OCR Text |
Show A CHINAIVIAN'S OATH. Judge Landis, in a case before him in ( Chicago, has held that a Chinaman is capable of understanding and appreciating an oath and that, therefore, the Asiatic's testimony is to be given as much weight as that of any other witness. . The judge, though learned in the law, should read Bret Harte's "The Heathen Chinee," which is a good word painting of a Chinaman's China-man's cupidity and unfathomable duplicity. Had Landis lived on the Pacific coast he would not have hesitated to declare a Chinaman's China-man's mind to be beyond all conception of the meaning, importance , or sacred responsibility of a Christian oath, in fact, two forms of oaths are administered to Chinese in tho courts of California, one following tbe custom of swearing witnesses in China, the other the law oath of this country. For years it was impossible to secure a conviction of any Chinaman, China-man, if conviction depended on the adverse testimony of the Chinese themselves. The witnesses would swear to anything with as little compunction as the ordinary American feels in beating a street car conductor out of a nickel fare. The highbinders murdered hundreds of their countrymen in San Francisco and the tong wars grew to the proportions of anarchy, and yet not one Chinaman could be found to bow down to the oath of our courts and tell what he knew, and tell the truth, without mental reservation approaching a complete mental blank |