allowing for such modifications as special circumstances might demand. Their end and aim was a consistent uniformity. And it has ever been the chief object of judicial investigations to distinguish between right and wrong, and to administer justice with impartial hand. Hence the impossibility of applying honour and punishment to the same case.
Let me explain. Suppose that Hsü’s father had committed no crime, but had been wrongfully done to death by the magistrate, out of spite or in a rage; and suppose the magistrate and other officials to have treated the matter as of small account, to have rejected all claims, to have turned a deaf ear to all entreaties;―then, if the son, scorning to live under the same heaven, his head pillowed by night upon his sword, his heart brimful of wrong, had struck the murderer to earth, careless of the death to come upon himself,―then I would say that he was a noble fellow who did his duty and deserved the thanks of shame-faced officials for relieving them of their responsibilities of office. Why talk of condemning him?
But if Hsü’s father was really guilty, and the magistrate rightly put him to death, in that case it was not the magistrate but the law which took his life; and can a man feel a grudge against the law? Besides, to slay an official in order to be avenged upon the law he administers, is simply open rebellion against properly-constituted authority. Such an offender should indeed suffer death for his crime in accordance with the statutes of the empire; but he should hardly be honoured at the same time with a memorial.
The above-mentioned Censor further went on to say, “Every man has a son, and every son is under the same obligations to his parents. If then it is admissible for sons to slay the murderers of their fathers, the result will of course be an endless chain of slaughter.” But here the Censor totally misunderstands the purport of social obligations. The man whom society deems qualified for revenge is one who struggles beneath a terrible load of wrong, with no means of redress. It is not one who, when a guilty father has rightly perished under the knife of the executioner, cries out, “He
