i 9 8  THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE
religion—not  the  judge’s  antipathy  to  the  religion  itself,  b
his  ingrained  feeling  that  the  convert  has  become  less  * n
than  the  non-convert,  that  he  has  received  that  foreign  a
which,  in  i  goo,  sent  missionary  and  convert  alike  o  °
common  sacrifice  on  the  altar  of  nationalism.  ie ^  ca ,.
fall  under  one  or  other  of  these  extremes,  and  eit  er
proof  is  forthcoming  or  the  decision  has  to  be  taken  y  01
capable  of  feeling  where  lies  the  right  and  where  the  wron&amp;
there  can  be  no  question  on  the  course  to  be  followed.  ^
great  majority  of  cases,  however,  are  such  as  to  be
ceptible  of  proof,  or  fall  into  the  wide  field  between  ^
two  extremes  ;  and  in  them  the  missionary  must  e  ®
bound  to  exercise  the  greatest  discrimination,  in  t  îe  i
terests  of  his  mission  work,  of  his  own  national  governme
and,  not  least,  of  his  converts  themselves.

Mixed  Courts
lhe  law  applicable  to  Mixed  Courts  in  China  at  th
present  day  is  that  prescribed  by  the  Chefoo  Convention
1876  with  Great  Britain,  and  in  Article  IV.  of  the  meric  -,
treaty  of  1880,  given  above,  but  they  merely  reguanse
what  had  been  the  practice  since  foreign  nations  un  er  00
the  task  of  enforcing  justice  on  and  for  their  nations.
There  is  not  anywhere  a  special  tribunal,  as  in  Egypt,
the  trial  of  all  mixed  cases  ;  but  the  court  is,  in  eac  ia
stance,  a  court  of  the  defendant’s  nationality,  giving  1  ^
decision  under  the  supervision  of  a  competent  representative ­
  of  the  plaintiffs  nationality.  This  is  the  theory.  I*
practice  the  Chinese  have  seldom  sent  representatives  to
sit  on  the  bench  in  the  foreign  courts,  since  it  has  generally
been  recognised  that  the  judgments  rendered  there  are  based
on  the  law  and  the  evidence  ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  foreign
powers  have  never  felt  the  same  confidence  in  Chinese  de
cisions,  and  no  suit  is  brought  in  China  by  a  foreign  plainti
against  a  Chinese  defendant  and  left  to  the  sole  decision  0
the  Chinese  judge,  without  the  presence  of  an  assessor  0
the  plaintiff  s  nationality  or  acceptable  to  him.