The Chinese, owing perhaps to the extensive use they make of this mode of punishment, have attempted, by fixing the length and breadth at the extremities, and weight of the bamboo, to render uniform the amount of the suffering produced by this mode of punishment; but one material circumstance that they have omitted to regulate, and certainly the most difficult to regulate, is the degree of force with which the stroke is to be applied; an omission that leaves the uncertainty nearly in the same state as in this country.—See the Penal Code of China, translated by Sir G. T. Staunton, p. 24.