Page 167 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

153.

believed their society required a legal system only to punish

those who refused to live by Confucian codes of conduct.

Consequently, the Chinese did not revere law in the abstract

sense. The Chinese legal system was fluid. Their Emperor, the

Son of Heaven, whose conduct was the highest standard of moral

conduct, had the law at his disposal to aid him in administer­

ing the Celestial Empire. Laws therefore changed from dynasty

to dynasty without causing an outrage. In the nineteenth

century Westerners did not understand the position of law in
Chinese society and the basis of that society's lack of respect

for the abstract value of law.

Correlated to the Chinese attitude toward law was their

attitude toward justice. Even though their legal system was

a fluid one, it did contain a criminal code complete with de­

lineated punishments for various crimes. For instance, pre­

meditated murder was punishable by beheading, whereas homicide

in self-defense was justifiable. Between these categories was
9
accidental homicide. Confucian morality stressed the concept

of social responsibility, beginning with familial relationships

and ending with the ruler's responsibility for his subjects.

This concept made a person involved in another person's death

responsible for that death, even if it was an accident.

(Naturally social responsibility did not preclude self-defense.)

As a result, people accused of accidental homicide were vir-

tually always judged guilty, and therefore subject to the sen-

9
H.B. Morse and H.F. Macnair, Far Eastern International
)
Relations (Boston, 1931 , p. 72.