THE MARKET VALUE OF LIFE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 7, 13 February 1892, Page 151

THE MARKET VALUE OF LIFE.

It is doubtful if in certain countries of the East a plurality of the population would agree with the desire of a long life. Not only a * short life and a merry one,’ but a short life on any terms, would seem to be the ideal of millions of Orthodox Buddhists, and during a famine in the < 'hinese province of Hunan, when a Government commissioner offered to take charge of the most destitute for two taels (about twelve shillings) a month, some of the applicants proposed to save him the moiety of his expenses if he would give them one tael's worth of opium and permission to drown themselves. Buddha Sakyamuni, indeed, distinctly instructs his disciples to crush out the love of earthly life as the root of all evil, and a good many of his followers naturally prefer a short line to salvation, and decide Hamlet’s alternative on rather triHing pretexts. Sir Emerson Tennent’s Cingalese gardener committed suicide to avoid the annoyance of being summoned as a witness in a Chancery suit, and a few months after his son imitated his example, to save himself the trouble of hunting up a runaway horse. In Burmah, false witness can be hired to assume the re sponsibility for a capital offence, in order to shield wealthy criminals, who agree to advance a small sum in cash, and the North China Herald informs us that, after the enactment of the new conscription law, many old men hung themselves to enable their eldest sous to claim the privilege of chief supporters of a widow, and thus evade the obligation of military service. That contempt of life not rarely manifests its recklessness by proxy. Abu Hassan, the leader of the Carmanite heretics, once received a delegation of envoys near the outworks of his camp, and politely asked them to witness the consummate discipline of his followers. • Stab thyself !’ he ordered one of his men. ‘ Leap down this precipice !’ another ; and both commands were executed on the spot. During the siege of Fort Schweidnitz, the commander of the Russian allies horrified General Loudon by deliberately instructing one of his subordinates to sacrifice two hundred men in a sham attack,-in order to divert the attention of the defenders front the objective point of the actual assault ; but in the last war against the Tae-ping rebels, the leader of the royalist troops went much further by ordering his regulars to drive a few brigades of cheap conscripts into a trench and keen at it till the chasm was filled enough to facilitate an escalade. ‘Just notice the disrespect of those fellows !’ muttered Czar Peter, when the people of Berlin crowded about his carriage ; then turning to the king (the father of Frederick the Great): ‘Brother,’ said he, ‘do me a kindness and order your men to hang a few of those loafers; it would make the rest more careful.’ - In Hindustan many a ‘ sovereign of fifty faithful square miles ’ would have promptly acted upon a hint of that sort, and the Guicowar of Baroda once ordered his elephant-driver to charge into a mob that obstructed his approach to the pavilion of the British resident. Potentates of that sort are, however, not the exclusive product of the Eastern hemisphere, and the opponents of Guzman Blanco, the dictator of Venezuela, accuse him of having authorised the execution of two hundred prisoners of war, merely because a detachment of the escort had to be sent off on other service, and the remaining guards seemed insufficient to prevent the escape of their captives. In war, in times of famine and in the storm and stress of seafaring exigencies, the value of human life is always liable to discounts, but the cynicism of the tendency reaches its ne plus ultra in the over-populated borderlands of Siam and Southern China. On the trip from Canton to Singapore a coolie junk a tew years ago, had launched a boat to get a cargo of fresh vegetables from a small island of the Anam coast, when a sudden gale forced the oarsmen out of their course, and instead of attempting their rescue the commander of the junk decided to double Cape Camboja without loss of time.

‘ That boat is drifting too far east to land, but we could save it, if we can find our way through the Saigon Reefs,’ suggested a correspondent of the Bombay Gazette who had taken passage for the Straits Settlements. • Yes, we might,’ grunted the captain ; ‘ but the Saigon pilots charge thirty shillings a day, and that sum would exceed my agents’ commission on half a dozen new Canton coolies. ’