EXTRATERRITORIALITY  185
Peking,  but  this  is  in  no  sense  a  re-trial  ;  and  in  certain
cases  an  appeal  may  be  taken  to  the  U.S.  Circuit  Court  of
California,  six  thousand  miles  away.  His  position  is  the
more  difficult  from  the  fact  that  he  has  to  administer,  not
the  law  of  Massachusetts  or  of  New  York,  or  even  of  California, ­
  the  nearest  state,  but  “  American  law,  and  this
generally  without  the  aid  of  trained  lawyers  ;  he  must
administer  the  common  law  unelucidated  by  any  statutes,
and  must  often  give  judgments  which  Solomon  would  have
envied.  Besides  American  law  he  must  have  a  sufficient
knowledge  of  the  lex  loci,  as  in  the  case  of  a  land  suit  to
which  an  American  is  defendant,  and  instances  have  been
known  when  his  judgment  has  depended  upon  the  right
interpretation  of  the  tenets  of  the  Buddhist  religion.  With
all  this  complexity  he  has  still  another  element  of  difficulty  :
his  instructions  from  the  State  Department  require  him
first  to  bring  two  suitors  to  common  terms  of  settlement,
and  having  attempted  this  without  giving  one  party  a  clue
to  the  case  of  the  other,  and  having  failed,  he  must  then  erase
from  his  mind  all  he  has  learned  in  the  matter  and  go  on  the
bench  to  sit  as  judge.*
Besides  requiring  him  to  act  as  judge,  the  extraterritorialised
  position  of  the  foreigner  in  China  places  on  the
Consul's  shoulders  still  another  burden  of  responsibility.
Beyond  the  protection  of  American  law,  the  American  in
China  is  safeguarded  by  the  stipulations  of  the  treaties.
These  specify,  to  select  a  few  among  the  many  instances,
that  Customs  duties  shall  be  uniform,  that  inland  transit
dues  (akin  to  octroi)  may  be  compounded,  that  Americans
may  freely  rent  or  charter  houses,  boats,  etc.,  that  they  shall
not  be  prevented  from  preaching  the  gospel,  that  the  U.S.
*  The  opening  on  January  2,  1907,  of  a  United  States  District
Court  for  China  will  remove  cases  of  a  certain  class  from  the  Consul’s
jurisdiction,  and  to  this  extent  will  modify  what  has  been  said  in  this
paragraph  ;  but  this  description  still  applies,  more  or  less  exactly,
to  the  Consuls  of  other  powers,  such  as  France,  Germany,  etc.  Only
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  have  thought  it  necessary  to
establish  separate  courts.