dress grievances and punish small transgressions nayboen, thus sparing the character and feelings of many an offender.

The public tribunals are very solemn, diligent, and astute in their proceedings, and seldom fail, we are assured, to elicit the truth. But to effect this, when evidence and other means are wanting, they have recourse to torture. From their verdict there is no appeal.

Capital punishment, and even sentence of death, necessarily involve confiscation of property, and disgrace to the family of the criminal. Hence, a man of the higher orders, publicly accused, and conscious of gilt, prevents his trial by at once ripping himself up. If the criminal be arrested too suddenly to allow of this step, and the family excite sufficient interest to induce the judicial and prison authorities to incur some little risk for their sake, recourse is had to one of two nayboen forms of death before sentence. When most kindness is felt, the prisoner is privately supplied with a weapon with which to rip himself up; but this is a rare indulgence, because attended with considerable risk to the friendly agent. The more ordinary course is, to order the prisoner to be tortured, for the purpose of extorting confession; at the same time, causing an intimation to be given to the executioner, that should the operation prove fatal, no questions will be asked. In

either case the prisoner is reported to have died of disease; and, being presumed guiltless, because unconvicted, the body is delivered to the family for interment, and the concomitant evils of conviction are avoided.

The criminal who, not having thus eluded or forestalled his fate, is sentenced to death, is bound with cords, set upon a horse, and thus led to the place of execution-an open field without the town,—his crime being published both by word of mouth and by a flag. Upon his way thither, any person who pleases may give him refreshment -a permission seldom made use of. Upon reaching the appointed spot, the judges, with their assistants, take their places, surrounded by the insignia of their office, and by unsheathed weapons. The prisoner here receives from the executioner a cup of sakee, with some of its regular accompaniments, as dried or salted fish, roots, mushrooms or fruit, or pastry; and this he is allowed to share with his friends. He is then seated upon a straw mat, between too heaps of sand, and his head is struck off with a sword.

The severed head is set up upon a stake, to which is affixed a placard, announcing the crime that had incurred such a punishment. It is thus exposed for three days, after which the relations are allowed to bury as much of the corpse as the birds of prey have left.

This is the description given by the Dutch writers of an execution, and doubtless is what they have witnessed at Nagasaki. But a conjecture may be hazarded, that the forms are those practised only towards criminals of the lower orders, founded upon what was said in a former chapter of the mode of putting high-born offenders to death; and perhaps a second, not improbable conjecture might be added—to wit, that however precise the laws of Japan, much is left to the pleasure of the judge, in relation to the mode of inflicting the immutable doom. But whatever be thought of the ideas here thrown out, it is very clear that both of these are the merciful forms of execution, as we elsewhere learn that prisoners are frequently and publicly tortured to death, and that the excellence of an executioner is measured by the number of wounds-sixteen is said to be the maximum-that he can inflict without causing death.* Upon these occasions, it is reported that the young nobles habitually lend the executioner their swords, as a trial of the edge and temper of a new blade. It is further asserted, that they take great delight in witnessing executions, especially such as are enhanced by torture. One species of torture, in which a shirt of reeds, the criminal's only garment, is set on fire, is esteemed so superlatively entertaining from the sufferer's con* Titsingh.

changed for a straw band, the wearing of which is a disgrace. The filth of the dungeon is rẻmoved through a hole in the wall, and through that same hole the food of the prisoners is introduced. Their victuals are of the very worst description; and although the prisoners are allowed to purchase or to receive from their friends better provisions, no individual purchaser or receiver of supplies can derive any benefit from his acquisition, unless it be sufficient to satisfy the appetites of all his chamber or dungeon-fellows. Inasmuch as the inmates of this detestable abode, a detention in which might be deemed punishment adequate to most offences, being left wholly to their own government whilst confined there, have established the law of the strongest, and that in its worst form; a ruthless democratic tyranny, where the strongest means the majority.

CHAPTER IX.

ANECDOTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE CHARACTER AND MANNERS OF THE JAPANESE.

The Phaeton, Captain Pellew, enters Nagasaki Bay.-Transactions there.-Japanese governor's plans.-Neglect of duty discovered. The Phaeton's departure.-Disastrous results.Siebold's adventures.-Tchouya's conspiracy.—Arrests. His wife's presence of mind. He and his friends tortured.Sibata Zabrobi's friendship.-Execution.-Yorinobon's escape by his secretary's suicide.—Gratitude of his posterity.— Ziogoon's purpose of illegal adoption.-Minister's fruitless remonstrances.-Midia's mode of prevention. - Japanese Lucretia.-Minister threatened.-His good humour.-Test of an accountant's qualifications.-Safe mode of nicknaming a monarch.-Ingenuity of a fisherman.-Its reward.—Artificial mermaid.-Curious mode of trial.

Or this kind of illustration, the recent Dutch writers afford very little, and that little is chiefly found in Doeff's recollections; but from Titsingh's unreadable annals a few anecdotes may be gathered, that strongly exemplify some national peculiarities both of mind and manners; for instance, the vindictive spirit and inflexible constancy of the Japanese, the slight account they