CHINESE WITNESSES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1606, 11 February 1884, Page 3

CHINESE WITNESSES.

One of the minor difficulties connected with our daily intercourse with the Chinese (observes the "North China Herald") lies in the uncertainty of nil attempts' to. get them to speak tho truth when their testimony is required in courts of law, We speak of it as a minor difficulty,, because it is one of comparatively rare occurrence; but it is obvious to everybody that cases do occur when the testimony of a Olvmeso under such circumstances may bo' of tho most vital importance—literally vital, as determining, perhaps, a question of life or death, It has been said, with only too much truth, that the Chinese are a nation of j liais; that they lib by instinct, they | lie from preference, they lie in their! histories, they lie in their books of science. Even to put it more mildly, we fully endorse the statement that a Chinaman feels not the slightest shame in being found out in a falsehood, and that lying generally is regarded as being so very venial an offence as scarcely to amount to an offence at all, It is always dangerous to affirm the non-existence of anything in the world, tnnd therefore we abstain from saying that there is absolutely no proverb in China which condemns lying as a vice; but we have no hesitation in confessing that we have met with none, and that in no work of morality or fiction that we ever read have.we come across a catalogue of sins which included the sin of lying,