up to eighteen years, from 30 to 300 taels. Needy parents sell their children, and orphans are sold in times of famine for a few taels in cash.
Williams ascribes the paucity of slaves to the existence of the competitive examination system. The widely diffused education consequent on the preparation for the examinations by 2,000,000 of people every year has saved China, he thinks, from the feudal system, the villeinage consequent thereon from the introduction of castes, and the considerable en tension of slavery. To deny that competitive examinations have had this beneficent tendency would be to contradict the experience of humanity touching the benefactions of education. But the same result in Western countries is much more advantageously obtained by the common schools, which more than all else are the distinguishing glory of modern times.
It is probable that the patriarchal form of the Chinese Government, the primitive idea among the Chinese as among the Jews, that all the people constituted a great family, and the doctrine of the worship of ancestors, have more than the competitive examinations restricted the spread of slavery.
That slavery is tolerated by Chinese law will sufficiently appear from the statutes which, although fallen somewhat in disuse, still exist. I quote a few of these laws.
By section 115 of the penal code a master soliciting and obtaining in marriage for his slave the daughter of a freeman suffers eighty blows. Accessories are punished in like manner. A slave soliciting and obtaining a daughter of a freeman in marriage is punished in like manner. If he receives the woman into his family he suffers one hundred blows.
A person representing falsely a slave to be free and thereby procuring such a slave a free husband suffers ninety blows. The marriages are in all such cases null and void.
Under section 313 a slave striking a freeman shall be punished one degree more severely than is by law provided in similar cases between equals.
Entire disability so caused is punished by strangulation, and in event of death from the blow, the slave is beheaded. A freeman striking a slave is punished one degree less than in ordinary cases, but he is strangled if death follows the blow.
Slaves striking or killing one another are punished as equals are.
Under the head of “slaves striking their masters,” section 314, the punishments are very severe. For striking the master the punishment is beheading; for killing him, death by the slow process; for accidental killing, death by strangling; for accidental wounding, one hundred [Page 265] blows and banishment. For similar injuries to their master’s relatives the punishments are reduced one degree.
If the master beats the slave to death for having committed a crime he suffers one hundred blows.
A gentleman living here who has devoted his life outside of all missionary societies and alone to charity, Mr. J. Fisher Crossette, gives me some information as to slavery. He says there is a system of servitude carried on in the coal mines west of Peking. Men are involved in gambling debts and then taken to a coal mine. Their lives and labor are mortgaged for the existing debt and for others subsequently created, and they remain slaves.
The Chinese have a great horror of this condition, and the law has done much to put a stop to this abuse, and in certain districts has succeeded. Mr. Crossette personally knows that large numbers of girls were carried off and sold into slavery during times of famine in the province of Shantung. A Chinese convert at Tsi-nan-fu sold his little daughter for $16 to serve as a maid of all work in a rich man’s family. Boys were not marketable. Another Christian sold his wife for $2.50 to pay a debt of that amount.
Mr. Crossette says that there exists in some parts of China a peasant servitude, such as formerly existed in Russia.
I have, etc.,