Further, in a well-known handbook, magistrates are advised to postpone, in certain circumstances, the infliction of corporal punishment; as for instance, when either the prisoner or they themselves may be under the influence of excitement, anger or drink.
The bamboo is the only instrument with which physical punishment may legally be inflicted; and its infliction on a prisoner or recalcitrant witness, in order to extort evidence, constitutes what has long been dignified as "torture;" but even that is now, under a changing system, about to disappear.

This must not be taken to mean that torture, in our sense of the term, has never been applied in China.

The real facts of the case are these.

Torture, except as already described, being constitutionally illegal, no magistrate would venture to resort to it if there were any chance of his successful impeachment before the higher authorities, upon which he would be cashiered and his official career brought abruptly to an end.

Torture, therefore, would have no terrors for the ordinary citizen of good repute and with a backing of substantial friends; but for the outcast, the rebel, the highway robber (against whom every man's hand would be), the disreputable native of a distant province, and also for the outer barbarian (e.g.the captives at the Summer Palace in 1860), another tale must be told.