I once heard a kind-hearted Englishman say that he could forgive China all her faults except the torturing of prisoners in the law-courts and in the gaols. Torture in China--which is very slowly becoming obsolete--has very naturally made Europeans shudder with horror: but where does Confucius give countenance to torture? And after all, the extent of China's crime is only this, that she has not abolished the practice of torture quite so early as the nations of Western Europe and America. Perhaps the missionaries and others who have pointed out to the Chinese the enormity of their crime in permitting torture have sometimes omitted to state that only in comparatively recent times have we ourselves become so merciful as to forbid the practice. Without dwelling on the abominable punishments devised for heretical offenders in every country in Europe, it is as well to remember that torture was continually inflicted in England during the Tudor reigns,[263] and also under the Stuarts. In Scotland it was long a recognised part of criminal procedure, and was not finally abolished in that country till the eighteenth century.[264] The Most High and Mighty Prince whose name adorns the front page of our English Bibles, in one memorable case directed the application, if necessary, of "the most severe" tortures, and expressed the devout wish that the Almighty would "speed the good work." When confronted with so lofty an ethical system as that taught by Confucius, European writers who wish to prove the justice of their contention that "it must at every point prove inferior to Christianity" are naturally driven to make the utmost of any passage in the Chinese classics that appears to reveal something of the Chinese sage's moral imperfections. Just as an anti-foreign Chinese commentator on the Christian religion might utilise certain texts in the Old Testament to show that the Christian God was neither just nor merciful, and certain texts in the New Testament to show that Jesus of Nazareth shared the superstitions of his age and was sometimes lacking in self-control, so European expounders of Confucianism have seized upon a few passages in the Confucian canon to prove to their own satisfaction that the great Sage of China did not always speak the truth. The passages are three in number. In one we are told that a certain brave man was commended by the Master for his absence of boastfulness, because though he nobly brought up the rear during a retreat, he said, "It is not courage that makes me last, it is my horse that won't gallop fast enough."[265] As courage really was the cause of his conduct, Prof. Legge and those who think with him take the view that the man's own explanation of what he had done was untruthful and that Confucius by awarding him praise condoned a lie. Considering that Confucius's only remark on the subject was that the man was no braggart, probably few of us except sanctimonious pedants would say that either the sage or his hero was