| The torture was also called beating imprisons. Although it has different forms of address in the different age, yet the meanings of them are all same. The high-developed traditional penal system of China is very famous in the world, yet the torture system is a very important part of it. The torture contains the basic idea of the traditional criminal law, and is a great contribution to the form of the culture of traditional criminal law. And thus, researching into the torture of the past ages helps to understanding the traditional penal system and the culture of traditional criminal law, and knowing about the characters of the traditional justice of China.The torture, according to the credible historical material, was popularly used in the Justice during the Qin and Han Dynasty. Yet, it just had certain principles, but not a system at that time. And then, at Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties time, the torture developed much better, and the systems appeared, such as“CeFa”?“CeLi”. To Sui and Tang dynasties, a complete system of torture centered on the flogging was formulated finally. After that, the rules of the law in Tang dynasties were inherited by the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties as a whole, yet the torture did not get bogged down. Especially to the Qing Dynasty, the torture had some new changes, including: new additional legal ways of torture, the larger scope of remitted in the torture system, the emphasis of coordination between certain cases and certain ways of the torture and so on. Moreover, the theory about the question of the torture became much deeper, such as, the manufacture and the use of the torture instruments, the ways of the torture and the matters needing attention, the prevention and the restriction to the illegal torture. All of the contents made the torture system seem much more complete, and represented a mature shape of the traditional torture system.The same as the formation and development of the former torture, the existence and the development of the torture system of the Qing Dynasty also had its specific foundation. Take its foundation of ideological concept as an example, they were nearly same compared with all previous dynasties. This was because the law system of the Qing Dynasty inherited the law system based on the Confucianism since Han and Tang Dynasty. The thought and concept which supported the law system were the same as the previous dynasties. The thought and concept included the consciousness of benevolent official, cautious punishment, the idea of no disputes and so on. As the new change in the aspects of the population, economy, administrative system, the condition of the lack of the Justice resource of the County Magistrates in the Qing Dynasty came out relatively. That made the Justice of the County Magistrates in the Qing Dynasty lean on the torture increasingly. At the same time, because of the low ability of the officials of the State &County in the Justice of the County Magistrates in the Qing Dynasty and other negative reasons such as XuYi, inquisition by torture was used in the Justice of the County Magistrates in the Qing Dynasty accordingly. The use of legal torture in the Justice of the County Magistrates was not negative at all. It had a lot of function, e.g. raising the efficiency of the Justice of the County Magistrates, legal prevention and so on.As the previous dynasties, the existence of illegal torture could not be denied in the Justice of the County Magistrates in the Qing Dynasty. But over the degree of illegal torture, there were much dispute between the folk impression and the official expression. Through the literary works about the ancient times cases, it's easy to find that the Justice of the County Magistrates in the Qing Dynasty was equal to the torture, and the unjust charge the folk impression. But in the official literary materials, the torture just happened by accident. Maybe the differences came from the folk repellence to the illegal torture subjectively. Regarding the illegal torture in the Justice of the County Magistrates, the law of Qing Dynasty made a system of prevention and punishment, e.g. prevention before happening, surveillance in the course, and punishment after happening. However, these were not enough to stop the problems of the illegal torture in the Justice of the County Magistrates in the Qing Dynasty. Actually, there were many reasons for the existence of the illegal torture in the Justice of the County Magistrates in the Qing Dynasty, e.g. the need of the political persecution, official corruption, or distorting the law and Practicing favoritism. The reasons of psychology included: sanguinities, the consciousness of authority, the idea of outcaste and the flaw of the system itself and so on. Through the analysis of the famous case of YangNaiwu in the Latter Qing Dynasty, we can recognize how the illegal torture in the Justice of the County Magistrates led to the unjust charge directly, and can see the function of adding fuel to the flames of the officials, medical examiner, lawyer, XuYi, witnesses while the illegal torture was produced.In the latter Qing Dynasty, under the influence of modern western legal thought, the validity of the torture was questioned unprecedentedly. After that, as the political reform and law repairing proceeding step by step, the reform of the torture system began to implement. The scope of the torture was limited in the homicide case and burglary case. During the early time of the Republic of China, The NanKing temporary government tried its best to abolish the torture officially. However, the abolishment of the inquisition by torture got little effect in the Justice practice during the latter Qing Dynasty ,because the social foundation on which the inquisition by torture based was all the same. So, the abolishment of the system did not bring the expected good effect. About that point, you can get a vivid understanding from the course of abolishment of the torture in the occident and the orient and the comparative research to the different effect. |
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